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Honestly I don't have much problem with protectionism. Flagrant theft is no good, but when the companies enter in the domestic partnership the IP transfer is ra

Honestly I don't have much problem with protectionism. Flagrant theft is no good, but when the companies enter in the domestic partnership the IP transfer is rather more de jure. And if China didn't take any IP they would continue to be massively under-developed and just a source of cheap labor, be cause there's no way in hell US companies would have willingly fostered higher skills, higher pay there. Let's face it, major US companies that outsource to China are doing fine, at least compared to workers, and we shouldn't start fucking WW III to raise their profits further. What's far more concerning to me is what is described in https://phenomenalworld.org/reviews/trade-wars https://phenomenalworld.org/reviews/trade-wars, the general race-to-the-bottom export dynamics where every country surpresses wages to try to stay competitive, and via the paradox of thrift not enough consumption has been afforded. This will ruin us. And we see the race to the bottom politically too, which follows. That book says bilateral tarries are a farce because commerce can route around them. As a programmer that makes....goddamn sense. They instead recommend general capital controls, which cannot be routed around. That also makes sense. How about we fix our rotten economy, reinvigorate society, and win a cultural war rather than loose a real one?

unishark 6y ago
> And if China didn't take any IP they would continue to be massively under-developed and just a source of cheap labor, be cause there's no way in hell US companies would have willingly fostered higher skills, higher pay there. We sell the training for those skills to anyone willing to pay as part of a huge education industry. You can just buy the textbooks on amazon or get many of them along with any other materials for free. Smaller countries in the west who couldn't possibly stand up the the big "bully" economies, and less developed regions like the US south, all have developed right up the cutting-edge with everyone else. They became developed by simply playing the game according to the rules. The real problem with developing countries is the ability tofollow those rules. The culture isn't fully-formed yet and some people are unclear on the line between stealing/scamming versus legitimate business. That doesn't mean stealing and scamming are a necessary part of development. It's the corruption that holds it back. Economic growth is based on people taking risks and making deals, which needs security and trust between them.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  > We sell the training for those skills to anyone willing to pay as part of a huge education industry. You can just buy the textbooks on amazon or get many of them along with any other materials for free. Education is necessary but not sufficiency, because the manufacturing secrets are sometimes intentionally secret, and sometimes simply the result of a process that isn't reproducible. If you want a programming analogy, imagine if China had all the source code but no binaries. But worse, because there aren't codified programming languages to describe arbitrary industrial processes. > Smaller countries in the west who couldn't possibly stand up the the big "bully" economies, and less developed regions like the US south, all have developed right up the cutting-edge with everyone else. Do you know of any country (excluding tiny ones like Singapore) that became advanced without some sort of IP theft? ------ To be clear I am not arguing that the US + China relationship has been good or moral or whatever other positive quality. The US should have instead had better foreign aid policies to help countries develop---none of that IMF liberalization bullshit, but actual useful stuff like: 1. You can tariff us and we won't retaliate 2. We invest in your physical infrastructure 3. We give you IP and shit so your industry can ween itself However, this very sweet deal comes with commensurately strict conditions: 1. Democracy 2. Unionizaiton 3. Gini coefficient maximum 4. Wage floor 5. Worker governance requirements. It's really depressing that US foreign policy has been a objectiveless fucking joke entirely captured by the nefarious interests of corporations and bored rich people.
  - unishark 6y ago
    Secrets now? How did anyone ever develop in the first place if secrets were a dead end? Anyway, even if you saddle them with a presumption of stupidity, they can still do the stuff that isn't secret. You can make money on commodities and low quality products in a developing country with low costs. Whereas people in developed countries need to chase after the bleeding edge because they can't survive without the higher margins there. Why are you discounting very small countries exactly? No one would take your deal because the government is the problem holding countries back in the first place. China is an ancient civilization, not some new child that was just born and needs to grow up yet. This analogy is overly reductionist. Things that work in silicon valley right now also work everywhere else in the world. It is not magic ground. And I'm no fan of IP, but the system using it is clearly able to work here.

unishark 6y ago

> And if China didn't take any IP they would continue to be massively under-developed and just a source of cheap labor, be cause there's no way in hell US companies would have willingly fostered higher skills, higher pay there. We sell the training for those skills to anyone willing to pay as part of a huge education industry. You can just buy the textbooks on amazon or get many of them along with any other materials for free. Smaller countries in the west who couldn't possibly stand up the the big "bully" economies, and less developed regions like the US south, all have developed right up the cutting-edge with everyone else. They became developed by simply playing the game according to the rules. The real problem with developing countries is the ability tofollow those rules. The culture isn't fully-formed yet and some people are unclear on the line between stealing/scamming versus legitimate business. That doesn't mean stealing and scamming are a necessary part of development. It's the corruption that holds it back. Economic growth is based on people taking risks and making deals, which needs security and trust between them.

Ericson2314 6y ago
> We sell the training for those skills to anyone willing to pay as part of a huge education industry. You can just buy the textbooks on amazon or get many of them along with any other materials for free. Education is necessary but not sufficiency, because the manufacturing secrets are sometimes intentionally secret, and sometimes simply the result of a process that isn't reproducible. If you want a programming analogy, imagine if China had all the source code but no binaries. But worse, because there aren't codified programming languages to describe arbitrary industrial processes. > Smaller countries in the west who couldn't possibly stand up the the big "bully" economies, and less developed regions like the US south, all have developed right up the cutting-edge with everyone else. Do you know of any country (excluding tiny ones like Singapore) that became advanced without some sort of IP theft? ------ To be clear I am not arguing that the US + China relationship has been good or moral or whatever other positive quality. The US should have instead had better foreign aid policies to help countries develop---none of that IMF liberalization bullshit, but actual useful stuff like: 1. You can tariff us and we won't retaliate 2. We invest in your physical infrastructure 3. We give you IP and shit so your industry can ween itself However, this very sweet deal comes with commensurately strict conditions: 1. Democracy 2. Unionizaiton 3. Gini coefficient maximum 4. Wage floor 5. Worker governance requirements. It's really depressing that US foreign policy has been a objectiveless fucking joke entirely captured by the nefarious interests of corporations and bored rich people.
- unishark 6y ago
  Secrets now? How did anyone ever develop in the first place if secrets were a dead end? Anyway, even if you saddle them with a presumption of stupidity, they can still do the stuff that isn't secret. You can make money on commodities and low quality products in a developing country with low costs. Whereas people in developed countries need to chase after the bleeding edge because they can't survive without the higher margins there. Why are you discounting very small countries exactly? No one would take your deal because the government is the problem holding countries back in the first place. China is an ancient civilization, not some new child that was just born and needs to grow up yet. This analogy is overly reductionist. Things that work in silicon valley right now also work everywhere else in the world. It is not magic ground. And I'm no fan of IP, but the system using it is clearly able to work here.