[quantumofmalice]

Meanwhile economists STILL bang on about ricardian free trade while, out the other side of their mouth, talking gleefully about the fading usefulness, way of life and, ultimately, existence of the people whose communities were destroyed by their recommendations.

[tfehring]

I don't disagree, but I also don't think it's appropriate to say that globalization and free trade should be avoided just because they've harmed those communities - globalization just needs to occur alongside policy changes that offset the localized harm that it does.

At its current level of globalization, the US is at a point where it stands to benefit significantly in aggregate from further globalization [0]. The problem is that the benefits of globalization disproportionately accrue to the wealthy, both in aggregate and at the US's current level of globalization [1].

IMO, the best approach is to "grow the pie" by promoting globalization and free trade and then implement distributional policies domestically to ensure that no one gets screwed over. Most advocates of globalization would likely say the same. The issue is that in practice, that increase in globalization has occurred, but domestic policy has been regressive rather than progressive in terms of its impact on wealth inequality.

[0] https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2018/03/13/The..., page 23 of linked PDF

[1] Same source, page 26

[cleandreams]

This doesn't work, as shown by the last 30 years. It requires not only wiser elites than the ones we've got but also real political power for working people. "Ordinary" middle class working people have much less political representation than they did 40 years ago and there is no improvement in sight.

[taurath]

Campaign finance reform is needed before there can be any significant priority shift in the US from the wealthy elite and corporations to actual people.

[ende]

I'm not so sure about that. I'm a big advocate of electoral reform, but in the aftermath of an election where arguably the two most successful candidates were either self-funded or grass roots micro-funded, I'm having a hard time being convinced that campaign finance reform is the number one problem.

The larger problem seems to be that our political institutions are captive to a hyper-polarized two party institution that lacks the degrees of freedom to provide legitimate representation to society's myriad facets and interests. Any dualistic system is naturally going to orient itself in opposition to its other half, to the marginalization of all other considerations. The key to effective electoral reform is finding ways to fundamentally change the processes from which structural bipartisanship emerges from. Practically speaking this means increasing political diversity through non-partisan primaries, ranked choice voting, proportional representation, and purging the entrenchment of the two national parties from election commissions and similar bodies.

Transforming the political court from a 2-sided chess match to a multiplayer game is a necessary condition for realizing the true expressive power of a democratic society over concentrated interests. Such conditions have been the key to the establishment and normalization of wealth equalizing institutions in many of the European democracies, for example.

[taurath]

What keeps 2 parties going? Money. If an independent or third party candidate had as much “fundraising” power as a major party candidate you’d see a lot more diversity.

[tfehring]

Trump's victory and Bernie's popularity in the last presidential election seem like strong evidence that non-elites have more political power than it's often claimed. And I don't think policy changes that would benefit working-class Americans harmed by globalization, like job creation programs or expansion of the earned income tax credit, are any less politically viable than the tariffs that were passed in recent months.

[coldtea]

>I don't disagree, but I also don't think it's appropriate to say that globalization and free trade should be avoided just because they've harmed those communities - globalization just needs to occur alongside policy changes that offset the localized harm that it does.

Why does it "need to occur"?

For example eating local produce is better for the environment than eating stuff that has been transported for 1000s of miles, with the respective carbon footprint. And that's just an example from an environmental perspective.

[slavik81]

There is no local produce in winter. The only fruits and vegetables available would be those that could be be stored for months without spoilage. I'd be eating potatoes and corn for 8 months of the year.

We could grow just about anything indoors year-round, but it's much better for both the environment and my wallet to grow crops in places where we don't need to enclose, light and heat them.

[coldtea]

>There is no local produce in winter

Depends on the country -- and region of the country. There are countries that sport different climates and micro-climates. And there is stuff that thrives during the winter as well. And if it's really needed, we've had greenhouses for ages.

But that's part of the proposition: don't eat out of season stuff, even if it means changing the diet in an annual cycle (which, e.g. tons of Italians has no problem doing -- even if it means no, of much fewer tomatoes in winter).

[tpm]

And even that example does not have to be true. Carbon footprint of spanish tomatoes imported into the UK can be lower than of locally produced ones.

[coldtea]

Never lower than not eating them -- or not eating them out of season though. Or, in other words, with promoting self-sustenance.

[tfehring]

That sentence of my last comment may be unclear, so let me rephrase - to the extent that globalization occurs, it needs to coincide with policy changes that offset the localized harm that it would otherwise cause.

While this isn't the point I was attempting to make in the sentence that you quoted, I also tend to think that increased globalization should occur, at least at the margin. But to your point, there may be specific sectors in which globalization is harmful in net, and externalities do need to be considered.

[graeme]

There's a credible case to be made that the shipping container did more to kill manufacturing jobs than any trade agreement. The container reduced shipping costs far more than lack of tariffs.

It's also likely that America could not have maintained its standard of living by walling itself off from this new technical development. The rest of the world would have continued to trade without America.

[nostrademons]

The shipping container also dramatically changed the geography of international trade, redirecting shipping away from shallow-draft ports (like in the Great Lakes, New England, or much of the American South) and from ports in heavily urbanized areas (like San Francisco or Manhattan) toward a small number of megaports like Seattle, Oakland, Long Beach, New Jersey, Houston, and Hampton Roads. When the old port was close to a new megaport (SF -> Oakland, Manhattan -> New Jersey), the city shifted from trade to financial services. When no major deep-draft container port was nearby (Great Lakes), the area's economy tended to whither and die, at leas relative to past glory.

[tannhaeuser]

AFAIK containers where invented in the US.

[overeater]

Every economist talk or research project I've seen has been the equivalent of an undergrad data science project but they get access to some unique dataset that the public doesn't have and wear a suit. That's about it. I don't know why they're so overpaid, because like the grandparent post says, it's not a science, but a social science. Economics has basically gone in a circle the past century, while actual science and engineering has made immense progress. Economists still haven't answered any questions conclusively.

[pessimizer]

> Economics has basically gone in a circle the past century

The economics profession has generally become one paid for its conclusions, not for its research. There are very few people working in mainstream, evidence-based economics anymore, and I don't think they're exceptions, they're just working for people whose personal interests happen to coincide with evidence-based theory. If the theory and the backers diverge, the economists will hopefully find new backers, because the backers will definitely find new economists who deliver the answers they want.

> actual science and engineering has made immense progress

I don't believe so. It's pretty much the same as economics. Most studies are wrong, and the review/reward system in science is all screwed up. We've generally been coasting on the invention of the transistor for a long time, and benefiting from their getting smaller and smaller. Once we've hit the hard limit with that, we can ride parallelism to squeeze a large amount of additional performance - hopefully enough to make a few more algorithms that have been around for 70 years have some pragmatic usefulness, but I think we're close to the end of what transistors are going to give us.

The best thing we can do for science is to get rid of the perverse incentives that cause bad science, eradicate accepted bad science, and mine the good science that will come to light after that uncovering. That might get us another good 100 years without a major discovery.