Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization • Hacker News Board

Re: Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization

#101

Post by aetherson » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 8:32 PM UTC

tengbretson wrote: post #84

harryh wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is generally thought of as immoral to rend one person in order to help one other. Not when it comes to buying things, which is what this situation is. Blue collar workers in the US (or other developed nations) don't have a moral demand on you to purchase their labor at the same rate forever. If someone across the street (or across an ocean) is selling the same product for less money it's perfectly fine to buy it f…

> If someone across the street (or across an ocean) is selling the same product for less money it's perfectly fine to buy it from them instead. The people across the ocean in this instance are working obscene hours under deplorable conditions. When you take your business to these overseas firms you are effectively telling your local workers "these are the conditions I think you ought to be working under." Except it's…

If you don't take your business to them, you're effectively telling local workers that they should work under even worse conditions for less pay. Except that you somehow doublethink yourself into imagining that you're being noble.

Re: Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization

#102

Post by yorwba » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 8:39 PM UTC

codingslave wrote: post #7

wahern wrote: post #6

> But after the Cold War ended, the debate over trade (Krugman’s Nobel-winning specialty) became a proxy for a larger intellectual struggle over free markets versus government intervention. This is the crux of it. The notion that economics, as a field, was blindsided by the rapidity and extent of economic dislocation doesn't match the history. Such a narrative is a whitewashing of a particular clique of superstar eco…

"The problem in the U.S. was much the same problem we've always had: free trade became synonymous to opposition to government intervention. All the free trade bills in the U.S. invariably included funding for re-education and R&D to help manage dislocation and build competitive advantages, but they were meager financially and suffocated by neglect. And that's because these measures were considered "government interve…

> Starting at the bottom of another career hierarchy at the age of 40 is a complete disaster, you will be out-competed by 22 year olds who cost alot less, are easier to train, have less grievances about a low salary, are okay with the bottom rung, and do not have huge expectations.

Only if those 40 year olds believe they're entitled to higher pay just because they're older. The number of available jobs in a given career hierarchy shrinks pretty quickly as you ascend, which means that most people won't rise very far. Start at the bottom rung, stay at the bottom rung for the rest of their life.

My mother lost her job as a factory worker (bottom rung) when Samsung stopped manufacturing CRTs in Germany. She was 50 at the time and retrained as a call center agent, working for the same pay as 22 year olds. She kept working there until her retirement, while new 22 year olds had to be trained every few months because they hadn't yet learned how to hold down a job. Talk about "out-competed".

> Even more than that, shifting X00,000 people from one career to another would flood the labor market and destroy wages. The whole thing makes literally no sense.

Only if they all retrain for the same job. Spread it over all industries that have room for growth and the effect becomes much less catastrophic.

Re: Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization

#103

Post by readams » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 8:39 PM UTC

Of course, the other side of this is billions of people outside the United States raised out of extreme poverty. Eventually, globalization means that everyone in the world has access to the same opportunities. The nationalist argument that workers in the us are better or more deserving of that high standard of living and those opportunities doesn't really stand up to much scrutiny here.

Re: Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization

#104

Post by jandrese » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 8:41 PM UTC

It seems to me that the big problem with Globalization is that we're only doing half of it. If we exported work but also exported working conditions then globalization would be a good thing.

Bringing all of the people of the world up to the first world standards. But instead we outsource only the work and not the working conditions so there's an enormous gap between what you can expect in the first world vs. third world. That gap ends up mostly as profit that is absorbed by the ultra-rich.

Globalization ends up being impossible in practice because there is no central world government dictating standards for all countries of the world, and opens up the system to exploit poor countries as they race to the bottom.

Re: Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization

#105

Post by repolfx » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 8:47 PM UTC

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #90

bryanlarsen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a strategy failed utterly in Canada. They moved a government department from Ottawa to Miramichi, New Brunswick for similar reasons. All the skilled bureaucrats used their reputations to get transfers to a different department so they wouldn't have to uproot their family, and the department was rebuilt around a core of incompetents. I'm sure the locals they hired weren't so incompetent, but rot starts from the t…

I don't think the good people of Miramichi are to blame for this. It's the people in Ottawa who wrote a blank check to Oracle/IBM for attempting to migrate a large part of the government software infrastructure to their incompatible system. Somehow, the contract was that billions would be disbursed to IBM/Oracle whether their system worked or not (it didn't). Also I don't think Oracle should be allowed to hide behind…

The Phoenix failure wasn't really a software failure, if I recall correctly. It was more that when everything moved to Miramichi the people who understood the byzantine government pay systems basically didn't follow and the result was people with no clue of what they wanted or how to do it being heavily involved. No software firm can succeed in those conditions.

Re: Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization

#106

Post by repolfx » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 8:49 PM UTC

aeternum wrote: post #37

ep103 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read an article once, that claimed when a Scandinavian country joined the EU, they expected significant job distortion as a result of free trade. So they literally moved government agencies from their current locations, to locations that they expected would be hardest hit. The end result was the shifting of thousands of government jobs from one location to another. Highly trained people in the old government center…

This seems like a great idea. It ensures that even if government efficiency is low, it is providing positive value. I'm surprised this concept isn't more widespread.

