4 ms·

You could make an argument like that for almost any good. The truth is that comparative advantages matter and its simple impractical to manufacture or claw out

by ch4s3 5y ago

You could make an argument like that for almost any good. The truth is that comparative advantages matter and its simple impractical to manufacture or claw out of the ground every thing people in a given country might want. Cheap masks are a great thing in a pandemic. We could have simply been maintaining the stockpile that the government had for just such a purpose. More simply put, Americans demand much higher wages than would make such a cheap mask possible. The cheaper a thing like a surgical mask is, the easier it is to use a fresh one every time you need one.

int_19h 5y ago
Do you think Chinese workers who make those masks wouldn't prefer to get paid the American salary for that job? Everybody demands higher wages. The point is that some get the high wages, and some get to produce the cheap goods that make those wages effectively even higher. It's not about any kind of skilful or technological or natural "competitive advantage" - humans are the same everywhere! - it's about how much any given country is willing to abuse its workforce, and how much other countries are willing to look away while benefitting from it.
- ch4s3 5y ago
  > t's not about any kind of skilful or technological or natural "competitive advantage" - humans are the same everywhere! - it's about how much any given country is willing to abuse its workforce This is a terribly myopic view of the world. Having a much lower cost of living or relative stage of economic development is a competitive advantage in manufacturing low cost goods that require a lot of human input. Those wages can be and often are pretty good relative to local alternatives. Low skill, low cost manufacturing is usually a stepping stone in economic from subsistence agriculture to a more advanced economy. The conditions don't necessarily have to be bad, and are quite a bit better than a lot of agricultural work. Having lot's of people moving from farms to cities is a competitive advantage in low cost manufacturing. We're already seeing China moving aways from some of these types of manufacturing as their economy advances. Neighboring states are using this shift to try and shift their economies away from subsistence agriculture as well. It's fine to lobby for better working conditions, especially in trade deals, but we shouldn't deny people in other parts of the world the opportunity to move from agriculture, to light manufacturing, to more advanced economic activity.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    If those conditions are "not bad", then why do we have borders and work visas? Let's be honest here: if the labor market was truly free across the globe, with no borders in place, most of those workers in countries where manufacturing has been outsourced to, would have moved to US and other Western countries. And the reason for that is primarily not political, but economical - Westerners get paid more (in terms of purchasing power as it translates to quality of life) for doing the same job. It doesn't matter how you move pieces around on this board, it boils down to the same thing: the West keeps its standard of living by outsourcing work that's "too expensive" to perform under that standard elsewhere.
    - ch4s3 5y ago
      This is a deeply myopic and zero sum view of trade. Moving low tech manufacturing to Asia has lifted a billion people out of grinding rural deprivation across multiple nations. Western nations are wealthy because the West, broadly, won WWII and the Cold War while spending the post war period building high tech industry. The US in particular started industrialization as a low cost manufacturing center. Other nation deserve a chance to follow the same path to prosperity.

by ch4s3 5y ago

int_19h 5y ago

Do you think Chinese workers who make those masks wouldn't prefer to get paid the American salary for that job? Everybody demands higher wages. The point is that some get the high wages, and some get to produce the cheap goods that make those wages effectively even higher. It's not about any kind of skilful or technological or natural "competitive advantage" - humans are the same everywhere! - it's about how much any given country is willing to abuse its workforce, and how much other countries are willing to look away while benefitting from it.

ch4s3 5y ago
> t's not about any kind of skilful or technological or natural "competitive advantage" - humans are the same everywhere! - it's about how much any given country is willing to abuse its workforce This is a terribly myopic view of the world. Having a much lower cost of living or relative stage of economic development is a competitive advantage in manufacturing low cost goods that require a lot of human input. Those wages can be and often are pretty good relative to local alternatives. Low skill, low cost manufacturing is usually a stepping stone in economic from subsistence agriculture to a more advanced economy. The conditions don't necessarily have to be bad, and are quite a bit better than a lot of agricultural work. Having lot's of people moving from farms to cities is a competitive advantage in low cost manufacturing. We're already seeing China moving aways from some of these types of manufacturing as their economy advances. Neighboring states are using this shift to try and shift their economies away from subsistence agriculture as well. It's fine to lobby for better working conditions, especially in trade deals, but we shouldn't deny people in other parts of the world the opportunity to move from agriculture, to light manufacturing, to more advanced economic activity.
- int_19h 5y ago
  If those conditions are "not bad", then why do we have borders and work visas? Let's be honest here: if the labor market was truly free across the globe, with no borders in place, most of those workers in countries where manufacturing has been outsourced to, would have moved to US and other Western countries. And the reason for that is primarily not political, but economical - Westerners get paid more (in terms of purchasing power as it translates to quality of life) for doing the same job. It doesn't matter how you move pieces around on this board, it boils down to the same thing: the West keeps its standard of living by outsourcing work that's "too expensive" to perform under that standard elsewhere.
  - ch4s3 5y ago
    This is a deeply myopic and zero sum view of trade. Moving low tech manufacturing to Asia has lifted a billion people out of grinding rural deprivation across multiple nations. Western nations are wealthy because the West, broadly, won WWII and the Cold War while spending the post war period building high tech industry. The US in particular started industrialization as a low cost manufacturing center. Other nation deserve a chance to follow the same path to prosperity.