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Hopefully we can use this failure of globalization to finally take a step back and acknowledge globalization has been a net-negative for the majority of America

Hopefully we can use this failure of globalization to finally take a step back and acknowledge globalization has been a net-negative for the majority of Americans. Instead of trying to band-aid globalization to make a minority rich, how about we reduce the need for so much international shipping in the first place?

yosito 5y ago
> how about we reduce the need for so much international shipping in the first place While there are a lot of negative aspects of international shipping, one major benefit of interinternational economic integration is that it serves as a deterrent to physical warfare.
- esarbe 5y ago
  That's actually a good point. I'm quite against international economic integration since it usually ends in exploitation, stratification and social de-integration. But you've got a point with regards to physical warfare.
LurkingPenguin 5y ago
> Instead of trying to band-aid globalization to make a minority rich, how about we reduce the need for so much international shipping in the first place? I think the answer is here: > Before the pandemic, through the pandemic, and really for the whole history of the freight industry at all levels, owners make their money by having low labor costs — that is, low wages and bare minimum staffing. Many supply chain workers are paid minimum wages, no benefits, and there’s a high rate of turnover because the physical conditions can be brutal (there aren’t even bathrooms for truckers waiting hours at ports because the port owners won’t pay for them. Making the goods onshore won't change the desire to drive labor costs as low as possible. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about truckers or factory workers. The American consumer wants more more more cheaper cheaper cheaper, and the people supplying the American consumer want as much profit profit profit as they can squeeze. This is always going to lead to a very unhealthy and unsustainable, and thus very vulnerable, supply chain. The pandemic was the straw that broke the camel's back, but the camel wasn't in very good shape before the pandemic. We just didn't notice how bad the camel was.
dandotway 5y ago
> how about we reduce the need for so much international shipping in the first place? Because China has 1.44 billion consumers and the USA only has 330 million, and companies like Apple in the long run can sell more iPhones in China because there are more people to buy them. The Chinese see Western brands as more desirable and authentic, much like many affluent Americans would prefer a foreign Mercedes to a domestic Cadillac. Starting pay for Chinese workers assembling iPhones is $3.15 per hour[1]. China does not have as strong of environmental regulations so massive toxic lakes can be produced there extracting rare earths like neodymium[2]. Chinese women have more children than American women because in America we are constantly told the earth is overpopulated and man is destroying the climate, and in America we are told it is medieval for women to focus on being mothers who produce and raise children who ultimately become the workers and consumers that are a nation's true wealth. (The goose that lays golden eggs is more valuable than the golden eggs.) But if a woman enters the workforce today instead of having children her immediate production and consumption can improve this quarter's profits, whereas if she instead has 4 children who won't enter the workforce until two decades in the future, well, that's two decades in the future and here in the West investors won't wait two decades for returns. So we must increasingly have non-American women give birth to the workers who make and consume Apple products and other Western brands. [1] https://archive.ph/yemy3 https://archive.ph/yemy3 [2] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-...
- leoedin 5y ago
  Not commenting on the rest of your comment, but > Chinese women have more children than American women The fertility rate of the USA and China is the same - 1.7 children per couple. China's facing a huge demographic crisis in the coming decades, primarily as a result of the one child policy.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    It’s not a demographic crisis, but an economic one. China’s citizens will be fine if the economy is appropriately managed (with healthcare and elderly care prioritized over more frivolous spending/investment categories), but China and the CCP will have diminished power with less labor and consumers available. It’s an important distinction.
simonh 5y ago
Ok, so you want to roll back globalisation and in-source as much as possible into the USA (or any developed nation). Making a lot more stuff in the good ole will employ tens of millions of people right? So, how many unemployed have you got to build those factories, make the equipment for them, run logistics and actually staff the factories themselves. Well, most unemployed people are only unemployed for less than a year, because they are between jobs or have just entered the job market. So how many long term unemployed do we have to help us recreate the Chinese supply chain for the US on-shore? Well, before the pandemic hit that was barely over a million people. That's hardly going to substitute for 80 million Chinese factory workers, or even the subset of them making goods specifically for the US. So where are all these workers going to come from? Then you have the fact that in-sourcing all that manufacturing will cause costs to shoot up. Everyone else in the US, including these workers too actually, will be paying a lot more for their goods. No more cheap products from China. Then of course current on-shore manufacturing that depends on parts from abroad are going to get their supply cut off, or the costs of those parts will rise making their products uncompetitive internationally. Result? Godawful mess. It might be possible, at exorbitant cost, on on-shore some manufacturing, but as many who have tried this found out it's incredibly expensive for very few jobs and the knock on effects can be worse than the benefits. This is why the USMCA is almost exactly the same deal as NAFTA with a few relatively minor updates, the effects of which have been negligible. It turns out more fundamental reform would have, for example, cut the legs out from under US export manufacturing relying on steel and parts from Mexico. If you want to protect an industry, or subsidise it that has a cost. Those costs have to be paid for by somebody, somewhere, and that turns out to be ordinary citizens as every attempt at serious protectionism has found out.