|
|
 Originally Posted by wufwugy
Good question. Is there forcing? I'm not sure I see forcing. What I do see is incentivizing, so I'll address that.
Well you're right, forcing is most likely not a good term, I think that's just how he wants to portray it. Another way to put it might be paying them to invest domestically, that is using tax payer money to incentivize it. Either way, actively intervening in the way markets operate. A lot of it probably is just Trump taking the credit for things that have been in the works for years.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business...reator/514466/
https://time.com/money/4640938/donal...almart-amazon/
Originally Posted by wufwugy
A lot of that which incentivizes companies to move abroad in the first place is the US government having big disincentive policies and the other countries not. The US government has in part caused the problem due to its intervention in the first place.
You mean corporate taxes? I'd think the main reasons to outsource are to avoid taxes and exploit lower production costs elsewhere.
Originally Posted by wufwugy
To make the case for government intervention, one has to make the case for a more efficient accounting of asymmetric information. I'm not sure I can do that. However, it is possible that there are types of things that for some reason markets don't account for costs and benefits as well as basic human intuition. An example could be how it is very hard to quantitatively show the effects of a disruption in national sensibilities, yet intuitively it is easy to see how that's a big deal.
This gets at one place where I diverge from open-borders economists. They use some simple economic models to show why totally free movement benefits the world. I don't think it does because of unintended consequences like subversion of liberal institutions that are necessary for growth and stability.
Interesting to hear you say that. My understanding was that before you were fervently against any kind of government interventions and regulations, and all for free trade, not just domestically. What made you change your mind?
Originally Posted by wufwugy
I'm not sure if this is any sort of answer. This is the one area that I consider the strongest counter to totally free markets. It's partly something I got from Nassim Taleb, that intuition is better at explaining very complex systems than quantitative models. It can be the case that some things about civilization are so complex that a sort of strongman approach with Grandma's intuition would yield better results than one that uses the best science has to offer.
Hold on, Taleb said that? Where? The Nassim Taleb who wrote The Black Swan? My understanding is that he has on the contrary quite vehemently argued against trusting intuition, due to all the cognitive biases we have. Favoring intuition over hard science amounts IMO to rather just following your feelings and emotions than bothering to study the issue. I'm sure the models we have with incomplete information are limited at best, but still better than a guess.
Originally Posted by wufwugy
This probably isn't the case for a great number of things (which we've seen in history), but it could be the case for something like this: markets tend to construct a society around consumerism while basic human intuition might tell us that's no way to construct a long-lasting and prosperous society. The intuition on this might be right. Markets might be unsustainable for unquantifiable reasons. For example, it can be the case that long-term prosperity requires standard gender roles, and markets liberalize gender roles to the point of eventual civilization destruction. I really just don't know. It's an idea I've been batting around.
Might or might not, just having an intuition says nothing about which is more likely.
I mean this with the highest respect possible, but it does sound like you're battling with cognitive dissonance, between your belief in free capitalism and trying to reconcile this with Trump supporting command economy and protectionism.
|
Reply With Quote