

Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans - maxklein
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,670826,00.html?

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arch_hunter
Anything made in North Korea, as long as it is not overly expensive, would be
worth buying just for the sake of owning something made in North Korea. (At
least in my humble opinion.)

If North Korea wanted to they could probably make a whole lot of money, and
improve the living standards of their citizens, by hiring a few good foriegn
designers and created a whole line of specialty products "100% made in North
Korea." Just imagine the premium they could charge!

The only difficulty that I can think of is how they would rehabilitate their
image.

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nazgulnarsil
i don't understand. why would people want to own an artifact of human misery?

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ilkhd2
1) People in USA/Canada/Other western world are _addicted_ to products made in
misery (in China, for example). Less miserable of course, but still far from
good conditions. 2) If there are reasons to think that it can improve their
condition, than it os a good idea.

~~~
w00pla
> 1) People in USA/Canada/Other western world are _addicted_ to products made
> in misery (in China, for example)

The act of buying something made in a third world country greatly reduces the
misery (by providing a job and an income to a person).

Btw, people in China have a pretty good lifestyle when compared to other
people in third world countries - all thanks to Americans buying their stuff.

~~~
ilkhd2
Oh yeah? tell it to ones who immigrate from China to Kazakhstan for example:
Kazakhstan has very limited trade with USA, but quality of live is much, much
higher than Chinese.

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whughes
Of course. Kazakhstan is not a third-world country. It's a former Soviet
republic, an oiled country, and basically a Russian satellite.

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koevet
Actually, I wonder if more entrepreneurs like those Swedish geeks started to
invest in North Korea would initiate a "Chinafication" process of the country.

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mahmud
"Entrepreneurs" are doing brisk business with North Korea, to the tune of
billions every year, doing arms deals, chemicals, construction, money
laundering, commodities, and what have you. Second to the Chinese, Singapore
government officials are deeply tied to the NK regime, for example.

~~~
koevet
Naturally I was implying some sort of legit investment, such as goods that can
be mass produced and sold to the world. It may sound cynical, but a
fascination indeed exists with products coming from troubled places.
Furthermore, there is a whole commercial philosophy behind supporting
developing countries: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_trade>

~~~
lsb
Fair Trade keeps the Triangle Trade alive and well.

If you want to change things and help developing nations, _make sure those
developing nations have added most of the value._

For example, you can buy fair trade chocolate bars, with beans bought from
Ecuador at a "fair" price, whatever that means. But then the bars are made in
Switzerland, or France, and the European country adds much of the value, and
keeps much of the profit.

Kallari Rainforest Chocolate, for example, is a cooperative making chocolate,
and they pick the beans in the lowlands and drive up to the mountains and turn
them into bars, and then airmail it out.

If you want to make a difference, figure out where your money actually goes.

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w00pla
Fair trade is a first World scam. What fair trade does is mandate the price of
certain commodities.

This in effect negates the biggest advantage of developing countries (cheap
labour) and allows the products to be manufactured in developed countries at a
"fair" price.

Fair trade, along with agricultural subsidization is some of the most evil
things that developed countries do.

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ilkhd2
Do not like it - do not buy, goddamnit. If you think that people who buy Fair
Trade are stupid - no we are not, and we are doing for a reason - we do not
feel good when consume something made by slaves. You can still shop for "free
trade" stuff, nobody prevents you from doing that.

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whughes
He didn't say you were just stupid, or that you were wasting your money. He
said fair trade was _evil_. That means it's not so easy as saying "if you
don't like it, don't buy it." Ignoring evil is not good, even if other people
are doing the evil. "If you don't like murder, don't murder people" won't stop
other people from committing murders. You're free to have your own opinion on
whether fair trade actually is evil, but please address his point rather than
ignoring it.

~~~
eru
With a bit of goodwill, you can read the ilkhd's comment as: If all
participants are in there voluntarily, it can't be evil; and you are free to
ignore it.

I do not like the `fairtrade' stuff for the same reasons as w00pla, but since
nobody's forced to participate (as opposed to agricultural subsidies and
tariffs), I do not mind other people engaging in this.

Fair trade is free trade where people in the developed world choose to pay the
produces to pay them for certain strange things. E.g. as a fairtrade producer
you can not employ day labourers. (At least that's what I heard. But I do not
remember the source.) And genetically modified plants are banned, too.
([http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/includes/documents/cm_docs/2008/...](http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/includes/documents/cm_docs/2008/f/fairtrade_gm_q_a_jan_08.pdf))

I can image myself paying more for stuff that gets produced in nice working
conditions and does not damage the environment. But I'd actually prefer to see
more GM and I do not mind day labourers. Perhaps one could create an
alternative to `fairtrade' where you can combine your own building blocks of
stuff you want to pay extra for?

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snan
Right, even hough that’s a bit of a simplification.

It’s not necessarily “paying more”, looking at the clarified conditions as
services (even though of course there’s overhead, and possibility of
corruption, in the labeling and certification process).

Imaging some item, let’s say jeans. You can get just jeans from company A,
with an unknown profit margin or middlemen, or you can get jeans from company
B together with information and conditions on production.

If these conditions were a service you were charged explicitly for, of course
the company B jeans would be more expensive than the ones from company A.
That’s not necessarily the case, however, since there might be unknown
expenses for the consumer involved with company A (like, say, higher profit
margins).

Or, for that matter, the jeans from company A could be every bit as “fairly”
produced, just you don’t know about it. Nothing says that the labeled (“B” in
the example) ones would be more expensive, disregarding the
labelling/certification overhead.

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chrischen
On one hand if you deal with a corrupt government, you legitimize them. On the
other hand, if you don't legitimize them, they can blame their
ineffectivenesses on forced isolation.

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EugeneG
By the way, this is the page they are talking about: <http://www.korea-
dpr.com/exports.htm>

I remember looking at this and laughing a few years ago. Ah, if only!

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antidaily
<http://nokojeans.com/>

