Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Disclosure: I'm a Brit, and my wife is Chinese.

Frankly I have no time for flag-waving 'Buy American' and for that matter 'Buy British' favouritism. I've seen the poverty in rural China first hand, industrialisation over there has it's rough edges that need to be addressed, but if we care about world poverty then that means cutting all the jingoistic claptrap and 'allowing' them to earn a better living.

There are legitimate cases where buying locally makes sense, especially in the case of regional foods or traditionally crafted goods. I'm all for preserving traditional ways of life if it makes sense, but I don't think iPhone assembly line production falls in that category.

The US, Britain and the western world in general has grown rich exporting goods and services to the rest of the world and importing cheap commodities and goods. Fair trade benefits both sides of the bargain. It's time to set aside protectionism and recognise it for the pernicious imperialism and borderline racism it really is.

Don't you think that decades of isolationist Maoism had more influence on the rural poverty in China than US and British protectionism?

The Mao isolation was just a continuation of centuries of Ming isolation, and, emphatically, yes.

I think the GP meant modern protectionism in the sense of "Buy American/British/etc" movements.

By talking about how the US and Britain had grown rich through trade and 'imperialist' protectionism and mentioning racism, the GP seemed to be implying that the poverty in China was somehow created by these western countries.

Aren't those modern "buy British" or "buy American" movements voluntary? Might there not be good reasons for supporting those who are economically tied to you by culture and legal jurisdiction?

There is no possible way I can read the GP to mean that. He only mentions imperialism and racism after talking about, and with clear reference to, "Buy American".

Most of the movements are voluntary for now, but not all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestm...

> Might there not be good reasons for supporting those who are economically tied to you by culture and legal jurisdiction?

Yes and no. But if the support takes the form of a bail-out, you're just wasting your money while delaying the inevitable and making the eventual crash much more painful. If you instead let industries fizzle out over time, it's much easier for something to appear to take it's place.

So, do you disagree with the point in the original article about the bail-out of the auto industry preventing a much wider loss?

Good grief. Downvoted multiple times without explanation?

The original top-level article that this thread is about made what seemed to be a reasoned point at the end about the bailout of the auto-industry, and I am simply asking mseebach whether he disagrees with it, since he made reference to bailouts.

Why on earth would that get downvoted?

Might want to revisit all those centuries of Chinese history. There is a gap of over 300 years between the fall of Ming dynasty and the establishment of the People's Republic of China, roughly from the time Mayflower Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock to the end of WW2.

Straw man.

How so?

Parent didn't argue that American/British protectionism was worse than Mao's isolationism. He simply argued that American/British protectionism was bad for poor people in developing countries.

> A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.

It seems to me that you are misrepresenting your opponent's position.

Nowhere did I assert that this was the parent's arguement. I didn't represent his position at all.

My question adds context that changes the weight of the parent's assertions. What I wrote isn't even an argument, so it can't be a straw man.

By asking a question in the negative form ("don't you think...") you are implicitly asserting what follows is your interlocutor's opinion.

If that's not your intention, don't ask the question in negative form. In this case:

> Do you think that decades of isolationist Maoism had more influence on the rural poverty in China than US and British protectionism?

or even better:

> On another note, do you think that decades of isolationist Maoism had more influence on the rural poverty in China than US and British protectionism?

By asking a question in the negative form ("don't you think...") you are implicitly asserting what follows is your interlocutor's opinion.

This is where you are wrong. By phrasing it in the negative form I am implicitly asserting that I think that what follows is not my interlocutors opinion.

So, no straw man.

Oops, forgot the "not" there. The rest still holds.

No, not a word of what you said holds.

You're flat out wrong, and it's clear that you don't understand what a strawman is. It is more than just 'misrepresenting' your opponent's argument, which in any case I didn't do.

A straw man is where you present a weakened form of your opponent's argument in order to more easily defeat it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

As you have now acknowledged, I did not present any form of my opponent's argument at any time, let alone argue against it. What I did was to ask a question to put his statements into context.

> Don't you think that decades of isolationist Maoism had more influence on the rural poverty in China than US and British protectionism?

This sentence implies that your opponent's position is: "US and British protectionism didn't have more influence on the rural poverty in China than decades of isolationist Maoism." Perhaps you are not a native English speaker and didn't know the implications of using a negative form question. Regardless, you were attempting to use this misrepresented position to win an argument as you later demonstrated in the thread.

All conditions are met to qualify your comment as a straw man fallacy.

That's the second time you've failed to comprehend the use of a negative. I suggest you reread what you've written.

The rest of the thread doesn't show me attempting to win any argument. I suggest rereading that too.

Whichever way my interlocutor responded to my question would neither invalidate his own position, nor 'win' an argument for me.

You are mistaking this form of discussion for a straw man because you are seeing things in black and white, when instead the question was intended to provide context.

Sometimes people ask provocative questions in order to better understand where other people are coming from. Dialog consists of more than just direct argument. Not every exchange is about gaining rhetorical advantage.

If you try playing back the comments in your head as if they are being spoken by a collegial group involved in a discussion, you'll see what I mean.

