| ▲ | sahila 4 days ago |
| > It's always baffled me how the same candidates that claim to be pro labor and pro environment are also pro globalization. The way it plays out is that the jobs are just offshore to jurisdictions that lack the same labor and environmental protections. Why's that? The jobs and lives of individuals in those countries are better than the alternatives present otherwise to them. Globalization may hurt certain America jobs but certainly countries like India is grateful for all of the engineering roles. High consumerism is harmful to the environment but I don't think the link between offshoring jobs is direct to environmental harms and certainly it's helpful to giving more job opportunites. |
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| ▲ | roenxi 4 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| Insofar as a "pro-labour" position exists in practice it has to be anti-globalist. If pro-labour is going to mean something it has to mean trying to get labour a better deal than a free market would offer, otherwise it isn't really taking a position on labour at all. A key part of globalism is it makes it impossible for labour in any given country to avoid being paid the market price for their labour. Environmentalism is similar. Globalism fixes the amount of pollution globally to the market optimum where presumably an environmentalist wants to control pollution using some other system than markets. You seem to be arguing that globalism makes the world better off. I agree, but that is because pro-labour and pro-environmentalist ideologies are pretty explicit that they aren't trying to maximise the general welfare. A situation where one soul works very hard and happily for little pay making things for everyone else could be a good outcome for everyone (see also: economic comparative advantage). The pro-labour position would resist that outcome on the basis that the labourer is not making very much money. And the environmentalist would probably be unhappy with the amount of pollution that the hard work generates. The globalist would call it a win. |
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| ▲ | palmfacehn 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Globalism as an ideology is distinct from globalization of trade. Globalists would argue for expansive supranational regulatory controls. Migration and alleged environmental concerns are typical rationalizations for their expanding powers. The distinction is better understood as between a set of liberal, laissez-faire trade policies and an emerging illiberal supranational regulatory state. Specifically when you say: >Globalism fixes the amount of pollution globally to the market optimum where presumably an environmentalist wants to control pollution using some other system than markets. We can observe that the Globalist organizations regard not just pollution, but carbon consumption to be something which markets cannot be trusted to manage. Instead they propose top-down regulatory management on a supranational level. https://www.imo.org/en/mediacentre/pressbriefings/pages/imo-... | | |
| ▲ | roenxi 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Hmm, yes. I am forced to agree. Sorry, please interpret my comment as talking about globalisation (the effect), not globalism (the ideology). |
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| ▲ | Peritract 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > If pro-labour is going to mean something it has to mean trying to get labour a better deal than a free market would offer, otherwise it isn't really taking a position on labour at all I think you're assuming here that 'a better deal' means 'more money than someone else', whereas lots of people would define it as 'everyone has more rights/security'. |
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| ▲ | sokoloff 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I'm very much free trade and pro-globalization, but it seems perfectly reasonable to me that a candidate for political office in country X should be most concerned about the overall welfare of the citizens of country X, then next for the non-citizen residents of country X, then non-citizen/non-residents last. We can argue how steep the dropoff should be, but I think most people would believe that the ordering is that one, with some possible ties. |
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| ▲ | simonh 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Overall welfare is about more than just income though. It’s about national security, the cost of living, and the benefits of things like innovation, technology, culture. Let’s look at US imports from China. Last year that was $462bn worth of goods. Suppose the development of China never happened and all those goods were manufactured in the USA instead. That’s impossible, the US doesn’t have tens of millions of industrial workers lying around spare to do those mostly low end, low value jobs and if it did they would cost more and the goods would all be much more expensive. So the cost of living would go up, the economy would less efficient because many workers would be doing lower value add jobs than they are now. The country would be much worse off overall. It would basically amount to enormous government subsidies and protections for vast swathes of lower value assembly work than what many people are doing now. I support global trade because I think it’s best for the west. Not hyper-liberal ultra free market trade. Negotiated, rules based, moderately regulated trade and investment that is balanced to meet domestic and international needs. | |
| ▲ | TheOtherHobbes 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Good news! Native USian developers will no longer be made unemployed by cheap immigrants. Instead they'll be made unemployed by AI and a crashing tech economy. But that isn't the point of this. It's leverage - much like the tariffs. Big companies making significant donations to the Donald Trump Presidential Aggrandisement Fund will receive carve-outs and exclusions. It's a grift, like everything else done by this benighted administration. | | |
| ▲ | itake 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | its a common tactic for companies to force high paying employees to relocate to other offices, or leave... This could be a tactic to force lower end to go home and accept a lower salary at the same company for their same role. up or out. or in this cause, over or out... | |
| ▲ | cantor_S_drug 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | In the recent podcast Balaji said, both Red and Blue America will start hating Tech for distinct reasons. Red America will hate for H1Bs. Blue will hate for AI displacing high paying white collar jobs. | |
| ▲ | seanmcdirmid 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I hope you are right. If this is just grift...well...I guess the bar is still low but at least it isn't at the bottom. |
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| ▲ | franktankbank 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Its arbitrage. You think the low rung indians are happy suresh is making top dollar programming a web app? |
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| ▲ | sokoloff 3 days ago | parent [-] | | They may not care about Suresh specifically, but they're probably happier than if no one in their country had a well-paying tech job. Suresh and his tech worker colleagues don't sit on Scrooge McDuck piles of gold coins; instead they spend the money in their country and community. I'm pretty sure my local pizza shop, waitstaff, and other small businesses are happy to have my money spent on their products and services. They don't care that I have a tech job, but they do care that I spend money with them, and spending money with them is only one degree of separation from having a job. |
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| ▲ | harimau777 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I could see that being the case in a scenario where all countries had strong labor protections. However, in practice globalism tends to result in jobs being exported from countries with strong protections to countries with weak protections. In that sense it is anti-labor. In the case of bringing in workers; those workers are less likely to join unions or demand good working conditions since they are effectively indentured servants. That also is bad for labor. |
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| ▲ | MiguelX413 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Nothing stopping a country for regulating the offshore labor of companies based in it |
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