I have no idea why a much larger than normal payment would trigger red flags for suspicious behavior.
The question is what did you do to get all this extra money? Did you commit a crime? Or did someone of disrepute give you the money to launder?
The purpose of these laws is to make a big stack of cash relatively useless. That helps make stealing or otherwise illegitimately "earning" a big stack of cash less inviting. Sure, you can steal a million dollars, but then you can't do anything with it.
Me: Even so, you can't both blame inflation and deflation on the same group of people. That seriously makes no sense.
You: Yes, you can, because these are different items.
As I made a big deal of pointing out, the players that purchase this gold also buy the farmed materials. The GP wanted to both blame farmers for inflation and deflation. However, it seems to me that they would balance out.
Also, there is also the disincentive of farmers to spend time overfarming items, since that makes little money. So, it is in the farmer's interest to keep the price of their goods competitive in order to keep making a good amount of money. While a farmer has an easy time making prices go down, it is difficult to make prices go up, lest someone else undercut the farmer.
The nice thing about WoW is that there are many, many ways to make money besides farming, some of which do not affect the overall economy. For example, one of the easy ways to make instant money is to farm cloth either in an instance or at a time when few people are playing, create bandages from that cloth, then sell that cloth to a merchant. A stack of runecloth bandages yields 1g. The farmer in this case would walk away with 1g per stack and the economy would be wholly unaffected.
There are so many woodcutters that even if it weren't for the people doing it with bots, the price of wood would still be ridiculously low... because the GMs (Archons) finally cracked down on the "auto-cutters", in the process annoying a lot of legitimate lumberjacks into flat-out quitting woodcutting or the game entirely, and now wood prices are back where they should be, comparable with metal and wool.
That sounds like a problem that extended beyond the small community of gold farmers. If average players overfarmed, then of course the price of materials was low.
What I don't understand from your example is why "legitimate" lumberjacks would quit in droves after the "illegitimate" auto-cutters were removed. Presumably, they would make more money when the price of their goods rose. Sounds more like the majority of the "legitimate" lumberjacks were using "illegitimate" auto-cutters. Considering the number of gold farmers is relatively low, then it was probably regular players killing that market.
Me: And since these people are presumably selling their gold all the time, that means they actually have less influence than regular player characters of the same level.
You: Up until this comment, I was treating you like an equal, but now I feel very tempted to just call you stupid and end the post.
Yes, Gold farmers sell their gold all the time. But it doesn't go into thin air. It goes to those "regular player characters", who then influence the economy.
By "these people" I was specifically talking about gold farmers. They are constantly ruining their financial position by selling off their gold. That specifically puts them in a worse economic situation than other players of the same level. Therefore, they generally have less power to manipulate the economy than other players.
Yes, regular player characters do then go and spend that gold, but that doesn't necessarily cause inflation or deflation either. Mounts in WoW cost either 100g or 1000g. However, expenditures on these items goes to merchants, effectively eliminating this money from the server. Some may call this deflationary since 1000g that was previously in player hands is now gone. However, this is probably balanced out by the people who would waste that 1000g in the auction house.
I had 35g at 25. Granted, that was with four 14-slot bags and not four 16-slot. Even so, by 29 I had 100g along with the best armor and weapons available.
Once you have about 10g, it's very easy to make more money. It's just a matter of watching the auction house, buying low, and selling high. Just a few days ago, I bought a Recipe: Strong Anti-Venom that some idiot put on the auction house for 10s. I bought it and put it right back up for auction at 90g. The next day, I had 85g in my pocket (90g minus 5g auction house fees).
...first the raw materials are oversupplied so they sell very cheaply affecting people like this guy who can no longer earn any reasonable amount through skinning, secondly they artificially inflate the prices of items by giving plenty gold to clueless nabs who throw it around like theres no tomorrow
You appear to be thinking that people buying gold won't spend that gold on raw materials in order to raise their profession skills. At level 42 in WoW, I decided to learn cooking. It took me a great deal of cash to get all the materials to level my cooking skill up, but I got to 250/300 in about two evenings. Now, I used a great deal of my own cash to do that. But, I could have just as easily gone out and bought gold farmer cash to do it as well.
