On Tuesday 14 September 2010 21:33:11 A. Mani wrote: > On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 5:29 PM, Vickram Crishna <[email protected]> wrote: > > Today, the world's leading economic power happens to be a country > > that professes to be communist, while in fact practising and > > leveraging most of the rules and processes that characterise > > classic capitalism, including some of its classic abuses > > (currency manipulation, for instance). Just yesterday, one of its > > leaders informed our government that they envy our leadership in > > the area of IT, or software (of course, perhaps his exact words > > were mistranslated, or am I being too cynical?) > > If you are referring to China, then they do not practice 'classic > capitalism'. They have a strong public sector and have been partly > conquered by MNCs. They are much ahead in FOSS and are more > self-reliant in IT.
I have been to China several times in the 80's around the time they went ballistic on capitalism. They were more "capitalistic" than countries claiming to be so. With one caveat. You had to be a party official above a certain rank to start a business - any business. Or you had to be a foreigner with foreign exchange. This is not capitalism. It is cronyism, wherein qualifying critirea did not have any logic whatsoever. It was gifting away of the commons. No better than obtaining Jagirs from the king for being a loyal henchman, in implementing arbitrary diktats. I If you were a party-man you wrote a one page letter asking for a government plot which came pre installed with electricity, water, phone and a RCC road connecting to the nearest (afaik national) highway. The allotment took a maximum of 4 weeks, though usually around a week. You may also state the number and nature of employees you want in your letter, and usually the next day 10 times that number would turn up on your allocated plot. If you were a foreigner the caveat was "you could check in anytime you like but you may never leave" - with your money that is. 100s of HK and Taiwanese companies flooded the country, followed by S'pore and Japan. And the world saw an economic miracle. BTW the revolutionary Fidel Castro has recovered from his alternate reality, according to the press atleast. -- Rgds JTD _______________________________________________ network mailing list [email protected] http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in
