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Comment by goatlover | Hacker News Reader

What's the better alternative?

A better alternative would be to have localised production and localised consumption of food and most basic goods. Stuff like not having foreign-cuisine restaurants and not buying salmon from thousands of kilometers away. Cloth production should follow the same idea. People should feel more attached to their birthplace and the goal should be to develop their skills locally with one company preferably. Strong bonds with the local extended family which provides an additional safety net. If your region produces cars, you should be more likely (through education and culture) to become an automotive engineer and live there for your life. Trade for more advanced goods should still be there, but it would be more inter-region and less inter-global.

> not having foreign-cuisine restaurants and not buying salmon from thousands of kilometers away. Cloth production should follow the same idea

These isolated communities exist. Their quality of life is lower. But anyone can join them. From hippie communes to Amish communities, Luddism has a long tradition in modern society. (I’m ignoring the ethno-racial undertone in implying there can be an objective arbiter of what counts as true local cuisine and culture.)

The point is not in absolute isolation, but trading away some optimization in global economic output for increased self-resiliency. Yes, overall we would be poorer on average, but we would a lot less likely to see catastrophic events and a bit more equity among members of the same community.

> point is not in absolute isolation, but trading away some optimization in global economic output for increased self-resiliency

You’re arguing for something reasonable. The commenter I’m replying to quotes Dugin and alludes to something resembling a hermit kingdom. (Attachment to birthplace. Going into the local industry, skills be damned. Blood thicker than water and no “foreign” food.)

This is a recipe for nationalistic poverty. North Korea and Russia are going down this path. They’ll be poor and uninfluential. But if makes them happy, as long as they keep it within their borders, it is difficult to advocate for a shift from outside.

> North Korea and Russia are going down this path.

While I'm not sure which side of the argument I stand on, I do think it's pointing out that even if certain societies / countries do do the things, they unfortunately bare of the costs of others' decisions. A third of Pakistan being flooded is more likely a consequence of the West's energy usage and not due to their own doing. So it's a global effort to make these changes or limited benefits are seen.

"Yes, overall we would be poorer on average"

You first.

Already did it, twice. First time by leaving my (relatively rich and comfortable) upper-middle class life in Brazil and moving to the US. Also have absolutely zero regrets about leaving the US and coming to Europe. Salaries are lower, the tax burden is greater and I'm losing the opportunity of "wealth" generation, but the amount of money I left on the table will never be enough to buy the quality of life my family and I have here.

Now, your turn.

God, I’m glad I wasn’t born in the designated car production region, what a horrible thing to be forced to devote my life to.

You are describing a world of slaves. How many people are you willing to sacrifice to achieve you vision?

Is participating jn an Amish village "slavery"? An Israeli Kibutz?

An amish village is a laughable anachronism that only exist in the context of a much larger whole that is antithetical to the very values and way of life it practices because no larger scale society so constructed could exist or compete with other societies practicing opposing values.

It's not a healthier better way to build a city its a tiny park on a corner lot surrounded by pollution and traffic.

First: yes, it is healthier for those living inside the park, compared to the alternative.

Second: the point is not to build "a larger scale" version of those societies, but actually to replicate the idea of localism in many different places. Less EU and one-world government and more independent nation-states, if you will.

Third: you can oppose the lifestyle and philosophy all you want, but it still is not slavery.

Can it survive against a larger-scale opponent that wants to take its resources, though? Without a friendly superpower enforcing peace with an extraordinarily powerful military, that is.

Switzerland managed to do it for centuries already.

Switzerland's wealth is built on plunder and money laundering. That's not a model we should want to replicate anywhere else.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/nazis/reading...

Thats a primitive way to look at things, and incorrect on so many levels it would take few pages to list them all. To sum it up - their wealth is based on precise high quality manufacturing, and secondly on tourism. Banking is not even up there in top revenues for state.

