i applaud your willingness to publish this content under your real name, and also understand your real name is closely associated with your software service. i understand that gives you a certain amount of power that other employees, say of Apple, may not have. kudos to you for using it fruitfully - sincerely. i am sure this will come across as tin foily, but i would advise you to monitor your digital assets and mayb…
The very worst case, he'll be denied access to China (and possibly HongKong) but otherwise he's fine. China is more interested in Chinese living in China and not some western somewhere.
China
261–270 of 497 posts
Re: China
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
Umm...economists know all about this. I taught international trade classes out in North Carolina. Talked to numerous people affected by the loss of textile manufacturing. There's a massive literature, going back decades, on the topic. I wish there was a way to raise the level of discussion on HN. Instead, completely uninformed comments like this get upvoted.
Perhaps my comment was a bit dismissive, but I think the general point stands: academic economists don’t live in the places that have been economically ruined by offshoring jobs. University professors are white-collar professionals and don’t live in run-down, economically-dead towns. It’s easy to draw abstract analyses from afar, but without actual hands-on experience, you end up with unexpected side effects - like t…
That is, it's not the economists job to predict that the demolishment of the rust belt will lead to Trump's election; their job is to predict that the demolishment of the rust belt will bolster the coastal cities, and improve the health of the American economy in general.
Also notably, towns come and go based the industries they support -- it has happened in the past, and will happen in the future. It's simply the inevitable outcome of an ever-evolving economy. How to mitigate the impact of that fact is not the really job of the economist.
And economists are not expected to live in the towns they discuss.. the local politician is intended to represent the local concerns. If he's failing to do so, or failing to have any impact, the economist can merely say "this is what will probably happen, if you do this and don't do that", and nothing will happen.
Re: China
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because he's criticizing liberals and most people on HN are liberals. Most censorship ("hate speech" included) is code for shutting your political opponents up. HN makes this really easy by making comments hard to read by removing contrast with the background as they get voted down; post something too much against the grain and it'll get flagged and hidden by default. When you hand users the power to shut those with…
Paul Graham: I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness. It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of so…
Re: China
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not just China. It started with Japan, and even without China, it will continue in Pakistan, Indonesia, and Vietnam, and eventually it will be replaced by automation.
So we know international trade is a thing and we know specialization is a thing. We know economies will over time become more value add and go up the chain. That’s not a problem if we put in place policies and regulations that put our workers on even footing with foreign workers. Benefits, protections (OSHA), anti-dumping, market-based pay (no institutional labor), IP protections, even access to markets, etc. that is…
Re: China
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US has always valued "principle" over actual results. In Iraq, Saddam was "evil", so he had to go, even though it would leave the entire country in the power vacuum and destroy the livelihoods of the average Iraqi. Ditto for Gaddafi in Libya. This post is much the same way. A poorer China is only going to deteriorate their human rights. A wealthier China is going to crave for more freedom. This happened in South…
"A wealthier China is going to crave for more freedom." We've been testing that theory for decades with negative results. Maybe it works other places, but it doesn't seem to be working in China.
Re: China
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty disingenuous don't you think? We all know trump says a lot of bullshit and contradictory things. He isn't Obama who was really good with his words. But if all you have is trump saying "good strong leader", then you don't have much. Show actions not words.
Trump abandoned the TPP which would have put actual pressure on China in favor of this visible trade war which is nothing more than a tax on American consumers.
Chinese economy is definitely struggling. I don't buy the argument that the trade wars do not work. They hurt both sides. Question is who does it hurt more?
It feels like you haven't thought of it in a game theoretic perspective. In the classical prisoner paradox, the two prisoners gain the most by collaboration. But if one of the prisoner shows no good faith collaboration, it might be necessary for the other prisoner to also stop putting their faith in the uncollaborative one.
Re: China
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
The logic behind opening things up with China (including allowing them to buy American companies) was that as they become economically successful, they would be more open to things like democracy. At what point do you realize you failed and close the barn door?
This assume the goal for China is democracy, and the one the west set for them. If they failed, we must destroy their economy, take their people into poverty, because the barn door must be closed. This narrative basically can be taken verbatim by the CCP as propaganda material. “The west didn’t like our political system that made great economical progress, and they will try to destroy your livelihood. By the way, the…
Re: China
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps my comment was a bit dismissive, but I think the general point stands: academic economists don’t live in the places that have been economically ruined by offshoring jobs. University professors are white-collar professionals and don’t live in run-down, economically-dead towns. It’s easy to draw abstract analyses from afar, but without actual hands-on experience, you end up with unexpected side effects - like t…
Your comment seems very anti-intellectual, which is surprising to find on HN. Academics do not need to live in a place in order to study it rigorously. Not being blasé, but the rust-belt is the trade-off for globalization. The US asked the rest of the world to open up their markets for American goods and services and promised to do the same.
The bargain of cheaper goods in return for us moving up the value chain may be good for GDP, but we have left tens of millions behind in the process, and they are pissed.
I am pro free-trade, but we need to come up with a system that more equally distributes the gains. You can't kick millions of people out of work, leave them to fend for themselves and not expect massive societal issues.
Re: China
#269The best remedy is to undermine the Great Firewall. And the easiest to hide censored content* in sites that are not filtered (like this one). Just hide it well enough that Baidu etc. cannot get to it.
*: That can include proxies to news sites, facebook etc.
Re: China
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article focuses on human rights abuses which I think is a cogent criticism of China-US trade. On the economics issue though, readers should know he disagrees with economists, who nearly universally agree that trade with China benefits Americans as a whole, with the caveat that there are concentrated losses in certain populations. Economists are highly certain on this, with uncharacteristically few people respondi…
> On the economics issue though, readers should know he disagrees with economists, who nearly universally agree that trade with China benefits Americans as a whole, with the caveat that there are concentrated losses in certain populations. The thing is: economists are hardly unbiased and neutral. Their theories are far from scientific truth, and typically embed significant political content. For instance: "benefit" c…
The main benefit that they give for Americans is that everything became cheaper. We can buy cheaper phones, appliances, cars, clothing, and household goods. But that's exactly what most of these things are - cheaper. We're importing a vast quantity of crappy junk, exporting untold pollution and human suffering onto factory workers and laborers in China, and hollowing out the American middle class in the process.
When presented with evidence about the declining quality and huge externalities of imported goods, they hand-wave about rational actors and price discovery and how consumers will just select for the products that minimize heavy metal pollution in some far off mine in rural China. There's similar hand-waving about how Americans will simply find new jobs when all the factories in Ohio automate or close. When products die more frequently because they're not engineered for durability or serviceability, they hand wave again about how consumers are making informed decisions to maximize their utility at the time of purchase.
The truth is a lot of this was a great con with a thin veneer of respectable economics on it. A few of the economists were in on the con, but most of them were taken for a ride. There were a few warning us all along about market failures, wealth inequality, disruption of rapid globalization, and unchecked externalities, but most just wanted in on the money.