Just as America would like to reduce its dependence on external production, so to do other countries want to reduce their own. We used to live in a world converging toward maximal international trade, when in fact it was exploiting underdeveloped nations. As we progress globally, and as the development gap shrinks, we have noticed power dynamics which weren't well guarded against in the old way.

So now what? How do we preserve a lot of the efficiencies of the past, while strengthening the resilience and redundancy. How can multiple nations create policy which drives business on partially compatible protocols?

If I allow myself to be optimistic, I'd be hoping for more international lawyers and trade agreements. Protectionism is natural, but taken too far, isolationism is a death sentence.

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dmix an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> we have noticed power dynamics which weren't well guarded against in the old way

The clearest example is a dependency on a single wealthy nation for military and world policing. It's a good thing for individual countries to be able to project their own foreign policy goals like containing Russia without having to rely on the whims of another country's politics. Even here in Canada we should be able to defend their own arctic border reliably and be able to project power to China/India beyond strongly worded letters.

> I'd be hoping for more international lawyers and trade agreements.

Ignoring the US's recent moves there does seem to be more trade deals than ever between 'middle powers'.

> isolationism is a death sentence

The best way to maintain global relationships is to offer tons of value. Similar to how China can get good trade deals and influence simply because they have so much to offer economically. This isn't just issues of diplomacy.

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nixpulvis an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Well said.

One of the USA's greatest exports is intelligence and higher education, and what has been happening with that and the general anti-intellectual atmosphere is to me the most concerning as an american. Ironically, public education in america has been pretty bad for a while. But I'm going to start rambling here... way too many problems, and no damn leadership.

	▲	gottorf 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> the general anti-intellectual atmosphere If I may humbly submit, this is not without justification, considering the unadulterated excrement that has been coming out of our institutions of higher learning. There are a lot of people at universities receiving comfortable taxpayer-funded salaries who spend an awful lot of time disparaging the American spirit. > public education in america has been pretty bad for a while Large parts of public education in America is currently a loop of tax dollars that cycle between politicians who shovel an ever-increasing amount of money in and teachers' union leaders that get paid very well and return some money in the form of far-left political activism and donations to those same politicians. Actually teaching kids is at best a fourth or fifth priority.

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littlestymaar an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> like containing Russia without having to rely on the whims of another country's politics

That's true, but at the same time it was probably already the case before invasion of Ukraine, and it is definitely the case now.

The main issue is political fragmentation: would Paris and Berlin risk lives of French and German people (soldiers and civilians due to retaliation) to save Vilnius?

But if the answer is true (as obligated by the Treaty of Maastricht, independently of NATO) then Russia stands no chance with conventional weapons against the whole Western Europe, the balance of military, demographic and industrial power is ridiculously lopsided (involving nuclear weapons would also raise the same political question about the French willingness to nuke Russia in retaliation to Russia nuking Poland but if the answer is yes, Russia cannot win a nuclear war either (which everyone would lose)).

	▲	HPsquared 41 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The answer is always going to be "maybe", but hopefully enough of a maybe to deter hostile actions. That puts everything in an uncomfortable state of uncertainty.

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RobotToaster 12 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> If I allow myself to be optimistic, I'd be hoping for more international lawyers and trade agreements.

One of the issues with the current system is that the WTO appellate body, which is effectively the court of world trade, requires USA approval for any appointments, which both Trump and Biden have refused to give. This effectively makes the WTO completely impotent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appellate_Body

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bborud an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It is risky to believe that the development gap alone makes for higher economic efficiency when manufacturing things in China. There are very real structural differences in how various industries are organized. Not least in terms of geography.

This is an aspect the west seems to have missed entirely as there are no attempts to learn from it or emulate it.

Everyone knows about Shenzhen. Not everyone knows that this is how every major manufacturing industry is clustered in China in various cities and regions.

	▲	nixpulvis 44 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		My point was that the development gap is what lead to the current situation, not that it's just cheap labor that makes Chinese stuff cheap. My point about maintaining higher economic efficiency is actually the same point you're making. How can the globe (not just the west vs the east) learn from the past and build for the future. We live in a magical world with translation services available to billions of people, how can we empower them to organize around the right ideas. How can we preserve culture and art while flooding ourselves with technologies developed globally? Who pays for security and research? Intellectual property law in general? So many big issues and questions still need a lot of work.

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michaelt an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Just as America would like to reduce its dependence on external production, so to do other countries want to reduce their own.

If anything, I'd say for other countries it's more urgent.

If China embargoes deliveries of light bulbs to Europe, all the light bulbs already in place keep working. The pain would grow over time - giving a grace period, to ramp up local production.

If America embargoes AWS, Google, Apple and Microsoft? The pain would be instant and severe.

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nixpulvis an hour ago | parent [-]

I'm absolutely not an expert, but critical things for power and food production not to mention medical supplies and emergency equipment are also tied up pretty deeply in international trade.

The world would break pretty quickly if we all just stopped trading with each other.

	▲	michaelt 13 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, but many products can be sourced from a load of countries. If you can't get natural gas from Russia you can get it shipped from America or Australia or Qatar - it's expensive as hell, and you might need to quickly build new regasification plants, but your economy keeps running. And there's no remote kill switch that disables the gas you already have in-country. That's not the case for the services provided by AWS, Google, Apple and Microsoft though - the 'competition' is one US provider vs another.

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pyrale 21 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> How do we preserve a lot of the efficiencies of the past, while strengthening the resilience and redundancy.

Open source with clear international governance and maintainer/contributor base, in such a way that a geopolitical rift leaves both sides with working software.

That works for tech and the infrastructure, of course, but not for the corporations built upon them.

> more international lawyers

I don't see that as a significant source of safety in our current world.

> isolationism is a death sentence.

The current US admin isn't isolationist, it's merely reverting back to 19th century imperialism.