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Trade isn't a zero sum competition like shooting hoops. When people engage in it both sides get richer.

• dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Trade isn't a zero sum competition like shooting hoops. This is less true than naive abalysis suggests, because relative deprivation is a significant source of disutility and trade that is “mutually beneficial” before the effects of relative deprivation are considered is often so unequal inn benefit distribution that the total net utility on one side is negative. Classical comparative advantage arguments for trade tend to ignore the disutility from relative deprivation.
  • harryh 9y ago
    Relative deprivation occurs when people learn about other cultures where people have access to greater wealth. In the information age I don't think this is avoidable even if we stop trading with each other.
    • dragonwriter 9y ago
      > Relative deprivation occurs when people learn about other cultures where people have access to greater wealth That's one of many places where it occurs, yes (it also happens locally.) Trade can exacerbate it, because even superficially mutually beneficial trade doesn't advance the wealth on both sides equally, and the degree of difference in material position, not merely it's binary existence or not, is a key factor in the magnitude of the resulting disutility.
      • harryh 9y ago
        I can see how this theoretically might be the case, but I am unpersuaded that lifting a billion people out of abject poverty in east asia was actually bad for them because a bunch of westerners got relatively richer in the transaction as well. I suppose this is a matter of judgement though and not an objective fact so to each their own.
        • dragonwriter 9y ago
          > but I am unpersuaded that lifting a billion people out of abject poverty in east asia was actually bad for them because a bunch of westerners got relatively richer in the transaction as well. That's a nice strawman you've set up, but no one in the discussion actually claimed that.