Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

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> I don't know why there is this general vibe amongst technologists that they are somehow far superior in their thought process compared to the general populace.

It’s a recent shift. Historically, “technologists” were skeptical of the supposed knowledge of “experts.” When Linus built Linux, the “experts”—the guys with PhDs—said the future was microkernels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_deb.... Linus was right. But I feel like today techies would’ve mocked him for being just a student arguing with a tenured professor on a subject in the professor’s field.

Opposition to free trade has been building for 25 years: https://www.britannica.com/event/Seattle-WTO-protests-of-199.... We used to make routers in California and sell them to China. Now we make them in China and Americans drive Uber. Economists tell us that this is efficient, but the public isn’t required to believe them. And it’s fine to try a different approach to see what happens.

I get your point, I really do. And I somewhat agree with the basic tenet. It's just that if you look at the big picture and what they are doing on all fronts, it looks really really bad. And it's also who is doing this. I think Trump is a lying, shallow, stupid stupid man. I have thought this for a long time. People like this bring pain and suffering, not reform.

Even more, if you truly believe what you are saying, and you want a more competitive trade environment, getting someone who will botch it will hurt your cause. I see no way these guys are going to leave your country in a good state.

I mean in theory you could maybe argue that free trade economically makes the the country as a whole better off, but it could still be worse off strategically (EG by not being able to produce weapons or the necessary components to defend itself).

It's also pretty clear that any economic benefits that there were, didn't benefit all of society equally,

I strongly suspect that free trade is good for the economy as a whole in the short to medium term, though has a negative effect on distribution (disproportionately benefitting those whose jobs can’t be easily outsourced). But in the long term it may destroy a country’s competitiveness by vitiating any comparative advantage.

I've thought long and hard about free trade. Ultimately, people want cheap products and free trade optimizes for price that's it. It's like this single objective function that disregards all other functions.

So the competitive advantage for any country now boils down to the entire nation optimizing for cost. A country like China can do this, because the cost optimization for USA = lifting someone out of poverty in China. They are at the rock bottom of cost already.

Now that China has learned to optimize for cost, they will continue down that path - AI, robotics whatever tool they can amass to drive down cost, they will.

Meanwhile, other nations arbitrage about quality of life, politics, hatred of the rich so on and so forth and let the cost optimization slide. Ideally if every country optimized for cost, free trade would work like magic. Sadly, China is the only country doing that and rest of the world is now beholden to them, losing their once cherished competitive advantage.

Now China which once was derided for cheap quality has learned to build quality at scale and for cheap. Literally no one can compete with them on price:quality ratio. 3-4 decades of cost optimizations have paid off immensely for them.

The competitive advantage boils down to being able to do what is optimal for you to spend your time on. America can enrich a majority of the richest people on earth, by having a fraction of the populace working.

China has to put up nets on its factories and subsidize entire swathes of its economy, for decades, to be competitive.

Currently - the value of labor is being eroded by the value of automation. This is why it’s no longer possible for India to succeed by turning into a manufacturing powerhouse. The global option now is in having effective service industries. Generative AI is already throwing a wrench in that plan.

This is leaving ZERO room for people with ordinary resources, knowledge and skills.

The idea that free trade is the problem, may have held for a specific window in time. That window was small and has closed. The larger issue is automation, and the displacement of neophyte workers.

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My personal take - the challenge today is helping people actualize themselves. This is a very fuzzy term, and frankly it embarrasses me to use it. But we have better tools, practice, and science behind human thinking. I’ve used this knowledge practically, and I’ve seen results in team performance and motivation.

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