To be fair, a lot of countries used methods to get rich (or try to) that are absolutely despicable and far, far worse than IP theft: slavery, colonization, straight up plundering, genocide, war. Basically every country of moderate size and of decent wealth today has at least part of that wealth attributable to something that could be called truly and utterly despicable.

I think that until maybe 70 years ago, countries did whatever they could to get ahead. If it was possible to accomplish, and it provided an advantage for the country, the country would do it. Nowadays, countries mostly do what they can get away with. The amount of things they can get away with has shrunk over the years, but there's still a hell of a lot of unexpected leeway, particularly if you have something someone else wants. For example, you can infer that Europe having cheap natural gas is more important than doing something about the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

Ultimately, that's it: in 2018, countries can enforce IP law a bit better than 300 years ago, and as a result they are going to. I don't think there's any American campaign to be more lenient on China for IP theft and I don't see such a campaign gaining traction. It certainly is interesting to watch the whole thing play out though.

If he was smuggling, it was a crime then, it's a crime now.

If you're referring to Slater, it was not a crime in the U.S., and explicitly legal for quite some time afterwards. See the links I posted in another comment here.

There are many things previous generations did in the name of economic progress that we would find wrong today (slavery, child labor, etc). Times change and I should not be required to defend the morality of my ancestors. That is not hypocritical.

>The logic is "if you've used it to become the richest nation on earth don't knock out others using it to become rich".

Cool, so you have no issues with China, India, Africa accelerating their use of fossil fuels.

No, I don't. Especially since those pointing the finger still have the most carbon- and materials-expensive lifestyle, and have refused to sign environmental agreements for decades...

At this point, personally, I have issues with anybody using fossil fuels. We do have alternatives now. We can talk social justice and whatnot but it'll ring hollow when civilization is collapsing around our ears, especially since Africa and India will likely suffer before the U.S.

What’s the alternative for them, to not have a middle class lifestyle? Especially since the US is the historic greatest emitter of CO2, and per capita still one of the top? Or are we living beyond our means and unwilling to step down..

Not really unless US and West want to give subsidies to these countries.

The real issue is that developed countries don't help other developing countries develop. The US got rich in the same ways that China is now getting rich, by stealing.

I think this is my favorite article on the subject.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/08/china-is-cheating-at-a-...