<story><title>The China tea trade was a paradox of global capitalism</title><url>https://aeon.co/essays/the-china-tea-trade-was-a-paradox-of-global-capitalism</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Melting_Harps</author><text>&amp;gt; “What if machines of war are really the greatest investment of capital”&lt;p&gt;Then it would negate modern History, specifically in regards to the collapse of the Soviet Union, wherein a country with 100s of ICBs with nuclear warheads, warehouses churning out AK47s and ammunition surplus that still are being exported to this day (Viktor Anatolyevich Bout), tanks and war ships in such quantities that they&amp;#x27;d trade Pepsi for them [1]! And still end up destitute, with a plutocracy and a massively disenfranchised population both at home as well as much of the former satellite nations.&lt;p&gt;Capital investment is best spent on a sound currency, strong local manufacturing base and a strong legal system to protect both from corruption as well as the Human rights of its populations; unfortunately no nation Western or Eastern seems intent on doing that... like ever in History. Thus proving that Humanity is not capable of not giving into the intoxication of ending mutually beneficial collaboration with others for extended periods of Time in exchange &amp;#x27;for more of their share.&amp;#x27; It may occur for short windows, but so long as a Human entity remains in charge of those aspects of Civilization it will always succumb to the same avarice and corruption regardless of whatever the rhetoric is espoused of National Brotherhood or Patriotic duty. Hence the argument for currencies and economic models outside the control of centralized systems like Governments.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m sure many of you are seeing visions of Westworld or Psycho pass type dystopias but I&amp;#x27;m convinced there is a middle ground between the two we just haven&amp;#x27;t been able to arrive to due to constant conflicts, and endless wars that drain the World of Human capital and technological resources best used for this end.&lt;p&gt;But I also find it funny how some of Elon Musk&amp;#x27;s, an openly declared Utopian Anarchist, biggest proponents haven&amp;#x27;t realized the fact that all of his and Kimbal&amp;#x27;s businesses are aimed to help establish a colony on Mars where he has gone on record to say one of the biggest reasons to do so it try and re-do all of this non-sense on Earth with a blank slate canvas approach, and this is the extreme one has to go to do it.&lt;p&gt;People keep accepting that War with China is inevitable, as it were some unavoidable deterministic outcome, but I disagree and have hope that Humanity can come to reason and refuse to participate. War is never in anyone&amp;#x27;s best interest, I really wish that we&amp;#x27;d have learned that by now.&lt;p&gt;1: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&amp;#x2F;how-pepsi-briefly-became-the-6th-largest-military-in-the-world-2018-7?op=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&amp;#x2F;how-pepsi-briefly-became-the...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>alextheparrot</author><text>Just to riff off this a bit more, it got me thinking along the thought “What if machines of war are really the greatest investment of capital”.  I think there is at least the seed of something to explore there, though the tools of war have traditionally been expensive irrespective of system (A uniform in the 1800s was orders of magnitude more expensive than today’s variety, for example).</text></item><item><author>Synaesthesia</author><text>The biggest advantage was their military success IMO, capturing India, the Middle East, areas all over the world ... taking on China. The violence was completely necessary because as the article said, because without force &amp;quot;The British could offer little in return that Chinese merchants wanted to buy.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>alextheparrot</author><text>A lot of the British global trade advantage came from transport and logistics advantages — growing opium in India, moving that to China, tea being transported back to Europe.  Alongside this, a strong navy to ensure the safety of shipping routes.  The quantity and value of resources they extracted during that time really are staggering.&lt;p&gt;A similar logistic marvel was the transport of ice from North America and Europe — this wasn’t a business where industrial scale was the primary complexity, but a challenge of supply-chain construction in an age without local refrigeration and cooling.&lt;p&gt;The article’s joining of “capitalism” and “industrialisation” is, in my opinion, a narrowing of reality that naively ignores all the other contexts in which capitalism has been quite successful.  Large ships are capital intensive, mercantilism in general has been a long-term, capital intensive business far longer than industry has been.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>brmgb</author><text>&amp;gt; tanks and war ships in such quantities that they&amp;#x27;d trade Pepsi for them [1]!&lt;p&gt;As an aside, the Soviet Union didn&amp;#x27;t actually trade tanks and war ships for Pepsi. Well, I mean, technically they did but not in the way people might assume when they read the sentence trading Pepsi for war ships.&lt;p&gt;Pepsi became nominally the owner of a derelict fleet headed to the scrap yard in 1989 as a way to bypass the Soviet Union lack of dollars. The Swedish scrap yard then directly paid Pepsi.</text></comment>
