[HN Gopher] Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
___________________________________________________________________
Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
Author : DanBC
Score : 379 points
Date : 2021-03-18 08:57 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (face2faceafrica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (face2faceafrica.com)
| lmm wrote:
| Feels like a pretty confused article, diving back and forth
| between cocoa and coronavirus vaccines even while saying they're
| unrelated.
|
| Building up local industry sounds like a good approach for the
| long term (though, contra the article, inevitably at a short term
| cost); the simplistic free trade arguments discount the value of
| developing industry within the country. A ban is a very blunt
| instrument though; a tariff (perhaps gradually increasing over
| time) seems like a better approach that would help the country
| gradually transition while avoiding shocks.
| Laforet wrote:
| Until someone shows me actual evidence of a ban being applied
| or at least some concrete plan with penalities for violations,
| what I have just read are nothing more than rhetoric and
| posturing.
|
| Banning the export of a commodity is very hard. It works when
| the supply could be drastically reduced in the short term (1973
| Arab oil embargo), or when the product has already failed in
| the market and they need government intervention to save face
| (recent Russian ban on raw timber export). In any other case,
| the goods will always find a way through the controls to meet
| the demand.
| jeromegv wrote:
| That was indeed a very confusing article to read, I couldn't
| finish it.
| Shivetya wrote:
| Explain LID [0] which is effectively a tax applied to every ton
| of cocoa sold of which most is paid to the farmers.
|
| However I think Ghana is in the wrong here because extorting
| other nations to give them anything free of charge by withholding
| trade goods will simply means that the trade goods will
| eventually be sourced elsewhere.
|
| Regardless what you think about rich vs poor, medicine vs goods,
| and such, IP is property and using a world wide organization to
| deprive another of their rights is never a good idea. (no
| whataboutism please). Yes it is medicine, yes it is important,
| but that does not mean it has to be free. It should be something
| that can be negotiated but going nuclear in trade never benefits
| anyone and usually affects the poorest of world the most.
|
| My suggestion, just up the LID
|
| [0]https://www.uncommoncacao.com/blog/2020/10/20/the-lid-in-
| gha...
| bildung wrote:
| _> to deprive another of their rights is never a good idea. (no
| whataboutism please)._
|
| What about access to cocoa not being a right?
| djohnston wrote:
| I think OP is talking about access to the COVID vaccines. As
| much a human right as access to cocoa really.
| meepmorp wrote:
| they said no whataboutism, fam
| stan_rogers wrote:
| I can't tell whether or not your response was meant to be
| in jest, but "whataboutism" is a variety of _tu quoque_
| involving a third party.
| meepmorp wrote:
| What about my post makes you think I don't know that?
| tziki wrote:
| I wish them success, but my prediction is that in a few years
| they'll have no successful products and the world's chocolate
| makers have found new suppliers. You can't just make a decision
| to create successful products.
| KuzMenachem wrote:
| You can incentivize the creation of certain types of businesses
| that aid in the economic development of the country though.
| Many countries, especially in Asia, have "decided" to become
| successful producers of industrial goods. For example, the
| automotive and electronics industry in South Korea were heavily
| supported by national policy, after the government decided that
| these areas were critical for the development of the country
| [0]. This actually worked incredibly well - many companies are
| still around today (e.g. Hyundai, Samsung, LG).
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-
| Year_Plans_of_South_Korea
| vagrantJin wrote:
| Inter African free trade is increasing sharply, so their
| primary market would likely be other African countries. Maybe
| that was their trumo card if worst comes to worst.
| jelling wrote:
| Same. I am concerned they are overlooking how much marketing
| mind-share Switzerland has globally for chocolate. Ghana could
| get there but it will not happen overnight, more like a
| generation. Distribution will also take time.
|
| Give that cocoa is their number 3 export - and I suspect most
| of that is in raw form - I really hope this doesn't backfire.
| They need foreign currency.
|
| A wiser path might be to build up global chocolate brands in
| parallel to raw exporting, sort of like we're seeing China move
| up the value chain from value-added manufacturing to consumer
| brands.
| sct202 wrote:
| They can process the beans and no one will notice. There are
| a lot of cocoa processors who produce bulk chocolate for
| other brands who melt that down to form their own products.
| Companies like Barry Callebaut or Valrhona primarily supply
| other companies with chocolate.
| ars wrote:
| I will notice - it's not easy obtaining Kosher
| certification in Ghana.
| bogomipz wrote:
| Sure but processing cocoa into chocolate at the scale
| quality of Callebaut and Valrhona is a massive undertaking
| of both production and skill. Callebaut and Valrhona
| produce chocolate for high end consumers such as pastry
| chefs in high end restaurants or artisanal bakeries. I'm
| not saying Ghana can't get there but it's going to a long
| time. Certainly long enough that it would be very much
| noticed.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| You're missing a step here. Yes brand recognition is powerful
| for consumers.
|
| But I don't think ghana is going to be doing B2C stuff just
| yet. I'd assume that they are going to export cocoa products,
| as it would allow them to charge a much higher price, keeping
| more money in the country
| acdha wrote:
| We recently enjoyed some chocolates made in Ghana from a company
| founded by a Ghanaian-born American immigrant:
|
| https://us.midunuchocolates.com/
| [deleted]
| htatche wrote:
| Is this rather a ban on Ghana suppliers themselves in order to
| trigger a shift in the country's manufacturing so they're forced
| to step up their processing and break away from just sending the
| crops at whatever price the market sets?
| kleiba wrote:
| I guess they will have to sell the beans to some other state
| then, from whom Switzerland will then buy it?
| ramraj07 wrote:
| If you read the article you would have gotten the answer - they
| want to make the chocolate themselves. Godspeed Ghana!
| kleiba wrote:
| I read the article. Want to bet?
| standardUser wrote:
| It's called industrial policy and it's pretty much the only way
| nations can make the leap from developing to developed. The thing
| is, industrial policy and mostly-free trade can and do work
| really well together, but for about a generation the "Washington
| Consensus" of free trade absolutists didn't allow it. Those
| countries that did so anyway, like China, were able to thrive,
| while smaller nations got stuck as resource exporters.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Cocoa as most raw food are just like commodities with little
| value added. Developing countries should make efforts to sell
| products with grater value added if they plan to become less
| dependent on richer nations.
| m12k wrote:
| I'm reading the book The Divide at the moment. It makes the
| argument that it takes time and the right conditions to build up
| an industry - infrastructure needs to be built, education and a
| skilled labor pool with the necessary know-how as well. To begin
| with, a fledgling industry in a developing country cannot compete
| with those of already industrialized countries - these are
| already so effective that they can undercut newcomers before they
| have time to become competitive. So the book argues that when
| developing countries are pressured into free trade agreements
| (for example by making aid dependent on this), these countries
| are also forced into a position where they get stuck at the low
| end of the production value chain, selling raw materials, while
| buying processed goods from others (often the same role they were
| forcibly assigned when they were colonies). So much like we allow
| children time to learn in school before we expect them to compete
| in the job market, we should allow developing countries to employ
| protectionistic policies like tariffs, in order to protect and
| build up their fledgling industries nationally, before fully
| entering the world market in a couple decades when they are
| ready.
| conjectures wrote:
| If you've not read it, 'Kicking Away the Ladder' by Ha-Joon
| Chang is a great book on this topic.
|
| It has a good deal of historical detail on what developed
| countries did themselves to become developed with respect to IP
| and protection.
| emodendroket wrote:
| This was Alexander Hamilton's idea and was in fact largely the
| US strategy in large part.
| enriquto wrote:
| > So much like we allow children time to learn in school before
| we expect them to compete in the job market, we should allow
| developing countries to employ protectionistic policies
|
| This sounds a bit paternalistic and condescending. I guess that
| first and foremost the "first world" should stop financing
| horrible dictatorships and wars in the ex-colonies. That would
| be a good, honest start.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| > should stop financing horrible dictatorships
|
| When you do that and even take down the dictator (Gadafi),
| you end up with a worse government, or no government at all.
| We can all agree Saddam Hussein was a horrible dictator
| supported by the US, look at Iraq now, is it better off
| without Saddam?
|
| There is no clear cut, and it seems like whatever the west is
| doing or abstaining from doing it's going to attract hate. We
| all hate that the Saudis are free to be horrible, but what is
| the alternative? A new Iraq?
|
| What if you just let them be, you might say? Then you end up
| with 8 year long wars like Iran-Iraq. Or with genocide like
| in Yugoslavia in the 90s.
|
| I think we can all agree China is a horrible dictatorship,
| how exactly can we stop financing it, since we rely so much
| on their factories?
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > We all hate that the Saudis are free to be horrible, but
| what is the alternative? A new Iraq?
|
| That's a false dichotomy. I think that many people who
| oppose the war in Yemen would settle for an end to military
| support and arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and possibly other
| economic sanctions.
|
| Whether that would lead to a positive outcome for Yemen,
| though, is another question, and highlights your point
| about the problems of abstaining.
| enriquto wrote:
| I suppose you are being sarcastic. In that case I agree
| with you.
| zfs wrote:
| Is the difference between developing and developed countries
| really the lack of tariffs or is it due to poor governance? I
| feel like the reason why countries are always so pro-tariff is
| because the benefits of tariffs go towards a small group of
| people, whereas the cost of tariffs are diffused. But small
| costs add-up and if you start applying the tariffs to other
| industries then you start seeing the impacts in the cost of
| goods.
|
| What are the examples where protecting a country from exports
| for a few decades then opening it up to competition actually
| produced a world-class industry? Singapore is an example of a
| country that has been pro free-trade and has benefited as a
| result.
| devdas wrote:
| South Korea. China. The US. The UK. Singapore has pretty much
| no manufacturing.
| devdas wrote:
| In fact, if you want actual free trade, then trade in labour
| must also be freely allowed.
|
| Freedom of movement to everyone, as inside the EU, would make
| even more sense. Every country is rather protective of that
| though.
| tim333 wrote:
| When I was younger tariffs were popular in developing countries
| but they seldom seemed to produce much prosperity - quite the
| contrary really.
|
| Maybe if you apply the tariffs very intelligently but most
| developing countries are not blessed with great non corrupt
| governments.
|
| The
|
| >pressured into free trade agreements (for example by making
| aid dependent on this)
|
| is kind of telling. A lot of the long time free trading
| countries like HK and Singapore don't need aid. It's often the
| tarrifs that make places poor enough to need that.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Things are even more problematic than tariffs keeping the
| people poor.
|
| Developing countries do not have hugely diverse domestic
| industries with top of the line offerings. How can one create
| a successful business if every niche or high quality product
| you have around costs a lot more for you than for your
| compettitiors in developed countries?
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| And even today you can see NH users in south America facing
| eyewatering taxes on computer hardware.
| tim333 wrote:
| Which is the kind of thing that hobbles the economy - it's
| not like those counties are building their own Intels and
| Apples as a result of the tariffs.
| [deleted]
| throwaway9870 wrote:
| Perhaps, but Asia does pretty well. Korea, China, Taiwan,
| Vietnam, etc. all did amazing development in the last 30-60
| years. The reality is that some cultures are better at it than
| others. Compare China to India for example.
| throwaway776543 wrote:
| What's also interesting is South Korea and Taiwan developed
| during their authoritarian phase. You can probably throw
| Singapore into that group too.
| triceratops wrote:
| > The reality is that some cultures are better at it than
| others
|
| That's extremely lazy reductionism. You're talking about
| countries of wildly different sizes (Taiwan is tiny, Japan is
| medium-sized, China is gargantuan), starting from wildly
| different levels of development (Japan was developed pre-WW2,
| India and China were in abject poverty), with wildly
| different levels of homogeneity and diversity (Japan is
| highly homogenous, China less so, India not at all),
| diplomatic alignments (Japan with the US, China with the
| Soviets, India in the third world), resources (Japan with
| zero, India with quite a fair bit), availability of capital
| (Japan, Taiwan and South Korea with quite a fair bit, India
| with very little, don't know about China), political systems
| (government-managed free market in Japan, autocracy
| transitioning to a democracy in Taiwan and S Korea, socialism
| in India, full communism until 1980s-1990s in China).
