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View Full Version : Is this the inevitable result of long term "trade"?




Becker
11-19-2011, 01:16 PM
Country A is rich, wealthy and technologically advanced.
Country B is poor, no resources, but plenty of labor.
(assume both countries have no excess of natural resources to sell)

Country A lets B do work, so A gets cheap products.
B gets better due to work, and starts to advance.
Eventually B becomes wealthy enough to either compete with A, or suck up all their jobs.
Country A, now has exported all of their jobs, and either has to start over in bringing them back, or has nothing to pay B for.

Isn't allowing poor countries to prosper, recipe for suicide and creating competition? Think about it? Why don't we feed poor people when they beg us for food? Because if we did, they'd become us and we'd have to compete with them. But if they starved, suffered and died, we'd stop worrying about them. Helping the poor, or trading with poor countries, only creates more consumers, competition, wars and waste. Letting them starve and suffer, leaves the world for those who know how to use it (there's a reason we're wealthy in the first place).

cubical
11-19-2011, 01:21 PM
Country A will have to start working for relatively less, but this is natural as prices would come down and throughout the cycle, standard of living should be rising for everyone. Of course this gets screwed up by government intervention.

Keith and stuff
11-19-2011, 01:25 PM
Isn't allowing poor countries to prosper, recipe for suicide and creating competition?

No, because what you said before that isn't true at all.


Why don't we feed poor people when they beg us for food? Because if we did, they'd become us and we'd have to compete with them.

That's not what happens when you feed poor people. Just because you provide them with food, doesn't mean they prosper and become like you. Someone else (or you) also has to give them decent healthcare, a decent education and a somewhat free market or at least a stable legal system. Otherwise, they cannot prosper.

Becker
11-19-2011, 01:36 PM
Country A will have to start working for relatively less, but this is natural as prices would come down and throughout the cycle, standard of living should be rising for everyone. Of course this gets screwed up by government intervention.

they will work less, that's guaranteed. But prices of living don't need to drop.

Becker
11-19-2011, 01:39 PM
No, because what you said before that isn't true at all.



That's not what happens when you feed poor people. Just because you provide them with food, doesn't mean they prosper and become like you.


But they have a higher chance than they did if you didn't feed them. and if they do not prosper as a result, what is the value of propping them alive?




Someone else (or you) also has to give them decent healthcare, a decent education and a somewhat free market or at least a stable legal system. Otherwise, they cannot prosper.

he does live in a relatively free market and stable legal system, or at least ,the same one I live in. Are you saying healthcare and education are rights?

Back to my question, if they DO prosper, are they not competition that I don't need?

cubical
11-19-2011, 04:21 PM
they will work less, that's guaranteed. But prices of living don't need to drop.

More than likely they would. And prices in country B would begin to rise.

Becker
11-19-2011, 04:31 PM
More than likely they would. And prices in country B would begin to rise.

they only drop if
a) there's competition
b) there isn't inflation
c) demand drops (which doesn't when you have the "Keep up with Joneses" attitude, and people continuing to pop out babies, welcoming immigrants)

How does cost of living drop in country A if they depend on B to get their goods and services? (and as you admit, B's prices will rise)

Steven Douglas
11-19-2011, 06:41 PM
Eventually B becomes wealthy enough to either compete with A, or suck up all their jobs.
Country A, now has exported all of their jobs, and either has to start over in bringing them back, or has nothing to pay B for.

You mean that Man Friday has finally earned all the coins and thus now owns Robinson Crusoe and all his assets? It's not quite that simple, but here goes one stab at it:

Here is the lunacy that I see of the world as we know it. Country A and Country B could well be the North and South of the United States. However, somehow, by division of labor, were were able to compete and trade amongst ourselves and prosper in the process, even with a net importing of labor.

So to avoid in vacuo assumptions that may not be correct, let's call Country A the United States, and Country B "et al".

It should be noted that the very first thing we exported was within our own borders, largely at the expense of those who labor, and that was all the private accumulation of capital that could otherwise have competed freely with debt/credit-based capital employed mostly by larger scale enterprises.

In a world without government/fiat-banking meddling and intervention, one that does not artificially collectivize and engage in the siphoning of private wealth, private accumulation of capital would factor in substantially, and would freely COMPETE with capital debt and credit financing. Note further a decided advantage of privately accumulated capital, in that it is NOT FUNDED BY DEBT, and therefore owes no interest, while debt capitalized enterprise must factor in loan payments and interest in order to earn the same profits.

Laborers and savers who are LEAST LIKELY to ship jobs overseas would have a chance of becoming capitalists themselves.

With capital and labor forever artificially divided, we now have a world populated by the mind-numbingly artificial EXPECTATION that labor MUST be on an artificial treadmill created by constantly inflating the currency that finances debt-based capital and deficit spending by government. Labor, in turn, must demand more of the fiat currency every year just to keep up with that, and the LAG is where a large part of that siphoning occurs - and all so that the very credit/debt machine that keeps labor from ever being a viable competitor, can continue to feed and expand corporate and other debt-financed interests.

And there are some equally mind-numbed people who think of this is an "economy-wide" zero-sum game - that privately accumulated capital (savings) is a bad thing that must be avoided by artificial manipulation of the money supply, and all is well "economy-wide", as if it does not matter that capital ONLY comes from debt, at the artificial expense of savings.

Labor in Country A was never in a position to decide whether or not to ship their own jobs overseas, because their power to accumulate wealth and freely compete was taken away from them long ago - literally taxed out of existence long before they saw their jobs siphoned away.