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  Well do you expect the US to keep running trade deficits of 2.8% of GDP every year? In 1980 the foreign sector owned 10% of US assets. In 2020 it's 40%. Now that's not going to continue forever, because at some point the military wont even be able to make planes anymore, and the US government wont allow foreign ownership of Intel, SpaceX, Boeing, etc. Sure, we'll sell off McDonalds and Costco, but not Amazon or Google. Maybe we can reach 70% of our capital stock under foreign control after another 40 years, but not much more than that, so this party has a life expectancy of less than 40 years. I don't care how irreplacable those Chinese workers are, they aren't going to work for free, so we will either need to produce more domestically or just do without, no matter how dependent we are on it, and no matter how unimaginable it is to live within our means. At the same time, we are getting more and more domestic unrest as a result of the collapse of productivity as we outsource our increasing returns industries. No productivity, foreign devaluation, supply disruptions -- that's a recipe for some serious social unrest, which will only increase once the supply of consumption drops from China comes to a halt. So regardless of how unthinkable the alternative appears to be, the deficits will stop in the worst case with a currency crisis in the future. Many nations have gone through that, and it's terrible, it can even cause starvation, but it's not unheard of. Even if we do nothing about it, it will right itself, just through the dollar falling by a factor of whatever is required to bring the trade deficit into balance. At some nonzero factor that will happen. If it takes 100 dollars to buy 1 RMB, then we wont have a trade deficit with China, even if this means lots of industries become bankrupt. And if that's what it takes, then to bankruptcy they will go. If that means there are millions of people wandering the streets without jobs, and shortages of clothes, computers, concrete, and even basic machinary, well that's what it's going to be. Reality doesn't stop just because something becomes unthinkable. When Russia had its currency crisis, the life expectancy fell, inflation reached 84%, there were food shortages, and GDP contracted by half. We are not immune. Bottom line, when you outsource your more productive industries, the standard of living has to decline. You can delay that decline for a while, but then the bill comes due and living standards drop. Your point, that we can't produce all these goods domestically, is just another way of saying we are living above our means. That will stop. And if you think it's painful to stop the trade deficits today, imagine how much more painful it will be in 40 years when even more production has been outsourced, and we are able to produce even less domestically. Then a collapse of the dollar will be much worse than tightening our belt today and doing without. But the deficits will stop, it's only a question of how much longer we keep delaying it. Of course Trump didn't have the political will, or the mandate from our ruling class, to put an end to the party. But at some point we will have a President who will put an end to the party or the currency markets will do that for us.
nostrademons 5y ago
I look at his as a reminder of all of the benefits of globalization, which are now being taken away because we can't ship things. We've enjoyed cheap imports and lower prices for decades because we can make goods cheaply abroad. Goods are about to get much, much more expensive, and it's already started. I'm not sure that once people see the results of an on-shore economy, they'll think it's an improvement. Note that the 1950s utopia that many want to go back to wasn't a domestic economy, it was a globalized economy where we were the only industrialized nation left standing. Truly domestic economies are more like the 1930s and 1970s. The issue with the non-globalized regions of the U.S. isn't that their economies fell abruptly in the 90s, it's that they never really recovered from the 1970s, while the coastal metropolises have moved on with gleaming capital infusions from abroad.
iammisc 5y ago
> Instead of trying to band-aid globalization to make a minority rich, how about we reduce the need for so much international shipping in the first place? Because if you propose any solution to such things, you are apparently a racist.
- esarbe 5y ago
  Or a socialist, which is equally bad. Isn't it interesting how the moneyed classes successfully arranged for the workers of each nation to despise each other while still being able to exploit all? Classic!

yosito 5y ago

> how about we reduce the need for so much international shipping in the first place While there are a lot of negative aspects of international shipping, one major benefit of interinternational economic integration is that it serves as a deterrent to physical warfare.

esarbe 5y ago
That's actually a good point. I'm quite against international economic integration since it usually ends in exploitation, stratification and social de-integration. But you've got a point with regards to physical warfare.