Even so, you can't both blame inflation and deflation on the same group of people. That seriously makes no sense.
The fact is that you have no idea how these gold farmers are making money. The likely thing is they're using multiple means of getting gold. Sure, they could be overfarming, driving down the price. The problem with that though is once the prices are down, they make no money from overfarming. So, like everyone else, it is in their best interest not to overfarm. Further, economies on servers tend to improve over time as players level up. That would suggest that a bad economy has nothing to do with gold farmers and everything to do with the number of higher-level players overall.
You also have no idea how many of these gold farmers exist on the server at any given point. Given the thousands of players on each server, a few gold farmers are not likely to affect the economy on a long-term basis. Gold farmers only become a problem should their numbers become high enough to overwhelm the balance of the server. And since these people are presumably selling their gold all the time, that means they actually have less influence than regular player characters of the same level.
Using something from outside the game to improve your chances inside the game is cheating. Whether or not it is serious you can debate until the cows come home, but it is cheating.
I've been on the phone with people in my party before. Other people use their internet connections to hold party conversations. Those conversations are "outside the game". Are those conversations cheating? I hardly think so.
Further, some people use outside mods to customize their WoW experience. Blizzard openly allows people to do this, even providing instructions on their website with where to load this code from "outside the game". Is that cheating? No, especially considering the support from Blizzard.
... the fact remains that the vast majority spend their cold hard cash on a subscription every month to play in a controlled realm where this doesn't happen.
No, that money is spent to play WoW.
The vast majority of noobs coming into the game have no idea how the economy is structured when they lay their money down in the store for the software and then enter their credit card for the subscription. The lack of gold manipulation may prevent them from leaving the game once they're in, but that's not the primary motivation to start playing or keep playing.
If you're a fund management company, managing investments is the core thing you do; providing a customer contact centre (which is the subject of what we're talking about...) to answer customer questions and operate simple transactions isn't.
Nonsense. The place the fund management company gets its funds to manage are from it's customers. Helping customers one way or the other is the core function of any business. Customers don't just hand over money for nothing.
You mean they didn't just fire half their employees and turn off half their equipment?
The link said they reduced their staff by 10%, not the 50% you said. That would be in line with removing duplicate functions that two companies need separately, but one combined company doesn't need. For example, one company doesn't need two marketing departments, two legal departments, or two corporate finance departments.
And no, they didn't turn off half of their equipment. The previous AT&T customers still use AT&T systems, while Cingular customers still use Cingular systems. And, both companies run on the same kind of cellular network, which was one of the reasons they wanted this deal in the first place.
It's beneficial for China and India combined to cease production of things which they can produce only 10x cheaper than us, and focus all their labor on the things which they can produce 100x cheaper than us. They should export to us the things they produce 100x cheaper, and import from us the things they would have produced 10x cheaper.
Yes, that would seem logical. However, you forget that India and China have about a third of the world's population with only a fraction of their people working. They can easily absorb all of our production and still have people looking for jobs.
Cingular's "Raising the bar" is a great example. Instead of building out their network, they are spending money on exclusive phone deals and billboards.
Actually, that's a bad example. With the purchase of AT&T Wireless, Cingular effectively doubled their network size. And considering that AT&T and Cingular had considerable overlap in many areas, they were then able redeploy their coverage to reduce overlap and extend area coverage.
Sorry, children in China and India are the responsibility of their parents, not me. If those parents can not support those children, then they should not be having babies in the first place.
Further, if I did help them, then that would send the message to the rest of the nations of the world that they could get all my resources if they just irresponibly had more babies than they could take care of. No, those nations need to EARN those resources, not just expect to be handed the resources when they act irresponsibly.
GP: One of the reasons globalization does ultimately raise all boats is that it gradually erodes archaic tribal nationalism.
Me: Britain and Germany were each other's largest trading partners before World War I. That trade did not stop the bloodshed of that war, or the next. That trade did not stop the "archaic tribal nationalism" of Hitler.
You: He did say "gradually."