Your judgement is incorrect because you have misidentified the nature of the conversation. You are imagining there to be an argument where instead there is actually a discussion.

And on this note, do you really think it's helpful to throw comments like "straw man" into conversations you aren't constructively participating in?

> That's the second time you've failed to comprehend the use of a negative. I suggest you reread what you've written.

You are right, thanks for correcting me, I'm a bit tired. Luckily, it was just an example and not central to my point. The key point here is that this way of formulating a question attributes an opinion to your opponent that he may or may not have. Fixed it: "Decades of isolationist Maoism didn't have more influence on the rural poverty in China than US and British protectionism."

> The rest of the thread doesn't show me attempting to win any argument. I suggest rereading that too.

At this point, there's nothing I can do but question your intellectual honesty. The least I can say is that you come across as someone who disagrees with your interlocutor's opinion. If you are not willing to admit that, I will call this conversation over.

> And on this note, do you really think it's helpful to throw comments like "straw man" into conversations you aren't constructively participating in?

Yes. Fallacies are subtle and it's important to highlight them.

The least I can say is that you come across as someone who disagrees with your interlocutor's opinion. If you are not willing to admit that, I will call this conversation over.

I don't think that the relatively emotive statement that the interlocutor made paints a particularly complete picture. That's why I asked the question. I don't know enough of his opinion to disagree with it or not because he didn't answer.

If you reread what my interlocutor wrote you'll see that he introduces a number of different ideas which don't add up to a single coherent argument to agree or disagree with.

Typically when someone presents me with this sort of communication and I find it interesting, I don't consider it an argument. Instead I try to find out more.

You say 'all you can do is to question my intellectual honesty', but if you really thought I tried to win an argument using a strawman, you would be able to point out where I did that and yet you can't.

If you won't acknowledge the possibility that you have perceived an argument in what was actually a discussion, then I have to, in return, question your intellectual honesty.

It's counterproductive to the cause of rooting out fallacies to make drive-by comments out of context.

Just to interject, but the us and british protectionism started a long time before maoism, or even marxism.

Surely since there are two different periods here is it not sensible to suggest that the two are not directly comparable in effect, although both have contributed to the history of the country.

One important question in this could well be whether imperial attitudes by the uk and us might partially be responsible for the development of maoism in the first place, and on reflection it seems more than obvious that they must be to at least some degree.

Agreed, it's not just Maoism, it's the broader history of China's economic development.

Also, if protectionism, which is notably bidirectional, isn't the root cause of rural poverty in China, do we have any reason for believing that unilaterally abandoning it would alleviate the poverty?

Opium and cannon.

There was a reason the sun didn't set on the British Empire.

God doesn't trust the British in the dark.

So basically war.

I think that is one of the root causes, both internal and external. Also I think that europe was extraordinarily lucky in retaining its lead once it got it.

[edit] and it is very difficult to separate war from protectionism as they are all on a sliding scale of policy.

and it is very difficult to separate war from protectionism as they are all on a sliding scale of policy.

Why isn't protectionism just part of the terms that nations negotiate when they trade?

So is war.

I'd suggest that war is different because with protectionism one side can choose not to trade if they don't like the terms, whereas one cannot simply choose not to participate in war.

With British protectionism, you had no choice but to trade. Thats what the cannon were there for.

And when China tried to ban British Opium, we were very annoyed indeed.

I'd definitely agree that trade at gunpoint is on the same spectrum as war. I can see how you get from there to all protectionism being on that spectrum too.

Short of eliminating national borders, I don't see how this would go away.

All trade protectionism by heavily armed players who regularly use force is on that spectrum. It would be almost impossible for the US or the UK to engage in protectionist trade practices that are not backed by some kind of military threat.

The idea that protectionism is a major factor in war has long been around;

Frederic Bastiat - "When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will" (possibly not him, but commonly attributed)

Carl von Clausewitz - "War is a mere continuation of politics by other means"

Henry Kissinger - "if protectionism grows in America or if China comes to be seen as a long-term adversary, a self-fulfilling prophecy may blight the prospects of global order."

Francis Sayre - "The policy of excessive protectionism is like a habit-forming drug. Nations once indulging in it go on from excess to excess; and the appetite increases. But the end of unrestrained indulgence is disaster. Economic nationalism and protectionism spell disaster for the world as well as for the nation...Men will fight before they starve. Uneconomic trade barriers forge the thunderbolts of war."

Sorry for the appeal to authority in using these quotes, but the simple fact is that even if you tried to create a protectionist policy that avoided associations with war wherever possible, the people who implemented it would still see it in military terms as a link between the two has been a fairly common consensus on most sides of the debate for a very long time.

Just to be clear - you do get that I agreed with you in my previous comment? I even went as far as to mildly echo Sayre's comment about economic nationalism.

Having said that, these quotes are good to see.

Summary: If it there was a straw man, you'd be able to identify the argument that it was being used to win.

You can't, so there is no straw man.

How about trying to create the greatest economy for our children? I care about the poor in China... but only after my own are taken care of. For me, family comes first, and then fellow citizens, and then the rest of the world.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com