Huang: The $12 Gongkai Phone

Posted Apr 19, 2013 9:23 UTC (Fri) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402)
In reply to: Huang: The $12 Gongkai Phone by karim
Parent article: Huang: The $12 Gongkai Phone

> Oh boy, I love this one. I've been labelled many things, but "westerner" is a first. Sold :)

Apologies - statistically on here the assumption is a good bet.

> if the Joe Westerners of this world no longer have jobs how is this going to help China's economy?

You are failing to take into account the dynamic nature of economics. Just because Joe Westerners might not be the wealthy ones with cash in their hands does not mean that the Chinese will suddenly have no customers.

If Joe Westerners have no jobs, the West's wealth will decline in favour of those who are providing goods and services to the West. The demand for high tech products will _not_ just magically evaporate.

And there's nothing anyone can do about it because that's just how economics works - so worrying about a $12 phone is pointless.

Huang: The $12 Gongkai Phone

Posted Apr 19, 2013 14:06 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (2 responses)

> If Joe Westerners have no jobs, the West's wealth will decline in favour of those who are providing goods and services to the West. The demand for high tech products will _not_ just magically evaporate.

Another plausible scenario is that if the export market drops out that there won't be enough of a local market to pick up the slack and both economies crash hard. That's the one that keeps many people up at night. In my mind this is why free trade agreements are a bad deal, they are connecting two networks under different administrative control bidirectionally without any firewalls or traffic control.

About Free Trade Agreements

Posted Apr 21, 2013 21:24 UTC (Sun) by XERC (guest, #14626) [Link] (1 responses)

Leaving the USA "Free" Trade Agreements, that provide asymmetrical freedoms, to aside, "free trade agreements" like the European Economic Zone remove government repressions from borders of geographical areas.

If You claim that freedom of trade is a negative thing, then would Your argumentation still stand, if the protectionist zones were halving Your home town like the Berlin Wall? How about automating the bureaucracy and placing some trade restrictions between every town or part of town? What makes trade restrictions between countries different from trade restrictions between towns?

To avoid misunderstanding: I love the idea that trade is not limited and anyone can provide its goods to any other country (like in the European Union) without any government restrictions, interventions. (OK, the EU does have some rules about gathering statistics to governments and environmental rules, e.g. rules, how goods must be transported, but they are not that repressive).

About Free Trade Agreements

Posted Apr 22, 2013 22:25 UTC (Mon) by jdulaney (subscriber, #83672) [Link]

So, the question then becomes: "Is it really free trade if the restrictions are removed one-way?" Look at China and US; relatively speaking, there are exceptionally few barriers from Chinese products entering the US, but the other way is extremely restricted by the Chinese government, who looks the other way when Chinese domestic companies rip off US products for their domestic market.

Huang: The $12 Gongkai Phone

Posted Apr 23, 2013 3:26 UTC (Tue) by rodgerd (guest, #58896) [Link]

Henry Ford got very rich by disagreeing with you.