Interesting. So, in hundreds of years of trading, how gradual is this erosion of "archaic tribal nationalism"? In the US, that nationalism is still strong. In Japan, that nationalism is still strong. In Germany, that nationalism is still strong. This erosion must be so gradual as to be almost indetectable.
OR, it could just be that his original statement is a truism that was never supported by fact and logical argument.
And yet, it makes little sense to talk about history of fifty years ago in this context - what matters to us now is how things are now.
Ok, now India and China have two of the largest populations in the world. And you want to ignore their irresponsibility in creating the world's largest populations. And you want to ignore their irresponsibility to their people for letting the problem get so bad that they have problems feeding and clothing their children.
Further, you now say they deserve more of the world's resources because of greater population. I say bullshit.
China and India did absolutely nothing to earn those resources, other than pop out too many babies that they couldn't support. They knew they couldn't take care of their children, but they had those children anyway. They are the epitome of bad parents. We should not encourage such behavior since the result would be far worse - every poor country in the world would follow their example. Then, we'd finally see just how many people this world could really hold.
If India and China got everything they wanted from each other, then they wouldn't import anything from the U.S., and they therefore wouldn't export anything to the U.S., since the purpose of exports is to pay for imports.
That is one of the most naive statements I've heard in a while. Of course countries will continue to export to the US even if they import nothing. The dollar is used all over the place for international transactions. Oil, for one, is a commodity that is traded exclusively in dollars. If nothing else, China or India will just take the dollars earned from the US and send them to the middle east for oil. Those middle east countries can just turn around use those same dollars for Indian and Chinese goods, leaving the US completely out of the loop.
Me:That three-way comparison of US, India, and China completely breaks the already strained idea of comparative advantage.
You: Three-way comparisons were part of the original idea of comparative advantage, and were present when the idea was first presented almost 200 years ago.
You are ignoring my point. What broke comparative advantage was the comparison of US, India, and China. US has absolutely NO comparative advantage over China and India combined.
Since the success of THEIR company depends on the quality of their services, how can that possibly make any sense?
Because once you're under contract, the goal is to fulfill the contract, not to do the best job.
We outsource our office cleaning. If we're not happy with the service then we switch supplier. How does whether the cleaners care about the success of OUR company come into it? It's their jobs that are on the line if they don't perform.
You're using an example that doesn't really matter to the bottom line. My wife was telling me about a company they outsourced to in Washington DC to set up their trade show booth in order to save the cost of her flying out there. She sent signs and pamphlets to be set up around the table. The only thing set up when her co-worker arrived at the trade show was the table. Then, the outsourced company charged for receiving the extra materials, even though they did nothing with them.
Sure, she may switch providers in the future. That doesn't necessarily mean the next company will do a better job for the same amount of money. The only way to get reliable service is to have your company do the work yourself. In fact, she will now fly to the next trade show in Washington DC to set up the booth herself.
In fact, if the workers are living in third world countries with less support for the unemployed then their incentive to perform will be higher.
That's true only if there is one employer in town. Often, these outsourcing companies cluster together. So, employees can and do easily move from one outsourcer to another. They have no need to kiss ass because the next place will always hire them, and often for more money.
Sure... China and India couldn't control the birth rates of their own populations and because of that, they "deserve" more than the rest of the world? That is also egoistic.
One of the reasons globalization does ultimately raise all boats is that it gradually erodes archaic tribal nationalism.
Britain and Germany were each other's largest trading partners before World War I. That trade did not stop the bloodshed of that war, or the next. That trade did not stop the "archaic tribal nationalism" of Hitler.
The essential truth that international trade is mutually beneficial does not depend on details such as the number of countries.
That's the picture presented in nearly every case. "China can produce some goods cheaper than the US, but the US can produce some goods cheaper than China." However, can the US produce goods and services cheaper than the rest of the world, other than IP-protected goods or local services such as barbers? NO. The US is the wealthiest country in the world and our people are some of the most well paid. Many other countries can produce cheaper goods and services than us.
How does that mean we fight back in terms of globalization? Currently, that means lowering our standard of living by eliminating jobs and shipping stacks of cash outside the country in order to reduce our own wages. Your model is hardly the model I, and many Americans like me, want to follow.
