Comment by _heimdall
15 days ago
Let's ignore whether we'll actually get there, that's a very deep question and entirely theoretical for now.
If we could snap our fingers and domestically produce most or all of our own products, would you not prefer that?
That's like saying "If we could snap our fingers and every state would have mild weather, abundant capital, and a highly talented workforce, would you not prefer that?"
Yeah, then every city could be like SF or LA or NYC.
But it's not even worth it as a thought exercise because it completely ignores reality. The reason I live in NJ and pay high taxes is because this is where the high paying jobs and good schools are. Cottontown, Alabama theoretically could be a financial capitol of the world and if you want to base your position on that, then you should probably re-examine your position.
This is called rejecting the hypothetical. Just because it's not worth it for the arguments you care about doesn't mean it doesn't have value as a thought experiment to explore the consequences.
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That potential end state isn’t possible is the point of my initial comment. It is as infeasible as the weather to control where natural resources are located.
Lets talk plastics. Plastic needs oil. We’re the largest oil producer in the world now. But we still import oil! Why? Because the oil we produce isn’t entirely the right kind for everything we do with it.
An end state where the US is an island cannot exist without massive shifts in production and consumption habits.
Maybe you’re saying though that shift should happen and that end state is good?
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No, it's not a desirable end state. If we produced everything in the US — just assuming we had magic tech to make it possible - we'd have less and be poorer. Americans today live like kings from 200 years ago, in large part due to global trade.
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You think commercial crops have no dependency on weather and growing conditions?
You should try farming mangoes in Vermont!
Where will you grow enough coffee to supply the USA?
Did you forget how growing crops works?
> I'm talking about something we absolutely can, whether we produce our own goods domestically.
Do you think we could grow enough coffee, tea, bananas, avocados and olive oil?
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Good question.
No, I would not prefer that. A robust distributed system is less likely to crumble under local pressures. A blight could more easily sweep through a single nation and take out a staple crop or two, where it'd be impossible for that to happen globally. You can't spin up additional global trade quickly after you've shut it down, which could lead to people starving in America. I like systems that can't fail. That's especially true when that system is how I'm able to eat food.
Global trade isn't a security issue, national or otherwise. We don't increase safety or stability by reducing sources of consumables.
Edit; super timely example because this isn't an unlikely hypothetical: egg availability due to bird flu.
> If we could snap our fingers and domestically produce most or all of our own products, would you not prefer that?
I'm not the person you asked, but I would definitely not prefer that. Trade & economic dependencies prevent wars. Wars are really, really bad things.
We've had plenty of wars since globalization came in post-WWII though. Its impossible to know what wars would have happened without it, and how much war may have been prevented due to trade rather than the threat of nuclear war, for example.
Those were good wars, though, apparently, since they bolstered US dominance and the spread of a certain flavor of "liberal democracy" based on progressive politics and consumerism.
I could have sworn they were bad wars when they were happening ("No blood for oil"?), but opinions on that seem to have shifted all of a sudden for some reason.
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Economic dependencies also start wars. Even if trade exists, sometimes they don't like the terms.
I think my answer to this question would be no? The food example is specific, all food can't be grown here, but for other products that aren't commodities, I want different cultures competing to build the best products i.e. cars, and I want other cultures innovating things that maybe their culture is optimized for (video games, electronics in Japan, in the 1980's?). There are some interesting questions recently about how maybe globalization have turned luxuries into commodities (i.e. all cars look the same) but I think my point still stands.
No, I wouldn't; Ricardian comparative advantage is a thing, and the kind of extreme autarky you suggest means sacrificing domestic prosperity available from maximizing the benefits of trade for the aole purpose of also harming prosperity in foreign countries (but usually less sonthan you are denying yourself, because they have other potential trading partners) by denying them the benefits of trade.
Its a lose-lose proposition.
No, research comparative advantage. We actually had it pretty great in the US.
Also a world trading with each other is a world disincentivized from war with each other.
I have, and that depends on whether you are concerned at all with where we externalize our costs to. We had it good while messing up a lot of other places.
Maybe that's fine, maybe its not, but its not as simple as trade makes everyone better off.
Then regulate those negative externalities. Huge progress has been made on that front over the years. This tariff approach is demolishing the whole bathroom full of people to get rid of the bathwater.
No, because it is far more expensive to domestically produce our own products. I would rather not have a huge increase in the cost of living.
