Memnison Journal

Very good article that explains the real limits of Chinese power down the road.  Here’s a mix of his points and some of my thoughts on the matter:

• Cheap labor and fair access to markets is about their main strengths.  Quality is not as important if the manufacturers can slide by.
• Labor is starting to price itself out of the basement, and the real dirt-cheap producers are looking elsewhere - like Vietnam.  In some cases, the manufacturers are finding out that the endless parade of people in government wanting a cut of the action are getting to be endless.  And expensive.
• Chinese aren’t innovating, they’re just cheaping things out. 99% of what they’re doing is innovated somewhere else, in regards to true innovation.
• They’re depending on massive, continuous, unending growth. This is impossible. Eventually, the growth is going to hit a limit.
• The Chinese - both people and manufacturers - are consuming huge quantities of raw materials, stripping their own country bare and polluting the heck out of it. Long before they’re done producing, the quality of life and the lack of arable, unpolluted land is going to smother them.  Or upset the masses enough to say enough-is-enough.
• Health care is China is absurdly bad, and this and the pollution is going to catch up with them.
• The demographics are going to hell in a handbasket. Because of the one-child policy and the way it’s been implemented, there’s going to be a lot of unmarried guys unemployed and looking for work and women that aren’t available, and there’s going to be a ton of elderly with no visible means of support (in the hundreds of millions, reaching a third of a billion in the not-too-distant future). There’s no pensions as a rule or Social Security in China - you depend on your kids. What kids?
• Too much corruption means that there’s too much of a leakage on all costs - you put X amount into a business or a government project, and too much of it gets trickled off and too little gets done in an effective manner. This will only work out so long as the spigot is full and juicy. If it ever dies down, watch out.  The inner contract between The Party and the people is that the gravy keeps rolling in, and the party controls things. 
• Too much government control and corruption in government is a situation ready for a long-term collapse and a drying up of further innovations in favor of cash cows to keep the bribes flowing.
• The government is subsidizing a lot of things, such as gasoline and diesel, but this becomes a constant drain that can never be cut off without open revolts in the streets.

At various times, I get into research projects; some simmer on for decades in various forms, and some break off and pick up speed because I happen to run into something that really fuels the fire, so to speak.

My library here is largely one that I use for reference. I have a huge amount of material that isn’t in book form, and I’m going through that all the time and hacking away at it to be able to organize and marshal the stuff. At present, the idea is to digitize everything, and use various management utilities to be able to find and figure out what’s what.

Here’s a *short* list of the topics I’m still digging for:

I thought I’d heard the end of orphanage-abuse stories for a while.  I was wrong.   This one’s in Iraq.

Chinese air pollution from coal emissions have now made it the top CO2 emitter in the world. One of the big culprits - cement production.  Think about the stuff behind that…the size and reasons for making that much cement…

The story: did Yale frat boys steal Geronimo’s bones?  Well, his relations want them back.

An inconvenient truth: a zillion Japanese legislators are now saying that the Nanking Massacre was all made up, and that 150-300,000 people were not killed for funsies by the Japanese Army.  Ignore those photos and mass burial sites.

• The debate on Ron Paul. (Interesting stuff, re the back and forth, but I agree on the statement that it would be nice if both parties had someone you didn’t look at with utter revulsion or despair).
• Are you a Sunni spy for Iraq, or are you a Sunni spy for Iraq?  Decisions, Decisions.
• The Big Gay Bomb, written in cheek in tongue.  Just in case it isn’t clear, the writer is gay.
• Meredith was asking me the other day if there were still such things as pirates.  Yes, there are, and they’re busy.
• Some debate on the use of coal for energy demands - using liquefied coal, etc.    See also this Wikipedia article, and this and this DOE link on the subject.  As a EPA guy, I’m against pollution and global warming, but I’m all for useful solutions to the energy crisis.  Just shooting down answers without some thought and debate, to me, is silly to ridiculous.
• See also this government information link on coal use.
• See also this set of materials on Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer and his ideas on coal: from ‘The Oil Drum‘, and the Daily Kos.

• Jack Williamson’s obit in the Telegraph
• A comeback for the Illinois coal mines
• I just heard a commercial on NPR for a chiropractor for dogs. Not a story, an ad.
• “Um, we don’t call those Americans ‘hungry’ anymore. We say that they have ‘very low food security’. And then we offer them a plate of ketchup.”
• The official added: “Bush has said ‘no’ to withdrawal, so what else do you have? The Baker report will be a set of ideas, more realistic than in the past, that can be used as political tools. What they’re going to say is: lower the goals, forget about the democracy crap, put more resources in, do it.”
• A lot fewer people ID themselves (now) as Republicans since before the election. Like a 31% to 24% (seven points) drop.

Aside of the horrible problems over communication, what struck me was - how did this happen? In China, you hear about these sort of things all the time because the government is in bed with the mining companies, if not part owners, are ssafety rules are ignored, underfunded and never enforced.

Well, guess what. The reason West Virginia went away from Gore and the Democrats and to Bush and the Republicans in the first place in 2000, and again in 2004, was scare tactics. For the mining companies, it was a scare over a environmentally-friendly candidate who would raise taxes and controls on fossil fuels over greenhouse concerns, which led to big GOP donations. For the locals, it was ‘the Democrats will take away your guns, close the mines, take away your job and send you liberal faggots who will tell you how to live and do.’ The result when Bush got in was to gut the enforcement arm of the Bureau of Mines, so that they could issue lots of paper, but never back it up with anything real in the way of making the mining companies comply. Violations on the mine where the disaster happened were repeated and numerous, but they were no more than $120 per violation, and nothing was ever done or settled on.

Having been around regulatory enforcement all of my life - first in Meat quality with my mom and then in the EPA - most violations are because someone wants to make a quick cheap buck and doesn’t want to pay for doing it right. 208 violations in one year, and nobody does anything until people die. This is the cost of George Bush to you and me and the men in those mines.