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| They followed the policies the OP is talking about though.
| That's their point: you need to protect your exporting
| industries early on so they can develop and become efficient.
| Then you can protect them less as they become higher
| quality/more productive. All of the countries you listed did
| this. India has a bunch of economic problems, many of which
| are self inflicted.
| sam1r wrote:
| This is well written. Nice metaphors and thank you.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| >"we should allow developing countries"
|
| Not to pick on you, but I often hear this frasing in the 'first
| world' and surely you dont 'allow' or 'disallow' internal
| policies to an sovereign nation?
|
| It sounds like a Freudianslip or something, the reality is that
| its easy to bully or bribe officials in developing nations.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| "I often hear this [phrasing] in the 'first world' and surely
| you don't 'allow' or 'disallow' internal policies to an
| sovereign nation?"
|
| Forget about the third-world, right now the USA is not-
| allowing Germany the right to build a pipeline with Russia!
|
| First-world - check, sovereign - check, allies - check.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > the USA is not-allowing Germany the right to build a
| pipeline with Russia!
|
| The USA is threatening trade sanctions if Germany builds
| the pipeline. I would not call that "not-allowing".
|
| That seems to be OP's whole point. The US is responding as
| a sovereign nation to actions of other sovereign nations.
| Phraseology like "allow" and "disallow" are not accurate.
| If Germany does the cost-benefit analysis and decides to
| cancel the pipeline because they don't want trade
| sanctions, that was their decision as an independent
| nation. It is not as if we are threatening war.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| Nonsense. The USA would not have gone to all the trouble
| to pass legislation to sanction Nordstream2 if they
| didn't think it would be effective.
|
| The USA didn't just do it to voice their displeasure:
| they could have done that with an email.
|
| They truly think its enough of a hammer to stop the
| pipeline.
|
| Hence "won't allow"
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| The law is threatening fines if you exceed the speed
| limit. By that logic.
|
| Are allowed to break the law? Are you not?
| dahfizz wrote:
| My landlord raised my rent this year. Are they not
| allowing me to live in my apartment?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Are you with a straight face equating consequences of
| breaking the law (fines and jailtime) with paying rent?
| dahfizz wrote:
| No, I'm making it obvious that collecting fees does not
| constitute forcing someone to do something.
| nytgop77 wrote:
| stop dating this girl or i will raise the rent x10. my
| english is not that good, but 'forcing' does not seem
| far.. maybe 'coercing' fits better, but the idea is very
| similar, make somebody do stuff against their will.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| You're not allowed to break the speed limit even if you
| pay the fine. You are allowed to live in your apartment
| if you pay the demanded rent.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > You are allowed to live in your apartment if you pay
| the demanded rent.
|
| ding ding ding. Germany is allowed to build whatever
| pipelines they want, they just also might have to pay US
| trade sanctions. Without a threat of force, we are not
| forcing them to do anything.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| There is no right to trade with the US, or with anyone
| else.
|
| If the US wants to impose a tariff to nations that do X,
| that does not mean that the US is forcing these nations
| to do anything. They can pay the tarrif, change their
| behavior, or sell their goods elsewhere. Or they can
| charge a counter-tarrif -- oops, not if they are an
| export-dependent economy they can't. That's the crux of
| the issue.
|
| Germany needs to pay their own workers enough so the
| German economy is not dependent on exporting a 1/3 of
| their GDP each year just to maintain domestic employment.
|
| Obviously when you create an economy that crashes the
| moment others stop letting you run massive trade
| surpluses, then you are effectively handing your
| sovereignty over to your trading partners.
|
| Whining about that and blaming your trading partners for
| using the power Germany has given them seems a bit naive.
|
| Germany will never be sovereign as long as it is an
| export-dependent economy.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| The US is exploiting its centrality in the international
| financial system, though. No other country uses secondary
| sanctions so extensively to dictate to other countries
| who they may and may not trade with.
|
| When the US pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, for
| example, it essentially ordered European companies not to
| trade with Iran. Even European companies that have no
| business in the US are afraid to do business with Iran,
| because American secondary sanctions will still hit them.
| No European bank will lend to a European company that
| does business with Iran, out of fear of American
| sanctions.
|
| These sorts of actions will eventually provoke a
| reaction: either the establishment of alternate financial
| systems or retaliatory sanctions.
| madengr wrote:
| The USA is not allowing the USA to build a pipeline.
| grecy wrote:
| > _Not to pick on you, but I often hear this frasing in the
| 'first world' and surely you dont 'allow' or 'disallow'
| internal policies to an sovereign nation? _
|
| Oh, it's much simpler than that. If an undeveloped (or
| developing) country doesn't place nice with the "Developed"
| rules, the IMF will just bankrupt their currency and send
| them back to the dark ages.
|
| Why do you think Switzerland is the world's 3rd biggest
| exporter of Coffee [1], while not growing a single bean ? ..
| and Germany is number 5.
|
| The IMF doesn't let coffee growing countries like Ethiopia or
| the Ivory Coast export processed beans, because they want the
| immense profits going to developed countries. Also the WTO
| plays a role and just doesn't tax unprocessed raw coffee
| beans coming out of those poor countries, but taxes processed
| coffee (and chocolate) goods at astronomical rates.
|
| [1] http://www.worldstopexports.com/coffee-exports-country/
| jariel wrote:
| WTO has rules, as do nations with agreements in place.
|
| 'Allow' implies some degree of forgiveness or allowance of
| entity on the other side of the table.
|
| In this case, Ghana may probably face trade sanction/scrutiny
| for their protectionism. It will have to play out in terms of
| other agreements.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| collusion for thee but not for me
| andrepd wrote:
| The point is that yes, economically strong countries can and
| do dictate internal policies of a sovereign nation.
| bluepizza wrote:
| > Not to pick on you, but I often hear this frasing in the
| 'first world' and surely you dont 'allow' or 'disallow'
| internal policies to an sovereign nation?
|
| Not exactly. Between forcing their hand on disadvantageous
| trade deals, lodging complaints and enforcing restrictions
| with the WTO, and outright installing dictators and funding
| militias - allowing or disallowing is all what the first
| world ever does.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I get where you're coming from, but in this case they are
| completely right to use this phrasing, with exactly the
| connotation you are talking about: the status quo is that the
| first world is NOT allowing these countries to run their
| affairs as they want internally.
|
| That is, any developing country is presented with 2 options
| by the developed world: either accept 'free trade' (allow
| foreign investors to buy up the local industry, commit to IP
| laws, don't apply tariffs) or no one will be allowed to trade
| with you or send you aid.
|
| In the meantime, powerful countries are taking numerous
| protectionist measures in their key industries, since that is
| the only way to actually be prosperous.
| btown wrote:
| > either accept 'free trade' (allow foreign investors to
| buy up the local industry, commit to IP laws, don't apply
| tariffs) or no one will be allowed to trade with you or
| send you aid.
|
| Do multi-national trade agreements (which I believe are the
| core mechanism for this) actually penalize signatories for
| trading with non-signatories? Or is it more that trade
| between signatories is so advantaged that no company within
| a signatory state would be competitive were it to trade
| with a counterpart in a non-signatory state?
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| Free trade is usually done on a tit-for-tat basis. I think
| the GP is saying they should allow protectionist policies
| without "tatting".
| pydry wrote:
| This is effectively how the US built up the industries of
| Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.
|
| The reason these countries were allowed to do it where
| others are not was because the US wanted strategically
| placed powerful allies in the region.
|
| There probably wouldn't be a Japanese electronics/car
| industry, for instance, if the Soviets hadn't spooked the
| the US in the 40s.
| jbay808 wrote:
| The US built those industries only in the same sense that
| they built Germany's.
|
| Japan's industrial base was built before the 40s, with an
| extensive domestic supply of machine tools and industrial
| equipment, rail infrastructure, and finished manufactured
| goods. Or else who do you think was building the planes,
| ships, and submarines that the allies were fighting on
| the Pacific front? Their industries were temporarily
| damaged by the war but it's no surprise that they'd be
| back to building cars within a couple decades.
|
| They, rather than the US, were the ones who built up much
| of the initial industrial base of Taiwan and Korea, as
| part of their own colonization efforts. Not out of so
| much benevolence, of course.
| pydry wrote:
| They weren't building walkmans or cars for export.
|
| Their skill base was intact but their industry was razed
| by WW2.
|
| Either way they needed raw materials and markets to
| develop their industrial base and that required favorable
| American trade policy, $$$ and military support.
| [deleted]
| Mat342 wrote:
| That's absolute BS, asians are smart and hardworking, US
| didn't build them
| dominicl wrote:
| I'm curious about this argument. Haven't heard the "tiger
| states" growth attributed solely to US policies. Any
| links/pointers to those advantages that were granted
| these states but not other developing countries at the
| time?
| sct202 wrote:
| I don't know about solely developed, but South Korea,
| Taiwan, and Japan did receive substantial amounts of
| foreign aid in the post-war period. In addition, some of
| this aid financed land reforms that forced large land
| owners to break up large holdings and sell to the tenant
| farmers who previously rented the land. The notoriously
| small farms in Japan are not a natural free market
| development.
| pietrovismara wrote:
| That's what the west does all the time.
|
| Blackmail poor countries into selling all of their assets to
| foreign capital, just to gain access to foreign credit.
|
| See what's happening in Cuba. See what Vietnam had to do
| after the war with the US, see Greece with Europe recently,
| see countless more.
|
| The WTO, IMF and the World Bank are the colonizing arm of
| capitalism.
|
| It's a relatively new form of supernational economic warfare
| that turned out to be very effective, especially when
| combined with embargoes and economic sanctions. It's the
| famous "offer one can't refuse".
| Blackstone4 wrote:
| The way you phrase it, makes it sound like theft...surely,
| they have to buy the assets and that goes to the
| owner...the owner then can chose to re-invest locally if
| they choose to...the capital doesnt just disappear...
| pietrovismara wrote:
| > the owner then can chose to re-invest locally if they
| choose to
|
| Only at the conditions imposed by the IMF. Usually that
| means the state has to steer away from anything that
| could be profitable and focus only on what is not
| palatable to foreign capital.
|
| It also means states can't apply import taxes, thus
| making their industries instantly obsolete. It's pretty
| much a huge transfer of wealth from inside to outside.
| Blackstone4 wrote:
| so are you mainly refering to state-owned assets rather
| than privately owned assets? State-owned companies are
| notorious for being badly run...no wonder they are
| overrun by foreign competition. Would it not be possible
| for a state to IPO these assets or give shares directly
| to the population rather than sell?
| viro wrote:
| > Only at the conditions imposed by the IMF. Usually that
| means the state has to steer away from anything that
| could be profitable and focus only on what is not
| palatable to foreign capital.
|
| Im going to need a direct example please
| pietrovismara wrote:
| Just check the IMF page on "Conditionality"[0]. Check the
| "Prior actions" sections and see "Elimination of price
| controls" there.
|
| Also see this video[1] about Vietnam, around halfway
| through it explains pretty well how it works.
|
| Edit: I realize now you asked about the "forced
| privatization of industries" sentence. That's thoroughly
| stressed accross all IMF literature, and you can see it
| happen in pretty much every country that takes IMF "aid".
|
| -[0]: https://www.imf.org/en/About/Factsheets/Sheets/2016
| /08/02/21...
|
| -[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMubOw5H-yo
| viro wrote:
| I just want to note nationalized industries have an
| incredibly unfair advantage over private industry. Since
| nationalized industries have no real need to make money
| at all. Widget A cost $65 to make? Nah, let's sell it at
| $5. Most of the fund comes from capitalist states. It
| wouldn't make much of sense for them to fund an economic
| system that is often antagonistic to capitalism.
| msg3 wrote:
| The Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang makes similar arguments in
| his book Bad samaritans. He argues that this model was
| successfully followed by Korea (Samsung, Hyundai, etc), Japan,
| and even Henry VII in 15th century England - well worth a read.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| This is called the "infant industry" argument, and it has been
| made since at least the 16th Century, most famously by Antonio
| Serra, a proto-mercantilist.
|
| This idea of raising tarrifs on imports and then using the
| money to protect domestic industries has been tried in Latin
| America in the 60s and 70s, in Africa, and in many places.
|
| The results are mixed.
|
| The problem with infant industry is that you get a group of
| local monopolies protected by the government who sell expensive
| low quality goods to the public, people get sick of it, they
| want the lower priced better foreign goods as it will increase
| their quality of life, and at some point there is sufficient
| political pressure to force a regime change.
|
| Another way of saying this is that the infant industries often
| fail to grow up, they remain protected infants forever.
|
| On the other hand, if you don't protect your infant industries,
| then you have no chance against mature foreign competitors, as
| you point out.
|
| Then there is a third aspect to this, which is that foreign
| governments, especially East Asian governments (not only China,
| but China is the biggest offender) massively subsidize domestic
| industries and so you have to subsidize and protect your
| industries in return, or they will be destroyed by competitors
| who never need to turn a profit, or repay a loan, or meet any
| environmental regulations, or deal with unions, etc.
|
| So it's a tough call. All these theories have valid points, but
| they all have fatal flaws. For the last few years, I've come
| around to the following mantra, which is my own development
| philosophy:
|
| * every country should have a long run balance of payments.
| That means all trade should be balanced.
