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> Of course in practice this has gone badly in the long term. The current generations are certainly feeling the consequences. Has it though? Because I think pr

> Of course in practice this has gone badly in the long term. The current generations are certainly feeling the consequences. Has it though? Because I think preventing lower-skill industry from migrating to lower-wage countries would have been a MASSIVE intervention into market dynamics with extremely unclear outcome, and it is very easy to be dishonest about its price and possible consequences. An example: If we had wanted to prevent consumer electronics industry to shift abroad, we would have needed to massively intervene starting in the 1970s (!!). Products like radios, TVs, etc. would have been significantly more expensive, and a lot of that generations talent that made Intel, NVidia, Microsoft etc. happen might have stayed in those sectors instead, thanks to cushy subsidies. Its quite possible that as a result, countries that did not waste so much effort on fighting market dynamics would have just pulled ahead. Comparing with a hypothetical timeline where there's a "healthy" (subsidised) US steel industry, lots of domestic electronics assembly and every other screen is "made in USA"-- BUT Microsoft is a European company instead, and Apple is Japanese-- that is a bad tradeoff in my view and entirely plausible.

michaelt 2y ago
> Has it though? Well, the hope that trade with China would lead to them becoming more democratic doesn't seem to have come through. And there was a hope the West would keep doing the design work, and high-tech manufacturing. There isn't much Silicon being produced in Silicon Valley these days. I'm not saying there's an alternative - I can't take a time machine back to the 1980s and explore a different timeline. I'm just saying that many of the purported long-term benefits of globalisation haven't really come about.
- myrmidon 2y ago
  I fully agree with you that effecting "better"/more democratic politics abroad via trade has a poor track record (EU buying Russian gas would be another example). But answer honestly: Do you think that the US/Europe shaped their trade policies in a way that maximized foreign political improvement (especially pre-Crimea)? Because to me, that sounds almost comically self-delusional: We did not try to foster democracy when trading with Russia/China-- we traded to get stuff for cheap. Looking at GDP development, this was very effective: Yes China grew more wealthy as well, but current trends are not looking like Chinese real wages will ever catch up to US levels, even in the next several decades... I honestly believe that the US has profitted immensely from trade with China-- it would be insane to try to avoid this (and hold on to domestic industry) from a perspective of how it affected the average American citizen.

michaelt 2y ago

> Has it though? Well, the hope that trade with China would lead to them becoming more democratic doesn't seem to have come through. And there was a hope the West would keep doing the design work, and high-tech manufacturing. There isn't much Silicon being produced in Silicon Valley these days. I'm not saying there's an alternative - I can't take a time machine back to the 1980s and explore a different timeline. I'm just saying that many of the purported long-term benefits of globalisation haven't really come about.

myrmidon 2y ago
I fully agree with you that effecting "better"/more democratic politics abroad via trade has a poor track record (EU buying Russian gas would be another example). But answer honestly: Do you think that the US/Europe shaped their trade policies in a way that maximized foreign political improvement (especially pre-Crimea)? Because to me, that sounds almost comically self-delusional: We did not try to foster democracy when trading with Russia/China-- we traded to get stuff for cheap. Looking at GDP development, this was very effective: Yes China grew more wealthy as well, but current trends are not looking like Chinese real wages will ever catch up to US levels, even in the next several decades... I honestly believe that the US has profitted immensely from trade with China-- it would be insane to try to avoid this (and hold on to domestic industry) from a perspective of how it affected the average American citizen.