<story><title>I Tried to See Where My T-Shirt Was Made</title><url>http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/india-garment-factories-sumangali</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tokenadult</author><text>Come on, ladies and gentlemen, the fine submitted article is about stark conditions in &lt;i&gt;India,&lt;/i&gt; where &amp;quot;Western capitalism&amp;quot; was specifically rejected, and socialism embraced, as an economic model after independence in 1947. The comparison with Taiwan (where I have lived, twice) is instructive. Taiwan too, under the China Nationalist Party (KMT) dictatorship, had a period of governance that accepted Sun Yat-sen thought and dabbled with a lot of socialism. (That the field of Taiwan&amp;#x27;s flag, formally the flag of the Republic of China, is red is no accident. The KMT was very much part of a worldwide socialist movement when it was founded.) Meanwhile, as the mainland fell to the Commmunist Party of China and then Stalin&amp;#x27;s invasion of South Korea from the north began, the United States felt constrained to prop up Taiwan, and one way it did so was by promoting land reform in Taiwan and local free and fair elections. Gradually, Taiwan became more &amp;quot;capitalist,&amp;quot; and it went from stark poverty (being poorer in my wife&amp;#x27;s birth year than some newly independent countries in Africa) to prosperity. Taiwan hasn&amp;#x27;t had a garment industry like that described in the submitted article for a long, long time. Essentially everyone who gets online to discuss issues on Hacker News probably uses an Internet device with multiple components made in Taiwan and traded in international trade.&lt;p&gt;Trade is the foundation of capitalism, not exploitation. (The references for this, of course, are the writings of Adam Smith and David Ricardo.) India (and also much of South America) specifically rejected this wisdom during much of my lifetime, and now those countries have to play catch-up. They still have time. They won&amp;#x27;t have stark poverty forever if they learn from the examples of other countries, just as Taiwan did.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>oskarth</author><text>Thank you for being a voice of reason and empiricism in this thread. Seems like too many people took a class in marxist sociology and all of a sudden see the whole world in terms of The Capitalists and The Exploited Class.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Taking a class in economics and thinking everything has a monetary value attached to it, or that homo economicus actually exists would obviously be just as bad.</text></comment>
<story><title>I Tried to See Where My T-Shirt Was Made</title><url>http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/india-garment-factories-sumangali</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tokenadult</author><text>Come on, ladies and gentlemen, the fine submitted article is about stark conditions in &lt;i&gt;India,&lt;/i&gt; where &amp;quot;Western capitalism&amp;quot; was specifically rejected, and socialism embraced, as an economic model after independence in 1947. The comparison with Taiwan (where I have lived, twice) is instructive. Taiwan too, under the China Nationalist Party (KMT) dictatorship, had a period of governance that accepted Sun Yat-sen thought and dabbled with a lot of socialism. (That the field of Taiwan&amp;#x27;s flag, formally the flag of the Republic of China, is red is no accident. The KMT was very much part of a worldwide socialist movement when it was founded.) Meanwhile, as the mainland fell to the Commmunist Party of China and then Stalin&amp;#x27;s invasion of South Korea from the north began, the United States felt constrained to prop up Taiwan, and one way it did so was by promoting land reform in Taiwan and local free and fair elections. Gradually, Taiwan became more &amp;quot;capitalist,&amp;quot; and it went from stark poverty (being poorer in my wife&amp;#x27;s birth year than some newly independent countries in Africa) to prosperity. Taiwan hasn&amp;#x27;t had a garment industry like that described in the submitted article for a long, long time. Essentially everyone who gets online to discuss issues on Hacker News probably uses an Internet device with multiple components made in Taiwan and traded in international trade.&lt;p&gt;Trade is the foundation of capitalism, not exploitation. (The references for this, of course, are the writings of Adam Smith and David Ricardo.) India (and also much of South America) specifically rejected this wisdom during much of my lifetime, and now those countries have to play catch-up. They still have time. They won&amp;#x27;t have stark poverty forever if they learn from the examples of other countries, just as Taiwan did.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>moocowduckquack</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Western capitalism&amp;quot; was specifically rejected, and socialism embraced&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That must be why it has such strong labour laws and enormous social safety net supported by a tax and spend government then. Or possibly the economy ditched socialism in 1991 when it carried out a series of free market reforms at the behest of global trade organisations. Who can possibly say.</text></comment>