|
| * countries should make investments in local productive
| capacity, but not subsidize industries per se
|
| * countries should not allow foreign companies to set up
| factories or purchase capital or land. Each nation's assets
| should be owned by their own citizens only.
|
| * With the above caveats, there should be free trade and no
| industry protection.
|
| What this means, in practice, is banning foreign capital
| inflows. Have your own currency, borrow only in your own
| currency from your own people, and don't allow foreigners to
| purchase you bonds, stocks, land, or factories.
|
| But trade all you want with them. As long as you do that, your
| currency will depreciate sufficiently to prevent any flood of
| cheap imports, and your domestic industries will have a chance.
| ReadFList wrote:
| >To begin with, a fledgling industry in a developing country
| cannot compete with those of already industrialized countries
| >these countries are also forced into a position where they get
| stuck at the low end of the production value chain, selling raw
| materials, while buying processed goods from others (often the
| same role they were forcibly assigned when they were colonies
|
| Basically what Friedrich List [1] wrote in 1841 [2], and being
| proven correct time and time again while we completely
| disregard it.
|
| Now you can even go further and ask yourselves if what is
| happening in the West by moving all the factories and
| manufacturing to China and neighbouring countries isn't exactly
| like the Colonization of the Americas by the British.
|
| It wasn't _luck_ that made the USA Great. It was the best stock
| from Europe who come up with the American School [3], and we
| can now see the tragic consequences of abandoning it for
| "free" trade.
|
| If a country imports manufactured goods and exports raw
| materials, it is a colony.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_List [2]
| https://archive.org/details/nationalsystemp00nichgoog [3]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_(economics)
| devdas wrote:
| It was a lot of luck. Today, you would need access to oil for
| energy (which needs USD), and far more complex technology,
| which needs money to acquire.
|
| The US could also support massively extractive industries
| internally. Most countries can't do that.
| Mat342 wrote:
| Honestly I don't think americans can outcompete Japan, Korea
| Taiwan or China. Maybe they keep accepting fake printed USD
| for real stuff in the future
| ReadFList wrote:
| Lot's of people said the same about the USA becoming
| economically independent of the all powerful British
| Empire. And yet the USA did it.
|
| Alexander Hamilton's influence goes way beyond inspiring a
| ridiculous musical for an attempt to capture that
| historical personality and distort his positions so nobody
| would read his writings.
|
| There is a vast difference between not being possible, and
| the interlopers we call "the elites" not wanting to do it
| because they have other interests that don't overlap with
| the Nation's interests.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| The Commanding Heights by Yergin and Stanislaw is another good
| book that makes a similar argument.
| jariel wrote:
| So Saudi Arabia, UAE, Canada and Saudi Arabia are 'stuck'
| selling natural resources?
|
| I think it's probably a much better plant to extract a good
| deal of wealth from the natural resource and invest it in other
| areas of higher value creation, even in the same vertical.
|
| There's a good chance that Ghana's policies are needlessly
| constrained.
|
| More obviously there are 100 things Ghana could do to improve
| living conditions in more obvious areas i.e. corruption etc..
|
| Consider the immediate situation:
|
| Ghana's exporters have just been banned from exporting. They
| are going to go out of business very soon.
|
| Ghana doesn't have all of the layers of industry necessary to
| support development and export of products i.e. there are no
| market buyers at any reasonable price.
|
| Result: collapse of the industry - unless somehow the
| Government of Ghana can artificially inflate prices and keep
| them alive for a very long time while domestic partners somehow
| magically are able to get off their feet.
|
| This plan feels not very well conceived.
|
| I'll bet something is lurking under the surface.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| It's called the Dutch disease for a reason. When Holland
| discovered large natural gas deposits the entire rest of
| their economy became less competitive. High wages from
| natural resources (and oil is the worst for this because it
| is so valuable) raise wages in the rest of the economy. This
| makes your exports less competitive. It also shifts
| employment into the natural resources sector (due to high
| wages), when many of those people would maybe be better
| allocated elsewhere.
|
| They only country that has been able to do what you're
| talking about successfully is Norway and maybe the US and
| Canada, which have much better institutions than anywhere in
| Africa and the Middle East.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Other points are already addressed in different comments, but
| to address this one:
|
| > _Ghana doesn 't have all of the layers of industry
| necessary to support development and export of products i.e.
| there are no market buyers at any reasonable price._
|
| Per the article, they literally control half of the world's
| cocoa. This means they get to define what "a reasonable
| price" is, as long as the rest of the world wants to keep its
| chocolate plentiful.
|
| I'm not a politician or economist - but to me, it seems
| obvious the plan here is to bootstrap domestic cocoa
| processing industries, get the current exporters to sell
| cocoa to domestic producers, and export processed products
| (like chocolate). They're not going to just stop cultivating
| cocoa - being in control of half of the supply of raw
| materials for a highly prized product is their one big
| leverage on the international market.
|
| As to not having the necessary industry base to pull it off -
| the question is, how fast can they build one? I'd guess a
| couple of years, if no foreign powers try to make it hard for
| them.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| The first question is: where are the main markets for
| chocolate? If Ghana loses access to a large percentage of
| the global chocolate market, controlling half the supply is
| as much a liability.
|
| The second question is: Is there any reason cocoa can't be
| grown elsewhere, or the _second_ biggest producer can 't
| increase production?
| rob74 wrote:
| Yeah, I already see other tropical-zone countries cutting
| down even more rain forest to make space for cocoa
| plantations (in addition to the rain forest they are
| already cutting down or burning for e.g. palm oil
| plantations). That's not really the desirable outcome
| here I think...
| devdas wrote:
| That's not really any different from what the developed
| world did when they were in the same state of
| development.
| brodock wrote:
| There is a location/clima reason. Cocoa grows (well) only
| in a certain part of the world around the equator line as
| it requires tropical weather with regular rains and small
| dry seasons.
|
| It may be possible to use artificial techniques to grow
| it elsewhere, but I'm assuming it's not economically
| viable or you get a product with worst quality in the end
| true_religion wrote:
| The last time Ghana blocked cocoa sales, the European
| powers responded by creating plantations in other countries
| to break Ghanas monopoly of the supply. Then they went a
| step further in researching and marketing low cocoa
| chocolate so their domestic population would be less
| reliant on cocoa.
|
| Agricultural luxury goods are one area where it's hard to
| continually push a monopoly advantage.
|
| That said, I think that if Ghana can take the short term
| repercussions, then the country will come out ahead. It can
| become to chocolate, what France is to wine. But that would
| require heavy marketing in order to change people's
| perception about what kind of chocolate is most delicious.
| msg3 wrote:
| By itself, it's probably not a good idea.
|
| If the government supports the development of a chocolate
| production industry, including support for cocoa exporters,
| then it has every chance of success.
| jfim wrote:
| It might, and it might not. Even though Japan also makes
| some fine watch movements, Swiss ones command a premium
| over the Japanese ones. I'd assume that this would be
| similar for chocolate.
| rout39574 wrote:
| If Ghana were to position itself as the 'Casio' or
| 'Seiko' of chocolate, I expect they'd tolerate the fact
| that there was a still an Omega out there.
|
| And with the Casio profits, they could make a reasonable
| run at unseating Swiss chocolate in another century or
| so.
| zorked wrote:
| Do you have any specific knowledge about Ghanaian industry or
| is this just your opinion? Can you provide some sources for
| your claims?
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Why would the Ghanaian government be any better at economic
| planning than the Argentinian or Indian ones? Sometimes
| industrial policy "works", as in South Korea or Japan. But
| we have no strong reason to believe either would have
| failed to develop without government help. Hong Kong didn't
| need it. People talk about the successes of industrial
| planning a lot but Argentina and India aren't the only
| countries to piss away enormous resources propping up
| domestic industries that vanished in a puff of smoke as
| soon as they stopped being protected by tariffs or non tax
| trade barriers.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| SK's recovery from the war was very sluggish for a decade
| until a military coup, protectionist economic polices,
| nationalization and multi-$B US economic donations.
| andrepd wrote:
| Maybe you would want to research what Japan and South
| Korea have in common and what Argentina has different.
| Hint: it involves something that starts with U and ends
| with SA
| rory wrote:
| Maybe the government is trying to pressure Swiss companies up
| the value chain to move processing operations to Ghana? That
| seems like a reasonable way to increase income to Ghanaians
| and build local human capital, without having to start
| industry from scratch.
|
| I don't know the fine details of how chocolate is made, but a
| chocolate bar seems like a fairly straightforward industrial
| product. Why should it be made in somewhere as high-cost as
| Switzerland, if not just because of operational and brand-
| value momentum?
| bingbong70 wrote:
| The story of this century, "cut off useless middlemen",
| Europe has a lot of comfortable useless middlemen left over
| from the colonization period.
| luckylion wrote:
| > So Saudi Arabia, UAE, Canada and Saudi Arabia are 'stuck'
| selling natural resources?
|
| Canada maybe not so much, but Saudi Arabia and the UAE? Yeah,
| and I think they understand that as well. If we have a fusion
| breakthrough next year, what will Saudi Arabia export besides
| Wahhabism?
| m12k wrote:
| The Saudi royal family is busy buying as much of Silicon
| Valley as they can, to ensure they can still live atop a
| mountain of cash once the oil runs out. As for the rest of
| the country - yeah, they are royally fucked (pun intended)
| since no other industry than oil was ever developed.
| arethuza wrote:
| They seem to be trying to develop their tourist industry
| - I keep getting adverts for holidays there!
| andrepd wrote:
| It's possibly one of countries in the world I'm least
| interested in visiting.
| nasmorn wrote:
| Where else to go to a good oldfashioned lashing?
| arethuza wrote:
| Saudi Arabia apparently has stopped using flogging:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/25/saudi-
| arabia-t...
|
| However, plenty places still use corporal punishment,
| including Singapore:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_corporal_punishmen
| t
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Or more likely, what happens when the oil wells eventually
| run dry? Or even, what happens in the years before, when
| those wells start producing less and less oil?
| fakedang wrote:
| > Saudi Arabia, UAE, Canada and Saudi Arabia are 'stuck'
| selling natural resources?
|
| Actually yes. The trend happening there is reminiscent of the
| spice trade. The UAE will stay afloat because of its massive
| externally invested wealth fund and Canada's liberal policy
| will keep the talent coming (although imo destroying the
| local population's affordability). But Saudi Arabia has a
| huge problem right now, since they squandered a lot of their
| oil wealth and are in no position to rely on immigrant growth
| - especially when native Saudis are not employable at all. I
| know for a fact that the UAE actually monitors intelligence
| in Saudi Arabia to make sure that a revolt or an insurgency
| doesn't happen there. OPEC annual meetings are literally a
| mercantilist exercise.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> a fledgling industry in a developing country cannot compete
| with those of already industrialized countries
|
| Except that often they do. With lower safety/environmental
| standards, lower wages, and lower expectations many
| "developing" countries can undercut the labor markets of
| developed countries, operating advanced manufacturing at far
| reduced costs. Many would ague that is exactly how China has
| risen to power.
|
| A reliance on export of raw resources is also no telltale of a
| country still "developing" its economy. Canada is heavily
| dependent on resource extraction and export. Canada is also a
| former colony. But would anyone here dare say Canada is a
| "developing" economy?
| pietrovismara wrote:
| > With lower safety/environmental standards, lower wages
|
| Well, no, thanks. I'd rather not be forced to enslave my
| people in order to compete with western capitalism.
| ISL wrote:
| The people of some countries are already enslaved by
| poverty and corruption. The pragmatic question is: will
| attracting outside capital improve the situation of the
| populace or not?