LurkingPenguin 5y ago

> Instead of trying to band-aid globalization to make a minority rich, how about we reduce the need for so much international shipping in the first place? I think the answer is here: > Before the pandemic, through the pandemic, and really for the whole history of the freight industry at all levels, owners make their money by having low labor costs — that is, low wages and bare minimum staffing. Many supply chain workers are paid minimum wages, no benefits, and there’s a high rate of turnover because the physical conditions can be brutal (there aren’t even bathrooms for truckers waiting hours at ports because the port owners won’t pay for them. Making the goods onshore won't change the desire to drive labor costs as low as possible. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about truckers or factory workers. The American consumer wants more more more cheaper cheaper cheaper, and the people supplying the American consumer want as much profit profit profit as they can squeeze. This is always going to lead to a very unhealthy and unsustainable, and thus very vulnerable, supply chain. The pandemic was the straw that broke the camel's back, but the camel wasn't in very good shape before the pandemic. We just didn't notice how bad the camel was.

dandotway 5y ago

> how about we reduce the need for so much international shipping in the first place? Because China has 1.44 billion consumers and the USA only has 330 million, and companies like Apple in the long run can sell more iPhones in China because there are more people to buy them. The Chinese see Western brands as more desirable and authentic, much like many affluent Americans would prefer a foreign Mercedes to a domestic Cadillac. Starting pay for Chinese workers assembling iPhones is $3.15 per hour[1]. China does not have as strong of environmental regulations so massive toxic lakes can be produced there extracting rare earths like neodymium[2]. Chinese women have more children than American women because in America we are constantly told the earth is overpopulated and man is destroying the climate, and in America we are told it is medieval for women to focus on being mothers who produce and raise children who ultimately become the workers and consumers that are a nation's true wealth. (The goose that lays golden eggs is more valuable than the golden eggs.) But if a woman enters the workforce today instead of having children her immediate production and consumption can improve this quarter's profits, whereas if she instead has 4 children who won't enter the workforce until two decades in the future, well, that's two decades in the future and here in the West investors won't wait two decades for returns. So we must increasingly have non-American women give birth to the workers who make and consume Apple products and other Western brands. [1] https://archive.ph/yemy3 https://archive.ph/yemy3 [2] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-...

leoedin 5y ago
Not commenting on the rest of your comment, but > Chinese women have more children than American women The fertility rate of the USA and China is the same - 1.7 children per couple. China's facing a huge demographic crisis in the coming decades, primarily as a result of the one child policy.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  It’s not a demographic crisis, but an economic one. China’s citizens will be fine if the economy is appropriately managed (with healthcare and elderly care prioritized over more frivolous spending/investment categories), but China and the CCP will have diminished power with less labor and consumers available. It’s an important distinction.

simonh 5y ago

Ok, so you want to roll back globalisation and in-source as much as possible into the USA (or any developed nation). Making a lot more stuff in the good ole will employ tens of millions of people right? So, how many unemployed have you got to build those factories, make the equipment for them, run logistics and actually staff the factories themselves. Well, most unemployed people are only unemployed for less than a year, because they are between jobs or have just entered the job market. So how many long term unemployed do we have to help us recreate the Chinese supply chain for the US on-shore? Well, before the pandemic hit that was barely over a million people. That's hardly going to substitute for 80 million Chinese factory workers, or even the subset of them making goods specifically for the US. So where are all these workers going to come from? Then you have the fact that in-sourcing all that manufacturing will cause costs to shoot up. Everyone else in the US, including these workers too actually, will be paying a lot more for their goods. No more cheap products from China. Then of course current on-shore manufacturing that depends on parts from abroad are going to get their supply cut off, or the costs of those parts will rise making their products uncompetitive internationally. Result? Godawful mess. It might be possible, at exorbitant cost, on on-shore some manufacturing, but as many who have tried this found out it's incredibly expensive for very few jobs and the knock on effects can be worse than the benefits. This is why the USMCA is almost exactly the same deal as NAFTA with a few relatively minor updates, the effects of which have been negligible. It turns out more fundamental reform would have, for example, cut the legs out from under US export manufacturing relying on steel and parts from Mexico. If you want to protect an industry, or subsidise it that has a cost. Those costs have to be paid for by somebody, somewhere, and that turns out to be ordinary citizens as every attempt at serious protectionism has found out.