<story><title>The China tea trade was a paradox of global capitalism</title><url>https://aeon.co/essays/the-china-tea-trade-was-a-paradox-of-global-capitalism</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Melting_Harps</author><text>&amp;gt; “What if machines of war are really the greatest investment of capital”&lt;p&gt;Then it would negate modern History, specifically in regards to the collapse of the Soviet Union, wherein a country with 100s of ICBs with nuclear warheads, warehouses churning out AK47s and ammunition surplus that still are being exported to this day (Viktor Anatolyevich Bout), tanks and war ships in such quantities that they&amp;#x27;d trade Pepsi for them [1]! And still end up destitute, with a plutocracy and a massively disenfranchised population both at home as well as much of the former satellite nations.&lt;p&gt;Capital investment is best spent on a sound currency, strong local manufacturing base and a strong legal system to protect both from corruption as well as the Human rights of its populations; unfortunately no nation Western or Eastern seems intent on doing that... like ever in History. Thus proving that Humanity is not capable of not giving into the intoxication of ending mutually beneficial collaboration with others for extended periods of Time in exchange &amp;#x27;for more of their share.&amp;#x27; It may occur for short windows, but so long as a Human entity remains in charge of those aspects of Civilization it will always succumb to the same avarice and corruption regardless of whatever the rhetoric is espoused of National Brotherhood or Patriotic duty. Hence the argument for currencies and economic models outside the control of centralized systems like Governments.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m sure many of you are seeing visions of Westworld or Psycho pass type dystopias but I&amp;#x27;m convinced there is a middle ground between the two we just haven&amp;#x27;t been able to arrive to due to constant conflicts, and endless wars that drain the World of Human capital and technological resources best used for this end.&lt;p&gt;But I also find it funny how some of Elon Musk&amp;#x27;s, an openly declared Utopian Anarchist, biggest proponents haven&amp;#x27;t realized the fact that all of his and Kimbal&amp;#x27;s businesses are aimed to help establish a colony on Mars where he has gone on record to say one of the biggest reasons to do so it try and re-do all of this non-sense on Earth with a blank slate canvas approach, and this is the extreme one has to go to do it.&lt;p&gt;People keep accepting that War with China is inevitable, as it were some unavoidable deterministic outcome, but I disagree and have hope that Humanity can come to reason and refuse to participate. War is never in anyone&amp;#x27;s best interest, I really wish that we&amp;#x27;d have learned that by now.&lt;p&gt;1: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&amp;#x2F;how-pepsi-briefly-became-the-6th-largest-military-in-the-world-2018-7?op=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&amp;#x2F;how-pepsi-briefly-became-the...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>alextheparrot</author><text>Just to riff off this a bit more, it got me thinking along the thought “What if machines of war are really the greatest investment of capital”.  I think there is at least the seed of something to explore there, though the tools of war have traditionally been expensive irrespective of system (A uniform in the 1800s was orders of magnitude more expensive than today’s variety, for example).</text></item><item><author>Synaesthesia</author><text>The biggest advantage was their military success IMO, capturing India, the Middle East, areas all over the world ... taking on China. The violence was completely necessary because as the article said, because without force &amp;quot;The British could offer little in return that Chinese merchants wanted to buy.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>alextheparrot</author><text>A lot of the British global trade advantage came from transport and logistics advantages — growing opium in India, moving that to China, tea being transported back to Europe.  Alongside this, a strong navy to ensure the safety of shipping routes.  The quantity and value of resources they extracted during that time really are staggering.&lt;p&gt;A similar logistic marvel was the transport of ice from North America and Europe — this wasn’t a business where industrial scale was the primary complexity, but a challenge of supply-chain construction in an age without local refrigeration and cooling.&lt;p&gt;The article’s joining of “capitalism” and “industrialisation” is, in my opinion, a narrowing of reality that naively ignores all the other contexts in which capitalism has been quite successful.  Large ships are capital intensive, mercantilism in general has been a long-term, capital intensive business far longer than industry has been.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dumbfoundded</author><text>A nuke seems like a profitable investment for anyone without.</text></comment>