Usually it just means gutting the department that moves. The UK has been trying this with the BBC, forcibly relocating the organisation to the north of the country. It encodes a basic assumption that in government, skilled and experienced people are so unimportant you can just lose all of them (as very few people want to relocate to a place chosen specifically because it's fallen behind). Says a lot, really.

Re: Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization

#107

Post by jacobolus » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

khrbrt wrote: post #100

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, for those workers in "poor" countries, this is a step up . My wife can tell you what two months' work for $300 meant to subsistence farmers in Guatemala. They were happy to get it. You may say "Sure, they're poor and exploited, but that doesn't make it morally right for us to exploit them just a little less ". I agree, up to a point. But insisting on first-world working conditions (including pay) mean t…

The CIA under Eisenhower overthrew the government of Guatemala when trade unionists were elected on the promise of eight hour workdays and better conditions for field workers. What do you think the country would be like today if we hadn't killed the union leaders and installed a dictator friendly towards US business?

For one thing there wouldn’t have been a decades-long civil war leading up to a genocidal military dictator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemalan_Civil_War

> CIA under Eisenhower overthrew the government of Guatemala when trade unionists were elected on the promise of eight hour workdays and better conditions for field workers.

This isn’t quite the whole story. A significant proportion of Guatemalan land was owned by the United Fruit Company (whose leadership/ownership included significant overlap with Eisenhower’s administration†), but the company was not using the land. The Guatemalan government wanted to buy the unused land back from the company at the price they declared it to be worth on their tax forms. The company went to the US government and whined that their private property was being expropriated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_900

† “John Foster Dulles, who represented United Fruit while he was a law partner at Sullivan & Cromwell – he negotiated that crucial United Fruit deal with Guatemalan officials in the 1930s – was Secretary of State under Eisenhower; his brother Allen, who did legal work for the company and sat on its board of directors, was head of the CIA under Eisenhower; Henry Cabot Lodge, who was America's ambassador to the UN, was a large owner of United Fruit stock; Ed Whitman, the United Fruit PR man, was married to Ann Whitman, Dwight Eisenhower's personal secretary.”

Re: Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization

#108

Post by tomatotomato37 » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 8:52 PM UTC

harryh wrote: post #67

methodover wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sympathetic to that idea, to some extent. Foreign workers would indeed be happy to get a marginal increase in their income, even if those wages and working conditions are well below developed-country standards. But, then, aren't we just making a trade at that point? I will fire 100 local blue collar workers, and hire 100 foreign workers who will do their job for less. I hurt 100 people, help 100 people, and along…

It is generally thought of as immoral to rend one person in order to help one other. Not when it comes to buying things, which is what this situation is. Blue collar workers in the US (or other developed nations) don't have a moral demand on you to purchase their labor at the same rate forever. If someone across the street (or across an ocean) is selling the same product for less money it's perfectly fine to buy it f…

The thing is that US workers have a lower bound on the fee they can charge for their labor, due to minimum wage laws. Those laws were enacted because we as a country believe there's a moral duty to ensure a minimum quality of life for it's working citizens (and in extension humans in general). Letting industries who would historically underpay US workers to instead just underpay some other countries workers defeats the whole purpose of those minimum wage laws, causing a worse quality of life then if nothing was done at all. Countries that want to treat its citizens well need to reign in that globalist behavior.

Re: Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization

#109

Post by AndrewKemendo » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 8:54 PM UTC

deogeo wrote: post #31

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a consumer you are voting with those corporations by buying from them or using their services. It might not seem like it's a choice, because the plurality of consumers have made the choice to go along, so if you do otherwise you're in a small group. It's still a choice though. You either live the modern lifestyle, which includes (though reducing) consumption based on what could be classified in many cases slave la…

How nice. First subvert democracy through lobbying so they can offshore production, so the only 'choice' consumers have is go along with it, or live in the stone age. Then when consumers don't all retreat to caves and huts in the woods, claim this means they agree with and 'voted' for this course. Buying is not voting, and deceiving people into believing this has been one of capitalism's greatest successes.

Unfortunately history would indicate that actual slave labor, or something close to it, (high volume, low unit cost) is required to rapidly scale new technologies to the point that they are ubiquitous. This is invariant on the amount of subversion of democracy there is or not.

The choices are 1. Slow down 2. Use bad labor practices 3. Completely automate production. Nobody seems to want to do #1 and we're not advanced enough for #3

Re: Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization

#110

Post by bnjms » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 8:56 PM UTC

khrbrt wrote: post #100

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, for those workers in "poor" countries, this is a step up . My wife can tell you what two months' work for $300 meant to subsistence farmers in Guatemala. They were happy to get it. You may say "Sure, they're poor and exploited, but that doesn't make it morally right for us to exploit them just a little less ". I agree, up to a point. But insisting on first-world working conditions (including pay) mean t…

The CIA under Eisenhower overthrew the government of Guatemala when trade unionists were elected on the promise of eight hour workdays and better conditions for field workers. What do you think the country would be like today if we hadn't killed the union leaders and installed a dictator friendly towards US business?

I hate hearing this. I don't even understand how good unions are an inherently anti-conservative thing. I cannot understand why the US would fail to build up countries in its sphere of influence in order to encourage gratitude. A crutch can help you grow and recover or it can hobble you, and everything I've ever heard about our influence in central and south America has suggested we've hobbled them. -- I hope I'm just ignorant and wrong.