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Comment by diego_moita | Hacker News Reader

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diego_moita

> Uber felt it was treated fairly by a government

> my guess is that if [...] had been more successful, China would have put a Mao-sized thumb on the scales.

This is how it lost me, it shows how light he is on facts.

I do agree with the 2 statements "China is protectionist" and "protectionism is bad".

But I am cynical enough to see that everyone carefully pics which protectionism they complain about.

As a Brazilian I am still waiting to hear Americans, Japanese and Europeans complaining about their own farming protectionism, at least as loudly as they complain about other countries.

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As an American: the US's protectionism and agricultural subsidies are shameful, and should be stopped.

It's hypocritical, that's true.

It's also true that there are good reasons not to let your farming industry completely collapse. Aside from the obvious large numbers of people who would lose everything. It's in the best interests of the US that they can feed themselves.

Farming protectionism is different from other protectionism, because self-sufficient farming is a national military security goal. If a nation gets into a huge war, then you want to still be able to feed the people.

In general any nation would want to be self-sufficient in all basic necessities, that would come under threat in war time.

Well, that's exactly my point and that's exactly what hypocrisy looks like.

Every protectionism is different because ... reasons. There will always be an "what if..." to justify everything.

This. As an Argentinian, I totally agree. I read a lot of comments from Americans complaining about protectionism in other countries, and their government tells everyone else that they should open their markets, but USA has several sectors in which protectionism is very strong.

I HATE American protectionism in farming. One such example is the ridiculous subsidies of corn that lead to obesity, feeding ruminants grain and even crappy cocacola!

Other terrbile side-effects of our agrisubsidies include crap processed food, agricultural practices built on assumption of nearly free water leading to droughts, nutritional deficiency in produce etc etc.

Other terrible side effects of our subsidies are a reliable food supply as we overproduce far beyond what's necessary which makes us nearly immune to supply shocks like pre-1930s america. Ever heard of famine in the united states in recent memory? Didn't think so. Know what else causes nutritional deficiency? Not eating. While there may be some problems with our current system, they are firmly in the "good problem to have" territory.

Exporting food for free is a more complicated topic, on the imports side, protectionism is justified for critical functions. If we outsourced our food production, we could get it more cheaply (it's already cheap), but imagine if a supplier suddenly decides to cut us off? Food security is a national security priority moreso than typical military stuff like steel mills.

> protectionism is justified for critical functions

Then don't complain about other countries' protectionism. They also have the right to decide what is critical to them, right?

I didn't. ;)

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