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Regarding sign products from China, the issues we have always seen is quality control. Every company says they have "best quality" but in reality they have zero quality control. Every product you order has problems, and every one is different from the last making them incompatible. Chinese companies will change what you order without telling you and just expect you to be okay with it. Their warranties are worthless, as you can't ship any "used" products in to their country, so it's impossible to take advantage of their warranties. There's a tremendous time delay when dealing with China. You ask a question, they respond the next day (usually not even answering your question but instead asking you something that you've already answered in a previous email). If you have a liaison that speaks the dialect and can be a middle-man that is great if your middle-man knows the product and problems and can ask the right questions. Otherwise, every time you want to talk to them you have to set up a midnight meeting and pay your middle-man to translate for you. It's really hard to provide a quality product if you're ordering it from China, and it's near impossible to do it in a timely manner and keep your customer from being furious at you!

I can agree with most of that. So rings true they can do whatever they want, and so we do not operate on a level playing field when it comes to trade, let alone operations. People will always start and run a business to make money for themselves, to turn a profit....usually the reason being they prefer to not work under someone. The incentive is, if you have an idea, where would you rather be, here or China? We're too over regulated and you're right, some other countries do have more freedom and less restriction but the drawback is the individual liberty and right to prosper is NOT there. But shame on us for letting it get this way. Standards are also set by the individual, or the company not necessary the government or in forms of regulation. Most set their own standards to build better products, services and performance to separate themselves from their competition and probably the reason why we get innovation set from personal standards and not ones set from government . As it relates to China and LED's well, we've all seen the companies that come here, advertise a here now gone tomorrow so much for the 80,000 hr warranty on cheap grade chips. Warranties offered for 50,000 hours, 5 years from a actual diode manufacture who only offers 3....false advertising. Most started with a great idea, acted on it and started a business. The purpose of a business is not to create jobs but to turn a profit, however an awesome byproduct of a business are jobs. Companies will thrive and grow with great employees. On monopolies, the interesting part about the collaboration of various large companies usually occurs when the people let government get bigger, more regulation, and so starts the overreach. In reaction, large companies bind together and merge to become larger to protect themselves and their way of doing business. This generally does not happen with smaller government and low regulation, it's easier to operate and compete But funny point on companies buying others to shut them down or have those products permanently shelved, we've seen plenty of that in this industry alone.....I suppose I could mention names. But just think about what you enjoyed using that you do not have anymore, lol All in all, we still live in the best country this world has ever seen, AND a country that has only been around a little over 200 years, no other country values individual/personal rights, liberties & freedoms. Others can try and copy, but "freedom" is never enough WITHOUT responsibility and virtue. Without those qualities it becomes a soggy mushy mess......and why America is exceptional, and why others flock to the idea of "Freedom" My Sunday thoughts....

I agree with most of the China-vs-West ideas, but I think China in a business sense is more capitalistic than the US and other rich Western countries. A dear friend of mine runs a business in Hong Kong. As as business you can pretty much do what you want there. Copyrights, environmental regulations, truth in advertising, etc. are not strictly enforced. Money dictates the rules. The government is of course very anti-democratic - but I think business there is much more slanted toward pure capitalism than many other places. Capitalism does provide incentive to work harder and do better... but "do better" means what? In a pure sense it means to make more money for yourself. Period. You can be very financially successful and create mass-misery, poison people, and destroy the environment at the same time. There is no incentive in pure capitalism to create jobs. On the contrary, a job is a liability and cost to be eliminated. Think of countries with products most consider well made: South Korea, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, France. All are considerably more socialist than China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan, etc, which all crank out cheap products. Agree there are few is any standards coming out of China. But standards mean regulation. Even if voluntary, someone has to confirm and/or track compliance? I don't mean to sound unpatriotic, but I think this county's problem is we let big monopolies exist and don't foster enough competition. And it's getting much worse. We have a punishing copyright and patent system that rewards the status quo with ever increasing winfalls. What's a copyright now... something like 60 years after the author's death??? Drug patents renewed when you change a word in the prescribing instructions? We allow pharmaceutical companies to buy up competitors and shut them down. We have the crappiest, slowest, most expensive internet service of any rich country, and we are still approving mergers of the 4 companies that control 80% of the market? And lastly lets not forget banking.... which used to be here to provide working capital to businesses. Now they exist completely to enrich themselves and aren't even required to to operate in the best interest of their clients. Wtf? (off my soapbox now and back to work. I swear there was a point in here somewhere about LED's....)