@Doctor Anon or the support of sjws...

It's a tool for trade wars

Can't let China win so it is necessary

Too much involvement from the state - interferes with the free market

Yes but what if China wins

We can't let China win

Then they win fair and square through the free market. Such is the nature of the free market

If China wins everybody loses

There's no free market in China

There's a market with a lot of government control

Correct, but China still competes in the free market globally

It does means state interference, but i'm happy to allow the state some power if it doesn't involve China winnning

Either the US market wins with moderate government intervention, or the chinese one wins with massive government intervention

I'm libertarian until I remember that China exists

The problem is that the chinese government subsidises everything remotly important that can be sold on the world stage.

And Protectionism is needed to stop China from controlling all the trade.

Protectionism is important depending on the market. If you are a huge producer of good quality goods and you don’t have a trade deficit, then be free market. If you have a huge trade deficit and no one buys your goods, then use protectionism

In my yet to be molded opinion, Protectionism is a good thing. However, I don't really know anything about the matter.

Protectionism is bad economic policy. However, it is a useful political tool to punish and bully other nations into submission.

^

Why be protectionist when you can be imperialist?

I mean

protectionism is objectively worse off for the market, especially between countries with similar labor/pollution laws

It should only be used to restrict the flow of goods created with slave/sweatshop labor

Sweatshop labor is good for those in sweatshops. They average higher wages than others in the same country. It helps raise families and nations out of poverty. Those working in sweatshops want to work there, so protectionism against sweatshop labor is punishing them for their own choices and pursuing their own best interest.

Ideally yes, because it does make the country wealthier and respects personal freedom to trade across borderlines just like private actors between states can, however, when you have third world nations that either restrict the rights of the people or are using tactics such as currency manipulation then tariffs can be used as a bargaining tool to make the country fall in line with economic policy that will make both that country and your country better off in the long run

To be clear, "it" in the beginning is free trade, and i was just going over some exceptions to the rule of free trade

The free market is a false idea. No one does this in practice. Look at the data from wto of ongoing protective measures and you will see every country always has them. China especially does not have a free market. To produce in china, you must accept a partnership with a local businessman, usually a chinese conglomerate before even opening. Then they steal all your trade secrets and open a competing factory across the street and undercut you using the backing of the chinese government subsidizing any losses. Its crazy to suggest china has a free market!!!!

@Jay1532 the free market has existed for short periods of time in localized areas. However, it is what we should be striving for as it is demonstrably the best system. The closer we get to it, the better

Free market is always best for a less developed country. It adds almost trivial growth to a developed nation

The global free market isnt the be and end all, the ethics of the state and how much they interfere in the free market domestically should be considered. If china use child labour, or near slave like conditions, why should that product get a free ride into the country with higher moral standards.

@Jay1532 less developed countries such as? any example?

If a government use tax revenue to subsidise an industry, so its goods are dirt cheap, domestic producers need their livelihoods protecting. Id let goods in penalty free, if they were truly from another free market.

@grilomoto its just economics. A less developed country that just now engages in free trade will have huge growth numbers. Just look at the historical data for any of the "asian tigers". They had that sort of growth not because of anything remarkable about their economies or economics, but it was mostly due to their being less developed. In economics you can think of some unknown variable which represents an economies "natural" gdp path. If a country is undeveloped and just opens up, it will shoot towards that natural gdp path in a hurry and so you will see growth years of 25% and more until it gets there and settles into the 1%-3% that developed countries have, often decades later

or even face recession, like what happened to japan

i can try to look up some of the formulas and theories but i just sold a lot of my old textbooks to ebay lol

https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/InternationalTrade.html

heres a good introduction to the economics of international trade

without too many formulas and jargon

the united states is an interesting case study though, because you can look at each city and each state from a comparative advantage standpoint. The biggest thing hamstringing this effect is federalism since it limits states with Procrustean bureaucracy

@Jay1532 it may initially help a less developed nation catch up to more advanced nations, but it's effect on more developed nations is not trivial. The free market incentivizes innovation, which is the greatest driver in increase of real wealth and higher living standards, and more developed nations have a better ability and more resources to innovate. Wealthy, developed nations increase the wealth of all nations just by creating better and cheaper products and developing more efficient means of production. This is all done best through the free market.

