what do you think, Holla Forums?
Free Trade or Protectionism?
Noah Cox
Wyatt Evans
An economy has never developed its industrial base without protectionism. "Free Trade" is the demand of the powerful on the weak.
Zachary Morales
Meanwhile here's two studies demonstrating how terrible NAFTA is.
Adrian Miller
Oh boy this graph is realllyyyy helpful in determining real life economic policy (not).
Justin Young
Trade is great between two socialist nations. Free trade between capitalist nations just ramps up the exploitation.
Juan Lee
protectionism
Parker Johnson
Free trade allows the natural process of capitalism to continue. Protectionist policies only postpone the inevitable collapse of capitalism, which is a necessary thing to ensure the proper material conditions for revolutionary movements to thrive in.
Then again, all that extra value from those deadweight loss triangles will probably only go to the producer and his useless products. While it does allow for capitalism to build more means of production that can be taken over by us, it also means that there is a good possibility that the extra labor goes into making earth pies for bourgs.
Meanwhile, it is our job that we try to hoard as much military equipment as possible to make sure that a monopoly on violence and power is able to be overthrown when necessary.
Eli Taylor
The job isn't a priori yours. The fact that someone else was hired, doesn't mean that you lost something that didn't have in the first place. This ia Trump's fallacy with the illegal Mexicans as well.
But from a third-world perspective, their wages go up. E.g. China.
I thought socialism would totally destroy Capital. Now we want to hoard it in our national borders?
Can't argue with that.
Setting up redundant factories in every other country in the name of protectionism would be worse for the environment.
Imagine everyone making their own cars.
That's not always the case. China has awesome quality products now.
Jaxon Morales
Sorry m8 that was mathematically proven to be bullshit
Isaac Wilson
post proof
Jose Adams
im a bit conflicted. obviously free trade is beneficial to the bourgeoisie and we shouldnt support it, but it will make capitalism a lot more vulnerable to collapse, and we can use the chance to revolt, but protectionism is in the workers best interests in the short term.
Ryan Walker
free trade of course
free trade + unions is how we successfully achieve socialism
Gabriel Flores
Not that user, and I have little knowledge of economics,
but what if imports out price a country's productive sector, and the out priced workers go jobless, or worse, the government creates a bloated public sector to keep unemployment down? Not all work creates value.
Yes, but protectionism does not necessitate all industries having equal protection. Having a protected agriculture could keep a country self sufficient with food, but still relying on trade for other commodities.
Justin Harris
So short term win vs. accelerationism
Hunter Rogers
Matthew Wright
Ian Watson
protection would mean price controls and regulations that would take out the very producers of agriculture you want to keep and increase , and if you meant to incentive them, then the less regulated it is the better since they would profit more
the most you could do without hurting the production would be to cut taxes which is free trade anyway
Mason Torres
That doesn't add up to me.
I live in a country where the cost of labor is high and the land is hard to work. Farmers are heavily subsidized and still one of the least paid professions. If we implemented free trade on agricultural products almost all production would stop over night, and wilderness would overtake the farmlands in four years, making it unusable in event of a food shortage.
Maybe higher profits would incentive farmers in more fertile countries to increase their production and thous compensate for our stop of production. But that would have other negative effects.
Centralization of food production in the most fertile lands would make the global food stock more vulnerable to natural disasters, war and the like. Then there is the environmental effect of transporting the food over longer distances, the loss of culture and tradition, and the national decrease in wealth creating jobs.
Jayden Carter
This question implies the existence of both markets and states.
John Nelson
it's a literal non issue when workers control the means of production
unemployment is profitable to private corporations since wages are an expense so to minimize expense you find ways to lay people off or outsource… when business strategies to limit supply and maximize costs no longer exist and production is done for use-value unemployment would be a mere expense since you would not be utilizing resources but still paying for them
Nolan Hughes
well free trade takes you to the cheapest products road- youre talking about a whole different scenario, one in which theres a nationalist and political views involved
pay attention to where the capital goes in your country, why are the cost of labor high? is the government implementing a minimum wage system? thats already a burden on production that makes the salaries go up
idk where you live, maybe europe? but limiting production to just a geographical location will never be the cheapest option, there are zones which are simply not the best for some good, its like some landlocked country wanting to have a cheaper sea food than sea opened countries-its not possible.
Camden King
In manufacturing, at least, free trade has hurt workers in rich countries, helped workers in poor countries a little, and helped capitalists in both countries a lot. I think it can be fairly beneficial to both countries if they have similar standards of living and labor/environmental laws, but harmful to the working class in richer countries otherwise. China is a good example of this, they have little in the way of labor or environmental protection and were poor for quite awhile, and free trade with China hurt US workers. A study came out this year showing essentially this, which anyone who is not retarded can figure out.
This once again proves that economists are too dumb for pure mathematics or theoretical physics but smart enough to realize that they can make a decent living as high priests of the ruling class while still feeling superior to other social scientists.
Zachary Allen
Was the USSR Socialist
Leo Anderson
Protectionism for most things.
Robert Price
Also OP your graph is absolutely retarded to understand the problem when viewed from the perspective of two countries, rather than tariffs within a single economy. If we want our economy to grow at the detriment of the capitalists, taking a small loss and gaining more for our own is acceptable, even if it means the total sum with tarifs of the growth by both us and the capitalists would be higher than the sum with tarifs.
John Evans
Just an example: Reducing the import we get into our country actually improves our currency's value compared to other, granting us more purchasing power.
So if we limit imports on products that we could make ourselves, our nation now has more purchasing power for goods we can't produce. Don't import food, we will make our own, suffering a temporary loss in total welfare of the people, but once the food industry has been established to fill the market gap, so to speak, our import:export ratio is now better, allowing us to have a better trading position, since we don't rely on imports.
There is a reason why so many economists say that development aid is detrimental to the economy of the developing country. This is exactly why. In the short run, cheap or free food helps out the economy, but it destroys the market for local food, which means that the people of said country become dependant on imports, which means more of their GDP must be spend on importing things they could make themselves, depriving other sectors of the societal surplus that would otherwise exist.
Cooper Cooper
If I would have to summarize this:
Instead of pouring money into commodities from foreign countries, you instead shorten the population on goods for a while and instead invest that money into capital. This builds your economy, allowing you to buy more commodities later, or invest more into capital and compound that saving. Spending vs investing should not be a foreign concept to capitalists.