I don't want a cost of living increase either. However, this raise the question of what the real cost is. The prices might be cheaper, but is that only because we're exploiting poorer people in markets with fewer worker protections and fewer environmental protections? Is it just because I'm greedy and I'm not willing to pay someone a liveable wage here or go without whatever it is? I'm not sure, but it makes for an interesting thought experiment.
Right, and there's a good case to be made for tariffs that are explicitly tied to another country's worker and environmental protections, where the country has actionable steps to improve their worker/environmental protections in order to avoid the tariff.
But the current administration is itself actively opposed to worker or environmental protections, and the result of the current tariffs will just be that the poor people overseas end up even more impoverished and still lacking in protections.
I worry about this, but I started worrying about it less when I read about Purchasing Power Parity. The same stuff costs less in poorer countries.
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> but is that only because we're exploiting poorer people in markets with fewer worker protections and fewer environmental protections
That's definitely happening, but there are other possible reasons. For example a good could be more efficiently grown or produced in a country because of geographical reasons.
Also, from a pragmatic standpoint, it is simply not the case that all wages and wealth across the countries of the world are equal. Maybe that could be a goal but is anyone talking about that? Either way, it does not follow that the workers in that country are necessarily exploited when paid lower wages compared to the importing country, unless we are using different definitions.
This is not to mention that untargeted tariffs can increase the cost of living _for no gain at all_. If Germany manufacturers some specialty tool (not with slave labor, I would hope!), and no US manufacturer wants to make it, then I suddenly have to pay X% more for no reason at all.
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If tariffs were being added as a response to poor working conditions, and a requirement of lifting the tariffs was to improve working conditions, that could potentially be seen as a generally positive outcome for the world.
Producing the same good in the US, at anywhere near the same price, requires automation or prison labor (legal slavery in the US) and likely won't result in more manufacturing jobs and likely won't result in higher wages for workers. Florida's approach here is child labor, which is both exploitative and cheap.
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"because we're exploiting poorer people in markets with fewer worker protections and fewer environmental protections"
This can easily be overdone. If you stop doing business with poorer people, you all but guarantee that they stay poor. Counter-productive to say the least.
In my lifetime, I saw a lot of countries grow at least somewhat wealthy from extensive commercial contact with the West, including mine (Czechia).
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Better not pay them anything and they can go work in an even worse sweatshop, right?
Or can hire some child labor in Florida since they already changed the laws there.
Shhhh, you're not supposed to ask those questions!
I’m not familiar with any arguments that would lead somebody to prefer that. Maybe to avoid giving adversaries leverage over you, but isn’t that better solved by diversifying your supply chain? Maybe to salve the domestic effects of the trade adjustment, but isn’t that better solved by reallocating the surplus wealth rather than eliminating it?
Self reliance and resilience, at least to certain pressures, would fit. I don't think many people would be willing to give up cheap electronics and only buy stuff we produce here, but those are reasonable goals even if uncommon.
Environmental concerns would actually fit the bill too, if one is willing to consider externalized costs. Its easy to ignore mining damage in other countries and all the oil burned shipping over the oceans. When that all happens at home people would more acutely feel the costs and may be more likely to fix it.
> Self reliance and resilience,
describe how a entirely domestic food chain would be more resilient than one that is global?
Self reliance is a defective meme that breaks down once you want anything other than individual survival. Dependence on a community allows humans to specialize. Humans being able to specialize is the only reason this comment, or this thread exists. More simply, not just the Internet, but modern life couldn't exist without it.
Once you acknowledge that interdependency is a reasonable trade-off for the other nice things about life. A simple infection no longer being a death sentence is a nice thing we've commoditized reasonably well. The only question is, how do you build a robust and resilient system?
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No, because economic interdependence keeps everyone (mostly) civil on the world stage.
Not at all. We'd be much poorer in that world. Comparative advantage is a thing.
Would the things you produce be as good? As cheap? As available?.
Autarky is very bad.
Certainly the answer to those questions is always "it depends."
If someone only cares about price, quantity, or some specific measure of quality certainly domestic production is limiting.
You'd want domestic production for other goals like self reliance, sustainability, or resilience.
Or, hear me out, you could build relations with friends and allies and not pretend you're Qing China and it's the 1800s.
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No, for the same reason I don't try to manufacture my own car in my backyard or build my own house, or grow all of my own food, or ...
This is basic fucking common sense: I'm good at some things and other people are good at other things. We each specialize in the things we're best at, and everyone ends up better off.
You went to the extreme though. I didn't ask if one wants to do everything themselves. In the US, for example, there are still hundreds of millions of people to specialize in various roles.
You aren't clever for re-inventing autarky.
It's a bad idea for the same reason.