Horatio Alger Multiplied by 1.3 Billion
“My mother and father went through the Cultural Revolution,” Mr. Feng said. “They had no chance.” He continued: “When I was in grammar school, the Cultural Revolution ended. When I graduated from university in 1992, that was the year of real reform. Deng Xiaoping encouraged students to go into business and become entrepreneurs. Before then, if you wanted to be an entrepreneur, you would sink like a stone. But after that, anyone could be an entrepreneur.”
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But look at what else happened: motivated by the prospect of wealth, people started companies. And as those companies succeeded, millions of new jobs were created.
I have written about the importance of capitalism to improve life for people around the globe. I have also discussed how many don’t understand what capitalism is (the general idea that capitalism is largely about those with the gold making the rules, which it is not).
Capitalism fundamentally is about allowing market to determine how to allocate resources (and government protecting that function along with others such as providing security, regulating externalities…). There are serious problems with in the USA in this regard - with enormous political favors granted those giving politicians enormous payments and oligopolies restricting the market from working properly. The government fails to properly regulate oligopolies, as dictated by capitalism - to prevent the markets to be dictated to by organizations pursuing their own interests, again due to large payments to politicians by those favored by preventing capitalism from working (either that or just a co-incidence that those making big payments just happen to give to politicians legislating [and overseeing regulators] against capitalism).
Just to state the obvious, Chinese government policy and practices also conflicts with capitalism frequently.
Related: Estate Tax Repeal - What is Wrong with Copyright Taking Public Good for Private Special Interests - Bill Gates: Capitalism on the 21st Century - The Future is Engineering - Making a Difference - Diplomacy and Science Research
I recently started reading A Bull in China: Investing Profitably in the World’s Greatest Market and am enjoying it.
From the Curious Cat Management blog, Decemeber, 2004:
Adventure Capitalist by Jim Rogers tracked his trip around the world by car. Previously he had documented his around the world motorcycle journey in Investment Biker. His views offer a worthwhile perspective that is often missed, in my opinion. That said I wouldn’t accept his views as the final truth they are valuable as one perspective to shed light on areas that are often overlooked.
China Wakes, by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn documents their time as Journalists in China (1988-1993) and again offers valuable insight into China. Obviously even gaining an incredibly oversimplified view of China would take a great deal more than one, or even ten books. Still the authors provide viewpoints that I found added, in a small way, to a picture of what China, was, is and may become. I plan to read their book: Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia.
Related: Rodgers on the US and Chinese Economies - Chinese economy and investment articles