The Emperor's New Clothes - Made in China

Well I think that with the world economy in the state it's in, we should reexamine our business models, and not only that, but strive to create newer, more effective, and better models. Having lived in China and seen firsthand the results of abused capitalism under illegitimate totalitarian control, namely, inhumanity, I think it's time for all people to realize that we are only as strong as the weakest link. Profit-driven market economy cannot regulate itself wisely. It's time to ask ourselves whether we will accept our responsibilities as individual decision-makers, or allow "external forces" to choose our destinies for us. When the baby's milk starts getting poisoned, it's time to change.

Because as a citizen, and a consumer, I am more concerned with product safety than terror. Chinese products enter the world's market in uncountable ways, and China, clearly, is too busy showing force and seeking legitimacy without surrendering communist power, to invite a truthful discourse about the government's powerlessness to regulate it's own country. To say nothing of creating a moral society. Clearly nations and markets are not able to manage themselves rationally. Instead we see facades and static concepts, while under the surface, anything can and will go. Freedom carries a price. That price is moral action.


Nations, corporations, markets, consumer bases, are all bodies made up of individuals, making individual choices, including the choice to abstain from accountability. But each of us is directly accountable for our own actions and decisions. Each of us is a drop that together, makes a raging river. But unlike a river, we can choose our own course - or squander that power and fall where we may.

When markets can no longer guarantee humane security, it is time to question their validity. And to start making demands of our suppliers and producers, and stop tolerating rationalizations and deceptions.

Get off the fence and plant an idea! I'm too optimistic. I believe that people can break through their static concepts into the world outside, and see their own power to do something other than parrot and deceive themselves. So what's the solution? More regulation? Smaller organizations? Stricter punishments? The only thing I can think of at this moment, is the power of the consumer, to choose moral action, organize, and steer this blind beast by making wise purchases, as well as wise boycotts. To demand a higher standard of quality and regulation with our purchasing power from producers.

I'm not even addressing the fact that if every dollar could somehow be sucked into China, leaving the US destitute, that this would be perfectly fine with a good majority of Chinese. I for one no longer project my own good-natured will onto the motives of others - because if there's one thing I've heard in my five years in this "international city", it's condescension toward the US and its people. Resentment, envy, and designs on its power.

Of course, the need for conceit belies its own insecurities. I can criticize the boxing technique of Muhammed Ali, I can deflect all criticisms of my fighting skills onto a criticism of his, and I can do so aggressively and with conviction and even the "evidence" - that while he stumbles, I can stand - but in the end, who have I impressed besides myself? Only the gullible. Only those placated with unexamined conceits and limited, slanted discourse. Throw in a dollop of racial superiority, blend to taste.

A gullible populace is an exploitable, manageable populace. But pride goeth before a fall.

TRM