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Comment by gsf_emergency_6

5 hours ago

A subtle reason for preferring negotiations towards mutually beneficial ends-- sanctions can supercharge tech adoption

Yeah, or even just protectionism. Most economists I've heard say that protectionism doesn't work, but I feel like China being quiet and protectionist in the infancy of its key industries was like the move of the century for them.

  • Neoclassical economics is quite clear that targeted protectionism is desirable under certain exceptions.

    As for China, they would be more wealthy without the meddling of their government. There's no reason they couldn't be like Taiwan, but bigger. The Chinese people got to where they are in spite of their anchor.

    • I remember half of the neoclassical economics focused articles about China from the late 90s and early 00s predicting that by not following ricardian comparative advantage China was shooting itself in the foot.

      They kept predicting collapse, too.

      Nobody talks much about the ricardian theory of static comparative advantage today. China's rise kind of invalidated it.

      America was taken by surprise by its rise because of this. The cordial relations and trade flipped almost overnight to hostility once it was realized that China's economic power now rivaled that of that of the US and was poised to grow even more.

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    • Not really. In neoclassical economics protectionism is only justified as a necessary evil and it is always a form of militarism (spending money to weaken or defend against your enemy), rather than building yourself up.

  • Protectionism and sanctions form a kind of virtuous feedback loop :)

    https://incyber.org/en/article/iran-between-isolation-and-te...

    >The Iranian Information Technology Organization (ITOI) even set precise rules to evaluate candidates based on three different standards: ISO 27017 (cloud security controls), ISO 27018 (protection of personally identifiable information), and NIST SP 900-145, which concerns the American definition of cloud computing. “They want a comprehensive offer with its three components— IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS https://incyber.org/en/article/iran-between-isolation-and-te...

  • Not sure tbh.

    China could have been like Japan per capita. Protectionism puts a big cap on economic growth potential.