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by yongjik 2759 days ago
This would have made the oddest pro-Brexit argument ever.

"Sure it will personally suck for you the British farmer, but think about the benefit to the avocado farmers in Chile. Brexit for Chile!"

1 comments

It's not just the avocado farmers in Chile, it's also the avocado purchasers in the UK.
If they come from Chile then there is likely no tariff into the EU due to the FTA. Perhaps you could drop the FUD?

https://metro.co.uk/2018/09/25/brexit-mps-tweet-about-foreig...

I didn't bring up Chile, my parent did. Replace "Chile" in our comments with "arbitrary country X" if you prefer.
arbitrary country x, apart from all the ones that already have FTA with the EU I suppose.

It is complete FUD

If the society you live in today decided to expropriate all of the money and resources owned by a randomly selected 5% of the population, so that 5% of the population was instantly destitute, but then distributed those resources evenly to everyone else, would you consider that society better off, worse off, or pretty much the same as the day before that happened?
Stealing 5% of people's money is not OK.

Stopping 5% of people from stealing other people's money is a good thing, but might easily be confused with the first thing.

It's just a factual question.

And it illustrates a basic concept, which is that redistributing money isn't value-neutral. Some distributions are better for society than others.

You can't just say free trade takes money from this group and gives it to that group and perhaps ekes out a modest efficiency gain and conclude your analysis there.

It matters who wins and who loses, and by how much.