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Its not like those countries would have had higher labour
| standards in the first place.
| oblio wrote:
| > So the book argues that when developing countries are
| pressured into free trade agreements
|
| This should have been obvious since the Opium Wars and the
| Opening of Japan (see Commodore Matthew Perry).
|
| All developed countries are pro free trade for markets where
| they are strong and fiercely protectionist where they are not
| (or they consider those markets strategic priorities).
|
| I'm from Romania. Romania joined the EU in 2007, so we had to
| liberalize everything. It has generally been good for us
| (higher wages, economic growth, overall development), but I
| know all the German, French, Belgian supermarket chains.
|
| Do you know why I know them? Because there are 0 (zero!) local
| supermarket chains left. They've all been bought by foreign
| companies.
|
| Similar story for banks, car companies, whatever.
|
| During the 2008 economic crisis Erste, Austrian banking group,
| repatriated all the local profits (from BCR, former major
| Romanian bank) to Austria so that the local banks would not be
| impacted. Similar story for OMV, Austrian oil and gas group
| (from Petrom, former major Romanian oil and gas company).
|
| It's a mixed bag, really. You need some foreign investment to
| kickstart things, but if you don't start blocking stuff off,
| you'll never go over the middle income barrier, at best. At
| worst you practically become someone else's colony, or in the
| olden days, you actually were their colony (and what happened
| in Bengal in 1941 and Ireland in the 1800s comes to mind).
| kar1181 wrote:
| Similar things are happening in Croatia.
| pjmlp wrote:
| To the point that when I traveled around a couple of years
| ago along the coast, most people I met along the way seemed
| to be more confortable speaking German than English.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Kosovar familiarity with German
| is something that dates from the era of Yugoslavia, it
| has little to do with corporate sway in the modern EU.
|
| Yugoslavia 1) allowed its people to freely work in the
| West, and many people chose to go to West Germany, and 2)
| Yugoslavia built up extensive tourist infrastructure in
| Croatia and Montenegro that drew predominantly German-
| speaking holidaymakers (and not so many English-speaking
| ones -- UK holidaymakers went for e.g. Spain or Greece
| during this era). All this made German seem like the
| language for communicating with foreigners, though among
| younger generations it is already giving way to English.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yeah this was about 10 years ago. Thanks for the
| overview.
|
| Althought I did see enough Lidl and Aldi around.
| mrkramer wrote:
| As far as I know the history of my country Croatia
| familiarity with Germanic nations dates from Habsburg
| Monarchy[1] meaning 300+ years.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habsburg_Monarchy
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| In Hapsburg times, only a fairly small elite outside of
| Austria knew German. Most people in the Empire knew only
| their own language (or sometimes e.g. their own language
| and some degree of Hungarian). It wasn't until after the
| fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that the average
| person - due to modern state-schooling curricula,
| business contacts with German speakers, or going to work
| in Germany - began to know German.
|
| There is quite a body of scholarship on the
| sociolinguistics of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, if you
| are curious.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Public/state workers had to know German, military
| personnel had to know German and as the education system
| was building in Habsburg Monarchy and Austro-Hungarian
| Empire children and university students were learning
| German. There are more than 2000 German words in Croatian
| language today dating back from Habsburg Monarchy and
| Austro-Hungarian Empire.
|
| You don't build a bond with some nation and culture over
| the course of one century it takes more than that. For
| example like you probably know Ottoman Empire was ruling
| and controlling south-east Europe for 500 years and
| impact of that is very much visible and present today.
| foobarian wrote:
| Speaking of the Ottoman empire, when I watched a Turkish
| show recently I was surprised to hear a number of words I
| had no idea were Turkish origin. (Well, could be the
| other way around too I guess. But they sounded Turkish.)
| Sanduk, cizma, budala, paramparcad, kapija, sandzak,
| inat, kutija, ajde just off the top of my head.
|
| The German connection is definitely there. There was even
| a transliterated word used for people working abroad:
| "gastarbajter," from German Gastarbeiter. And it was used
| for anyone working abroad, no matter where :-)
|
| Edit: https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Categor
| y:Serbo-C... . I can't believe "boja" is borrowed.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Public/state workers and university students _were_ a
| small elite until the 20th century, as were
| schoolchildren until a fairly late date. Also, the
| demographics you speak of were males, meaning that you
| are leaving out a half of the population.
|
| Certainly German words in Croatian testify to contacts at
| some level of the population. Romanian, too, abounds in
| German words in some domains, for example, but this
| doesn't mean the average Romanian would have been able to
| speak any German. But in Croatia knowledge of German
| varied greatly from the country's northwest to its south.
| Again, the sociolinguistics of the Austro-Hungarian
| Empire are well-described.
| paganel wrote:
| Fellow Romanian here, a person very close to me died of
| heart-failure in the middle of the street in downtown
| Bucharest 10+ years ago, not a block away from her employer's
| HQs at the time. She was in her early 40s, her employer was
| BCR (the bank that had just been acquired by Erste), and said
| close person had had a few fights with the new Austrian
| rulers to be, she was part of the bank's trade-union body,
| she didn't want her colleagues' jobs to go away after the
| purchase. The jobs did go away after the purchase, in droves.
|
| A person even closer to me used to work for OMV immediately
| after they had purchased Petrom (our former State-run oil
| company). The stories I could hear back then could fill many
| pages, I still remember seeing the papers with hundreds of
| people's names on them, people who were supposed to be laid
| off the following days. And that was just from one company
| division. To say nothing of the fact that the Austrians had
| no oil drilling operations, no oil drilling specialists,
| nothing of the sorts, while Petrom had been in the oil
| drilling business for decades. Or how OMV had (I think it
| still has) as its major shareholder the Austrian State, so in
| fact we managed to sell our oil state company to basically
| another state.
| leto_ii wrote:
| Also a Romanian here. My take is similar to yours, but I
| would go even further in saying that the 90s were even more
| catastrophic in terms of privatization and liberalization.
| Remember the 'shock therapy' years? Prices doubling every few
| months? Entire industries collapsing, prized factories being
| sold for scrap metal? Millions losing their jobs etc. - a lot
| of that stuff didn't have to happen that way. A lot of it was
| forced via Washington Consensus type reforms.
|
| To my mind the EU was our salvation not so much because of
| its economic nature, but because of its political one. The
| free market was the price we had to pay in order to be able
| to travel, work, study abroad, earn real wages that we could
| use to invest back into our own country etc. The EU also
| insured a decent degree of geo-political, strategic
| stability. Without the EU we may have ended up like our
| neighbors to the North/East.
| starfallg wrote:
| >I'm from Romania. Romania joined the EU in 2007, so we had
| to liberalize everything. It has generally been good for us
| (higher wages, economic growth, overall development), but I
| know all the German, French, Belgian supermarket chains.
|
| That's already known factor though. The reason of the free
| movement of labour to make up for capital movements like
| these.
| lostinquebec wrote:
| Do you have a counter factual?
|
| It seems to me too early to predict a lot about Eastern
| Europe. < 20 years is not a long time. 2007 means that the
| first children born after Romania joined the EU are 8 years
| away from leaving university.
|
| You could very well be correct, but I'd want to see some
| countries that tried this a lot longer ago.
| oblio wrote:
| It's hard to say, but...
|
| Almost all the cases of countries going from
| underdeveloped/developing to developed did it through
| various forms of protectionism: Japan, Singapore, Taiwan,
| South Korea, China, Hong Kong.
|
| I'm trying super hard to think of a country that did it by
| liberalizing fully. Eastern European countries might be the
| examples you're looking for, but it's too early to say.
|
| If you think about any sport, or any activity in general,
| it makes sense. You never expose the hard parts, you only
| expose what you can easily defend or what can defend
| itself. Or if you're China, you fake exposing the soft
| parts and then you catch everyone in your tar pit :-))
| jopsen wrote:
| Are those supermarkets really all that French or Belgian
| anymore?
|
| In practice, many large companies are owned by investors from
| all over the world looking for diversification.
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| The specific ownership and the details are irrelevant, what
| matters is that a large chunk of their profits is extracted
| out of the country and doesn't get reinvested.
| viro wrote:
| Thats not how the economy works. Walmart profits don't
| get "invested" in the States. They get invested into
| Walmart. The wages and taxes those wages fuel always gets
| applied locally. Nothing is being "extracted". Thats just
| nationalist bullshit used to fuel protectionism.
| oblio wrote:
| If the very well paid jobs stay in the home country, how
| do you call that?
|
| If the interesting work all stays in the home country,
| how do you call that?
|
| We like to kid ourselves that multinational companies are
| truly multinational, companies of the world. What's the
| percentage of non-American top managers, for example,
| working for American based multinationals? It's probably
| in the low 1-digit percentages.
|
| There is a definite advantage to bejng an early investor.
| For these companies the risk is comparatively small and
| the rewards they reap are huge and on very long time
| horizons.
|
| It's not super clear cut that it's all nationalist BS.
| labawi wrote:
| AFAIU, neither wages nor investments count as profits -
| those are paid to owners / shareholders.
|
| As far as returning the earnings to workers and local
| economy via taxes - yes there are expenses, you can't
| take 100% of income as profits, but there is a lot of
| leeway to direct the funds pretty much wherever the
| company chooses. Corporate headquarters in tax friendly
| countries are popular for a reason.
| TheButlerian wrote:
| Fucking dumb Eastern European gypsy.
| Blackstone4 wrote:
| Is that really true? The international supermarkets may
| chose to invest by open new stores....secondly, they had
| to buy the local supermarkets in the first place...that
| went somewhere...maybe that was reinvested locally. It is
| not clear cut.
| labawi wrote:
| > they had to buy the local supermarkets in the first
| place
|
| When foreign owners extract profits to recover their
| investment or pay whomever, wealth is in fact leaving the
| country - because they still own the capital (stores) yet
| get money back.
|
| It's not clear cut based on this. They could have
| invested beyond price, brought knowledge, improved
| efficiency ... It's also possible they are in effect
| extracting wealth colonialist style, which is something
| to beware of - at scale it can have severe consequences
| for local economies.
| oblio wrote:
| The top management for sure is French/German/Belgian. At
| least big chunks of it. And the owners
| (individuals/companies) are French/German/Belgian.
|
| If push comes to shove, they will for sure prioritize
| French/German/Belgian interests.
|
| Can't really blame them but strategically it's not a
| position you want to be in, looking at it from the other
| side.
| killtimeatwork wrote:
| Yep. The story about large corporations being totally
| nationeless is a pure fantasy. For example, just a couple
| years ago Fiat-Chrystler decided to move production from
| one of its best factories in Poland to one of its worst
| (in terms of quality and costs per unit), located in
| Italy. It made zero sense for the business and was only
| made as a favor to Italian politicians.
|
| In more general sense, all global companies have some
| originating country and most of them keep the HQ and most
| of the high-paying jobs there. They expand to other
| countries mostly as a cost-saving measure and they have
| zero loyalty to them, while they have a lot of loyalty to
| the mothership.
| toyg wrote:
| _> It made zero sense for the business_
|
| No, it makes perfect sense when you factor in that
| FIAT/FCA/Stellantis was and is the receiver of massive
| subsidies, in various guises, from the Italian state.
| Losing those would be more harmful to the business than
| losing any foreign factory (with the exception of US
| ones, which were also beneficiaries of massive state
| support). FCA stopped being a "national champion" ages
| ago, they are just a hardened global business now; they
| just know which side their bread is buttered.
|
| _> They expand to other countries mostly as a cost-
| saving measure and they have zero loyalty to them_
|
| Believe me, they have zero loyalty to "the motherland"
| too. Many of them have long relocated their HQ too, for
| fiscal reasons. FCA/Stellantis, for example, is now based
| in Amsterdam. The chance that they'll ever expand again
| their manufacturing bases in Italy or France is minimal.
|
| Honestly, the issue is that national champions don't
| exist anymore. Greed-is-good is all that matters.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Aldi the 3rd (or 4th) biggest supermarket chain is still
| owned essentially by the Aldi families (there are in fact 2
| Aldi chains, because the brothers could stand each other.
| foobarian wrote:
| I've been in Massachusetts for a while, which is a small
| American state. And guess what? 20 years ago there used to be
| many more local supermarket chains, that over time were
| increasingly absorbed or destroyed by massive national
| chains. I feel like this same story plays out all over the
| world, except that when you have countries like in Europe it
| feels like a more personal type of event e.g. "those foreign
| superchains are out to get our local wholesome stuff." But in
| reality maybe it's mostly just business.
| killtimeatwork wrote:
| That's where China was smart I guess. They didn't sign any
| treaty which forced them into free trade or IP protection,
| but instead slowly allowed their industries to build up via
| IP theft and strong protectionism. Now they have giant
| companies on par with the West's. Whereas everyone who joined
| the EU in the decade of 2000 (and the Washington Consensus
| before that in the nineties) is now a pawn of the Western
| capital with no clear path of escaping the trap of
| mediocrity.
|
| So far, the standard of living in post-Soviet EU countries is
| still higher than in China, but that's because of the much
| better starting point and also because it's just hard to
| provide wealth for over a billion people in a modern, heavily
| automated economy. However, even with their gargantuan
| population size, I see China potentially overtaking Poland or
| Czech Republic in terms of quality of living in the next
| 50-100 years.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| Funny you say that because exactly the opposite thing
| happened to China. They were completely taken advantage of
| in the 19th century and didn't fully recover from that
| until a 100 years later when Nixon and Kissinger in one of
| their "4D chess" moves restarted diplomatic relations as a
| way to limit the Soviets.
|
| From that point on they had a pretty clever long view
| policy but it would have been surprising if they hadn't.
| They spent the previous century getting fucked by foreign
| invaders, if they hadn't learned how to resist it by the
| 1970's then Chinese culture as we know it would have been
| doomed to collapse by the 90's.
