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While it's true that we are competing in a global market, perhaps we shouldn't be racing to the bottom at the expense of our labor class.

al_borland 1y ago
I generally agree with this, but we’d need systems in place to incentivize companies to keep local workers and for customers to support local companies. There are a lot of politics at play.
- jjani 1y ago
  Those are called tariffs and other barriers, and in many sectors they work very well. I live in a country (South Korea) where such barriers have been enormously successful in keeping tech jobs and revenue inside the country. Literally everyone here has benefited from it, it's a huge win-win-win; consumers get human customer service, properly localized services and much less enshittification, politicians have a success to point at and get more tax revenue, the public gets jobs. Everyone gets sovereignty. This also extends past tech. Forcing physical companies to set up a local subsidiary/do JVs has done the same. Examples abound, Starbucks being a big one. Forcing them to do a JV means a huge portion of the revenue of the biggest coffee chain in the country stays inside the country, as well as plenty of office jobs. Otherwise everything but the actual in-store jobs would have once again flowed to the US. China of course has done the same, to similar success. Imagine if they hadn't, and just let e.g. Meta be their social media platform of choice, Google their search engine, Amazon their shopping platform. It'd be nothing but a massive net loss to everyone involved but those tech firms; including the Chinese public as the state would impose the exact same censorship and rules on those companies, as they currently do with the remaining ones. That other countries haven't done so and just let SV walk over them in order to appease the US - who has now turned out not to be their friend after all, surprise surprise! - is very unfortunate. This incredible imbalance is what has let the average HN FAANG employee make absolute bank at the cost of the rest of the world, so I'm not expecting this to be particularly popular here :)
- TFYS 1y ago
  Unless the country can be completely self-sufficient, even that is not enough. If a country decides to cut working hours and other's won't, it will eventually not be able to afford the resources it needs from other countries because the countries that squeeze their workers will have more money to pay for them. I believe these competition based systems will be our downfall. Nobody can do anything that doesn't improve their position compared to competing countries/companies/people, even if it would make things better overall. If you do, you lose and die out. We will use all our resources, kill each other, etc in pursuit of victory for as long as the systems of this planet can support it and then we die.

al_borland 1y ago

I generally agree with this, but we’d need systems in place to incentivize companies to keep local workers and for customers to support local companies. There are a lot of politics at play.

jjani 1y ago
Those are called tariffs and other barriers, and in many sectors they work very well. I live in a country (South Korea) where such barriers have been enormously successful in keeping tech jobs and revenue inside the country. Literally everyone here has benefited from it, it's a huge win-win-win; consumers get human customer service, properly localized services and much less enshittification, politicians have a success to point at and get more tax revenue, the public gets jobs. Everyone gets sovereignty. This also extends past tech. Forcing physical companies to set up a local subsidiary/do JVs has done the same. Examples abound, Starbucks being a big one. Forcing them to do a JV means a huge portion of the revenue of the biggest coffee chain in the country stays inside the country, as well as plenty of office jobs. Otherwise everything but the actual in-store jobs would have once again flowed to the US. China of course has done the same, to similar success. Imagine if they hadn't, and just let e.g. Meta be their social media platform of choice, Google their search engine, Amazon their shopping platform. It'd be nothing but a massive net loss to everyone involved but those tech firms; including the Chinese public as the state would impose the exact same censorship and rules on those companies, as they currently do with the remaining ones. That other countries haven't done so and just let SV walk over them in order to appease the US - who has now turned out not to be their friend after all, surprise surprise! - is very unfortunate. This incredible imbalance is what has let the average HN FAANG employee make absolute bank at the cost of the rest of the world, so I'm not expecting this to be particularly popular here :)
TFYS 1y ago
Unless the country can be completely self-sufficient, even that is not enough. If a country decides to cut working hours and other's won't, it will eventually not be able to afford the resources it needs from other countries because the countries that squeeze their workers will have more money to pay for them. I believe these competition based systems will be our downfall. Nobody can do anything that doesn't improve their position compared to competing countries/companies/people, even if it would make things better overall. If you do, you lose and die out. We will use all our resources, kill each other, etc in pursuit of victory for as long as the systems of this planet can support it and then we die.