It’s sure nice to be back in the USA after a month traveling in SE Asia. The trip was great, filled with great new friends from very different cultures (though at the core, I’d say, folks are all pretty similar), wonderful sights and sounds, and a LOT of great food (many MANY pictures of food to come over at the Online Highways and US History companion Travel Blog: TravelandHistory.com.
However on balance I can’t think of any place I’d rather live than right here in loverly Southern Oregon USA. We’ve got the natural beauty, nice folks, cheap and plentiful food (e.g. the big juicy ribeye steak I’m having for lunch today), clean bathrooms (more on my somewhat narrowly avoided international incident with Ho Chi Minh’s embalmed body … later…. and clean water that comes magically right out of the tap. I still marvel at how many highly travelled folks don’t seem to make the obvious and logical connections between the US economic system and the amazing prosperity we enjoy here. It’s almost as if the guilt of living so well blinds them to the fact that we do live very well. And NOT at the expense of the other countries mind you – in fact their challenges are usually because they have failed to implement the unique blend of democracy, massive public infrastructure, and entrepreneurial capitalism that have made the American experiment the most successful prosperity booster in the history of humanity.
But I digress….. Vietnam is a fantastic place with wonderful folks and some amazing natural beauty. Over the next few months I’ll recap the trip day by day at Travel and History along with supplemental history and travel information that’ll flow into the Online Highways Travel Website where we’ll be adding sections on Vietnam and Thailand.
Joe Duck 
in fact their challenges are usually because they have failed to implement the unique blend of democracy, massive public infrastructure, and entrepreneurial capitalism that have made the American experiment the most successful prosperity booster in the history of humanity.
Look closer at Vietnam (china, korea, taiwan, latin America, etc) and you could find many industries specializing in peripherals, hardware, various technological add ons which Microsoft and Apple and a few others depend upon. Or other gear–bicycles,etc.
So Vietnam, et all are part of global capitalism, just the bottom feeders, more or less—they just get a few shekels a day for the labor/assembly work–often in near sweatshop conditions– while Apple/MS which saves a bundle on labor (ie, not having to pay US wages) makes a few million shekels per week.
Wb Duck.
I’m not at all certain that the various MamaSan boards and assembled goods are actually being assembled cheaper than robots could do it.
Sweatshops? We consider them sweatshops, those countries consider it normal business practices.