Venture Communists

In the future we will all become like China, as their living standards rise ours will drop. Not as consequence of mercantilism but as human powered manufacturing drives out machanized manufacturing, see Manufactured Landscapes. In Boingboing there was excepts of a report of venture capitalist who just toured China. He was in China to scope out custom manufacturing, in his case hand assembly that is cheaper the machine assembly.I used to joke about Dot Communists during the dot com boom. It is no longer a joke when venture capitalists ally with communists with the same goal of cheap manufacting, cheap life. When a post called Venture Communist is writen the joke becomes a sick one.

Once I came a magazine piece that consisted of predictions by famous writers. Paul Theroux's vision was the bleakest in seeing the future in the worst of China. Here is, if the exact quote, Paul Theroux's dire futurism, (thanks Ambivalence.)

from Down The Yangtze in Fresh Air Fiend]

In a hundred years or so, under a cold uncolonized moon, what we call the civilized world will all look like China, muddy and senile and oldfangled: no trees, no birds, and shortages of fuel and metal and meat, but plenty of pushcarts, cobblestones, ditch diggers, and wooden inventions. Nine hundred million farmers splashing through puddles and the rest of the population growing weak and blind working the crashing looms in black factories.

Forget rocket ships, supertechnology, moving sidewalks, and all the rubbishy hope in science fiction. No one will ever go to Mars and live. A religion has evolved from the belief that we have a future in outer space, but it is a half-baked religion, a little like Moromonism or the cargo cult. Our future is the mildly poisoned earth and its smoky air. We are in for hunger and hard work, the highest stage of poverty -- no starvation, but crudeness everywhere, political art, simple language, bad books, brutal laws, plain vegetables, and clothes of one color. It will be damp and dull, monochrome and crowded -- how could it be different? There will be no star wars or galactic empires and no more money to waste on the loony nationalism in space programs. Our grandchildren will probably live in a version of China. On the brown banks of the Yangtse the future has already arrived.