craftsmanship, consumerism, virtue, privilege, and quality

- if you want to own a tv you should be paying the cost of poisoning the air above shenzen &c

lol TVs weren't always made in Shenzen man!

- we need to find ways of taking advantage of productivity gains and efficiencies w/o encouraging consumption

ya can u get on this? we need an answer by like... 100 years ago

we used to poison the air over pittsburgh...toledo...akron.... man those were the days

it's so nice that america's skies don't have to be polluted anymore, we can just outsource it to china

we used to poison the air over pittsburgh...toledo...akron.... man those were the days

who can tell me with a straight face they wouldn't repoison akron & toledo to bring back the glory days of shenzen

shenzhen used to be a nice quiet fishing village. 30 years ago a fisherman would catch a fish.

100% would sacrifice toledo & akron to make that fisherman happy

- we need to find ways of taking advantage of productivity gains and efficiencies w/o encouraging consumption

the key is that 'consumption' includes services and 'goods' that are 1s and 0s. and we should encourage a shift to that type in the long run and in lots of ways it's happening already. otoh is buying an iphone app for $5 better for the world than buying a hamburger for $5? if you just isolate that purchase, yeah, but a. can't isolate that b. I guess we're also more willing to spend money on these 1s and 0s in a world where we can already afford the material goods we want.

idk aero, I guess my point is that if america wants TVs then america should be ready to handle the pollution that comes with it instead of dumping it all elsewhere

it's so nice that america's skies don't have to be polluted anymore, we can just outsource it to china

chinese air pollution already reaches california iirc

Has anyone informed the Minnesota ilxors that they may be untapped reserves of cultural capital? This knife dude seems to have a fair amount of press relating the fact he is from REAL PLACE, MINNESOTA

idk aero, I guess my point is that if america wants TVs then america should be ready to handle the pollution that comes with it instead of dumping it all elsewhere

― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Sunday, November 6, 2011 3:12 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark

or rather, that if americans want flatscreen TVs, then hopefully they would not be against paying a higher price so that the waste associated with manufacturing TVs doesn't get improperly dumped into the environment, whether that environment happens to be in china or in toledo

but that would mean TVs would cost more, guess it's okay for poor people in china to suffer from heavy metal poisoning in their land and in their food so that joe sixpack can watch football on his 60" as cheaply as possible

ya can u get on this? we need an answer by like... 100 years ago

ok c u soon

dayo I'm not sure who you're arguing w/. I'd be in favor of heavy enough tariffs to stop China from ruining itself to provide worthless consumer goods to the west, but can you really put that ruin on the west? China had several systems that didn't result in the destruction of China, they had various pluses and minuses; participating in the market capitalism of the west seems easily the most destructive of them to my mind, but I don't think western demand gets to shoulder all the blame for the fate of rural China

participating in the market capitalism of the west seems easily the most destructive of them to my mind

wait what

I think China about thirty years from now will make the worst years under Mao look like a picnic

there really isn't any way to make 30 million people starving to death look like a picnic

hold that thought man!

a key component of a good picnic is making sure that everyone has food

lol max u are on fire today

arguably that is the #1 most important characteristic of a good picnic

ants

picanic baskets

China had several systems that didn't result in the destruction of China, they had various pluses and minuses; participating in the market capitalism of the west seems easily the most destructive of them to my mind, but I don't think western demand gets to shoulder all the blame for the fate of rural China

wait what? I'm as critical of deng xiaoping as anybody but this is just trolling

I do agree though that if china could get into a time machine and go back to mid-qing dynasty living, everybody would probably be better off

right but where are you going to make that time machine, shenzen?

bespoke time machine handcrafted in brooklyn by artisans

dayo I'm not sure who you're arguing w/. I'd be in favor of heavy enough tariffs to stop China from ruining itself to provide worthless consumer goods to the west, but can you really put that ruin on the west?

heavy-tariffs to stop china from letting american businesses make things and sell things to americans is patronizing 'stop-hitting-yourself'-esque logic btw. otoh you can argue that china's currency manipulation is *bad for people in china*.

there isn't an easy answer for 'how do you lift a billion people out of poverty without fucking up the world'. you can blame the west for having fucked up consumption patterns and being way behind the curve when it comes to dealing w/ its own environmental issues and you can blame the chinese government for being very short-sighted when it comes to the real costs of pollution. but tariff wars aren't gonna help anybody in any sense, esp. since any long-term solutions require a lot of international coordination.

man dayo knows his dynasties, qing dynasty even tried to stop footbinding

the qing dynasty was doing pretty well til the british showed up

the qing dynasty world was doing pretty well til the british showed up

heavy-tariffs to stop china from letting american businesses make things and sell things to americans is patronizing 'stop-hitting-yourself'-esque logic btw.

in re: this, what if somebody is actually hitting himself

as long as america is around countries are going to have lots of help w/r/t hitting themselves

isn't there already legislation re: pollutant-heavy manufacturing/processes and disposal of waste etc in the US?- ie the very type of attempt to force companies to pay environmental costs up-front that lamp suggests?

Cos I mean, presumably that's one of the major factors that makes it cheaper to manufacture abroad.

and if you accept that the globalised economy makes it inevitable that developing economies will tend to take on the tasks that become problematic in eg US, are we going to start seeing fair-trade flatscreens?

selling for 4x the price of the regular flatscreen but made out of papaya or something

Or what's the suggestion?

there is more legislation here than china obv, tho generally not anywhere near the realm of 'factory x pays for all its environmental externalities'.

china actually has pretty strict safety laws, its just that nobody follows them and the courts dont enforce anything

strict environmental laws

refreshing and healthy benzene

yeah tbf i hadn't ever assumed 'sufficient' legislation but that underlines the point, really- even with light regulation, the problem just goes elsewhere without solving anything in terms of global impact.

benzene rings, the lord of them all

when they fix things in china they'll just move all the factories to SE asia, when SE asia outlaws they'll just move the factories to the parts of africa that aren't war-torn

right, which means even if china one day got 100% on board, you still have other places willing to step up. xp

xp yup

but hopefully the reptilians will reveal themselves by then and show us the path to salvation and to Betelgeuse V

exactly. Where to next, this place isn't shitty enough to be a viable cost centre anymore

Globalisation works

we basically need a world government willing to impose and enforce environmental taxes

a rising tide will hopefully cover all plutonium dumps, kiu icecaps

xp lol