Comment by boondongle
1 day ago
Part of the real confusion people have is - so many things about current trade are due to "current economic decision making". That is, something isn't rare or unable to be done elsewhere but that it's been done this way for efficiency of all involved.
There's often a really weird undercurrent of nationalism that springs up in these dicussions as if its' "a country" that does something well as a function of being that country, not as a function of an economic opportunity and ramp up.
I'd like to read a good article or book about the tension that exists between efficiency and resiliency. At the simplest level, unneeded redundancy is always less efficient, but also more resilient.
https://academic.oup.com/jiel/article/26/2/233/7071723
One case study involves economic coercion.
(Disclosure: I worked with the author, although not on this paper)
Slack is a synonym for redundancy but is also a synonym for inefficiency.
Same thing that happens for people. Luck and circumstance is equivalent to merit.