Ricardo's argument is simply the clearest explanation around for why the naive statement that "Everything is cheaper in India!" does not mean that trade is bad.
Free traders like to present their argument in terms of a false dichotomy. There is more than just free trade or protectionism. Fair trade is a viable alternative that is often not discussed. It is the model that I would like to see.
Do you argue that Silicon Valley residents need trade barriers to protect themselves from the unfair advantage Iowa has in farm products? Why don't we erect trade barriers between ourselves and our next door neighbors?
First off, our next door neighbors aren't another country. They're part of our country, our economy, under our political rules and laws. We defend them like they defend us. Comparing our neighbors to other countries is outright dishonest. India may not be openly hostile to us, but China certainly is. Our neighbors won't go to war with us, but China certainly would.
Secondly, the opposite of free trade is not necessarily erecting trade barriers around us. There's that false dichotomy again.
Well, I guess the solution is to nationalize the industry, the communists taught us that was a brilliant idea...
No, you're presenting a false dichotomy. The solution is to conduct fair trade instead of free trade and to not sell our national security interests to foreign governments OR companies.
Fact of life: Joe Consumer doesn't care that his jeans aren't made in America, he just cares for the $10 savings he got because they aren't.
Joe Consumer won't be caring about buying any clothing at all if his good paying job fires him in order to hire Apu.
Economists love to fudge this stuff, but the reality is a lot of them are simply bullshitting and/or don't really know how things are going to turn out.
Exactly. Economics is a soft science. It is not like physics or chemistry where we can perform experiments and get a hard, verifiable result that everyone can agree upon. Economics is a soft science that attempts to study human behavior in the aggregate. Sometimes it works and makes sense. Sometimes it doesn't. Either way, human behavior can and does change, sometimes completely randomly, meaning economics will not always be correct.
Further, old theories need to change with changing human society. In this case, comparative advantage has not caught up with either the internet age nor with world globalization.
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I have no idea why a much larger than normal payment would trigger red flags for suspicious behavior.
The question is what did you do to get all this extra money? Did you commit a crime? Or did someone of disrepute give you the money to launder?
The purpose of these laws is to make a big stack of cash relatively useless. That helps make stealing or otherwise illegitimately "earning" a big stack of cash less inviting. Sure, you can steal a million dollars, but then you can't do anything with it.
Me: Even so, you can't both blame inflation and deflation on the same group of people. That seriously makes no sense.
You: Yes, you can, because these are different items.
As I made a big deal of pointing out, the players that purchase this gold also buy the farmed materials. The GP wanted to both blame farmers for inflation and deflation. However, it seems to me that they would balance out.
Also, there is also the disincentive of farmers to spend time overfarming items, since that makes little money. So, it is in the farmer's interest to keep the price of their goods competitive in order to keep making a good amount of money. While a farmer has an easy time making prices go down, it is difficult to make prices go up, lest someone else undercut the farmer.
The nice thing about WoW is that there are many, many ways to make money besides farming, some of which do not affect the overall economy. For example, one of the easy ways to make instant money is to farm cloth either in an instance or at a time when few people are playing, create bandages from that cloth, then sell that cloth to a merchant. A stack of runecloth bandages yields 1g. The farmer in this case would walk away with 1g per stack and the economy would be wholly unaffected.
There are so many woodcutters that even if it weren't for the people doing it with bots, the price of wood would still be ridiculously low... because the GMs (Archons) finally cracked down on the "auto-cutters", in the process annoying a lot of legitimate lumberjacks into flat-out quitting woodcutting or the game entirely, and now wood prices are back where they should be, comparable with metal and wool.
That sounds like a problem that extended beyond the small community of gold farmers. If average players overfarmed, then of course the price of materials was low.
What I don't understand from your example is why "legitimate" lumberjacks would quit in droves after the "illegitimate" auto-cutters were removed. Presumably, they would make more money when the price of their goods rose. Sounds more like the majority of the "legitimate" lumberjacks were using "illegitimate" auto-cutters. Considering the number of gold farmers is relatively low, then it was probably regular players killing that market.
Me: And since these people are presumably selling their gold all the time, that means they actually have less influence than regular player characters of the same level.