Or, to put it in similar fashion - the wealth of US is based on plunder. The wealth of all western Europe is based on centuries of plunder.

See, the way you frame your posts leads down the conflict immediately. I've checked some of your posts, and kudos to consistency - you are not interested in rational discussion, just consistent trolling and largely baseless conflict.

Well, good thing that I am not using them as example of "how to get rich", but only on "how to keep yourself small and still avoid being invaded by a stronger power".

But even if you want to talk about wealth of the countries, I'd be extremely eager to hear any example of any wealthy nation with a comparatively better moral ground than the Swiss.

There certainly aren't many, but Finland would certainly qualify.

Switzerland isn't by the prior analogy a park its a normal modern nation. It's a complete non sequitur

It's a modern nation that had very mighty expansionist empires on their borders. It's also the only country in Western Europe that never intended or desired to join the EU.

Yes but lest we entirely lose track of the thread its not an isolationist nation that foregoes the fruits of globalism or corporatism its merely been willing to do business with everyone including letting nazis bank the gold literally yanked from the mouths of murdered jews.

It's neutrality even in the face of abject evil has nothing whatsoever to do with any topic being discussed.

And this is how you arrive at needing walls and guns to keep people in - because we tend to vote with our feet and leave such sick authoritarian "utopias" at the price of risking our life - freedom is worth it.

Pretty much how all similar communist experiments had to change their country into a prison so that a "dreamer" such as yourself can have his "perfect" society.

You are still arguing the extreme version of a position of the argument, when I was arguing for the less radical side.

I am arguing for localism. Democratic governments that give more power to its people and their representatives in the lower spheres of power. People can (and should) vote with their feet, and communities can (and should) collaborate with each other.

Then nobody prevents you having what to want even today. This is the beauty of capitalism: it’s perfectly fine to have other forms of organizations inside it. There are communes and kibbutz you can join right now.

No, there aren't. I am not Amish nor Jew.

Anyway, that is besides the point. No one is arguing against "capitalism". The argument is against Globalism and Corporativism. Capitalism, by itself, is amoral. The problem is, e.g, Disney and the NBA kow-towing to the Chinese because of the "Chinese market".

There are many secular intentional communities you can join, right now. I used to live on one; it was great!

But you can’t actually achieve what you call localism for the majority of the population without severely constraining the options for that majority.

And it’s exactly those constraints, which you seem to repeatedly ignore in this and other threads, that people are objecting to. It gives people actually working towards a satisfying localism a bad name, being associated with involuntary ideological constraints.

As it happens, I would be happy to argue against capitalism. I agree no one should argue against markets, but capitalism isn’t markets, it’s entrenched power assigned to those who have accumulated capital for themselves, often justified by “it’s just markets!” when in reality the laws are helping the big capital holders more than is required by just “markets”.

But I won’t argue for localism as a power structure. More local control, OK, maybe, but you seem to think that would lead to more local self reliance. I doubt it.

If you're not allowed to leave, YES.

They are allowed to leave, dude...

You appear to be ignorant of basic economics such as Ricardo's law of comparative advantage.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/comparativeadvantage.as...

What you have proposed is worse than what we have in every way. Transporting food and basic foods over long distances is cheap and very energy efficient. In fact it's more efficient than having a bunch of tiny factories in every city. People shouldn't be stuck living their whole lives in one place working for one company making shitty cloth or whatever.

Please edit swipes like "you appear to be ignorant [etc.]" out of your posts to HN. They break the site guidelines, and you can make your substantive points without them.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: we've had to ask you about this many times:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30120252 (Jan 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29598017 (Dec 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25935223 (Jan 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18774141 (Dec 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16175756 (Jan 2018)

Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN in the intended spirit? We ban accounts that keep breaking them. I don't want to ban you, but we need you to fix this.

It is cheaper, but less robust. One ship blocking the Suez Canal means that billions of people are not able to get their food and medicine on time, because everyone is too specialized to do anything that is not a desk job.

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