@campodin also is an expedient way to create megalomaniac superstates like china is becoming

@Jay1532 China is a house of cards

Their economy is getting ever more precarious and unstable

Much of their growth is artificial and manufactured

It is going to catch up to them soon enough

yeah, but they have successful infiltration operations and stole so much american intellectual property that now they can successfully challenge the pax americana weve all (the world) enjoyed for so long

especially american military IP

@campodin Government Contracts (to private companies) drive the most innovation

Since it's instant motivation, unlike a regular market where it takes a multitude of time to innovate

Lol, no China is not challenging the pax Americana. Trump has showed just how weak they really are

China can't hold off against the U.S in a trade war

thats naive

China is already outsourcing itself @Jay1532

they are not weak

They are investing into new companies in Africa

only if xi loses power will they have been shown to be weak

they are planning on nuking the petro-dollar behind the scenes

Xi is basically neo-mao, have fun trying to convince it's popular to rebel

and if turkey and others are any indication, they are receiving an audience thats listening

China will never be a sole superpower, they will follow the path of the soviet union

@Doctor Anon government contracts doesn't drive the kind of innovation that leads to more prosperity though. Most of that innovation is expensive and not practical until the market gets to improve upon it

@campodin It does get to improve on it, most contracts are for military, which almost always translates into civilian tech

Oh, in regards to contracts for military tech I'm all in favor of it.

What's expensive and impractical on the market shouldn't be a consideration for defense

idk though, theres a compelling argument that free trade can also hinder research

since it creates a climate of long term uncertainty for certain products

Im 50/50 on free trade

I'd support national free trade, but not global free trade

look how ford and other american car companies bought outsourced vehicle parts in the 90s to compete on PRICE, not to innovate on quality

and theyve been playing a losing game ever since

A nation should always strive to be able to sustain itself with *0* imports

i dont know if id go that far. The best case scenario is import what we cant make well ourself, and export what we excel at

and make sure that important industries are protected

I didn't say no exports, i meant no imports

anyone that thinks we could wage war without domestic steel production is probably a commie infiltrator

as for the 0, i mean in terms of goods needed to sustain a country, for example during a war so supply lines cant be cut off

yeah

There are some things that are not economically good short-term, such as protectionism, but are necessary

- Protectionism sacrifices the benefits of comparative advantage for BOTH countries, but it encourages localized production of goods, which is essential if you ever go to war, because once you go to war you can't use the other country's industrial capacity anymore.
- I would argue that a libertarian "free market" actually doesn't make sense unless there is protection against trading with non-free markets. This kind of trade favors the non-free market, which is likely controlled by an authoritarian power actively seeking to undermine neighboring libertarian societies.
- The hidden benefit of protection is that when companies are producing locally, it becomes MUCH easier for independent citizens to compete in the marketplace, because they can work for themselves for free, whereas larger companies must pay relatively high wages. So while we might be theoretically "poorer" by not producing in the cheapest way across country lines, the protection creates a situation in which the protected market has more competition and relative equality.

saving this

The Chinese government, for example, limits how wealthy its people are getting by producing most of our goods through extreme inflation of their money - that is to say, they're using the money supply to confiscate most of that wealth. So rather than companies having to increase their wages for Chinese workers and rather than Chinese workers being able to afford goods and services from the United States, the price of their labor is kept artificially low and the proceeds go to funding the expansion of Chinese power.

By allowing trade with China, we make it so that the most powerful corporations in the United States are the ones that use Chinese slave labor. Meanwhile, these same companies that do all of their business with China lobby for higher regulations in the United States, either to virtue signal or to cripple competitors who try to produce domestically within the United States. If their production is oversees then environmental and labor regulations here don't apply - if they did, it wouldn't be so much cheaper to ship everything from China. This is why you don't see corporations giving any funding to libertarian political candidates, even though they could easily justify giving some proportion of what they give to Democrats and Republicans. Free markets aren't in the benefit of international corporations - they want politically protected profits.

I would also surmise that we're hearing 10-100x more negative news about Donald Trump than we otherwise would because national borders and traditional values are also inconvenient impediments to the supremacy of international corporations. It is in their financial interest to water down our political consensus and to lower our wages through H1B skilled immigration. This is the major scam of progressivism - capitalists scamming socialists into dis-empowering their workers relative to capital in the name of solidarity.

Workers

Better Workers

Without workers

better workers, the point of schools is to educate kids not brainwash them

No point in loyalty

i think there are problems with both approaches

if i had to pick one i'd say better workers

Loyal

I'll take the other side on this one

better workers obviously

The problem with the question is that you assume loyalty cannot be taught while also teaching how to be better workers

In fact, it usually comes hand in hand

The most disciplined and skilled children are also usually the most loyal.

For example, the Hitler Youth.

😬

Well, there's no denying the Hitler Youth were skilled as well as loyal.

No matter how messed up the whole thing was

workers, no matter how loyal they are, no country lasts forever, but contrributions do