You: Up until this comment, I was treating you like an equal, but now I feel very tempted to just call you stupid and end the post. Yes, Gold farmers sell their gold all the time. But it doesn't go into thin air. It goes to those "regular player characters", who then influence the economy.
By "these people" I was specifically talking about gold farmers. They are constantly ruining their financial position by selling off their gold. That specifically puts them in a worse economic situation than other players of the same level. Therefore, they generally have less power to manipulate the economy than other players.
Yes, regular player characters do then go and spend that gold, but that doesn't necessarily cause inflation or deflation either. Mounts in WoW cost either 100g or 1000g. However, expenditures on these items goes to merchants, effectively eliminating this money from the server. Some may call this deflationary since 1000g that was previously in player hands is now gone. However, this is probably balanced out by the people who would waste that 1000g in the auction house.
I had 35g at 25. Granted, that was with four 14-slot bags and not four 16-slot. Even so, by 29 I had 100g along with the best armor and weapons available.
Once you have about 10g, it's very easy to make more money. It's just a matter of watching the auction house, buying low, and selling high. Just a few days ago, I bought a Recipe: Strong Anti-Venom that some idiot put on the auction house for 10s. I bought it and put it right back up for auction at 90g. The next day, I had 85g in my pocket (90g minus 5g auction house fees).
...first the raw materials are oversupplied so they sell very cheaply affecting people like this guy who can no longer earn any reasonable amount through skinning, secondly they artificially inflate the prices of items by giving plenty gold to clueless nabs who throw it around like theres no tomorrow
You appear to be thinking that people buying gold won't spend that gold on raw materials in order to raise their profession skills. At level 42 in WoW, I decided to learn cooking. It took me a great deal of cash to get all the materials to level my cooking skill up, but I got to 250/300 in about two evenings. Now, I used a great deal of my own cash to do that. But, I could have just as easily gone out and bought gold farmer cash to do it as well.
Even so, you can't both blame inflation and deflation on the same group of people. That seriously makes no sense.
The fact is that you have no idea how these gold farmers are making money. The likely thing is they're using multiple means of getting gold. Sure, they could be overfarming, driving down the price. The problem with that though is once the prices are down, they make no money from overfarming. So, like everyone else, it is in their best interest not to overfarm. Further, economies on servers tend to improve over time as players level up. That would suggest that a bad economy has nothing to do with gold farmers and everything to do with the number of higher-level players overall.
You also have no idea how many of these gold farmers exist on the server at any given point. Given the thousands of players on each server, a few gold farmers are not likely to affect the economy on a long-term basis. Gold farmers only become a problem should their numbers become high enough to overwhelm the balance of the server. And since these people are presumably selling their gold all the time, that means they actually have less influence than regular player characters of the same level.
Using something from outside the game to improve your chances inside the game is cheating. Whether or not it is serious you can debate until the cows come home, but it is cheating.
... the fact remains that the vast majority spend their cold hard cash on a subscription every month to play in a controlled realm where this doesn't happen.
I've been on the phone with people in my party before. Other people use their internet connections to hold party conversations. Those conversations are "outside the game". Are those conversations cheating? I hardly think so.
Further, some people use outside mods to customize their WoW experience. Blizzard openly allows people to do this, even providing instructions on their website with where to load this code from "outside the game". Is that cheating? No, especially considering the support from Blizzard.
No, that money is spent to play WoW.
The vast majority of noobs coming into the game have no idea how the economy is structured when they lay their money down in the store for the software and then enter their credit card for the subscription. The lack of gold manipulation may prevent them from leaving the game once they're in, but that's not the primary motivation to start playing or keep playing.
If you're a fund management company, managing investments is the core thing you do; providing a customer contact centre (which is the subject of what we're talking about...) to answer customer questions and operate simple transactions isn't.
Nonsense. The place the fund management company gets its funds to manage are from it's customers. Helping customers one way or the other is the core function of any business. Customers don't just hand over money for nothing.
Yes, and the United States actually earned those resources.
You mean they didn't just fire half their employees and turn off half their equipment?
