How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility • Hacker News Board

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#91

Post by 77777777 » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 6:33 PM UTC

Applejinx wrote: post #27

knuththetruth wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you’ve been downvoted. History from the 1990s onwards seemed to demonstrate that past a certain point, democracy becomes an obstacle which Capitalism has to overcome or devolve into crisis. If anything, the US is hemming more towards the authoritarian technocracy of China than away from it.

Absolutely. If you look at it in a game-theory sort of way it becomes obvious that capitalism proliferates in its most efficient manner, not in favor of other values like democracy, or the common good etc. Rules aren't rules, rules are further obstacles that capitalism as a large evolving system is there to evolve around. Most of what we see as rules are only suggestions if you've got enough capital, or things in pla…

I think in the end everyone gets pwned by Capitalism.

"Social Conservatives" often champion free markets while at the same time those free markets destroy social norms in order to open new markets and increase market utilization (LGBT industry, eschewing traditional gender roles in favor of a world where everyone works "like a man" and everyone can buy cosmetics "like a woman", etc...).

Socialists get bought off by cheap entertainment and a subsistence level of welfare, cutting their hopes of mobilizaing the working class off at the knees.

Social Justice Warrior types get support insofar as they promise to increase labor participation and drive down wages (this is how Diversity and Inclusion is financially justified), but in the end they will at best just succeed at integrating new people into the corporate structure without really making any grand changes to society at large.

List goes on. No one has been able to control capitalism with their ideology.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#92

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 8:04 PM UTC

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #87

leereeves wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By your definition of nationalism, Europe is simply replacing French/German/etc nationalism with EU nationalism. The EU already has a parliament, "federal" laws, and a single currency. They're building an EU army and discussing federal taxes. At what point do you call them a nation?

You are engaging in absurd double-think. Loosening restrictions on movement is not tightening restrictions on movement no matter how many mental hoops you try to jump through.

[deleted]

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#93

Post by leereeves » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 8:06 PM UTC

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #87

leereeves wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By your definition of nationalism, Europe is simply replacing French/German/etc nationalism with EU nationalism. The EU already has a parliament, "federal" laws, and a single currency. They're building an EU army and discussing federal taxes. At what point do you call them a nation?

You are engaging in absurd double-think. Loosening restrictions on movement is not tightening restrictions on movement no matter how many mental hoops you try to jump through.

This discussion is becoming too hostile for Hacker News. I'll make one more attempt to explain my point of view, then I'm out:

Loosening restrictions on select people is not loosening restrictions on everyone.

Vatican City, with their tightly controlled migration policy, is not the country with the most freedom of movement simply because they allow freedom of movement to carefully chosen people.

In the Vatican, for example, a given person either has a 100% chance of migration or a 0% chance. Israel has similar numbers. In the Schengen area, it's either a 100% chance or a very small chance.

Update:

Perhaps this will be clearer. Every free country grants total freedom of movement to some group of people. In Israel, this is Jewish people. In the United States, US citizens. In the Schengen area, citizens of the Schengen area.

What does that have to do with nationalism? Nationalism is a distinction between the treatment of in-group people and out-group people.

In the Schengen area, people from the Schengen area are the in-group.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#94

Post by jacobolus » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 10:20 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #67

cryptonector wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What could the U.S. have done about Tiananmen? Serious question. Military intervention would have been absolutely out of the question. U.S.-China trade back then was very small, so the U.S. had no leverage. The U.S. could not have armed a guerilla either. There was really nothing the U.S. could do about China in 1989.

> What could the U.S. have done about Tiananmen? Impose Cuba-style sanctions on China until they held free elections. It may not have changed their policy, but it would at least have shown we were serious about it. And knowing what we know now, it would obviously have had significant economic consequences over time.

That was basically US policy toward China in the 50s–60s. It was utterly ineffective.

US policy toward Cuba had much bigger impact because Cuba is a tiny island next to the North American continent, and being cut off from your obvious larger trading partner is more severe.

The US sanctions on Cuba didn’t have anything to do with free elections though, and their primary effect was entrenching the Cuban government while impoverishing the Cuban people.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#95

Post by Gibbon1 » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 10:53 PM UTC

jaggederest wrote: post #89

Gibbon1 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I mean is instead of slapping a carbon tax on gasoline you slap it on the car. So if a car is slated to emit 60 tons of CO2 during it's expected life you compute a excise tax based on 60 tons.

Right, but that's too broad. Some people will drive a car for a million miles, some people will drive it for ten thousand. It's better to tax the embodied carbon of manufacture and delivery of the car separately from the carbon emitted by the fuel, for example. Fuels, in particular, are easy to determine the carbon weight - just add it up!

