Website review: A nation of outlaws - The Boston Gl...
TapwaterJ discovered this in Law
•4 reviews since Aug 27, 2007
law, economics
•boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/...
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TapwaterJ discovered 11 months ago
A Nation of Outlaws A century ago, that wasn't China -- it was us The Boston Globe By Stephen Mihm | August 26, 2007- "If recent headlines are any indication, China's rap sheet of capitalist crimes is growing as fast as its economy. Having exported poison pet food and toothpaste laced with antifreeze earlier this year, the world's emerging economic powerhouse has diversified into other, equally dubious product lines: scallops coated with putrefying bacteria, counterfeit diabetes tests, pirated Harry Potter books, and baby bibs coated with lead, to name but a few."
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"What's happening halfway around the world may be disturbing, even disgraceful, but it's hardly foreign. A century and a half ago, another fast-growing nation had a reputation for sacrificing standards to its pursuit of profit, and it was the United States."
"As with China and Harry Potter, America was a hotbed of literary piracy; like China's poisonous pet-food makers, American factories turned out adulterated foods and willfully mislabeled products. Indeed, to see China today is to glimpse, in a distant mirror, the 19th-century American economy in all its corner-cutting, fraudulent glory."
"China may be a very different country, but in many ways it is a younger version of us. The sooner we understand this, the sooner we can realize that China's fast and loose brand of commerce is not an expression of national character, much less a conspiracy to poison us and our pets, but a phase in the country's development. Call it adolescent capitalism, if you will: bursting with energy, exuberant, dynamic. Like any teenager, China's behavior is also maddening, irresponsible, and dangerous. But it is a phase, and understanding it that way gives us some much-needed perspective, as well as some tools for handling the problem. Indeed, if we want to understand how to deal with China, we could do worse than look to our own history as a guide."
"A bit of empathy might even be in order. One hundred and fifty years ago, even America's closest trade partners were despairing about our cheating ways. Charles Dickens, who visited in 1842, was, like many Britons, stunned by the economic ambition of our nation's inhabitants, and appalled by what they would do for the sake of profit. When he first stepped off the boat in Boston, he found the city's bookstores rife with pirated copies of his novels, along with those of his countrymen. Dickens would later deliver lectures decrying the practice, and wrote home in outrage: "my blood so boiled as I thought of the monstrous injustice."
"What was it that made the 19th-century United States such a hotbed of bogus goods? And why is China's economic boom today, as New York Times writer Howard French clucked earlier this month, "minted in counterfeit"?
Piracy, fraud, and counterfeiting, whether of currency, commodities, or brand-name electronics, flourishes at a particular moment in a capitalist society: the regulatory interregnum that emerges in the wake of fast-paced capitalist change. This period is one in which technology has improved, often dramatically, and markets have burst their older boundaries. Yet the country still relies on obsolete ways of controlling commerce. Until there's something to replace them, counterfeiters and other flim-flam operators flourish, pushing new means of making money to their logical, if unethical, conclusion."
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"But understanding the parallels does suggest a way to move forward. The rogue industries of the United States eventually responded to stiff international economic pressure. Beginning in the 1880s, the European meat boycotts spurred Congress to pass a raft of federal legislation aimed at imposing some inspection controls on the exports of meat. In response, European countries opened their doors to American meat again. And in 1891, Congress finally bowed to decades of angry lobbying and passed an international copyright law that protected foreign authors."
- Darque rated 11 months ago
- I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that China is a "younger version" of the U.S. - especially considering that their culture predates ours by several thousand years. But, it does seem that there are certain parallels to their rapid capitalist growth and that of the United States a century and a half ago - brazen greed mixed with wanton disregard for life and limb. Doesn't it make you proud?
- logarithm rated 11 months ago
- This is actually pretty interesting. I hadn't thought about it like this. It's similar to how people in the US, or the North Carolina textile industry specifically talk about foreign powers "stealing" our jobs and not playing by the same rules, when we in North Carolina "stole" those textile jobs from the New England area before. It's just the way things work.
- laodan rated 11 months ago
- A nation of outlaws in the Boston Globe by Stephen Mihm assistant professor of American history at the University of Georgia and is the author of "A Nation of Counterfeiters," to be published this week by Harvard University Press.
What's happening halfway around the world may be disturbing, even disgraceful, but it's hardly foreign. A century and a half ago, another fast-growing nation had a reputation for sacrificing standards to its pursuit of profit, and it was the United States. ... China may be a very different country, but in many ways it is a younger version of us. The sooner we understand this, the sooner we can realize that China's fast and loose brand of commerce is not an expression of national character, much less a conspiracy to poison us and our pets, but a phase in the country's development. Call it adolescent capitalism, if you will: bursting with energy, exuberant, dynamic. Like any teenager, China's behavior is also maddening, irresponsible, and dangerous. But it is a phase, and understanding it that way gives us some much-needed perspective, as well as some tools for handling the problem. Indeed, if we want to understand how to deal with China, we could do worse than look to our own history as a guide. A nation of outlaws A tragic lesson U.S. in 1887=China in 2007: It's All Deadwood To Me by dan in China Law Blog When Charles Dickens, left, arrived in Boston in 1842, he was startled to see what Americans would do for profit and infuriated to find bookstores filled with unauthorized copies of his work. Hei, Hei... This concept of adolescent capitalism refers to the adoption of consumer protection legislation. All well. But how do we call the West today? is it mature capitalism? Is it late capitalism? or what else? The Western hand is responsible for the cultural, political and economic tsunami that originally destabilized Africa from which the continent does not seem to regain its composure. The same happened with the American natives but only worse, for, they were decimated to let their lands free to be occupied by emigrating Europeans. But all this happened long ago. The side-effects of modernity that erupt today: loss of diversity, climate change, poisoning of water and air, peak resources, and all the other effects not yet known are threatening the survival of humanity. in its civilizational stage of evolution and perhaps even in its survival as a specie... So how do we call such a stage of capitalistic advancement? Who cares, for, after the collapse there will be nobody to think about all that. Is it not?
- A nation of outlaws in the Boston Globe by Stephen Mihm assistant professor of American history at the University of Georgia and is the author of "A Nation of Counterfeiters," to be published this week by Harvard University Press.
