[cryptonector]

What I meant is that in mercantilist world you do have asymmetrical protectionism, and that has real-world effects that require more thought than simply standing by the free market position, because it's not a free market even if you try on your end.

[WalterBright]

There are no perfect free markets. But the closer you can get to them, the more beneficial they are.

Protectionism hurts yourself just like trade sanctions and embargoes hurt the other guy.

[Daishiman]

This just really isn't true empirically.

What ends up happening is that countries cannot jump start industries that are already established and competitive in other countries. For countries to get into the renewable energy game, for example, they need to subsidize local industry and put a good bit of government capital on the line to the get to a point where they're productive at globally acceptable levels.

Countries don't need to pick _the_ cheapest products from around the world; getting good-enough local work that provides high value-add and keeps foreign currency reserves from going overseas is something that's objectively preferred by most of the global population. Most people are most definitely willing to accept +/- 15% cost of living changes in order to live in places with good employment and quality tax-funded services and infrastructure over having cheap imported crap.

[WalterBright]

> This just really isn't true empirically.

But it happens every time.

> For countries to get into the renewable energy game, for example, they need to subsidize local industry and put a good bit of government capital on the line to the get to a point where they're productive at globally acceptable levels.

If it was profitable to invest the capital, there's plenty of capital eager for something profitable to invest in. Having the government forcibly extract tax money and use it to invest pretty much guarantees it will be a lousy investment.

Currently, Washington State imposed a massive gas tax of $.50/gallon. The state is investing a big chunk of that into hydrogen electrolysis plants. The only people who are going to make money off of this are the contractors getting rich off of the construction projects. The state is pretty much guaranteed to get a negative ROI off of it.