Diegetics

I would not take any of ALI's non-sourced confabulations as factual, if I were you. I'd particularly love to see the evidence that the world does not have enough food growing capacity "to feed the Chinese even one hamburger per month", especially since 6 years ago, China was consuming 6 kg of beef per capita per year. Either their burgers had a half a kilogram slice of meat each, or ALI is again making stuff up.

The Chinese usually go for pork, however. In total they eat 60 kg of meat per year.

Read through to find data for china:
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/nati ... n-eats.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

People who question my statistics should read the articles I link to,

From the original link:
Every Taiwanese consumes an average of 77.1 kilos meat per year, putting it ahead of nations like China, Japan and South Korea in Asia, according to a foundation for sustainable energy.
Taiwan is a country that consumes much meat, compared to China that has an annual consumption of 60.8 kilograms per person.

Also:
http://www.fas.usda.gov/dlp/circular/20 ... bpppcc.pdf

the asians dont eat meat meme was spread hard and fast by the vegan food nazis who want us all to eat a bowl of rice with a few beans sprinkled ontop like a "good little asian villager"... oooh how cute they are in their little hats.

its always been horseshit, the asians eat as much meat as they can get at like the rest of us, and they are not living in starving communist wonderlands anymore.

"Hello, my name is How Li. I am very interest in the 6 free kittens you advertise on Craigslist! I will give them good home, and bring my own bag when I pick them up."

"No!!"

Alexis,

I know the following reply will to some extent make me sound like a weak-kneed technologist, or even a hard-core technodeterminist. Nonetheless, some things to consider:

1) The current wave of industrialization is based on taking advantage of the massive entry of labor-rich, capital-poor regions into the world economy. This is based solely on the fact that decades of high productivity in mass-production plants have led to rampant wage inflation throughout the service sectors in the West, making low-end manufacturing economically unfeasible in the West.

2) I posit the claim that in 10-20 years:
a) demand for many industrial goods in the West from the Industrializing nations will evaporate.
b) both the West and the Developing nations will be richer for it.
c) the potential exists for severe fragmentation of many multinational states, above all India, Russia, Indonesia, China and Iran.

What is the foreseeable, yet revolutionary shift that will make all this possible? Why, glad you asked.
3) The rise of Homeart. 3D printing technology already exists, and amazing things can be printed in a matter of hours of being designed for an outlay between $5 (low end) to $100k (high end). DIY kits with a low voxel per inch resolution also . The current tech is in many ways limted, as only plastics can be printed, and only a few printers can combine more than one kind of plastic. However, conductive plastic circuits are being designed and miniaturized, more and more materials are added to the repertoire of printable materials, and the VPI (voxels per inch) resolution is being pushed up at a remarkable rate. Now you can prints spoons and simple toys, in a few years complex electronic devices will be printable for a reasonably low initial outlay.

My prediction is that as soon as versatile (electronic circuit-capable) priting machines will become available for under $3000, and to some degree also depending on the cost of "material cartridges," the mass-production market for small durable goods will vanish. Why buy a spoon when you can print one? Unless, of course, you want luxury items like hand-crafted silverware, where local artisans can be competitive and have branding and word-of-mouth advantages over competitors abroad. A few years after that, the question will shift to why buy an iphone when you can print one. Mass manufacturing will increasingly become restricted to high-volume products, like cars, fridges and homes, as well as super-high-end devices, like the cores of computers and high-density battery packs. These are capital-intensive, human-capital-intensive goods, where the rich world has an advantage.

b) follows from the observation that if 3D printing is more economical for Westerners, it will eventually become more economical than mass production for non-Westerners as well.
c) is more speculative, and a potential consequence of the new distributed nature of manufacturing, making it easier to sustain and arm insurgent movements.

My expectation is that Homeart, combined with cheaper solar and better battery technology, will lead to a dramatic readjustment in global trade, affecting the oil, commodities and cheap manufacturing markets in particular. This will likely impact trade deficits in a measurable way.