The problem with imposing a tax on fuel is your punish people for decisions they made before you changed the policy tax regime. Where taxing new equipment doesn't. The former tends to result in a lot of political blowback.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#96

Post by knuththetruth » Sat, Aug 11, 2018, 12:50 AM UTC

77777777 wrote: post #91

Applejinx wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. If you look at it in a game-theory sort of way it becomes obvious that capitalism proliferates in its most efficient manner, not in favor of other values like democracy, or the common good etc. Rules aren't rules, rules are further obstacles that capitalism as a large evolving system is there to evolve around. Most of what we see as rules are only suggestions if you've got enough capital, or things in pla…

I think in the end everyone gets pwned by Capitalism. "Social Conservatives" often champion free markets while at the same time those free markets destroy social norms in order to open new markets and increase market utilization (LGBT industry, eschewing traditional gender roles in favor of a world where everyone works "like a man" and everyone can buy cosmetics "like a woman", etc...). Socialists get bought off by c…

It does seem to be the paperclip maximizer of ideologies.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#97

Post by RestlessMind » Sat, Aug 11, 2018, 1:57 AM UTC

shard972 wrote: post #49

RestlessMind wrote: post #42

The answer lies in Politics. If a multinational is ruining your beaches / water supply / air quality / whatever, use the power of government to apply regulations and taxes. One common argument against that is that a company will simply go to another place which offers friendlier regulations. In that case, good riddance. Now, if someone depends on those multinationals for a better living and have no options otherwise,…

Which society stands to become richer? The country that sold it's beaches to a foreign company, or the foreign country which operates the business and owns the profits? To the extent this is politics, I guess you could say it's a battle between liberalism which would see the situation as efficient and the result of free capitalistic action while a nationalist perspective would lead you to see the beaches are apart of…

When played smart, the answer can be both - the country willing to pollute its environment and the country which is outsourcing the "pollution". For example, China and the USA.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#98

Post by TheCoelacanth » Sat, Aug 11, 2018, 2:55 AM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #93

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are engaging in absurd double-think. Loosening restrictions on movement is not tightening restrictions on movement no matter how many mental hoops you try to jump through.

This discussion is becoming too hostile for Hacker News. I'll make one more attempt to explain my point of view, then I'm out: Loosening restrictions on select people is not loosening restrictions on everyone. Vatican City, with their tightly controlled migration policy, is not the country with the most freedom of movement simply because they allow freedom of movement to carefully chosen people. In the Vatican, for e…

This line of argument is absurd. You cannot become more restrictive by becoming less restrictive.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#99

Post by perl4ever » Sat, Aug 11, 2018, 3:03 AM UTC

baud147258 wrote: post #72

perl4ever wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that immigration helps raise wages. A multinational company is going to employ people in India regardless of US immigration policy. But if those people can come to the US and make 5x the money, then even if they are making somewhat less than other Americans, they are improving (i.e. raising wages in) the global market for labor that we have to compete in. Given that wages in India and other places are…

According to you, immigration would help raise wages globally, but since it introduces lower-paid worker in a national/local labor market, it would reduce wages at this level. And I don't think we're working in a global market for labor, the supply is too unelastic to be a market.

"According to you, immigration would help raise wages globally, but since it introduces lower-paid worker in a national/local labor market"

The labor market is not national or local for a multinational company. Hence, as I wrote, if people are being underpaid in some countries, it is in a multinational's interest to keep them in those countries to exploit, and not let them immigrate to where they could make more money.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#100

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Aug 11, 2018, 4:53 AM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #94

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What could the U.S. have done about Tiananmen? Impose Cuba-style sanctions on China until they held free elections. It may not have changed their policy, but it would at least have shown we were serious about it. And knowing what we know now, it would obviously have had significant economic consequences over time.

That was basically US policy toward China in the 50s–60s. It was utterly ineffective. US policy toward Cuba had much bigger impact because Cuba is a tiny island next to the North American continent, and being cut off from your obvious larger trading partner is more severe. The US sanctions on Cuba didn’t have anything to do with free elections though, and their primary effect was entrenching the Cuban government whil…

> US policy toward Cuba had much bigger impact because Cuba is a tiny island next to the North American continent, and being cut off from your obvious larger trading partner is more severe.

The US is China's largest trading partner and the relative size of China's economy was much smaller at the time. Moreover, other democratic countries could have adopted the same policy which would have given it real teeth.

And the sanctions did nothing to entrench the government. The government was already entrenched. If the people there don't like the policy then they know how to end it -- change their government.