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There sure are many articles popping up trying to persuade the US that protecting their strategic industries - what every economy in the East has done and is do

There sure are many articles popping up trying to persuade the US that protecting their strategic industries - what every economy in the East has done and is doing - is a bad idea. Do prosperity and autonomy lie in letting your industries wither and die, or get taken over by foreign countries?

wahern 4y ago
> Do prosperity and autonomy lie in letting your industries wither and die, or get taken over by foreign countries? At macro scale and longitudinally, the answer seems to be, "yes", at least regarding prosperity. Regarding autonomy, which country do you think enjoys more autonomy, the U.S. or North Korea? The latter enforces Juche as state ideology (i.e. self-reliance almost as a religion). But what can be said generally about national economies (especially large, developed economies) doesn't necessarily apply to specific industries.
- AinderS 4y ago
  > which country do you think enjoys more autonomy, the U.S. or North Korea? The US practiced plenty of protectionism to nurture its economy. And looking beyond the global exception of North Korea for a moment, China, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, and indeed every advanced economy, did the same. Of course protectionism and self-reliance can be taken to a harmful extreme, but so can the opposite. Yet economists only warn about one, not both.
rektide 4y ago
I nearly fell over in awe & respect for this comment. This is the heart of so much. In this particular area, I feel the US is trying to regrow (rather than protect) it's asset, it's capability, and that's why congress realizes they needed to put down some money; to make it happen. I wish this were merely protection. But alas, the US is in most areas non-competitve globally, with too big an obligation on the average & even below average corporation to make a not-cheap life liveable. Housing, healthcare, food, energy, all of it has gotten out of hand costly via ever deepening ever more exploitative privitization & now it just doesnt make sense to do industries here. Oops, mea culpa. We have to pay companies extra to do work here. That's what this funding means, that's where we are. Because we dont support lur people, because we let private concerns take over without check.

wahern 4y ago

> Do prosperity and autonomy lie in letting your industries wither and die, or get taken over by foreign countries? At macro scale and longitudinally, the answer seems to be, "yes", at least regarding prosperity. Regarding autonomy, which country do you think enjoys more autonomy, the U.S. or North Korea? The latter enforces Juche as state ideology (i.e. self-reliance almost as a religion). But what can be said generally about national economies (especially large, developed economies) doesn't necessarily apply to specific industries.

AinderS 4y ago
> which country do you think enjoys more autonomy, the U.S. or North Korea? The US practiced plenty of protectionism to nurture its economy. And looking beyond the global exception of North Korea for a moment, China, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, and indeed every advanced economy, did the same. Of course protectionism and self-reliance can be taken to a harmful extreme, but so can the opposite. Yet economists only warn about one, not both.

rektide 4y ago

I nearly fell over in awe & respect for this comment. This is the heart of so much. In this particular area, I feel the US is trying to regrow (rather than protect) it's asset, it's capability, and that's why congress realizes they needed to put down some money; to make it happen. I wish this were merely protection. But alas, the US is in most areas non-competitve globally, with too big an obligation on the average & even below average corporation to make a not-cheap life liveable. Housing, healthcare, food, energy, all of it has gotten out of hand costly via ever deepening ever more exploitative privitization & now it just doesnt make sense to do industries here. Oops, mea culpa. We have to pay companies extra to do work here. That's what this funding means, that's where we are. Because we dont support lur people, because we let private concerns take over without check.