51–60 of 110 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
coke gets delivered around the world in barrels concentrated. only water is added in factories.
This is a nice legend about the secret recipe. However production differs oflver the world. I.e. I'm the US the sweetener is high fructose corn syrup, while Europe uses Sycrose.
(Conversely, New England has a variety of local "sodas". I do not hesitate to try those when I am in that area. New England is not India.)
When State screwed the customers and removed the choice to buy Coke, they bought other stuff. Some investigative journalism!
What does that tell me about whether customers were better off? Nothing. Maybe they had to pay more for the same or the same price for inferior substitutes.
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" You will not find a single example of any country becoming developed following free trade except for island nations like Singapore" Canada, Australia, New Zealand and in reality, the US as well. The US has always been pretty open. But yes, if a nation is in shambles, it may very well make sense to make major strategic investments for the national good, but ultimately, it can't last. Korea, Japan etc. would be much…
New Zealand has fallen further and further behind its nearest neighbor over the time it's taken a hard-line free-trade position.
Australia has major advantages when it comes to natural resources and geographic proximity to Asia. There's also major structural issues with the Australian economy with significant agitation at present for major taxation and industrial relations reform.
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Latin america and even india are proofs that "pure" protectionism does not work. Even China is an example of free trade working. China opened up massively , reduced customs, reduced costs of doing business etc for 3 decades before moving towards more restrictive and more protectionist policies. After learning as much as possible from foreign corporations that flocked to China. Even now, free trade would be much more…
Latin America is an example how the "free market" theory as espoused by the washington consensus is very bad for developing nations. Latin America is the region that most closely follows the washington consensus and they have suffered for this mightily for this over the post ww2 years. There were little spurts of protectionism in argentina and brasil but those happened only around the 2000s and only as a reaction aft…
On the contrary. Brazil and Argentina are super protectionists and never had a free market economy in the last decades. Free market means entering product from other markets with a near zero tariff. For example, the price of a notebook in theses markets is 2x the price in US, and always worked like that. For an Argentinian a top of the line 13" MacBook Pro in US at USD 2k is cheap because in Argentina that will cost more than USD 4k. There were arbitrary cases (e.g. clothes) where in the 90s the imports from China broke local factories but never a free market economy but an arbitrary market economy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Latin america and even india are proofs that "pure" protectionism does not work. Even China is an example of free trade working. China opened up massively , reduced customs, reduced costs of doing business etc for 3 decades before moving towards more restrictive and more protectionist policies. After learning as much as possible from foreign corporations that flocked to China. Even now, free trade would be much more…
Latin America is an example how the "free market" theory as espoused by the washington consensus is very bad for developing nations. Latin America is the region that most closely follows the washington consensus and they have suffered for this mightily for this over the post ww2 years. There were little spurts of protectionism in argentina and brasil but those happened only around the 2000s and only as a reaction aft…
I also should've been more clear, what I'm talking about is more free movement of goods than the libertarian definifion of free markets. You can import and export goods in China pretty easily, but it's a nightmare in countries like Argentina. You are (or were, until recently) also relatively safer in china, when you don't have to worry about sudden anti-business measures, tariffs, or outright death by targeted regulations
Also, protectionism in south america has a very long history [0], and was already very strongly enforced much earlier than the 2000s. The concept of protecting "Infant industry" is ingrained in much of the region's recent history. And again, the countries that are doing better right now in latin america have mode liberal trade policies. I don't understand how it's not outright obvious that latin america has shot itself in the foot multiple times with very inefficient, very populist protectionist policies that made competitiveness impossible and commodities/primary goods the only productive sectors.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a nice legend about the secret recipe. However production differs oflver the world. I.e. I'm the US the sweetener is high fructose corn syrup, while Europe uses Sycrose.
And in Mexico uses cane sugar.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Latin america and even india are proofs that "pure" protectionism does not work. Even China is an example of free trade working. China opened up massively , reduced customs, reduced costs of doing business etc for 3 decades before moving towards more restrictive and more protectionist policies. After learning as much as possible from foreign corporations that flocked to China. Even now, free trade would be much more…
I think you’ve made an argument for free trade, but your examples and logic don’t refute the value of protectionism. China is a ridiculously protectionist state - people in the west had theorized that the market would force China to more opennness and democracy back in the day. China instead found a way to run a market with Chinese characteristics - a dual contract system where the English contract holds little power…
Still, none of what has been accomplished in China could've been possible with very high tariffs, obsession in homegrown industry before acquiring expertise, and obsession with policies that have always failed but still sound good to the electorate. All of which are characteristic of India, Argentina, Egypt, etc. And I'd argue that China is better when it comes to free movement of trade than India even if it's much worst in almost every other type of freedom.
People like to pretend that protectionism is such a bad thing. But Western nations built themselves through protectionism, it's something China has been doing to great success and the Asian tiger economies (primarily South Korea) did as well. After all, there's only so much you can do for your population if you never ensure a steady supply of high quality jobs that provide a path into the middle class, and you don't…
This is wrong, misguided and naive. International trade when done with effective reciprocity and managing the trade deficit, can lead to competition on a larger scale, better outcome for consumers and specialization in particular aspect of manufacturing or services. Even domestically, specialization is how human species became to me. If humans continued to be inwards looking and never engaged in barter-trade or any k…
Related thought experiment: What if the aliens were 1000 years ahead in patenting everything (in a way which didn't expire), then forced their IP regime on Earth, extracting IP rent for everything, since it would _only_ make sense to trade with them?