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0 pointsintended19d ago0 comments

> I don't want an even playing field. I want my country to have the advantage.

Why the whole country?

Are all your countrymen equally deserving? Do all of them work as hard, care the same, and give back to their nation the same?

I too, want my nation to “win”, but I want that advantage to be something that we built and something that endures.

They need to win by just being that good, and creating an environment that allows for that to happen.

Since everyone cannot be the best and brightest, I would want a safety net that allows for a society that isn’t constantly in fight or flight.

> offshoring .. best factories from country B.

What typically happens is that factory B will offload work to factories that wont be inspected.

> use innovation to come up with a more efficient factory.

This is what is happening today. We’ve been losing more factory jobs to robotics than outsourcing for a while.

——

When manufacturing jobs are lost, the issue of underemployment and the loss of expertise is what hampers economies. Burger flipping pays far less than Foreman or specialist, and losing manufacturing hubs means no cross pollination and skill development in your populace.

This is all to say I am well aware of the issues, and sympathetic to your greater cause.

However, there is no victory for me in your ‘defeat’. The average citizen in any country has more to gain from the deepening of the middle class globally.

Healthy economies, with actual competition, create a deeper more informed citizenry. This means more people living up to their potential, more ideas, more culture, more resources to solve challenges, and a chance to live up the ideals we seem to be failing.

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modo_mario19d ago

Not him but my 2 cents:

>The average citizen in any country has more to gain from the deepening of the middle class globally.

The deepening of the middleclass here to me has seemingly meant that more people do jobs that are seen as middle class. At the same time the "middle class" purchasing power when it comes to important thing isn't that far off from that of the lower class of the past. yes they can buy big flat screen tv's for cheap now but more important things have started to become an issue despite rapid technological advancement.

>Healthy economies, with actual competition, create a deeper more informed citizenry. This means more people living up to their potential,

You now compete with a foreign multinational which employs people at a fraction of your local wages. So you no longer compete and there's less real actual competition.

intendedOP19d ago

> At the same time the "middle class" purchasing power when it comes to important thing isn't that far off from that of the lower class of the past. yes they can buy big flat screen tv's for cheap now but more important things have started to become an issue despite rapid technological advancement.

You are drawing a causal line between correlated events.

The middle class globally has been weakened since the 80s.

One of the current issues we are contending with is the fact that wealth has concentrated into fewer and fewer hands.

America recently had a year where the top 10% of earners drove nearly 50% of consumer spending.

We could spend the entirety of the conversation discussing wealth concentration, and it would still be a worthwhile digression.

You can’t have a consumer driven market if the consumers don’t have anything to purchase with.

However, when you dismiss flat screen TVs offhandedly also does your own argument a disservice. By deciding what is important and what is not, you are taking on the role of arbiter of subjective merit.

This is fine, but then you have to also make arguments for how the economic incentives must be aligned to achieve your subjective goals.

——

From what I have said, you should know that I am sympathetic to the motivations behind your argument. I am not sympathetic to bad arguments.

Protectionism is fatal to economies, and simply tanks your drive. The ability of MNCs to just offshore work should be benign, but appears malignant. If work is offshored, it should also result in more productivity or higher productivity in the nation it is offshored from.

You should see higher tax revenues as a result, which should be plowed back into your local economy.

Weirdly, our economies seem to all be becoming more productive, but not much richer.

This is one of the reasons I sincerely recommend exporting labour standards more aggressively. At least you are not at a disadvantage because you have actual labour protections, and it reduces the value of labour arbitrage.

The other issue is retraining doesn’t work at the speed and scales changes happen. Our brains are not flexible enough to retrain miners into programmers and have them find jobs which are equally well paying.

If we had a number for how much retraining we can actually achieve, or how much time it would take, we could figure out how much we can outsource before it becomes impossible to retrain our citizens.

modo_mario19d ago

>One of the current issues we are contending with is the fact that wealth has concentrated into fewer and fewer hands.

And I'm suggesting wage bargaining power has affected that. Not on it's own. But it has had notable effect.

>By deciding what is important and what is not, you are taking on the role of arbiter of subjective merit.

I am as are you but I think I am far from alone. After all the big societal issues that spark these discussions aren't sparked by a few cents of lipstick and somewhat cheaper screens.

>Protectionism is fatal to economies, and simply tanks your drive.

Various protectionist self-serving policies are part of what made japan a threathening rapidly growing economic power untill the US and Europe strongarmed it with....protectionist policy. It's also what made China the power it is today. Etc

And I don't think anyone can argue it stopped japan, china, etc from innovating.

Show me the ultraliberal free for all that did well and isn't super financialized.

"drive" on the other hand is an ephemeral thing that starts falling apart when it is more clearly defined. I can just as easily argue that my drive is hampered because there's no reason for me to attempt to enter plenty of conceivable fields (and even begin to innovate) where i would compete with a multinational utilizing sweatshop workers in Mali. I can also point at the various industries that got internationally more and more consolidated into fewer and fewer players leading to less innovation and "drive".

>This is one of the reasons I sincerely recommend exporting labour standards more aggressively. At least you are not at a disadvantage because you have actual labour protections, and it reduces the value of labour arbitrage.

I don't get to dictate the labour policies of kuala lumpur, etc and any attempt to would be radically more involved costly and far beyond my small countries scope than simply affecting what companies do locally. It is defending a situation with hypotheticals that rarely happen and when they happen they have often happened badly or shift the problem further.

