Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
The theory behind trade is that you can be more efficient at producing things in concentrated centres with the most skill/ lowest cost and you are able to replace the loss of work with focusing on the industries you have advantages in. Then everyone benefits from lower costs of goods.
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The world runs on inefficient labour, free trade and technology are going to destroy that and leave both the unskillled and lesser skilled with no role in the economy other than as consumers. Tariffs and protectionism will only delay future economic pain at the cost of current economic disaster, as the other driver, technology, can't be successfully legislated against in a world where it produces wealth and military advantage to nation-states that embrace it.
I prefer to think there is vast human potential that will become available as more and more efficient industries create vast surpluses of wealth. Gettign there from here, however, will involve a lost generation or two of people who won't see this future utopia as meaningful to them in the eternal now - and why should they? There's not even a certainty that there is any utopia at the end of the process, that's just my hope, not any kind of guarantee. There's arguments to be made that the result will be 90% proles under the rule of 9% technocrats and the 1% wealthy.
This natural resentment and anger against being part of a lost generation doesn't excuse people who prefer stupidity and ignorance to reality. It does, however, explain why finding some way to find them meaning and purpose should be a top priority of the so-called elites. There will always be opportunistic demagogues like Trump willing to exploit the discontented. The trick is not to let them become a significant minority of the population, as committed zealots in sufficient numbers can overthrow a complacent, uncommitted majority - that's how you end up with Bolsheviks, Nazis and islamic theocracies.