Ethics isn't a black and white thing and people feel differently globally about whats ethical.
Take copyright. That's a western thing, but personally I think we can do without. I like China's ethics on copyright even though most westerners would disagree.
What ethics? China has nominally had standard, WTO-compatible copyright protections for decades. The problem is inconsistent and often corrupt enforcement.
The sine qua non of any legal system is consistent application of the law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law If you don't have the Rule of Law, you don't have much of anything.
Western companies would have you think that China systematically ignores copyright, patent, and trademark protections, sort of like that there's a quasi-legal norm of simply ignoring those protections. But that's a strategically misleading characterization designed for Western audiences.
The US did exactly the same thing to the UK back in the early 20th century. All developing economies do. Protecting "Intellectual Property Rights" are only relevant to a nation's economy when those rights have value in that economy.
Nations that are in the "developing" state are generally the destination of outsourced manufacturing from developed states. They are arbitraging their lower costs of labor, less developed regulatory environment ("light touch", "economic development zones") and lower standards for environmental and other protections.
China is starting to enforce IPR because it now has the developed capacity to create IP.
Perhaps you're referring to the 19th century? The U.S. didn't recognize foreign copyrights until 1891: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Copyright_Act_of... But when it did happen the enforcement apparatus (rule of law) executed the protections quickly and efficiently, AFAIU.
The difference with China is that China does recognize foreign copyrights. Why does the difference matter? Because consistent recognition in China can't happen with a simple passage of a law--that law exists. Any promises they make can't be upheld as their entire administrative apparatus is intertwined with communist party politics, and deficiencies in the political machine are what make enforcement so costly. Excepting espionage and trade secrets, I've never seen any evidence of an official or even unofficial policy of looking the other way for IPR violations; what I have seen is plenty of evidence that the processes for enforcement are byzantine, regardless of whether you're a domestic or foreign owned company, and too slow to catch violators such that it remains profitable. Have you been to developing countries? The black and grey markets are huge. You can't suppress these by fiat; you can only replace them, organically, with legal alternatives. (Same as digital piracy in the U.S.) The leadership can move mountains but they can't move a million mole hills nearly as easily.
The situation can and likely will improve without any major legal or political reforms. What you need, if you wish to accelerate this, is to incentivize the monied interests in China. How to do that? Maybe tie their foreign IP protections, particularly patents[1], on their domestic enforcement of copyright? That way corporations have an independent, self-serving interest in regularizing and normalizing copyright enforcement up and down the value chain, such as by building out their own value chain to replace the black and grey markets. Foreign trademarks are readily enforced in China, within the limits of what the bureaucracy can achieve, precisely because domestic companies have an interest in enforcement of their own trademarks domestically. And I'd bet big money that many of Disney's problems have already been solved by multiplexes owned by corporate conglomerates, which help to displace pirate DVD shops. Omnibus trade deals aren't going to get that done, and there's ample proof of this because there have been many.
You can't address a situation without understanding why it's happening. You can't ascribe simple motivations to such complex systems.[2] Whether you're Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Fidel Castro, or Hugo Chávez, you can't simply decree that some complex reform happen; things are more likely to go sideways or backwards. (OTOH, if you control the media--and even if you don't--you can simply declare that it happened, and more often than not enough people will believe you, or at least be satisfied.)
[1] Because language and cultural barriers means they're unlikely to have major export markets in copyrightable materials any time soon.
[2] I mean, you can. People do all the time, obviously. Simple narratives are an easy sell. But political reforms built on simple narratives don't have great track records.
I'm going to be honest. As an American it feels like my government is not in check. Not at all. They are failing to represent the wishes of constituents.
I too feel like the person you replied to. Why can't our goverment get with the times and create infrastructure to support the new global economy.
I've been asking myself this also. We have the ability to be more productive(vastly). The question is how much more productive can we be without reaching the asymptote that represents environmental death.
I think we have reached a critical junction where we must pause and consider our environmental and social impacts first and foremost. We evolved divine conscious to protect diversity of all kinds. Our failures and successes will lead to further propagation. Before we were the dominant species on this planet biodiversity was thriving. Our goals should be to seek further diversity in information, life, and living systems. Success is not guaranteed in our lifetime, but guaranteed in infinity. We should do our best though.
Some people think they are here already. Terrence Mckenna proposed that spores are one such possible Von Neumann vessel. Spores are very resilient and could possibly travel the universe. Time is irrelevant to a fungi. I haven't finished reading his thoughts, but I think he's onto something to be honest. You can read more about this in the "Archaic Revival" Really great text for changing your existential perspective. Very intelligent man.
Elon Musk is a great example of how consolidated wealth an individual has can have a large impact on outcomes.
It's not all bad news, but there are things going on with consolidated wealth that are very concerning right now.