> And if China didn't take any IP they would continue to be massively under-developed and just a source of cheap labor, be cause there's no way in hell US companies would have willingly fostered higher skills, higher pay there.

We sell the training for those skills to anyone willing to pay as part of a huge education industry. You can just buy the textbooks on amazon or get many of them along with any other materials for free.

Smaller countries in the west who couldn't possibly stand up the the big "bully" economies, and less developed regions like the US south, all have developed right up the cutting-edge with everyone else. They became developed by simply playing the game according to the rules. The real problem with developing countries is the ability tofollow those rules. The culture isn't fully-formed yet and some people are unclear on the line between stealing/scamming versus legitimate business. That doesn't mean stealing and scamming are a necessary part of development. It's the corruption that holds it back. Economic growth is based on people taking risks and making deals, which needs security and trust between them.

> We sell the training for those skills to anyone willing to pay as part of a huge education industry. You can just buy the textbooks on amazon or get many of them along with any other materials for free.

Education is necessary but not sufficiency, because the manufacturing secrets are sometimes intentionally secret, and sometimes simply the result of a process that isn't reproducible.

If you want a programming analogy, imagine if China had all the source code but no binaries. But worse, because there aren't codified programming languages to describe arbitrary industrial processes.

> Smaller countries in the west who couldn't possibly stand up the the big "bully" economies, and less developed regions like the US south, all have developed right up the cutting-edge with everyone else.

Do you know of any country (excluding tiny ones like Singapore) that became advanced without some sort of IP theft?

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To be clear I am not arguing that the US + China relationship has been good or moral or whatever other positive quality. The US should have instead had better foreign aid policies to help countries develop---none of that IMF liberalization bullshit, but actual useful stuff like:

1. You can tariff us and we won't retaliate

2. We invest in your physical infrastructure

3. We give you IP and shit so your industry can ween itself

However, this very sweet deal comes with commensurately strict conditions:

1. Democracy

2. Unionizaiton

3. Gini coefficient maximum

4. Wage floor

5. Worker governance requirements.

It's really depressing that US foreign policy has been a objectiveless fucking joke entirely captured by the nefarious interests of corporations and bored rich people.

Secrets now? How did anyone ever develop in the first place if secrets were a dead end? Anyway, even if you saddle them with a presumption of stupidity, they can still do the stuff that isn't secret. You can make money on commodities and low quality products in a developing country with low costs. Whereas people in developed countries need to chase after the bleeding edge because they can't survive without the higher margins there.

Why are you discounting very small countries exactly?

No one would take your deal because the government is the problem holding countries back in the first place. China is an ancient civilization, not some new child that was just born and needs to grow up yet. This analogy is overly reductionist. Things that work in silicon valley right now also work everywhere else in the world. It is not magic ground. And I'm no fan of IP, but the system using it is clearly able to work here.

> You can make money on commodities and low quality products in a developing country with low costs.

The factory owner can make a lot of money, but without advancing technology there is no way to raise the standard of living. The PRC's hold on power is absolutely predicated on raising the standard of living.

> Why are you discounting very small countries exactly?

At least in Singapore's case, being a strategically located trade intermediary stopped a lot. But that only works when huge fraction of ones country is so strategically located; this is impossible with a country of decent size.

> No one would take your deal because the government is the problem holding countries back in the first place.

Saying it's (always?) (usually?) the governments fault is capitalist propaganda. Tell that to Prussia, Meiji Japan, or numerous other countries with top down approach that worked. Raising the standard of living imposes demands on all sectors of society. Indeed, it would seem the most useful thing is a cultural memory of development. This possibly explains why Japan and West Germany post war could use that US money so effectively, whereas say, Italy's postwar miracle sputtered out sooner.

My deal is a good one because it's saying "get yourself going as an exporter, but we will provide you with what you need to keep advance your economy and standard of living to the point that poorer countries undercut your exports but domestic demand makes up for it". Making that last step is crucial, as we need educated societies with leisure time to secure budding democracy.

(The US is failing because both we are uneducated and overworked. There is no enough energy left over for the average person to help maintain their corner of the commons.)

> China is an ancient civilization, not some new child that was just born and needs to grow up yet.

