Yes You can understand economics and not be materialistic

e.g you can understand that tariffs are an overall bad thing on your economy and still want them to "conserve communities" or whatever reason, but as long as you understand the long run consequences

but then it becomes a value judgment

Gee I wonder how much better Japan would be now if it didn't create car manufacturing through tariffs

Likewise Korea with its shipbuilding industry and Samsung etc.

Just so bad for the economy

Think of all the cheap shit they could've got with their economy stuck in the primary sector

It's weird how Austrians hate the labour theory of value and still make use of Smith's and Ricardo's model to justify free trade

Just think for a minute about the example usually given about wine and cloth being traded between Portugal and England
Somehow Portugal can just scale up the output of vineyards because they had timesavings. You just throw more labour at it and the Vineyards magically produce more
Somehow there's a magical advantage for England in producing cloth (cloth not wool) so only England should make cloth because you know Portugal as a country is just magically incompetent at turning wool or cotton into cloth

Tariffs are a good thing. The only upside to free trade is that you have marginal cost savings which can have some use if you want cheap raw materials for your industries so they can be competitive enough for export or if you want intermediate/labour intensive goods like steel for further use in your high value added manufacturing

But even then western wages are hardly competitive enough to make it worthwhile to produce anything for export in a western country, being limited to exports which depend on their reputation/branding/quality

The LTV is another issue. Arguement for free trade is that when its cheaper to import foreign, resources at home can reallocated elsewhere for better use. Portugal isn't magically incompetent at producing at turning wool or cotton into cloth. Tarrifs have use like protection of culture for example in agricultural communities which is Abby I support them for that reason though.

@Mr. Nessel What are you even going on about

> "Somehow Portugal can just scale up the output of vineyards because they had timesavings. You just throw more labour at it and the Vineyards magically produce more"

You talk about free trade and don't even bring up the concept of opportunity cost?

Opportunity cost isn't the main argument for free trade. It was comparative advantage

Wow

You're a meme

An actual right wing communist meme

Ah yes I'm a communist for not liking free trade and supporting the policy under which modern capitalism developed

Big brain

All the law of comparative advantage states is that countries will increase net supply of goods by producing goods at the lowest relative opportunity cost

Opportunity cost was characterized in terms of time being invested and I brought that up

I must be missing something?

Are you just saying labour time is to limited?

Because you have other factors of production

I'm saying the model by which free trade is justified relied on two flawed assumptions, one being that it implicitly endorse the LTV and secondly that comparative advantages are temporary in manufacturing

Oh yeah

The logic still applies tho

Well yeah in a given moment it demonstrates you can save a bit of money

But it's not how you develop an economy

Deardorff's general law of comparative advantage
Skeptics of comparative advantage have underlined that its theoretical implications hardly hold when applied to individual commodities or pairs of commodities in a world of multiple commodities. Deardorff argues that the insights of comparative advantage remain valid if the theory is restated in terms of averages across all commodities. His models provide multiple insights on the correlations between vectors of trade and vectors with relative-autarky-price measures of comparative advantage. What has become to be known as the "Deardorff's general law of comparative advantage" is a model incorporating multiple goods, and which takes into account tariffs, transportation costs, and other obstacles to trade.

Look ^

Models have been made with other commodities

Labour is just like any other commodity

Earlier you were actually getting at the law of diminishing returns

which is good

because you're correct, simply applying nothing but labour time in the absence of other factors of production would decrease marginal value of labour and be inefficient via Says law

The other part is that there is no inherent difference between nations in how well they can potentially manufacture something

Japan had a comparative disadvantage in car manufacturing prior to insituting tariffs

Under free trade conditions they just would've been stuck with the immediate gratification of importing cheaper foreign cars

"The other part is that there is no inherent difference between nations in how well they can potentially manufacture something"

You sure?

I'm sure at least in a geopgraphic sense. I know Africans aren't going to make processors and whatnot

It's different in the primary sector

So what about minimum wage laws? Country A has them at 15Y and country B has the minimum wage at 5Y

Both countries produce cars and jobs making cars are all minimum wage

cetrius paribus which one is better?

I don't like minimum wage laws because they don't actually adress the issue of oversupply of labour

not relevant

"oversupply of labour"

No such thing

People making better wages off of the car industry is better. I'm aware that it'll make cars marginally more expensive

And yes there is oversupply of labour

That's a subjective term your using

not relevant

Though it's a subjective category I think it's fair to say there are too many low wage/low skill workers

so we have established some countries produce goods cheaper than others

so the theory is correct

In the moment

It doesn't tell you about peotential output

What the fuck does that have to do with anything now

It really isn't complicated

The point is output per input not just output

opportunity cost

It's all opportunity cost

country A produces more Y with less Z than B

so it makes sense for them to make it

Yeah in a given moment

apply this to two commodities

then you can have to countries, one can produce both goods better but its about what you are producing at the expense of

I'm not sure you understand the logical law

A factory doesn't take inherently more Z to produce B depending on which country it's in

That's entirely variable

WHAT

Industrial techniques and the like advance over time as long as you have an industry to begin with

It's so simple, do countries produce goods at differing opportunity costs? Yes or no?

Mate I think you should stop digging yourself a hole here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YboSszwySzU

Just watch this

Not inherently. There's only certain commodities which actually have an inherently differing opportunity cost depending on the country
Fracking is more costly than extracting in Saudi Arabia for example. Fields differ inherently in what climates they are in, how fertile they are etc.
Factories almost entirely depend on technical expertise or cheap labour

The advantage free trade offers you is that you get immediate gratification by getting stuff cheaper

I have to keep re-reading what you're saying because I must be missing something.

So what's wrong with the law or free trade again?

Because it has a short time horizon

It's advantage is in you saving a few bucks now

But putting aside economic development

With few exception where foreing investment makes up for it like Singapore

It's immediate gratification

I am incredibly confused

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Import_substitution_industrialization

Basically my views are similiar to this

I don't like the leftis shit

But it's the policy under which most countries industrialized

Right

It's not a panacea either though

So you want less net supply of goods in the world and worse material conditions?

You can still fuck up like Argentina

I know what you want, I want an argument for it