|
| And truth be told they almost did in 1989. If the CCP was a
| little less organized, if the military was a little less
| loyal and if the protesters had their shit together a bit
| more it could have turned into a full popular revolution.
| khuey wrote:
| They did sign those treaties (e.g. with WTO membership),
| they just ignored them.
| yorwba wrote:
| They didn't exactly ignore them.
|
| A WTO member can either comply with their treaty
| obligations (e.g. reducing barriers to trade) or have
| other members apply their own remedies (e.g. punitive
| tariffs.)
|
| If the effect of compliance is worse than the punishment
| (e.g. underdeveloped industry eliminated by foreign
| competitors vs. continuing to operate despite high
| tariffs) they'll not comply.
|
| If the punishment is worse (e.g. industry is basically
| competitive, but tariffs would make products hard to sell
| in foreign countries) they'll choose compliance.
|
| At the bilateral level, there's not much difference to
| the pre-WTO situation, which might make you wonder
| whether it's all pointless. The advantage of the WTO is
| that it provides a shared target for compliance: if a
| country follows WTO rules, pretty much every other member
| will be happy with that. Which is a bigger incentive than
| having to please every trading partner individually.
| oyashirochama wrote:
| And no one cared, it something that needs to be reckoned
| with.
| audunw wrote:
| I really think China is making a huge mistake actually. See
| how TSMC (Taiwan) and Samsung are free to buy ASMLs EUV
| machines, while China is blocked. Part of that is due to
| their rampant IP theft. Why sell machines to China if
| they're just going to copy them?
|
| China also messed up big time by enforcing their 1 child
| policy, and taking so long to open up and industrialize.
| They're far behind economically compared to where other
| countries were with their demographic. Now they're on the
| verge of the biggest wave of senior citizens reaching
| retirement the world has ever seen, with crumbling
| infrastructure and housing, relatively low GDP/capita and
| no clear path to manufacturing/export of truly high value
| goods and services. They're screwed.
|
| China really wants to get out of low-value manufacturing,
| and in some ways they're encouraging pushing that out to
| south-east asia and africa. But at the same time they don't
| have the positive image and reputation needed to be a big
| exporter of high-value goods. Who is going to trust Chinese
| companies with things like 5G infrastructure and CPS, when
| they're all basically an extension of the CCP when it comes
| to security? Who wants to live and work in China now, when
| you have no real justice for foreign citizens and the CCP
| can arrest you at a whim? If anything even close to
| Shenzhen is replicated elsewhere in the world, I think
| companies and individuals will gladly develop their
| products elsewhere. Will a giant Chinese company ever gain
| the reputation of Samsung or Sony? DJI I guess? But that's
| a bit niche.
|
| Poland is growing healthily last I checked. The proof is in
| immigration numbers in other European countries. It seems
| to be reversing. In Norway there's a clear downward trend
| in immigration from Poland.
| mrkramer wrote:
| IP theft allowed China to acquire much needed technical
| know-how and to build up their manufacturing industry.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _See how TSMC (Taiwan) and Samsung are free to buy
| ASMLs EUV machines, while China is blocked._
|
| That's because of geopolitics: These countries are small
| enough that they cannot be a threat to the US. In fact
| they are dependent on the US.
|
| China, on the other hand, is a strategic adversary
| irrespective of their IP laws (and enforcement of those
| laws) or even of their political regime.
| yorwba wrote:
| > See how TSMC (Taiwan) and Samsung are free to buy ASMLs
| EUV machines, while China is blocked. Part of that is due
| to their rampant IP theft. Why sell machines to China if
| they're just going to copy them?
|
| ASML's machines aren't something you can just copy by
| buying one of them. (You'd do better by hiring ex-ASML
| engineers to teach you how to do it.) And ASML would've
| sold their EUV equipment (just as they continue to sell
| previous-generation machines) if their export license had
| been extended by the Dutch government, but the US applied
| pressure to make sure that didn't happen.
|
| You say China took too long to open up and industrialize.
| Well, they are open to buy from ASML and industrialize
| with their help, but others are closing that door...
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> See how TSMC (Taiwan) and Samsung are free to buy
| ASMLs EUV machines, while China is blocked. Part of that
| is due to their rampant IP theft. Why sell machines to
| China if they're just going to copy them?
|
| > You say China took too long to open up and
| industrialize. Well, they are open to buy from ASML and
| industrialize with their help, but others are closing
| that door...
|
| There's also the elephant in the room: China is
| controlled by the Communist party, which holds values
| that are antithetical to those of many of its trading
| partners
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-
| new-lea...). Neither Taiwan nor South Korea have that
| kind of incompatibility. It was kind of naive and
| arrogant for Western trade policy to focus on stuff like
| IP theft and market access while ignoring that elephant.
| brutus1213 wrote:
| I think people who think China can be contained are being
| naive. As an academic, I am extremely impressed with the
| improvement in scientific publications in CS out of China
| of late. In 10 years, they are now killing it on a
| consistent basis (personal anecdote: a paper from
| Tsinghua or Shanghai Jiao Tong on average is as good as
| one from Berkeley, Stanford or MIT). I have a feeling it
| has to do with the reality that Chinese nationals (or
| people with some ethnic/language connection) are an
| integral part of cutting edge science globally. It is
| extremely do-able to entice these individuals back.
| Western countries have severely under invested in
| research .. even back when I got my PhD (like a decade
| ago), my job packages were far superior in Asia (not just
| China) than in the West.
|
| I think in 5G, some top level planners in the West have
| realized the error of their ways, and are investing
| heavily in basic research. I think it is too late.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > (personal anecdote: a paper from Tsinghua or Shanghai
| Jiao Tong on average is as good as one from Berkeley,
| Stanford or MIT)
|
| Wait until Berkeley Stanford and MIT get better network
| security! [0][1][2]
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/us/chinese-
| scientist-canc...
|
| [1] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-11/c
| hinese-...
|
| [2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/chinese-
| researcher-e...
| klmadfejno wrote:
| > I really think China is making a huge mistake actually.
| See how TSMC (Taiwan) and Samsung are free to buy ASMLs
| EUV machines, while China is blocked. Part of that is due
| to their rampant IP theft. Why sell machines to China if
| they're just going to copy them?
|
| Because China can waggle a huge target market to tempt
| people into repeating well documented mistakes
| newswasboring wrote:
| > See how TSMC (Taiwan) and Samsung are free to buy ASMLs
| EUV machines, while China is blocked. Part of that is due
| to their rampant IP theft. Why sell machines to China if
| they're just going to copy them?
|
| You seem a bit misinformed. ASML CEO has repeatedly
| showed extreme desire to sell in china (it already
| comprises the fastest growing DUV market)[1]. It's the
| american pressure, indirectly or directly exerted which
| is causing issues. If it were upto ASML SMIC would
| already be establishing it's EUV fabs.
|
| [1] https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-10-16/dutch-tech-
| giant-asm...
| nytgop77 wrote:
| fact remains, that there are dificlties.
| babesh wrote:
| The 1 child policy is probably a big issue but IP theft
| is partly how the US industrialized. The textile mills of
| the North that kicked off industrialization in the US was
| based off of IP stolen from Britain. In fact, many of the
| practices that the Chinese are using were also used by
| the Americans: smuggling plans, hiring key employees,
| tariffs, etc.
|
| https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2018/07/30/ip_t
| hef...!
|
| http://web.mit.edu/heikki/www/antebellum_tariff_draft1.pd
| f
| thereare5lights wrote:
| It's really interesting what some of the similarities
| there are in China's rise vs the US's rise.
|
| * Genocide
|
| * Colonialism
|
| * IP Theft
|
| * Promotion of an ethnostate
|
| * Manifest Destiny
|
| * Monroe Doctrine
|
| I'm sure there's more.
| jkepler wrote:
| Isn't the underlying problem here the idea of
| Intellectual Property doesn't really correspond to real
| property? If I have an ax I use to provide lumber to our
| town and you steal it physically from me, that's theft.
| But if you see my ax, understand how it works, and make
| your own to also cut lumber, is that really theft? Or is
| it net beneficial to the town, as now people have more
| cut lumber to choose from and perhaps lower prices?
| However, if I lobby to get an IP law, how does that serve
| the community? It only protects me from competition.
| mpoteat wrote:
| The theory is that nobody will invest in e.g. researching
| how to build a complicated lumber cutting machine if they
| don't have protections against their competitor copying
| the results.
|
| Let's say this research costs 1 million dollars, and the
| company bankrolls this via a loan. They build it and are
| successful, and begin paying it off.
|
| Their competitor copies their idea, and exploits the fact
| that they have more capital and less debt to buy up more
| of the market, and end up the winner.
|
| So, under a zero protection scheme it is optimal to wait
| until your competitor invests in research, and then just
| steal it. Which is what happens on a geopolitical level
| where there is no feasible enforcement possible.
| fragmede wrote:
| Even domestically, the reason Hollywood is the center of
| the film industry is because California was too far from
| the East coast for patents on moving picture cameras to
| be effectively enforced.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I thought it has more to do with weather, particularly
| ~300 sunny days per year.
| the_af wrote:
| It was a bit of both. I think I first read about this in
| Lessig's _Free Culture_ [1], but even Wikipedia mentions
| some of this: somewhat ironically because of the MPAA 's
| current heavy-handed tactics, Hollywood was founded on
| piracy and patents infringement. Some moviemakers moved
| West to explore new territories and climates (Wikipedia
| mentions D.W. Griffith) but others soon followed suit in
| order to avoid Edison's patents. It can be argued that
| _Hollywood was made possible_ by people who broke the law
| [2]
|
| So Hollywood and the MPAA, who so aggressively pursue
| what they deem "IP infringement", have more than one
| skeleton in their closets.
|
| Bear this in mind whenever someone tells you -- as often
| witnessed here on HN -- "but without copyright there will
| be no writers" or "art isn't possible without IP laws".
|
| ----
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_(book)
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_the_United_St
| ates#Ri...
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| > "without copyright there will be no writers"
|
| Just recently had a bit of a good laugh about this. I
| decided to read Caesar's notes on Gallic wars, and
| downloaded some random .fb2
|
| It turned out to be a preview fragment, which ended with
| a stern warning that it is illegal to break copyright
| laws and that this book can be legally purchased via
| provided link. I'm sure Gaius Julius is very happy with
| how these guys protect his interests.
| throwaway776543 wrote:
| > Part of that is due to their rampant IP theft
|
| Weren't South Korea, Taiwan, and even Japan once known
| for their rampant IP theft?
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| The US was to and not that long ago.
| nix23 wrote:
| >Japan once known for their rampant IP theft?
|
| Yes they stole even IBM Mainframe OS's repeatedly....and
| sold it.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| Nowhere near as bad. The sheer scale and reach of Chinese
| counterfeits/crap quality is epic. If there's an olympics
| for this, China wins all the medals in every event.
|
| - Fake apple cables
|
| - Fidget spinners
|
| - Remember fake Apple stores?