I didn't say otherwise? Yes, my plan is patronizing, but international relations from the Hegemon usually are! (I don't know how to solve that problem.)

I don't think it's relevant to my argument, but FWIW Chinese culture is much more divorced from the past than say India's. Presumably this is due to decades of propaganda, and major disruption both due to politics (Cultural Revolution) and the huge economic changes (tons people living far away from and in very different ways than their ancestors).

> Things that work in silicon valley right now also work everywhere else in the world. It is not magic ground.

Well, I'm suspicious how much SV is "working", and not just something that is a) first mover benefit b) flushed with quantitative easing money when EU didn't do that c) The actual big companies survive off rent seaking.

But let's just ignore all that and say SV is a smashing success.

SV succeeds because it is in America, and hierarchy of needs / standard of development -wise benefits and relies on an already technologically advanced society. Asking why SV occurred in America is like asking why factories came to prominence in Britain during the empire: it was historically inevitable.

If you are nation of subsistence farmers, developing some apps is not going to solve your problems.

A parting example: When people gush about Africa skipping land lines and going straight to cellphones, they should realize this isn't all good. Being able to bury wires and pipes is key signal of internal stability, cooperation, and a technology development that will raise the standard of living, and ability to consume, for all.

> And I'm no fan of IP, but the system using it is clearly able to work here.

IP only work alright when all parties have some. That's fine amongst already-developed countries. You can be sure if some Bangladeshi company steal's Huawei stuff China will throw a fit too.

> Saying it's (always?) (usually?) the governments fault is capitalist propaganda.

I gather from your post that you may not have much experience with startups or small business on your own, despite where we are. Because all the things you say are hard or impossible or just not done, are things you see daily. People with no IP working around that of others, which is the same problem for you as a foreign company. People in developing countries starting businesses to trade with the west (i.e. you). People in developing countries looking to what the west needs, gaining the skills via western training (often free), then making lots of money providing it to the west. And yes the killer is governments. The "wealth of nations" is a simple model: skilled laborers use technology to produce more than they need, which they can trade to people with complementary skills. That's the whole system. Borders and cultures and IP are just details to work around. Ultimately there is one big market. The only countries that needs to relive the 19th and 20th centuries in this silly development-process narrative everyone pushes, is places who's govt restricts them to a little local economy foolishly.

Actually, I work for a small tech company, and have to work around other people's undocumented interfaces all the time just like everyone else in this industry.

Your vision sorta works for software-based startups which are not capital intensive and dominated by labor costs. And I've seen first hand how telecommuting overcomes bad immigration law, allowing people in the west to cut the deals that cannot be done remotely on effectively behalf of foreign workers. Bad immigration law is indeed a government-induced problem, and this is one of the best workarounds we have.

Even then, the idea that no good local education is needed and that some body can just get a laptop, read some docs, and start making money is too optimistic.

But the larger problem is I don't think there is enough demand for YC-type stuff to significantly change the standard of living of a state. Consider how much money is dumped into SV startup before it makes money on average, and how few people SV employs due to the productivity of tech. This is not a good recipe for an entire nation.

The classic export goods are material goods; the far simpler unit economics ensure a steady stream of money back home, and the produced goods can (at least in principle) also be consumed domestically to make increasing in the standard of living not import-dependent. No country has gotten rich in the modern era without some of this, and I don't see this trend changing.

> Even then, the idea that no good local education is needed and that some body can just get a laptop, read some docs, and start making money is too optimistic.

This is viewing what I said in an impossibly narrow light. We don't need every man woman and child (of sufficient age to work) to be brimming with such initiative and self-agency. Just a subset of entrepreneurial ones who start businesses which bring these factors together and hire others. This happens on both sides of the ocean. If you can't hire the skills you need you train people. It's far cheaper to do in a country where your competition is the pay they get at home on the farm. This is exactly the situation in India. By the way did you see the thread about what a hassle it is to start a business in India?

Only a fraction of Americans work for large businesses. Generally more work for small businesses, so focusing only on giant scaled-up business models isn't even an accurate picture here.

> Do you know of any country (excluding tiny ones like Singapore) that became advanced without some sort of IP theft?

By the way this question is unfair. Can you name a successful US technology company who has not been accused of IP theft by a competitor?