The link said they reduced their staff by 10%, not the 50% you said. That would be in line with removing duplicate functions that two companies need separately, but one combined company doesn't need. For example, one company doesn't need two marketing departments, two legal departments, or two corporate finance departments.
And no, they didn't turn off half of their equipment. The previous AT&T customers still use AT&T systems, while Cingular customers still use Cingular systems. And, both companies run on the same kind of cellular network, which was one of the reasons they wanted this deal in the first place.
It's beneficial for China and India combined to cease production of things which they can produce only 10x cheaper than us, and focus all their labor on the things which they can produce 100x cheaper than us. They should export to us the things they produce 100x cheaper, and import from us the things they would have produced 10x cheaper.
Yes, that would seem logical. However, you forget that India and China have about a third of the world's population with only a fraction of their people working. They can easily absorb all of our production and still have people looking for jobs.
Cingular's "Raising the bar" is a great example. Instead of building out their network, they are spending money on exclusive phone deals and billboards.
Actually, that's a bad example. With the purchase of AT&T Wireless, Cingular effectively doubled their network size. And considering that AT&T and Cingular had considerable overlap in many areas, they were then able redeploy their coverage to reduce overlap and extend area coverage.
Sorry, children in China and India are the responsibility of their parents, not me. If those parents can not support those children, then they should not be having babies in the first place.
Further, if I did help them, then that would send the message to the rest of the nations of the world that they could get all my resources if they just irresponibly had more babies than they could take care of. No, those nations need to EARN those resources, not just expect to be handed the resources when they act irresponsibly.
GP: One of the reasons globalization does ultimately raise all boats is that it gradually erodes archaic tribal nationalism.
Me: Britain and Germany were each other's largest trading partners before World War I. That trade did not stop the bloodshed of that war, or the next. That trade did not stop the "archaic tribal nationalism" of Hitler.
You: He did say "gradually."
Interesting. So, in hundreds of years of trading, how gradual is this erosion of "archaic tribal nationalism"? In the US, that nationalism is still strong. In Japan, that nationalism is still strong. In Germany, that nationalism is still strong. This erosion must be so gradual as to be almost indetectable.
OR, it could just be that his original statement is a truism that was never supported by fact and logical argument.
And yet, it makes little sense to talk about history of fifty years ago in this context - what matters to us now is how things are now.
Ok, now India and China have two of the largest populations in the world. And you want to ignore their irresponsibility in creating the world's largest populations. And you want to ignore their irresponsibility to their people for letting the problem get so bad that they have problems feeding and clothing their children.
Further, you now say they deserve more of the world's resources because of greater population. I say bullshit.
China and India did absolutely nothing to earn those resources, other than pop out too many babies that they couldn't support. They knew they couldn't take care of their children, but they had those children anyway. They are the epitome of bad parents. We should not encourage such behavior since the result would be far worse - every poor country in the world would follow their example. Then, we'd finally see just how many people this world could really hold.
If India and China got everything they wanted from each other, then they wouldn't import anything from the U.S., and they therefore wouldn't export anything to the U.S., since the purpose of exports is to pay for imports.
That is one of the most naive statements I've heard in a while. Of course countries will continue to export to the US even if they import nothing. The dollar is used all over the place for international transactions. Oil, for one, is a commodity that is traded exclusively in dollars. If nothing else, China or India will just take the dollars earned from the US and send them to the middle east for oil. Those middle east countries can just turn around use those same dollars for Indian and Chinese goods, leaving the US completely out of the loop.
Me:That three-way comparison of US, India, and China completely breaks the already strained idea of comparative advantage.
You: Three-way comparisons were part of the original idea of comparative advantage, and were present when the idea was first presented almost 200 years ago.
You are ignoring my point. What broke comparative advantage was the comparison of US, India, and China. US has absolutely NO comparative advantage over China and India combined.
Since the success of THEIR company depends on the quality of their services, how can that possibly make any sense?
Because once you're under contract, the goal is to fulfill the contract, not to do the best job.
We outsource our office cleaning. If we're not happy with the service then we switch supplier. How does whether the cleaners care about the success of OUR company come into it? It's their jobs that are on the line if they don't perform.
