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Comment by MangoToupe | Hacker News Reader

I don't really seen any benefit from buying American. The entire point of being capitalist is to let the market solve these issues, and the market has. I don't have any more loyalty to Americans than to any other people on earth, and I think that impulse is rather odd.

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The market has not decided on anything; to employ Americans, you have to pay huge amounts of extra taxes and provide all sorts of legally mandated protections, and to operate an American business, you have to follow all sorts of operational and environmental laws that foreigners don't have to follow. Yet they're allowed to sell their goods in the same venues as Americans.

If there are two ice cream vendors at the park, and the park charges one ice cream vendor a $350/day license and the other one doesn't have to license itself at all, has the "market" decided that the unlicensed business is superior?

> If there are two ice cream vendors at the park, and the park charges one ice cream vendor a $350/day license and the other one doesn't have to license itself at all, has the "market" decided that the unlicensed business is superior?

I don't know about "superior", but they're certainly going to sell more ice cream.

It has nothing to do with how much ice cream they sell. You cannot determine who would sell more ice cream based on who pays a license fee and who doesn't. What you can say is that the profits from the licensed vendor will be lower because of higher operating costs if they sell the same amount.

> has the "market" decided that the unlicensed business is superior?

I think recently we've decided it does? Look at Uber versus licensed taxis, Airbnb versus licensed and inspect B&Bs, and many more.

I get what you're saying though, and if there was the will for it then the unlicensed business would be fined such that it would pay more in fines than the cost of a license. It just seems to be going the opposite way.

A better example would be one ice cream vendor uses ethically sourced milk and pays all it's workers a solid living wage with benefits, effectively functioning as an extra $350/day expense. The other vendor uses minimum wage labor and factory farm milk.

>has the "market" decided that the [unethical] business is superior

Yes, because anyone half paying attention on the ground instead of scrolling self-righteous internet content all day knows that price is actually king above all else.

$18 ethical ice cream cones taste great, but not as great as $4 ice cream cones.

To ground this in reality, look at the insane rise of Shein for clothes.

I don't disagree with anything you're saying. I think we're making the same point, namely that if one business operates American-style and the other business operates third-world style, the third-world style business will win on price every time, making it incredibly, prohibitively difficult to operate "American-style" at scale.

America itself operated "third-world style" for centuries.

I like supporting my local community - so I guess I don't have much loyalty to a company in Arkansas but I do have loyalty to a company down the street or a town over.

I do see benefit from not buying from China. China is making geopolitical moves that I do not like and suspect will result in war in the future. They are making moving to take Taiwan. They are clearly supporting Russia against Ukraine.

Well, that's your prerogative. I don't like the way most states behave (very much including our own warmongering state), but I'll be damned if this alters where I buy basic goods and services.

If America wanted my money, it wouldn't behave in such a blatantly hypocritical manner. Either we're a free-market society or we're going to take care of each other. We've prioritized crying over business owners for decades while letting people go homeless. Fuck those businesses; where were they when the homeless needed advocacy? They chose to spend their time trying to complain about society rather than contributing to it.

I feel like you're misdiagnosing the problem. One of the key ways in which we've been prioritizing business owners for decades is uncritically accepting their arguments for free trade.

It is not business owners, it is economics professors and philosophers for free trade. Free trade can be better or worse for business depending on what business you are in. For the people, and for the philosophy of freedom free trade are both good.

I, as a Swede, also see the same reasons for not buying American.

Nobody is perfect, and I won't defend the many dumb things the US has done over the years. Some of them I opposed at the time, some of them on hindsight I now wish I had, but I didn't realize.

However when considering things, we don't know what might have been. Some of the dumb things were the best (at least close to best) among many bad options. As a large powerful country the US often doesn't get the choice of sitting out - those who hate "freedom" are forced to attack us either directly or indirectly since we are standing in the way of their goals, and we are taking those attacks for Sweden allowing you to face less of those bad choices (not none - since Sweden also generally stands for freedom you also face some of those attacks)

All you can do is look at the overall situation. I have concluded that China is worse for the world than the US. However I will not claim perfection. There are things I know of about Sweden that I believe would make the world worse if your country gets it way, but overall Sweden is on the right side and so I generally support them. (you may or may not support your country in those things)

I do what I can to make my country better, but I'm one vote and often outvoted. I'm not a very good writer so I rarely convince anyone of a better way. I have more than once found myself on the wrong side of an issue, and been forced to change my mind to my regret. Which is to say I'm human and trying my best. Hopefully you can be the same and make the world better.

It was pointed out to me in a different context that propoganda is a large factor. Nobody/country is perfect. However some are a lot worse than others. Some of the worse countries (Russia) are spreading propaganda trying to drive "the west" apart so they can in turn pick off the pieces. Thus be very careful about what you know.

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