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Not being able to produce the core technology we depend has hamstrung us.
by CPLX 2y ago
Not being able to produce the core technology we depend has hamstrung us.
- whimsicalism 2y agoComparative advantage is a feature of the world. Rage against it as much as you want, it’ll only delay the green transition
- CPLX 2y agoIndustrial policy, predatory trade practices, pandemics, supply chain disruptions, and real-live violent wars are also features of this world. I have a degree in economics, no need for remedial training on comparative advantage and stories of secretaries and typewriters and so on.
- whimsicalism 2y agoYou have a degree in economics and think we should be manufacturing EVs & solar panels domestically? It seems like you've internalized the things you've learned in your degree as "stories" and the way-the-wind-blows media coverage of our 'adversaries' as real.
- CPLX 2y agoAbso-fucking-lutely we should be producing those things domestically. Being able to produce the core technology we need for the future is the only way to have a future. The power and stability of the country is fundamentally based on its productive capacity. Do you think it's based on green pieces of paper or something? The idea that this is not true is the greatest collective mass delusion of our lifetimes. Or just a good story told by those who benefit from the financialization of everything.
- freeone3000 2y agoThe US comparative advantage is in agriculture, an insanely protected industry, computer software, which is the most mobile industry on the planet, and financial services, which produces nothing. If we want to be good at anything, we need to have the first, worse attempts be worth it.
- whimsicalism 2y agowe are extremely good at services, invention, and economic planning. your claim about financial services producing/doing nothing seems more virtue signal than based on reality. our economy is extremely productive, your narrative of 'good at almost nothing' is ridiculous, we're just not a manufacturing economy.
- CPLX 2y agoI would have thought the pandemic would have woken people up a little bit. No you can’t just consider “owning stuff” and “moving assets around on spreadsheets” to be the same thing as international power. China isn’t confused about this at all and they don’t make idiot mistakes like letting hostile foreign powers own or control the core means of production needed for their population to prosper. Good luck with your fucking economic planning business when Taipei is being shelled from three directions.
- freeone3000 2y agoMobile services, like software, are mobile. Nothing ties them to their consumers. Non-mobile services, like healthcare and hairdressers, aren’t exportable. (And calculations are entirely COL-based; 20% inflation causes a 20% rise in cost of haircuts which causes a 20% rise in their contribution to GDP). Counting non-tangible, immobile, non-exportable goods is not useful as a measure of productivity. As for financial services: what do they make. It’s a lot of “value” entirely generated by accounting. There’s nothing tangible backing it; KPMG’s accounts might as well be in cryptocurrency for all that they can be used to materially improve lives. You can’t eat a futures contract and you can’t make anything with a credit default swap. The financial system is all musical chairs.