Often, the most perceptive rejoinders to articles that appear in the major print media are found in the comments section. But you won’t see them unless you are online because they don’t show up in the letters-to-the editor section.
The New York Times has cut off comments to Paul Krugman's recent column about China at 334. Here are some snippets of what some of their readers had to say.
Commenting from Taiwan, one Mr. Bill Pieper notes:
The Chinese are masters of two classic strategic and tactical policies used in concert and with complimentary effects. One is divide and conquer, that is, pitting nations which should be naturally allied against the PRC to instead quarrel with one another. This is frequently accomplished by pitting the US exporters and financiers against their European counterparts for example. The other is to exploit an opponent’s weakness, using it as a weapon. In the case of United States, the weakness would be the American slavery to an ideology of “free” trade and unrestricted capital flow; an ideology that provides a near perfect cover for unfettered greed on the part of the nation’s political and financial class. In a hyper-financialized oligarchy such as the US, this fanatic devotion to ideology has benefited a handful of players enormously, while contributing greatly to the ongoing decimation of the middle class.
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The REE debacle illustrates an alarming trend that has been going on for decades. The loss of REE processing resources will take years to replace, so even if mining commences tomorrow, the ore cannot be processed until the plant and expertise is in place. But it is not just rare earths that should concern Americans. When a nation loses its ability to create things, even non-strategic industries will decline over time because there is a lot to learn by making stuff.
Even when products are produced using high level design, creation and engineering talent located in the US, many innovations in process and design are taking place in the locations that actually manufacture the products. The US is losing the “culture” of manufacturing, a culture that contributes to improvements of the products being produced. In addition to this, there is an enormous amount of technological transfer and outright theft of intellectual property from western companies going on, especially in China where western companies are forced to partner with local operations to produce at least some components. These local partners will flat out steal patented technology, even highly sensitive defense related technology, all while being protected by political allies in the PRC. The western companies go along with these risks and costs because they either feel they have no choice in order to remain competitive, or they are [eying] the alluring and thus far illusive carrot of a billion person market. Some companies are finding out too late that it has simply not been worth the cost. But the C-level managers who made the decisions to go to China in the first place - as well as their eager financier partners - have long since made their millions and care not a bit about the costs to their home countries and fellow countrymen.
Ouch. That's brutal, but entirely consistent with facts, matters that writers such as Paul Craig Roberts, Joe Bageant and Jim Hightower (among others) have been consistently making for years. Facts (not narratvies, hard facts on the ground) that never seem to make it into the "news," but nonetheless, percolate very closely to the surface of the consciousness of millions of Americans who have been down-sized, right-sized or out-sourced.
Andrew from Maryland adds that:
Two-thirds of the rare earth minerals [reside] in the civilized “free world” and one-third in the irresponsible economic power area, called China. How big a difference there is! When the U.S. vampire squids could not compete for blood with Chinese ones, they bluster against whichever rogue economic superpower.
Chinese oil company Cnooc Ltd. in August 2005 withdrew its $18.5 billion takeover bid for California energy firm Unocal Corp., saying it could not overcome resistance from politicians in Washington who said such a deal could threaten U.S. national security and violate the rules of fair trade. All [capitalists] are “unwilling to play by the rules. And the question is what the rest of us are going to do about it.” It is a good question for us non-capitalists to ponder.
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You probably think that [capitalists] should be nationalistic. They are not. U.S. [capitalists] have outsourced jobs to China, Mexico, and India and elsewhere for four decades. Have they ever considered the basic and long-term interests of the U.S. working and middle classes? No, they have never done that. Mutually beneficial [capitalists] have no fatherland. Their empathy is not with the U.S. workers but with the friendly [capitalists] offshore and overseas, and vice versa.
Paul Cohen of Hartford CT echoes some of my concerns
There are already too many conflicts around the world that could embroil everyone. We are fighting two endless wars to protect our access to oil, without which, our mighty military machine would collapse. Now you want to escalate tensions with China because they won’t share their rare-earth materials? Let’s throw in Panda Bears. And hey, they have the Great Wall for tourism too. We need to end our colonial foreign policy, not extend it. The greed and selfishness (the ever escalating concentration of wealth flowing to the top) of Corporate executives is the reason we export jobs to exploit cheap labor. If there were a more equitable distribution of wealth in this country, Americans could support demand without having to cut jobs and the opportunity for amassing wealth would still flourish. I’m a bit surprised at the hawkish tone of this piece.
While reader Paul Cohen was a "bit surprised at the hawkish tone," reader Mark Ganzer was horrified.
I think you should be too.
