I dislike Microsoft as well and I'm rarely using it. However, it is a big company which has managed to make most schools using their system. Being good at engineering isn't enough. Zuse invented the first computer, the Fraunhofer institute invented MP3, both technologies became big in the US.
With regard to companies you may be right, it may be a cultural bias of the media I use, which gives me a false impression.
If you any economic theory which would make it useful for a country to have huge current account surpluses forever, I could agree, that it is arbitrary to assume, that things change from alone, but I have never heard of that. It would make sense for an Chinese emperor to let is slaves work all day for foreigners. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
If you any economic theory which would make it useful for a country to have huge current account surpluses forever, I could agree, that it is arbitrary to assume, that things change from alone, but I have never heard of that.
Mercantilism.
For that matter, there is no real reason to assume that the Chinese government considers economy to be overridingly more important than other strategic interests. That kind of thinking is a Western(TM) peculiarity. It's entirely possible that the Chinese leadership is perfectly content with having lower than possible economic efficiency if that means that it will have a more solid grasp around the balls of several other major powers.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
And if e.g. China would use Mercantilism even after having an overall decent standard of living, we could still start protectionist measures to defend ourselves against them. But up to now this is not the case and western protectionism would really hurt a lot of poor people (and has done it in the last years on agricultural protectionism). Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
