Will China Start Laying Off Workers?

Invisible Handwriting has an interesting news item about China having to deal with factory over capacity. In most free market economies, this problem is dealt with by layoffs.  But, oxymoronicly, China's is a Communist free market economy, a concept on which I remain a bit unclear. My opinion is that China's behavior is very much shaped by the fear of social unrest. Laid off workers in the US tend to react by voting incumbents out of office. Over there, the people don't get to vote, so they may respond to others forms of unrest.

Chris Gondek over at

Meanwhile, I just met Chris this past week in a phone interview for his superb podcast. It's mostly me hawking Naked Conversations, but Chris got me nicely off topic and up on a soapbox over the issue of China and freedom--or the lack of it. It's supposed to go live here tomorrow.