>The other issue is retraining doesn’t work at the speed and scales changes happen. Our brains are not flexible enough to retrain miners into programmers and have them find jobs which are equally well paying.

I think this idea that everyone in the world can be part of the professional-managerial class (PMC) and this striving towards it is also self defeating. You argue about this from a global perspective but also as if it would be good locally in a more developed place if only those with "less desired jobs" could properly retrain and such as if these same reasonings wouldn't apply there. Those jobs that are leaving are desired to me even if I don't do them all. Those wage setting mechanics for jobs in mining, at a call center, assembling components on an assembly line also indirectly affect those wage setting pressures/purchasing power of the software dev, marketing person, etc

intendedOP19d ago

> Various protectionist self-serving policies are part of what made japan a threathening rapidly growing economic power untill the US and Europe strongarmed it with....protectionist policy. It's also what made China the power it is today. Etc

See when its an oversimplification of the case history, we will have divergent conclusions.

India's License Raj resulted in decades of slow growth, till the markets were opened in 1990 and incumbents were forced to shape up. Argentina is another case.

Protectionism here is far too broad a term. There are many things which were needed, such as investment in training, labour, export controls, infrastructure investment, industrial policy and more.

The Japanese market was also open to firms, and they most definitely entered and integrated into that market, so its not a one way street.

China is more egregious in that sense, since it has corporate espionage, state protection, and a market which is not really open to foreign compeition (unless you are a luxury brand).

> Show me the ultra-liberal free-for-all that did well

I am not going to ever make that case, since I don't believe that ever existed or succeeded if it did.

> I can just as easily argue that my dr

Sure, feel free to argue. However there are others who just want to make stuff, and don't spend the time arguing.

> I don't get to dictate the labour policies of kuala lumpur,

Says who? Have you ever seen an outsourcing contract? They include terms on how people should be fired, number of working days, and more. Rules vary according to jurisdiction, however the contract can include whatever terms you like.

> I think this idea that everyone in the world can be part of the professional-managerial class

Where did you get this? I am talking about retraining. You could retrain into naval captains for all I care.

> less desired jobs" could properly retrain

Not what I am saying. I am saying the argument for outsourcing used to be supported by the idea that those who lost employment could be retrained into other domains.

However, there are limits to what retraining can actually achieve, which removes the support this argument provided.

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modo_mario19d ago

Not him but my 2 cents:

>The average citizen in any country has more to gain from the deepening of the middle class globally.

>Healthy economies, with actual competition, create a deeper more informed citizenry. This means more people living up to their potential,

You now compete with a foreign multinational which employs people at a fraction of your local wages. So you no longer compete and there's less real actual competition.

intendedOP19d ago

You are drawing a causal line between correlated events.

The middle class globally has been weakened since the 80s.

One of the current issues we are contending with is the fact that wealth has concentrated into fewer and fewer hands.

America recently had a year where the top 10% of earners drove nearly 50% of consumer spending.

We could spend the entirety of the conversation discussing wealth concentration, and it would still be a worthwhile digression.

You can’t have a consumer driven market if the consumers don’t have anything to purchase with.

This is fine, but then you have to also make arguments for how the economic incentives must be aligned to achieve your subjective goals.

——

From what I have said, you should know that I am sympathetic to the motivations behind your argument. I am not sympathetic to bad arguments.

You should see higher tax revenues as a result, which should be plowed back into your local economy.

Weirdly, our economies seem to all be becoming more productive, but not much richer.

If we had a number for how much retraining we can actually achieve, or how much time it would take, we could figure out how much we can outsource before it becomes impossible to retrain our citizens.

modo_mario19d ago

>One of the current issues we are contending with is the fact that wealth has concentrated into fewer and fewer hands.

And I'm suggesting wage bargaining power has affected that. Not on it's own. But it has had notable effect.

>By deciding what is important and what is not, you are taking on the role of arbiter of subjective merit.

I am as are you but I think I am far from alone. After all the big societal issues that spark these discussions aren't sparked by a few cents of lipstick and somewhat cheaper screens.

>Protectionism is fatal to economies, and simply tanks your drive.

And I don't think anyone can argue it stopped japan, china, etc from innovating.

Show me the ultraliberal free for all that did well and isn't super financialized.

intendedOP19d ago

See when its an oversimplification of the case history, we will have divergent conclusions.

India's License Raj resulted in decades of slow growth, till the markets were opened in 1990 and incumbents were forced to shape up. Argentina is another case.

Protectionism here is far too broad a term. There are many things which were needed, such as investment in training, labour, export controls, infrastructure investment, industrial policy and more.

The Japanese market was also open to firms, and they most definitely entered and integrated into that market, so its not a one way street.

China is more egregious in that sense, since it has corporate espionage, state protection, and a market which is not really open to foreign compeition (unless you are a luxury brand).

> Show me the ultra-liberal free-for-all that did well

I am not going to ever make that case, since I don't believe that ever existed or succeeded if it did.

> I can just as easily argue that my dr

Sure, feel free to argue. However there are others who just want to make stuff, and don't spend the time arguing.

> I don't get to dictate the labour policies of kuala lumpur,

> I think this idea that everyone in the world can be part of the professional-managerial class

Where did you get this? I am talking about retraining. You could retrain into naval captains for all I care.

> less desired jobs" could properly retrain

Not what I am saying. I am saying the argument for outsourcing used to be supported by the idea that those who lost employment could be retrained into other domains.

However, there are limits to what retraining can actually achieve, which removes the support this argument provided.

1 more reply

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