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If we take this to it’s logical extreme we can see how absurd it is. Why stop at the EU? If Tau Cetians can produce trains cheap we ought to buy trains from T
by TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
If we take this to it’s logical extreme we can see how absurd it is.
Why stop at the EU?
If Tau Cetians can produce trains cheap we ought to buy trains from Tau Ceti.
Never mind that it puts the locals out of a job, diminishes local pride in locally manufactured goods, and what do the Tau Cetians care if the trains are unreliable and in comfortable.
Economics doesn’t occur in a vacuum, and it doesn’t matter if my opinion is economically factually incorrect: the National morale does matter.
But, if you hold competition above all else, then we have an ideological mismatch, and no amount of fact or opinion sharing is likely to help.
- ucaetano 8y ago> it doesn’t matter if my opinion is economically factually incorrect: the National morale does matter. I don't even know how to reply to that. Not only you're completely wrong, but you're a nationalist who would sink your country for "national pride". Kinda like North Korea.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoIs there something fundamentally problematic with me want a say in how my tax dollars are spent, and that I would rather the majority go to my fellow citizens so that I have to support fewer of them with welfare?
- ucaetano 8y agoNo, you can want it as much as you want. Won't make it good, but you're still free to want.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoWhat about China? Do you see China buying German trains?
- ucaetano 8y agoActually, yes, the Velaro was exported to China, then built there too.
- jdietrich 8y agoProtectionism is usually an inferior policy option that makes everyone poorer. It amounts to a state subsidy of uncompetitive industries, redirecting resources away from other, more productive parts of the domestic economy. Investing in local industry is perfectly wise. A country that has a skilled workforce, good infrastructure and efficient capital flows is likely to be highly competitive on an international level. Propping up industries just because it's politically easy is the first step down a very slippery slope. Alstom is comfortably profitable and doesn't need propping up. What's more, it is substantially reliant on export contracts that could be severely jeopardised in a culture of protectionism. The multi-billion dollar contracts it has to provide trains to India, South Africa and the US are all under threat if those countries decide "why should we give all this money to a French company when we could build these trains ourselves?". Protectionism destroyed the British national morale in the 1970s. The country was weighed down with an unsustainable burden of uncompetitive industries, propped up by the public purse because it was too politically painful to allow them to decline. The resulting swing to Thatcherism resulted in a swift and brutal end to those industries - rather than a managed decline, they were simply culled off, with utterly traumatic effects on a generation of workers who weren't prepared for it. National morale based on an economic sleight-of-hand is a poor substitute for national morale based on industries that are genuinely capable of taking on the world and winning.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoThat’s fair. And, if we take a global / universal perspective it makes sense to optimise production where it’s most economical. I guess my wider point is: we ignore nationalistic sentiment to our own detriment, as evidenced by Brexit. We probably ought to consider there is a spectrum rather than an either/or.
- pas 8y ago> we ignore nationalistic sentiment to our own detriment, as evidenced by Brexit. What do you mean by this? Could you explain this a bit please?
- 8y ago
- scarejunba 8y agoI mean, if the thing is that we'd get a common market with the Tau Ceti and get to trade with their entire market in exchange it may well work out in favour of all of us due to comparative advantage etc. etc.