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-fake-
| idUSTRE7...
|
| - Remember the milk scandal?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal
|
| - And don't forget the Three Gorges Dam, where the
| grifters building it used so much concrete building it
| (causing a global concrete shortage), but didn't worry
| about the problems non-homogeneous concrete causes in
| large load-bearing structures, and skimping on quality
| and every which way. The CCP has basically admitted the
| dam is useless for flood control. And it has some cracks,
| and the weather changes are going to cause more issues.
| nytgop77 wrote:
| probably legaly i am wrong. but apple cables and figdet
| spinners.. not much _intelectual_ property there. there
| should be separate term for brand infrigment.
| throwbacktictac wrote:
| I think it's healthy to have a diverse set of mid and
| upper market companies. Chinese companies will ultimately
| buy their way into up market businesses. One antidote
| that I can readily think of is the acquisition of the
| street wear company Bape buy a the Chinese/Hong Kong
| manufacturer I.T Group. Forbes magazine is another
| company that was acquired by a Chinese company.
|
| Furthermore, Hong Kong has some international appeal and
| most people think of it as a nation separate from China.
| In reality, companies from China incorporate in HK to
| escape the aurora of being a Chinese compnay
| babesh wrote:
| Hong Kong companies have better brand reputations than
| Chinese companies but gradually there are more Chinese
| brands gaining better reputations.
|
| I would expect this to continue. In fact, there are
| probably a few brands that are Chinese that you don't
| realize are Chinese.
| [deleted]
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| Uuh have you not heard of xiaomi or oneplus? They're
| already creating high value goods.
| klipklop wrote:
| Indeed. My 4 year old Oneplus phone taught me that China
| can make a phone just as good as anyone else. It's a
| quality product and was at a great price.
|
| With that said, my next phone will be an iPhone. I am
| trying to de-china whenever I can when it comes to buying
| stuff.
| OrbitRock wrote:
| DJI drones is another example
| jfengel wrote:
| _Who is going to trust Chinese companies with things like
| 5G infrastructure and CPS, when they 're all basically an
| extension of the CCP when it comes to security?_
|
| They're going to try to compete on price and quality. If
| customers think that the Xiaomi phone is good and cheap,
| the governments will have a hard time banning it.
| Customers don't really care about turning over huge
| amounts of information to Tiktok as well as to Facebook.
| That puts the western governments in a bind, to either
| ban wholesale or piecemeal, and it looks bad for them
| either way.
|
| That's not a guaranteed win for China. It's hard to
| compete on both price and quality, and they're going to
| have to work hard to win a reputation for the latter.
| It's possible: both Japan and South Korea have done it.
| But they did so with a friendly US, not a hostile one.
|
| They have the advantage of an enormous internal market,
| but it's not a wealthy one. They're going to look to
| Africa, which is also not wealthy, but there is money
| there, with less focus on privacy and more on price.
| Perhaps India and Latin America as well.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| I think it's also fair to note that "Africa" is a huge
| place with huge income distributions. I can see South
| Africa and North Africa aligning more with the West, and
| East Africa going more to China.
| [deleted]
| haspok wrote:
| How can you compare China (population ~1.4bn) to any EU
| country (population average ~10mn - several orders of
| magnitude less, even in the case of the largest country)?
| Size is an advantage, not a disadvantage!
|
| Pretty much none of the tactics would have worked for a
| small country that China played successfully. If you are
| small you can choose to be independent and protectionist -
| and remain very poor, or join the party, but be pushed into
| the corner, hoping that with time the playing field will
| level out somewhat.
| zz865 wrote:
| I'm from a country where there are several locally owned
| supermarkets. They're all very nice but eye wateringly
| expensive. I'd love if Aldi/Carrefour/Costco moved in.
| treis wrote:
| This is the counter argument. By protecting an inefficient
| sector you make it harder for every other sector to
| operate. If Ghana moves to protect their Chocolate
| manufacturing that will likely come at the expense of their
| Cocoa growers.
|
| The best way seems to start with low level work and move up
| the chain.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Romania still has at least one local supermarket chain I can
| think of: Oncos. I'm not sure how many locations they have
| outside of Transylvania, though.
|
| Sadly, Romania's competitiveness in building its own
| businesses in Europe is weakened by being left out of
| Schengen. Considering that Mark Rutte's party just won
| reelection in the Dutch elections, sadly nothing is likely to
| change on that front for years - he is the biggest force
| vetoing Romanian accession to Schengen.
| oblio wrote:
| That's on our government.
|
| We should just start vetoing some of those important
| treaties or other big agreements. We need to start
| pressuring the other EU members into pressuring the
| Netherlands for us.
| Florin_Andrei wrote:
| Well, it's a matter of leverage, isn't it?
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| In 2002-2005 I worked with all the supermarket and
| hypermarket chains in Romania, I still have a couple of
| friends in CxO positions in the top 5 companies; you are
| missing the full picture on what happened there, but the
| story is too long for a comment here; the 2007 change had
| zero impact of what already happened in the early 2000s.
| oblio wrote:
| I wanted to keep it simple for non-Romanians. The process
| started as Romania was implementing the EU acquis, after
| 1999.
|
| I'd be interested in the story, if you have time, but my
| only comment for everyone else reading this, these are
| technicalities, regarding the gist of my comment. They only
| change the timeline, but the main idea is the same.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| That is the point, the main idea is wrong. The 2 major
| factors were lack of experience of the Romanian owners (I
| had very close friends that worked at the failed
| Univers'all chain, it was total chaos) and capital to
| build the right format at the right quality.
| DSingularity wrote:
| WW3 was fought with soft power and economics. Now some
| countries own other countries and nobody is complaining.
| smolder wrote:
| I hear quite a lot of complaints from all sorts of people
| about their economic victimhood. I've got complaints myself
| about what global economics are doing for our prospects as
| a species.
| baryphonic wrote:
| Considering that at the end of WWII, large swathes of
| global population were subject to colonial rule,
| particularly in Africa and Asia, I wonder how the current
| situation you describe compares.
| permo-w wrote:
| Soft power and economics have been used as weapons for
| centuries Do you really think that their current or recent
| use is enough to warrant the moniker "WW3"?
|
| I don't
| WalterBright wrote:
| As a counterexample, the US has 50 states, and no internal
| protectionism. Yet there are no "colony" states.
| nytgop77 wrote:
| puerto rico?
| oblio wrote:
| The starting point for the US states is/was much closer
| than that of random countries around the world, to each
| other.
|
| US states, despite what Americans tell themselves, are
| culturally/socially/economically a lot more homogeneous
| than random countries around the world are to each other.
|
| And US states are all protected by the same federal
| government. None of them can really be abused by outside
| forces with little/no repercussion.
|
| They really can't be compared (US states vs countries
| around the world).
| jldugger wrote:
| > Do you know why I know them? Because there are 0 (zero!)
| local supermarket chains left. They've all been bought by
| foreign companies.
|
| It depends on your perspective really. When I lived in
| Oregon, there were Fred Meyers all over the place, but
| they're all owned by Kroger (HQ in Ohio) now. Are they
| 'foreign' because they're from another state inside the USA?
|
| AFAIK, Kroger keeps the local brands, so IDK why none of the
| local Romanian brands were kept. If it's anything like China
| or USSR, probably not a lot of faith in the local brands I
| guess?
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| Sort of yes. While a lot of the benefits of the development
| that comes with the growth of the grocery industry in
| Oregon will stay local, the surplus will not. It ends up in
| Ohio or inside pensions or investor pockets.
|
| But this isn't a great analogy because the U.S. federal
| government keeps interstate trade much more homogeneous
| than the EU.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Developing countries lack proper legal system where laws are
| based on property rights and market economy. That's why
| mentality of African people for example can not change and can
| not embrace capitalism.
|
| I would suggest you to read Hernando De Soto - The Mystery Of
| Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs In The West And Fails
| Everywhere Else
|
| The book argues "it actually has everything to do with the
| legal structure of property and property rights. Every
| developed nation in the world at one time went through the
| transformation from predominantly informal, extralegal
| ownership to a formal, unified legal property system. In the
| West we've forgotten that creating this system is also what
| allowed people everywhere to leverage property into wealth."
| [1]
|
| Book is in the public domain: [1]
| https://archive.org/details/Hernando_De_Soto_The_Mystery_Of_...
|
| Once the China for instance embraced capitalism and changed
| their legal system to allow private property ownership and
| allow market economy they thrived. Plus allowing American
| companies to come and exploit cheap work force they acquired
| "know-how" by now widely known and familiar stealing of
| intellectual property and copying literally everything they put
| their hands on.
| valuearb wrote:
| This is of course silly. Slowing your rate of growth now does
| nothing to make you grow faster later.
| totalZero wrote:
| > when developing countries are pressured into free trade
| agreements (for example by making aid dependent on this)
|
| "forced" is probably not the right word. "baited" is better.
|
| The developed world uses aid/loans to manipulate policy in the
| developed world, by targeting desperation. Make loans that the
| recipient cannot repay, then offer to restructure if they will
| comply with certain conditions.
|
| This is why the IMF exists.
| bingbong70 wrote:
| "The developed world uses
| aid/loans"/coups/assassinations/currency-debasement-attacks
| Siira wrote:
| Theory is not trustworthy. Here in Iran, we have had extreme
| protectionist policies for decades in, e.g., cars, and all it
| has done is made the car factory owners rich while car quality
| stagnates and regresses, and prices keep rising.
| tashoecraft wrote:
| The book "How Asian Works" touched on this as well. A
| combination of promoting/subsidizing local industries whilst
| pushing them to be competitive on the global stage can do great
| things
| nickik wrote:
| I don't think this is actually true. IF you go threw all the
| history of development economics, sure its easy to point out 'X
| government did X and look at that, now they are successful at
| X'.
|
| However that is selection bias, government and international
| development agencies tried literally everything, many things 10
| times, often over years and years. Often wasting resources that
| then didn't go into their successful part of the economy.
|
| Quite often governments also do lead following, they do
| something, something else is successful, then more money flows
| into that and then a few years later all the bureaucrats
| congratulate themselves on their success.
|
| We actually have pretty good and very clear numbers on what
| actually works. Basically it boils down to 'don't be a shit
| government' and if you manage that you will have some amount
| pretty good amount of growth. Avoid a few idioitic policies,
| implement the basic of law and business (property rights),
| don't punish successful people, don't be ultra protectionist.
|
| Any country that manages that usually manages to get a fair
| amount of growth. It might not be growth in Steel industry but
| better more efficient framing, mining, tourism, labor intensive
| industry and stuff like that are still very helpful base to
| build up the basic infrastructure and business environment.
|
| The old Post-WW2 version of 'lets not import steel, invest many
| billions in building our own steel industry' kind of plans
| actually have a terrible history of success.
|
| But this debate has been raging for 3000 years now, in modern
| history mercantilism vs free market debate, then the socialism
| vs capitalism debate (calculation debate), then Post-WW2
| development of 'Development economics' that had all these
| debates again. Look at India, and its strange 'Indian
| Socialism' based on many British ideas.
|
| > So much like we allow children time to learn in school before
| we expect them to compete in the job market
|
| Mostly what we are actually doing for most jobs is kids
| basically showing that they can be good little workers and have
| basic social skills.
|
| For a country this would basically be, show that you respect
| basic property rights, don't have polices that make creating a
| business impossible, be reasonable accessible to global market.
| If you can do that, welcome to being adult, you will likely be
| reasonably successful.
|
| > we should allow developing countries to employ
| protectionistic policies like tariffs
|
| Allow them sure, who are we to deny them. But that doesn't mean
| its a good idea most of the time.
| osacial wrote:
| That's a complete nonsense on how things work in reality. The
| biggest problem for Africa is that MARKET of anything that they
| are selling is in Europe and US. They can demand anything they
| want(which is simple racket and anyone despises these things in
| business), and it all will simply end with some startup in Cali
| who will start to grow cocoa beans in vertical farms or some
| other African country will become cocoa exporter Nr1 in the
| world.
|
| ANY developing European country in history started with
| offering raw materials and very quickly invested into
| manufacturing and producing good quality products. There are no
| obstacles for Ghana to do the same. At the moment you can see
| some poor European countries with industry and skilled
| workforce and they all have poor results because of corruption.
| Something tells me, that it will be the same for Ghana.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Demanding a greater % of the final value of a good is a
| racket?
|
| And you really think that Ghana's cocoa superiority will be
| upended by some American startup? That's laughable, and
| certainly not enough of a credible threat to keep Ghana under
| the boot of economic imperialism.
| vlan0 wrote:
| Life and Debt is another good example.
|
| http://lifeanddebt.org/
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Okay, but if local goods can't be produced at a price that is
| commensurately low, then the fledgingly country's wage earners
| have their purchasing power reduced, with less discretionary
| income to further their own educational and business pursuits.
| I think this thesis you are referring to takes for granted that
| the tariffs are going to be responsibly used by the governing
| class setting them to invest in the long term prospects of
| their people and not siphoned off into corrupt ends. That's a
| pretty tall assumption.
| m12k wrote:
| Correct, the lower priced international goods help give the
| population of developing countries more purchasing power with
| their low wages, but at the cost of those wages never going
| up significantly. They get stuck in a local optimum - and
| unfortunately, yes, in order to escape from one of those, the
| first steps will always be toward something less optimal.
| pydry wrote:
| >if local goods can't be produced at a price that is
| commensurately low, then the fledgingly country's wage
| earners have their purchasing power reduced
|
| If the industry they work in can't compete their _entire_
| income is reduced to zero.
|
| That can knock out related industries as well and ultimately
| leave the country exposed to currency collapse and
| hyperinflation as the exporting countries decide that this
| country has nothing it really wants any more while they still
| desperately need imports.
|
| This happened to Venezuela (after local industrialists
| declared war on Chavez in 2002 he effectively set out to
| destroy them) and Zimbabwe (when Muagabe dispossessed farmers
| from their land, rendering it unproductive).
|
| The US is also exposed to this risk. It's steadily but very
| slowly losing hi tech manufacturing capabilities - something
| that takes decades to get back once lost (due to the network
| effect and loss of skills).
| tshaddox wrote:
| > If the industry they work in can't compete their entire
| income is reduced to zero.
|
| But I thought we're talking about a time period before that
| industry even exists.
| mxcrossb wrote:
| The nerve of that website to beg for donations while being
| plastered with advertisements
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I know HN prefers not to discuss site misbehavior, but since
| there is already is a thread...
