Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : IFMX - Investment Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Oberon who wrote (11814)	9/2/1998 2:27:00 PM
From: Charles Hughes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14631

I think John needs to visit China. You can't walk down the street there and think it's not a capitalist country. And of course, there is no 'Hong Kong aside' now, it is truly part of China. In China, you want to sell something, you buy a folding table and some stock, and voila, you are a businessperson. You try to do that in the place I live, they arrest you for not waiting in que for a pedlar's license. At the low level, they are more capitalist than we are. At the high level, the high level members of the government, the elected officials, even ex Red Guards, have re-clothed themselves as entrepreneurs and magnates. Check any privatized factory and you find the daughter or son in law of some hot shot in the government owns it. The former political powers have turned themselves into the capitalist aristocracy overnight. You have your Rupert Murdochs, your Ross Perots. The idea that capitalism equates to democracy is a foolish canard promoted by businessmen of the last century when they were threatened. Nothing more. For most of the millenia that there have been businessmen and trade, there has been brutal feudalism over all. In this century, a typical capitalist country has been a military dictatorship, though that started changing in the late 1970's under Carter. I will grant that capitalism works much better in a non-corrupt, functional democracy with enforceable laws. Democracy provides much needed oversight. Living in San Francisco as I do, I can only wish I lived in a functional, non-corrupted democracy. Cheers, Chaz P.S. to whoever mentioned Wang: Despite the counter impression that American born Chinese often give you, an ABC in China is just someone else to charge double the local price for everything. Speaking Chinese helps, but if you can do that, you have all you need or can use.