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> As for the Rust belt. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but it’s not going to recover. There’s no chance it ever meaningfully does > I don’t understand any

by csense 2y ago

> As for the Rust belt. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but it’s not going to recover. There’s no chance it ever meaningfully does > I don’t understand any of this unfounded confidence Usually when I post about political topics here, I'm full of skepticism, devil's advocacy and cynicism. But today, I'll reveal my true colors: I'm secretly an optimist. I really, truly believe that human progress has a generally positive trajectory. That technology will continue to progress. And such progress generally improves peoples' lives and makes a positive impact on the world. Our society used to have things figured out. We used to have a social narrative that made sense. I truly believe that we can set up a society where success and opportunities are available to anyone who's willing to make an honest effort. Why? Because I'm an optimist. Because we already did it. Observing the sustained, long-term backward progress, shrugging, and saying "Well, that's just the way things are now" is something that I do not understand and do not accept. The idea that that's truly the way of things seems wrong and counterintuitive. Both objectively so: It seems to go against the model backed by most of human history, that the trajectory of progress is generally forward. And subjectively so: If there is truly no path forward, that set of affairs isn't just an intellectual curiosity. Living in a world where that's true is a genuinely frightening prospect. Let me just emphasize how absurd it is. Our society solved the problem of routing good economic opportunities to most people and then one day we just stopped doing that. The solution's so obvious it's a farce. Just go back to what we were doing before! Global trade used to be expensive, and a lack of global trade seems to be a big piece of the puzzle as to why the economy was the way it was back then. To me, making global trade expensive again seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to attempt!

no_wizard 2y ago
>The solution's so obvious it's a farce. Just go back to what we were doing before! Global trade used to be expensive, and a lack of global trade seems to be a big piece of the puzzle as to why the economy was the way it was back then Global trade became cheap with the advent of modern container ships and their containers. This happened well before the decline of the industrial base in the 1980s It really came from lack of investments in the sector and poor industrial policy.
ViktorRay 2y ago
As for your last paragraph…in those days the US was the only country in the world that could manufacture stuff. Africa and Asia and Eastern Europe had been wrecked and would remain devastated by imperialism, war, failed attempts to try to make a planned economy work, etc. Over the past few decades, the rest of the world has managed to develop and compete. In regards to making global trade expensive again….the policies that the United States is pursuing won’t make global trade more expensive. It will just make trade with the United States more expensive. The other countries will continue to trade with each other cheaply and will continue to gain prosperity and continue to advance. It is possible we may see a world in which the United States has stagnated to not compete with the rest of the world. And a world where maybe the dollar has been replaced with the euro or some other currency as the reserve currency. If that is the case…well things won’t be too good for Americans to say the least.

by csense 2y ago

no_wizard 2y ago

>The solution's so obvious it's a farce. Just go back to what we were doing before! Global trade used to be expensive, and a lack of global trade seems to be a big piece of the puzzle as to why the economy was the way it was back then Global trade became cheap with the advent of modern container ships and their containers. This happened well before the decline of the industrial base in the 1980s It really came from lack of investments in the sector and poor industrial policy.

ViktorRay 2y ago

As for your last paragraph…in those days the US was the only country in the world that could manufacture stuff. Africa and Asia and Eastern Europe had been wrecked and would remain devastated by imperialism, war, failed attempts to try to make a planned economy work, etc. Over the past few decades, the rest of the world has managed to develop and compete. In regards to making global trade expensive again….the policies that the United States is pursuing won’t make global trade more expensive. It will just make trade with the United States more expensive. The other countries will continue to trade with each other cheaply and will continue to gain prosperity and continue to advance. It is possible we may see a world in which the United States has stagnated to not compete with the rest of the world. And a world where maybe the dollar has been replaced with the euro or some other currency as the reserve currency. If that is the case…well things won’t be too good for Americans to say the least.