|
| This site had it all. I think I had something like 4 or 5
| overlaying popups/infocards, plus ads. When I tried to scroll
| it redirected me to the next page, and then it hijacked the
| back button on top of that.
|
| Revisited to count the garbage: Donation beg, cookies, sticky
| ad on the bottom, "Add to home screen", "install our app",
| notification bell button. White space in the content area, with
| an ad underneath. No content visible at all.
| dgellow wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow the argument. Surely Ghana could sell some
| cocoa to Switzerland, while at the same time building their own
| chocolate brands. Maybe reduce your export, but keep a strong
| influx of money and at the same time invest in your own line of
| products.
| eloisant wrote:
| Easier for them to compete internationally as Nestle, Lindt,
| etc. will have to either reduce their production or find other
| (possibly more expensive) cocoa sources.
|
| Also it prevents from having internal competition between
| exportation and internal refining, as exportation is easy
| "right now" money while refining will take time and
| investments.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Wait... Swiss diplomats still wear jack sparrow hats?!
| dgellow wrote:
| No. The people you can see in the first picture aren't the
| diplomats themselves, it's just part of the tradition when
| welcoming country leaders. Watch the video, you will see that
| our current president has completely normal clothes.
| andimm wrote:
| They are called Bundesweibel, took me a while to find them:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huissier
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weibel_(Amtsdiener)
| dgellow wrote:
| Et pour les romands:
| https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huissier_(Suisse)
|
| :)
| prepend wrote:
| I think it's good to see raw producers start working up market to
| make their own chocolate. I think a Ghanaian chocolate brand
| actually owned by Ghanaians and made for export would market very
| well.
|
| It's interesting to me how much tasty and interesting stuff in
| Africa has not been marketed internationally and there's lots of
| room for them to grow and develop.
|
| For example, fonio [0], is a grain native to west Africa that
| I've never seen in the US but was eaten every day when I was
| there, as common as rice. It's gluten-free and could be the next
| quinoa and a great opportunity to develop a new brand and export
| finished products rather than just commodities.
|
| One of the big opportunities of all this digitization, I think,
| is that it's now easier for remote locations to get more value
| out of their commodities than just exporting raw and having
| someone else add most of the value.
|
| I'm surprised the Swiss aren't trying to do more joint ventures
| to develop chocolate making capabilities in Ghana.
| valuearb wrote:
| Or they just opened the door for other countries to get in the
| cocoa business, while their chocolate business fails because
| they don't have the expertise, brands or market access to
| succeed.
| [deleted]
| hanche wrote:
| I satisfy my chocolate cravings with chocolate from fairafric
| now. Chocolate produced all the way from the tree to packaged
| chocolate bars in Ghana. They ran a couple kickstarter projects
| to get going. It's excellent chocolate too! At least the dark
| variants, which are the only ones I care about.
|
| https://fairafric.com/en/home/
| kzrdude wrote:
| Very cool. Just note (since it's on topic here) that their
| team is mostly German, not from Ghana
| https://fairafric.com/team/
| hanche wrote:
| True. However, they seem to be working hard - and with some
| success, I believe - at transferring ownership and
| responsibility to their partners in Ghana.
| auiya wrote:
| There's a smoked chili pepper which I believe is native to the
| area that is labeled as "ghana pepper" for export, and is hard
| to find elsewhere. It is _incredible_.
| zymhan wrote:
| AFAIK peppers are native to the Americas, I'm not sure there
| is a "native" African pepper. Though they certainly could
| have been cultivating them for 400-500 years.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chili_pepper#Origins
| nix23 wrote:
| >AFAIK peppers are native to the Americas
|
| You are right, the oldest proven use and origin of pepper
| is from Mexico, exported from the portugese all over the
| world...but the chinese and india peppers are still a bit
| of a mystery.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chili_pepper
| exhilaration wrote:
| Thanks, another item to add to my list: corn, tomatoes,
| potatoes, and peppers. All are now staples worldwide but
| were unknown outside of the Americas until ~500 years ago.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Cacao seems like a highly relevant addition while you're
| at it...
| xeromal wrote:
| Really?!?!
| devdas wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_exchange has a
| whole list.
| nix23 wrote:
| You can add Tobacco too ;)
| simonh wrote:
| I found this article about the developing domestic Ghanaian
| Chocolate industry much more informative than the OP.
|
| https://foodtank.com/news/2018/08/ghanaian-chocolate-revolut...
| solidsnack9000 wrote:
| In the long run, it wouldn't make sense for so much finished
| chocolate to be from places like France and Switzerland, where
| cocoa doesn't grow.
|
| There is a parallel with tea. At one time, people thought in
| terms of "English tea" or "French tea". In recent decades,
| western people are much more acquainted with Japanese and Chinese
| tea directly. It is no coincidence that this stuff is fresher,
| more varied, more affordable...
| bsanr2 wrote:
| This is similar to the situation with Global South coffee
| exports, wherein actual growers only receive a fraction of the
| revenue from consumer sales (despite the relatively cheap and
| easy value-add of roasting or conversion into instant coffee)
| because of logistical concerns, and because Europeans and
| American just plain do not buy African roast coffee when it
| appears on their shelves. If these countries were to decide to
| restrict exports, a billion-dollar market would collapse.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I think people buying fairtrade are under impression they are
| solving the issue, whereas in reality it doesnt do much
| jariel wrote:
| Coffee is a commodity. Marketers will re-brand their roasts
| pretty quickly and convince us all that 'it's better'.
|
| Coco is special in that production is limited.
| brodock wrote:
| Good coffee is not abundant. Not the crap you will find in
| local supermarket, that will almost always taste the same.
| It's like cheap wine.
| [deleted]
| unwind wrote:
| This is a pretty minor point, but any proper coffee geek will
| tell you that the shelf life of roasted coffee is pretty bad.
|
| Thus it makes sense to roast closer to the time when the coffee
| is made available for sale; shipping from African countries up
| to Europe, would increase the "latency" a great deal.
|
| I'm sure modern packaging gives a decent shelf life, and TBH I
| don't worry much about the use-before label on coffee around
| here, but that's generally because it doesn't last long on the
| shelf anyway. :)
| fogihujy wrote:
| Not to mention that many prefer one specific blend. If you
| want me to buy another brand/blend then you first have to
| convince me that the new one is at least as delicious as the
| previous one.
| ggm wrote:
| If the raw cocoa had attracted a price closer to the final
| products value, this wouldn't have happened. Sure, the value add
| is significant and so this is not just "chocolate is the value
| inherent in the beans" but really? This is happening because
| chocolate consumable production underpays the farmers.
|
| This response is a good thing. I hope they succeed, its as steep
| hill to climb making good chocolate from cocoa.
| tyingq wrote:
| _" With Ghana's move towards processing its own cocoa, the world,
| and not just Switzerland, will experience a massive shortage
| since Ghana is responsible for about 45% of the world's cocoa."_
|
| That seems like bigger news than the headline.
| redisman wrote:
| They can outbid the local companies if they want to. The whole
| point is that Ghana wants to move up the rung from a producer
| of raw goods to more value add to their exports
| Shadonototro wrote:
| they'll move production elsewhere, problem solved
|
| why people do not think nowadays?
| tyingq wrote:
| I'm no expert, but there are articles from many different
| sources saying that the transition will result in a crisis,
| and will take a long time to resolve.
| Shadonototro wrote:
| i doubt it, they anticipated that many years ago, they only
| import 1/3 from ghana, easy to replace
|
| source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-
| eurostat-news/-/E...
| ISL wrote:
| It may encourage the major chocolate processors to build
| processing plants in Ghana.
|
| This must be done with caution. Crashing the internal chocolate
| price will hurt Ghanaian farmers in the short term even as the
| country attempts to negotiate the country to a better place.
|
| "Governing a country is like frying a small fish" -- Tao te
| Ching 60
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| My local shop got its chocolate from Honduras and Nicaragua.
| They visited the farms and arranged to have the beans processed
| there. Meant they could import a liquid and not an agricultural
| product. So it didn't have to be fumigated. A big win.
| amelius wrote:
| They could also ask Switzerland to pay 30% of their revenue,
| similar to what Apple does.
| arcticfox wrote:
| It's also a massive assumption... first of all that Ghana won't
| be able to process & export chocolate in significant
| quantities, and second of all that other nations that are
| paying the LID won't be able to pick up the Swiss slack.
|
| Surely the cocoa won't just be burned, someone will find a way
| to process it.
| laraph wrote:
| That 45% figure in the article is wrong; Ghana produces about
| 18% of the world's production. They hold a lot of the world
| market because they have low prices. If they raise their price,
| their market share will drop, and other countries could move in
| and take their position. There's simple market economics at
| play.
| SamBam wrote:
| If Ghana is able to process its own cocoa at the same rate as
| the Swiss, or at least accelerate to such productions soon,
| then the world won't see a massive shortage of chocolate, just
| of raw cocoa.
|
| It seems reasonable to me. My understanding is that the ones
| adding the value, by turning the raw material into chocolate,
| are the ones making the majority of the profits.
| aritmo wrote:
| Here says[0] that Ghana and China are about to sign a $2b deal to
| build schools, roads, hospitals and other infrastructure. In
| exchange of cocoa products.
|
| Did this work out for Ghana? There are no newer posts since 2018
| on this.
|
| [0]: https://archive.is/CPFhC
| fmajid wrote:
| Divine Chocolate is owned by Ghanaian cacao farmer:
|
| https://www.divinechocolate.com/products
|
| A much better model than the Fairtrade scam by which white-savior
| consultants jet off to poor countries to lecture locals whose
| backs their fat salaries are extracted off.
| vmilner wrote:
| It's about twice the price of Cadbury's in the UK, but
| significantly better quality. I often buy it when I see it, and
| it has fairly good shop distribution now.
| mpol wrote:
| How i fairtrade a scam?
|
| Please be aware that the market of cocoa is not an easy one and
| not very transparent. The Dutch TV maker Teun van der Keuken
| was devastated by what he saw in Ivory Coast with a lot of
| child slavery going on. He started his own slavefree brand Tony
| Chocolonely, but even they have to admit they can not guarantee
| it is slavefree made, they can only strive for that. By the
| way, the people from Nestle just shrugged over the issue of
| child slavery.
|
| I am very happy to see good policy being applied in Africa,
| they need to do this more often and strongly. Europe and the
| US, governments and companies, have been pulling their strings
| far too long. I hope China can give them a sense of how they
| can fend better for themself.
| devdas wrote:
| https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fairtrade-scam-when-comes-
| pri...
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/05/25/surprise.
| ..
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| I didn't realize Tony Chocolonely was intended to be a slave
| free brand, I had bought it in Europe thinking it had a
| hilarious name and large size - the background of traditional
| brands sold in the US sounds horrific if he decided to make
| his own company based on what he saw, which haven't even
| penetrated our domestic market.
| pudhbithyftdti wrote:
| You can purchase Chocolonely at Natural Grocers and Sprouts
| in the US, if they're in your area. It's the best quality
| chocolate I've ever purchased that didn't come from a
| chocolate shop, highly recommend it.
|
| Coco is sold on world markets as a commodity good.
| Suppliers can't know what country the beans originated. To
| get guaranteed slave-free chocolate you effectively have to
| create your own logistics for that specific purpose. Any
| chocolate producers that haven't done that will have some
| amount of slave-produced coco mixed into their supply
| chain.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| I wonder what Ghanaian chocolate will be like? I will be happy to
| buy it and try.
| refraincomment wrote:
| Hopefully they also stop exporting unsolicited people.
| jkaljundi wrote:
| Netflix series Rotten has a good episode on cocoa lifecycle and
| the problems involved: https://www.netflix.com/ee/title/80146284
| m000 wrote:
| I really hope Ivory Coast will join Ghana on this, as they did
| for the LID bonus case. Together they account for over 2/3 of
| cocoa production. So, they can pretty much reshape the
| cocoa/chocolate market and break out of colonialistic trade
| agreements for the benefit of their people.
| m_mueller wrote:
| As a Swiss, I hope the same. I find this IP waiver blockage
| horrid - it should be in the interest of everyone to try to
| extinguish this disease worldwide, as quickly as possible, to
| reduce the mutation risk as much as possible. Hats off to
| Ghana!
| barry-cotter wrote:
| If the Swiss can buy from 1/3 of global producers that's still
| plenty to satisfy the demand. And it's not like the world is
| short of areas where cocoa would grow. It's not so long since
| Vietnam went from not growing coffee to being one of the
| world's largest producers in under 20 years. I bet they could
| do it with cocoa too.
| throwaway1916 wrote:
| Yep. It would probably take another 20 years to develop
| another Cocoa producer as prolific as Ghana and Ivory Coast.
| Also, Cocoa only grows within 20 degrees north and south of
| the equator.
| jeromegv wrote:
| There's actually a worldwide shortage of cocoa, it's
| apparently not that simple.
| jjcon wrote:
| Due to COVID yes, but there are shortages of everything
| right now - cocoa isn't unique in any way in that regard
| BoorishBears wrote:
| ... except it's actually relevant to the thread's point
| about exercising greater control over _cocoa_
| jjcon wrote:
| The above was in a response saying they could take 20
| years to invest in cocoa elsewhere - the shortage is very
| temporary in comparison
| BoorishBears wrote:
| ... no it didn't. Didn't even imply it. Literally there
| was an aside that used "20 years" and that's it.
|
| Why would you lie about a comment I can literally just
| scroll up to read?
|
| The pandemic and its effects doesn't need to last 20
| years for Ghana and the Ivory Coast to take greater
| control of their cocoa crop.
|
| We're literally watching it happen right now.
| jjcon wrote:
| > It's not so long since Vietnam went from not growing
| coffee to being one of the world's largest producers in
| under 20 years. I bet they could do it with cocoa too.
|
| It's right here... maybe do a read through before
| breaking HN rules and assuming poor intent
| BoorishBears wrote:
| The sweet irony, read the comment you just replied to
|
| > Literally there was an aside that used "20 years" and
| that's it.
|
| Which aside do you think I was referring to? An aside
| about a different crop in a different period of time,
| which might I add didn't involve a global pandemic?
|
| Saying someone said something they didn't is... a lie. Or
| would you rather I just interpret it as you breaking HN
| rules and assuming poor intent on their part?
