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Comment by quantumofmalice | Hacker News Reader

Simplistic ricardian arguments for free trade ignore production dynamics over time, the asymmetry between the mobility of labor and capital, productivity infrastructure, global externalities such as ocean and atmospheric poisoning, asymmetries in labor and environmental standards, etc.

I think at this point everyone capable of doing so understands that international trade has benefits. I would prefer if the intellectual class in the west recognized and reflected on the costs that the middle and lower classes in the west, in particular, have paid for it.

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> I would prefer if the intellectual class in the west recognized and reflected on the costs that the middle and lower classes in the west, in particular, have paid for it. reply

Cry me a river. Those lower and middle classes in the west were built on the back of international trade, I mean back when said international trade was mostly from Western nations to more undeveloped ones (of which my country was then part of). One of the oldest (and most renowned) streets from the Eastern-European capital from where I'm writing this comment is named after the German city of Leipzig, which was providing most of the high-end merchandise back in the 1600s and the 1700s. There's a reason why the West has all the palaces, castles and other expensive stuff built from the 1400s up to the early 20th century, which expensive stuff mainly lacks from the rest of the world, and that reason is international trade. Asking us to stop international trade now that we've started to approach the West in terms of expensive stuff is pure hypocrisy (some would call it economic colonialism). Also, see Fernand Braudel's books, especially his "The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernand_Braudel#La_Méditerrané...)

I know that is the standard history, I took economics at Berkeley and was taught all that. I simply don't believe that's the major factor. I think productive capacity and innovation are more important than international trade, beyond a certain scale.

I do cry for the middle class and lower classes in the west, and for the beset upon labor of the third world. It worries me greatly: my class lives very well, but friends and family that didn't win the IQ lottery are falling apart.

Nicely put. I’d rephrase part of your last sentence:

IQ + opportunity lottery

'The west' being US, I imagine? The Nordics and western Europe have a more equal society with a much larger part of society getting by comfortably than the US. Perusing HN I am often amazed at the implicit cultural differences within the west. How your employer treats you (US: at will employment, more like tenure in many western European countries), how we view (access to) healthcare and -insurance, heck a hundred things that make our day to day way of looking at the world vastly different.

Plenty of big palaces and castles in China and Japan too, for what it's worth.

> In the case of politicians opposed to international trade, the arguments put forward vary a lot, from the subtle to the grotesque, but all have in common the deflection of responsibility for domestic policy failures to external forces as the cause of those failures.

I would propose that 99.99% of "the costs that the middle and lower classes in the west, in particular, have paid for it" are a direct result of various domestic (social engineering) policies and have very little to do with international trade aside from being a convenient boogeyman to blame for the unintended consequences of these policies.

Is it any wonder there is high unemployment in somewhere like France (as an example, not to pick on the French) with a 32hr work week and being almost impossible to fire underperforming workers?

> I would prefer if the intellectual class in the west recognized and reflected on the costs that the middle and lower classes in the west, in particular, have paid for it.

No, they should reflect on the fact that rich and powerful has united across the globe to enslave all innocent people without even giving them a chance to express their opposition.

> No, they should reflect on the fact that rich and powerful has united across the globe to enslave all innocent people without even giving them a chance to express their opposition.

I think this is going too far the other way. I appreciate the anger that this topic can generate, but it is always important to remember that markets have brought huge numbers of people out of poverty.

The best way that I can think of to deal with the problems of the market involves creating solidarity across class lines. That may require two very unpopular ideas: restricting trade across national borders so people don't cheat on that solidarity, and generating that solidarity via social identity, which is most often based on, everybody get their fainting couch ready, ethnicity and culture.

Yikes.

Intellectuals have never claimed that free trade is pareto optimal.

It's better to have free trade and compensate for the cost losing people other ways than limiting trade.

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