Comparative advantage and when to blow up your island
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Re: Comparative advantage and when to blow up your island
#2What about strategies that involve blowing up the bridge instead of one of the islands? This seems much more real world feasible.
Re: Comparative advantage and when to blow up your island
#3What about strategies that involve blowing up the bridge instead of one of the islands? This seems much more real world feasible.
Because the bridge is a metaphor for trade so thats the same thing as just choosing not to trade.
Re: Comparative advantage and when to blow up your island
#4What about strategies that involve blowing up the bridge instead of one of the islands? This seems much more real world feasible.
> What about strategies that involve blowing up the bridge
This sounds like the cornerstone of Trump's trade policy. "Give me what I want, or I will end all trade between us."
In theory, it works. In practice, you end up with a Dr Strangelove dystopian outcome.
Re: Comparative advantage and when to blow up your island
#5If I understand correctly, one reason there seem to be so many results for zero-sum games is that they have defined solutions, whereas in other situations, a mathematically valid strategy is to be a jerk ("blow up the island") and attempt to take the lion's share[1] of the surplus for oneself.
One of the early game theory papers considers two people with radios, parachuted onto a grid, who must rendezvous. It derives a theoretical strategy: broadcast one's location, then destroy one's radio, forcing the other player to do all the walking.
Bonus clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yfXgu37iyI
@ 3:42 whew, still there: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_radio_fourfm all OK, Boomers!
@ 3:55 unlike the House of Windsor during '14-'18, Kongo-Müller didn't bother to change his name: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24423024 (esp. 53:40-56:15)
Those who prefer their skulls virtual are advised to avoid 30:10-33:30 and instead regard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU&t=57
Re: Comparative advantage and when to blow up your island
#6What about strategies that involve blowing up the bridge instead of one of the islands? This seems much more real world feasible.
> What about strategies that involve blowing up the bridge
The article rules those out by presenting scenarios in which there is always some advantage to trade. In any such scenario, neither party has any incentive to blow up the bridge, since there is always some way for each party to improve their situation by using the bridge to trade, compared to what their situation would be if the bridge did not exist.
In the real world, there are cases where there is no advantage to trade, usually because one or more of the "complexities" described in section III of the article applies. The obvious one, of course, is "there might be more than two people"--in the real world, there are always more than two parties with whom potential trades can be made (this is true even if we consider the "parties" to be nations instead of individuals), and as the article notes, in that case there can be scenarios where at least one party will gain nothing from trade.
Re: Comparative advantage and when to blow up your island
#7What about strategies that involve blowing up the bridge instead of one of the islands? This seems much more real world feasible.
> What about strategies that involve blowing up the bridge The article rules those out by presenting scenarios in which there is always some advantage to trade. In any such scenario, neither party has any incentive to blow up the bridge, since there is always some way for each party to improve their situation by using the bridge to trade, compared to what their situation would be if the bridge did not exist. In the r…
But can't you leverage cutting off trade in the same way that he talks about threatening to blow up your island, and it wouldn't result in total loss of everything (which any rational player would see through as a bluff, as opposed to losing trade which would be a negative but still survivable).
IE think about the modal logic intersected with the game theory, no one will believe that you will blow up your own island, but they may believe that you will blow up the bridge.
Re: Comparative advantage and when to blow up your island
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What about strategies that involve blowing up the bridge The article rules those out by presenting scenarios in which there is always some advantage to trade. In any such scenario, neither party has any incentive to blow up the bridge, since there is always some way for each party to improve their situation by using the bridge to trade, compared to what their situation would be if the bridge did not exist. In the r…
But can't you leverage cutting off trade in the same way that he talks about threatening to blow up your island, and it wouldn't result in total loss of everything (which any rational player would see through as a bluff, as opposed to losing trade which would be a negative but still survivable). IE think about the modal logic intersected with the game theory, no one will believe that you will blow up your own island,…
> can't you leverage cutting off trade in the same way that he talks about threatening to blow up your island
If you are the only possible party the other party can trade with, then blowing up the bridge and blowing up your own island are, as far as the other party is concerned, equivalent, yes. So if there is any benefit to the other party in trading with you, they have an incentive to have that trade available to them, and hence to do whatever it takes to have you not blow up either your own island or the bridge.
However, if there are any other parties besides you that can be traded with, that is no longer the case, because you not being there just means they go trade with someone else.
Another thing to note is that the article's assumption of non-violence, which basically means neither party will do anything to harm anything that isn't their own property, also rules out blowing up the bridge, since the bridge, by hypothesis, is not the property of either party. A better analogy to withholding trade in the article's scenario would be something like building an impenetrable wall at your end of the bridge.
Re: Comparative advantage and when to blow up your island
#9What bothers me in today's world is that we ignore how some countries achieve their comparative advantage.
Why did Hershey's chocolate close the factory not too far from where I grew up, and move the manufacturing to Mexico? Well, labor is cheap there because there are no unions, few health and safety regulations, few workers' rights groups. That makes it much cheaper to operate.
Why can China manufacture clothing cheaply? Well, they have hundreds of thousands of Uighur prisoners being 're-educated' via forced labor.
And while I don't disagree that for some countries that are trying to move up in development, so-called 'sweat shops' can represent a stepping stone forward (2 generations ago, South Korea had plenty of them), the question is how long that's an acceptable excuse?
In my opinion, we need trade rules that explicitly tax and tariff those countries who are only finding comparative advantages through exploitation and unethical activity.
Re: Comparative advantage and when to blow up your island
#10What bothers me in today's world is that we ignore how some countries achieve their comparative advantage. Why did Hershey's chocolate close the factory not too far from where I grew up, and move the manufacturing to Mexico? Well, labor is cheap there because there are no unions, few health and safety regulations, few workers' rights groups. That makes it much cheaper to operate. Why can China manufacture clothing ch…
in that case the government would just profit from the forced labor via additional tax income