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Issues with coca shortage were way before any covid hit
| the distribution channels. Its not trivial plant to get
| good crop, not ruined by pests, fungus etc. Quality
| matters a lot.
| jjcon wrote:
| There were rumors that minor disruptions could cause
| shortages but supply was still having no trouble meeting
| demand (that is until COVID)
| aaron695 wrote:
| > Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland
|
| This is not true.
|
| He only said they are going to _try_ and process _some_ cocoa in
| Ghana.
|
| "we intend to process more and more of our cocoa in our country"
| https://youtu.be/gs_dD7qKfX8?t=317
|
| It'll take decades and they will grow more to supply both
| markets, if their market is successful.
|
| What's with the hysterical headlines - "Awkward moment when
| President of Ghana says they intend to process cacao", "Ghana
| will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland", "Ghana President shuts
| down Swiss President", "Ghana President Publicly Denied Cocoa
| Export to Switzerland."
|
| I thought maybe short sellers, but I can't see a link.
|
| Is it just some addictive meme, I guess the random covid bits are
| like an attack vector or something?
| sschueller wrote:
| Yes, this is garbage news. I dont see anything in the top Swiss
| papers.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| Having worked in Whole Foods and been surrounded by family who
| prefer organic, free/fair type foods, I must say I do understand
| there is a market for the chocolates we usually see marketed as
| non-European. There's an emphasis on dark chocolate, "artisanal
| blends" with spices, etc. The kind of chocolate people pay extra
| for because they think it's special, then don't touch because
| they paid extra for and want to preserve it, only for it to
| expire in the pantry.
|
| Let me be honest. I prefer European-style chocolate. Milk
| chocolate. White chocolate. They're much richer, and I hope there
| will continue to be a great supply of this type of chocolate.
| Maybe that Swiss brand recognition has more to do with the fact
| that it actually tastes really good versus what's being
| attributed to hand-wavy concepts about colonialism and power
| structures.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| As for Lindt, milk and white chocolates are rather small
| portion of their portfolio [1], and at least here in
| Switzerland it looks accordingly in the shops - these
| 'artisanal' types take 80-90% of the shelves and overall are
| bought more than basic milk/white ones. Personally, these days
| if I buy then only dark one with sea salt.
|
| Fun fact - there is stark difference between Lindt made in
| Switzerland and the ones made in EU (had ones from France and
| Germany, you have to look for fine print in the back since
| overall design is same). Swiss-made I found unsurprisingly only
| in Swiss supermarkets, with the price being 50-100% higher than
| the same in EU supermarkets, but the taste is much, much
| better. I guess higher quality coca beans are used but not sure
| here.
|
| They are so good that I don't seek out local/foreign artisanal
| chocolate anymore, since every single one of them simply
| doesn't compare (apart from price which can be even
| significantly higher). Over the years, I've tried many. But
| this is obviously highly subjective and true only for variants
| of dark chocolate, I don't buy other types.
|
| [1] https://www.chocolate.lindt.com/our-chocolate/our-
| brands/exc...
| samatman wrote:
| I might have a bad attitude about people's food preferences as
| well, if I had worked at Whole Foods.
|
| I assure you, a bar of dark chocolate with "fancy" spices has
| never expired in my pantry. The Swiss stuff is ok, if your
| palate reached maturity at seven years old+.
|
| + this is not my actual opinion. I'm ribbing you.
| rory wrote:
| Hey I actually like that dark, spiced chocolate! I'm also
| skeptical it's any more expensive than the Swiss chocolate sold
| in gaudy mall stores like Lindt and Teuscher.
|
| There's obviously a market for these sort of "non-European-
| style" chocolates, which, as you said, are marketed
| specifically as being associated with countries like Ghana. In
| NE Asia there's actually a chocolate bar just called Ghana
| (made in Japan..)! So why shouldn't Ghana try to capture more
| of the value of that market? I'm sure Swiss chocolate makers
| can source their cocoa elsewhere, and milk chocolate needs far
| less actual cocoa anyway.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| > "I prefer European-style chocolate. Milk chocolate. White
| chocolate. They're much richer"
|
| And also much unhealthier. They contain copious amounts of
| added, refined sugar. Cocoa can be healthy given it's nutrient
| profile, but only outweighs the damage added sugar causes if
| the chocolate is >90% cacao.
| someonehere wrote:
| I read their reasoning why they're stopping, but my gut tells me
| China is behind this. They're actively tapping Africa for natural
| resources and I wouldn't be surprised if there's some dealings
| behind closed doors to hand over cacao to China.
| rhplus wrote:
| Playbook: 1) Ghana needs capital to build
| cacao processing plants 2) Foreign investors loans
| capital and plant is built with skilled foreign labor
| 3) Once running, plants are staffed by unskilled local labor
| 4) Ghana has an unrelated financial crisis and defaults on
| loans 5) Foreign investors take ownership of cacao
| processing plants through liens 6) Foreign investors
| threaten to close plants unless they get a free-trade zone
| 7) Cacao is now processed in Ghana with cheap labor and no
| export duties
| sgt wrote:
| This is terrible. How did it get that far, so quickly?
| igammarays wrote:
| I wonder if we would go to war over chocolate, like we would over
| other brown sticky stuff.
|
| Wouldn't be surprised if there's a coup in Ghana soon, not least
| because a lot of rich exporters will be angry.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| Just flexing that geopolitical hot take:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-22/ghana-see...
|
| China's influence over Africa to secure it's own cocoa
| production?
|
| Article from 2017:
| https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUKL8N1K35R1
|
| So looks like China paid up this year and got exclusives, and not
| Switzerland.
|
| What's the game, I must know. Ghana is Lord Baelish?
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Seems like a good decision. Would be good for other African
| countries to do similarly, but they are largely hindered by
| corrupt governments whose officials benefit from exporting the
| raw materials.
| williesleg wrote:
| No more swiss piss? Thanks china!
| amelius wrote:
| In other news, Switzerland begins militarization process
|
| https://infobrics.org/post/31420
| sadmann1 wrote:
| How will Switzerland counter this change of events
| fogihujy wrote:
| The first response will probably be for the chocolate producers
| to try to source the raw materials from other sources. This may
| or may not result in production ramping up elsewhere, or even
| new producers appearing as increased prices could make
| production financially viable in places it previously wasn't.
|
| Depending on how the markets react, prices may go up, and many
| of the really cheap brands could disappear from the shelves, or
| just have their fat/sugar contents increased. There's also a
| non-zero chance that new African brands will grab a part of the
| low-end of the market, with protectionist measures implemented
| to respond to them.
| eloisant wrote:
| Considering Switzerland is less than 9 millions people, their
| total consumption is a drop in the ocean of the global market
| so I'm don't think protectionist measures would change much.
|
| And I don't see why the big markets (EU, US) would want to
| protect Swiss companies.
| fogihujy wrote:
| The big markets won't care about Swiss chocolate. It's far
| more likely that Swiss chocolate producers will simply
| focus on the high-end market and leave it at that.
|
| Now, if other African countries tried doing this to the EU
| and re. other raw materials on the other hand...
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| CO2 tariffs: https://www.bcg.com/publications/2020/how-an-eu-
| carbon-borde...
|
| Ghana's electricity supply is 51% fossil fuel, whereas
| Switzerland is 2.5%.
|
| But its a lot easier to build solar plants in Accra than in
| Bern...
|
| I think that Europe is at a fundamental disadvantage over the
| medium/long-term, due to the burden of its welfare states.
|
| Its surprising to see that taxes over basically all
| categories are lower in Ghana than in Europe (except
| corporate taxes).
|
| The minimum monthly aged pension is EUR6.60 in Ghana, vs
| EUR1,080 in Switzerland. Life expectancy is 20 years longer
| in Switzerland than Ghana, but the retirement age is only 4
| years later.
|
| The end effect of these extremely early and generous pensions
| is that economies become stratified, to ensure that these
| pension payments are maintained, and taxes are heaped on
| individuals to pay for it.
|
| Europe needs a widespread increase of the aged pension age to
| 70, cease all migration from regions with high usage of
| welfare state service, and begin a large, multi-generational
| modular nuclear power plant building plan.
| kwere wrote:
| maybe we need a individual capitalization pension plan
| csomar wrote:
| I think Switzerland is doing, overall, fine. France is the
| biggest abuser. They have a large bloated-welfare system
| that encourages people _not_ to work; and they have a
| combination of impossibly high taxes and bureaucracy.
|
| If you look at this list, you'll know something is horribly
| wrong with these economies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L
| ist_of_countries_by_tax_reven...
|
| The ones at the top are all European except for Cuba...
| ISL wrote:
| My experience with corruption in Ghana suggests that the
| Swiss have some other key advantages. It is impossible to
| imagine a swiss policeman stopping every third car on the
| country's main highway and asking, "Where's my Christmas?"
|
| That said, the potential for Ghanaians to thrive is
| astounding. Incremental improvements will yield incremental
| gains. It is a tropical paradise emerging from the weight
| of poverty.
|
| Also, the mangoes are hands-down the finest I have ever
| tasted.
| WestOaklandfan wrote:
| How will Ghana counter the loss of a high quality cocoa buyer ?
| staticelf wrote:
| Good for them I guess or is it? I don't understand how you cannot
| have prosparity from selling raw materials?
|
| If you think you're not being paid enough, increase the price
| along with creating your own products. It seems weird to me to
| not let foreign countries buy your raw materials just because you
| want to produce more stuff yourself.
|
| It's not like I will start buying chocolate made in ghana because
| they don't want to sell their cocoa anymore. I will still buy
| from the brands I like and are used to most of the times, which
| is a local brand.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I feel like for every measure of progress this might give
| Ghana, it will give other exporters of cocoa beans 10x as much
| advantage, at least in the short-term.
| austincheney wrote:
| > If you think you're not being paid enough, increase the price
| along with creating your own products.
|
| Who makes that decision? Cocoa slavery is a thing because the
| economics of raw material pricing is complicated by many
| factors but the demand is very simple and very high.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The (effective) demand for beans produced in Ghana just went
| way down with this policy enactment though, right?
| austincheney wrote:
| I doubt it. If anything it will restrict market
| availability which will only increase demand, but the best
| way to know is watch the price for beans.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I agree that watching the market is the best way to judge
| the balance.
|
| I'd expect the price for beans as-delivered to
| Switzerland is likely to go up. The price for beans as-
| offered in Ghana is likely to go down. The latter matters
| more to Ghana cocoa farmers.
| Mat342 wrote:
| It's 2021, africans can abolish slavery if they want to
| macspoofing wrote:
| >I don't understand how you cannot have prosparity from selling
| raw materials?
|
| Depending on how big the export is in relation to your economy,
| it can certainly have a negative effect:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
| vmilner wrote:
| >If you think you're not being paid enough, increase the price
| along with creating your own products.
|
| That seems to be what happened with Mars and Hershey (i.e. a
| price increase) though put in the terms of not paying farmers
| enough and trade war. It's unclear to me whether Mars and
| Hershey are now getting less cocoa than they did because cocoa
| is being diverted to domestic production, or the same amount
| and paying more.
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(page generated 2021-03-19 23:01 UTC)