Comment by modo_mario
6 hours 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
> 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.