rsj_hn 5y ago
Well do you expect the US to keep running trade deficits of 2.8% of GDP every year? In 1980 the foreign sector owned 10% of US assets. In 2020 it's 40%. Now that's not going to continue forever, because at some point the military wont even be able to make planes anymore, and the US government wont allow foreign ownership of Intel, SpaceX, Boeing, etc. Sure, we'll sell off McDonalds and Costco, but not Amazon or Google. Maybe we can reach 70% of our capital stock under foreign control after another 40 years, but not much more than that, so this party has a life expectancy of less than 40 years. I don't care how irreplacable those Chinese workers are, they aren't going to work for free, so we will either need to produce more domestically or just do without, no matter how dependent we are on it, and no matter how unimaginable it is to live within our means. At the same time, we are getting more and more domestic unrest as a result of the collapse of productivity as we outsource our increasing returns industries. No productivity, foreign devaluation, supply disruptions -- that's a recipe for some serious social unrest, which will only increase once the supply of consumption drops from China comes to a halt. So regardless of how unthinkable the alternative appears to be, the deficits will stop in the worst case with a currency crisis in the future. Many nations have gone through that, and it's terrible, it can even cause starvation, but it's not unheard of. Even if we do nothing about it, it will right itself, just through the dollar falling by a factor of whatever is required to bring the trade deficit into balance. At some nonzero factor that will happen. If it takes 100 dollars to buy 1 RMB, then we wont have a trade deficit with China, even if this means lots of industries become bankrupt. And if that's what it takes, then to bankruptcy they will go. If that means there are millions of people wandering the streets without jobs, and shortages of clothes, computers, concrete, and even basic machinary, well that's what it's going to be. Reality doesn't stop just because something becomes unthinkable. When Russia had its currency crisis, the life expectancy fell, inflation reached 84%, there were food shortages, and GDP contracted by half. We are not immune. Bottom line, when you outsource your more productive industries, the standard of living has to decline. You can delay that decline for a while, but then the bill comes due and living standards drop. Your point, that we can't produce all these goods domestically, is just another way of saying we are living above our means. That will stop. And if you think it's painful to stop the trade deficits today, imagine how much more painful it will be in 40 years when even more production has been outsourced, and we are able to produce even less domestically. Then a collapse of the dollar will be much worse than tightening our belt today and doing without. But the deficits will stop, it's only a question of how much longer we keep delaying it. Of course Trump didn't have the political will, or the mandate from our ruling class, to put an end to the party. But at some point we will have a President who will put an end to the party or the currency markets will do that for us.

nostrademons 5y ago

I look at his as a reminder of all of the benefits of globalization, which are now being taken away because we can't ship things. We've enjoyed cheap imports and lower prices for decades because we can make goods cheaply abroad. Goods are about to get much, much more expensive, and it's already started. I'm not sure that once people see the results of an on-shore economy, they'll think it's an improvement. Note that the 1950s utopia that many want to go back to wasn't a domestic economy, it was a globalized economy where we were the only industrialized nation left standing. Truly domestic economies are more like the 1930s and 1970s. The issue with the non-globalized regions of the U.S. isn't that their economies fell abruptly in the 90s, it's that they never really recovered from the 1970s, while the coastal metropolises have moved on with gleaming capital infusions from abroad.

iammisc 5y ago

> Instead of trying to band-aid globalization to make a minority rich, how about we reduce the need for so much international shipping in the first place? Because if you propose any solution to such things, you are apparently a racist.

esarbe 5y ago
Or a socialist, which is equally bad. Isn't it interesting how the moneyed classes successfully arranged for the workers of each nation to despise each other while still being able to exploit all? Classic!