You're using an example that doesn't really matter to the bottom line. My wife was telling me about a company they outsourced to in Washington DC to set up their trade show booth in order to save the cost of her flying out there. She sent signs and pamphlets to be set up around the table. The only thing set up when her co-worker arrived at the trade show was the table. Then, the outsourced company charged for receiving the extra materials, even though they did nothing with them.
Sure, she may switch providers in the future. That doesn't necessarily mean the next company will do a better job for the same amount of money. The only way to get reliable service is to have your company do the work yourself. In fact, she will now fly to the next trade show in Washington DC to set up the booth herself.
In fact, if the workers are living in third world countries with less support for the unemployed then their incentive to perform will be higher.
That's true only if there is one employer in town. Often, these outsourcing companies cluster together. So, employees can and do easily move from one outsourcer to another. They have no need to kiss ass because the next place will always hire them, and often for more money.
You've never heard of one family, one child?
You're ignoring their history up until that point.
Sure... China and India couldn't control the birth rates of their own populations and because of that, they "deserve" more than the rest of the world? That is also egoistic.
One of the reasons globalization does ultimately raise all boats is that it gradually erodes archaic tribal nationalism.
Britain and Germany were each other's largest trading partners before World War I. That trade did not stop the bloodshed of that war, or the next. That trade did not stop the "archaic tribal nationalism" of Hitler.
Don't delude yourself. All of these things can be copied and produced at a cheaper price in China, given enough time.
The essential truth that international trade is mutually beneficial does not depend on details such as the number of countries.
That's the picture presented in nearly every case. "China can produce some goods cheaper than the US, but the US can produce some goods cheaper than China." However, can the US produce goods and services cheaper than the rest of the world, other than IP-protected goods or local services such as barbers? NO. The US is the wealthiest country in the world and our people are some of the most well paid. Many other countries can produce cheaper goods and services than us.
How does that mean we fight back in terms of globalization? Currently, that means lowering our standard of living by eliminating jobs and shipping stacks of cash outside the country in order to reduce our own wages. Your model is hardly the model I, and many Americans like me, want to follow.
Ricardo's argument is simply the clearest explanation around for why the naive statement that "Everything is cheaper in India!" does not mean that trade is bad.
Free traders like to present their argument in terms of a false dichotomy. There is more than just free trade or protectionism. Fair trade is a viable alternative that is often not discussed. It is the model that I would like to see.
Do you argue that Silicon Valley residents need trade barriers to protect themselves from the unfair advantage Iowa has in farm products? Why don't we erect trade barriers between ourselves and our next door neighbors?
First off, our next door neighbors aren't another country. They're part of our country, our economy, under our political rules and laws. We defend them like they defend us. Comparing our neighbors to other countries is outright dishonest. India may not be openly hostile to us, but China certainly is. Our neighbors won't go to war with us, but China certainly would.
Secondly, the opposite of free trade is not necessarily erecting trade barriers around us. There's that false dichotomy again.
Well, I guess the solution is to nationalize the industry, the communists taught us that was a brilliant idea...
No, you're presenting a false dichotomy. The solution is to conduct fair trade instead of free trade and to not sell our national security interests to foreign governments OR companies.
Fact of life: Joe Consumer doesn't care that his jeans aren't made in America, he just cares for the $10 savings he got because they aren't.
Joe Consumer won't be caring about buying any clothing at all if his good paying job fires him in order to hire Apu.
So who owns who?
Let's see... They're buying our companies... So, that would mean they own us.
Economists love to fudge this stuff, but the reality is a lot of them are simply bullshitting and/or don't really know how things are going to turn out.
Exactly. Economics is a soft science. It is not like physics or chemistry where we can perform experiments and get a hard, verifiable result that everyone can agree upon. Economics is a soft science that attempts to study human behavior in the aggregate. Sometimes it works and makes sense. Sometimes it doesn't. Either way, human behavior can and does change, sometimes completely randomly, meaning economics will not always be correct.
Further, old theories need to change with changing human society. In this case, comparative advantage has not caught up with either the internet age nor with world globalization.
You might try laying off the LSD for a while...
Food production in the US is highly subsidised by the US government and therefore not really a good example.