Why is it unfair trade if it truly costs less to make something,

at some point I will write a small book about how spending a month in India made me more libertarian/classically liberal/Adam Smithian/capitalist pig or something like that

short version:
- lower labor costs in developing countries, so it does indeed cost less to make things
- cost of living is indeed somewhat lower in those countries, or can be
- but there's no free lunch: those labor costs are lower in real terms, and the standard of living is lower

there's a huge reserve army of unemployed people in those places ("shithole countries"), they just need jobs. and any job, however low-paying, is better than no job in a place were food-truck works make 50 INR a day.

*food truck workers, oops

2025-03-08 20:17 from LoanShark

Why is it unfair trade if it truly costs less to make something,

at some point I will write a small book about how spending a month in

India made me more libertarian/classically liberal/Adam
Smithian/capitalist pig or something like that

short version:
- lower labor costs in developing countries, so it does indeed cost

less to make things
- cost of living is indeed somewhat lower in those countries, or can

be
- but there's no free lunch: those labor costs are lower in real

terms, and the standard of living is lower

there's a huge reserve army of unemployed people in those places

("shithole countries"), they just need jobs. and any job, however

low-paying, is better than no job in a place were food-truck works make

50 INR a day.

To be honest, there are two lectures about this.

First things first. Counterintuitively, free trade is the solidarian, progressive thing to do. I would rather have a big country buy all the cereals and vegetables my valley produces rather than send us "aid" funds.
In fact I am glad I can work for an American company that pays me American rates so they can get services that are not on high suply in America as far as I understand. That is much better than sending me a third-world-support check paid by taxpayers and then have the American company understaffed.


Now, I understand the problem comes when Americans buy foreigner wares they could be producing themselves, because American product is ten times more expensive. As I have said elsewhere, this points at structural problems within American more often than not. If producing a tomato in America is more expensive than producing it overseas and hauling it over across the ocean, then something is wrong in the American supply chain.

On the other hand, there is the argument to be made that sometimes your international trade partners are traitorous motherfuckers that deserve to be nuked. Europe is the first example I can think of. More than half of Europe is, from a cultural point of view, openly Anti-American, and their firms are so heavily subsidized via European funds paid with fraudulent means (such as debt bonds, or hyper-depriced crappy fiat money) that it does not make much sense to openly deal with Europe, from a geopolitical perspective.

Honestly, I think in commerce such as in life, the best strategy is to have a close network of supporting partners and then try to branch out and reach new friends as often as possible, but knowing everybody is a motherfucker until proven otherwise.

First things first. Counterintuitively, free trade is the solidarian,

progressive thing to do. I would rather have a big country buy all the

cereals and vegetables my valley produces rather than send us "aid"
funds.

Yup.

With regards to Europe, this is all just off-the-cuff, so take it with a grain of salt. They're mostly a high-labor-cost region, for all the reasons you mention.

(They sit there on their loathsome spotty behinds, squeezing blackheads, and not caring a tinker's cuss for the... **AHEM, never mind**)

WTO rules are byzantine, and I don't pretend to understand them, but trading on WTO terms means committing to less tariffs or face the consequences etc


I don't pretend to know to what extent Europe is gaming that system (although Volkswagen springs to mind immediately.)

Long story short, I'm more worried about competition from developing countries--not from the Greeks.

Long story short, I'm more worried about competition from developing

countries--not from the Greeks.

Fair enough.

Take it witha grain of salt, but as far as I understand, anything medium sized is done with government/state/county/province funds. This is true to the point an American company operating in Europe might do so leeching funds from the administration and in fact I have heard some European headquarters for American IT exist as a way to get free Euros.

The main problem with this approach is that companies created under these regimes don't need to work well. This leads to scenarios in which, let's say, a politician decides to subsidize horse milk, every farmer and his uncle starts breeding horses like crazy, and when the politician's plan fails to achieve its objectives, the funding is cut and there are hundreds of horse farms left in the dust.

At which point it sucks to be a horse in such bankrupt farm, unless you end up being in the 0.001% which gets purchased at a discount by a short, fat, bearded guy with a hat, suspenders and a Columbo-style trench coat. For example.


So well, I kind of buy your idea of not taking the eurozone as a threat XD