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Comment by menomatter | Hacker News Reader

Thank God for living and growing up in Syria. We are expert at living with scarcity

May you rebuild Syria and your grandchildren's children enjoy the shade.

I suppose war creates resilience in people to live with less and make do. That head-strong mentality helps a lot.

Half-Croat here. Unfortunately the only thing war and widespread poverty creates is a massive brain drain, as the most capable people flee for greener grass and, especially if the causal crisis goes on for longer than two or three years or widespread destruction takes place, emigrate permanently.

What is left over is indeed a resilient population, but that's nowhere near enough to (re)build a country.

Yeah the Yugoslavian civil war and violent breakup was disastrous. War can destroy something in a year that takes decades to rebuild. And you touch on something very important: in our globalised econom the best and the brightest can just pick up their bags and move for greener pastures.

Why stay behind to rebuild when you can move to Holland or Austria?

> Why stay behind to rebuild when you can move to Holland or Austria?

That's why waging a war always needs some decent rebuild plan, similar to WW2's Marshall Plan. Never thinking further than "throw a shitload of money towards military contractors, NGOs and whoever we can find willing to serve as a government" is what led to the failed states of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

If the West had offered the people in these countries the clear offer "we give you X billion dollars, in exchange for actual democracy and stability", the results would have been way different...

I don't see Mullah Omar, Saddam Hussein, or Moammar Gaddhafi willingly walking away from their jobs for a bribe, even a 10-figure one. Nor do I see their populations successfully revolting against them for 50 times that.

I would love it if we could bribe our way to a more peaceful world, but I don't think it's that easy.

"These people have no idea how to live without money. They're what's called 'new poor.'"

Thank God for living in China. We are expert at doing it ourselves with just an email with a blueprint :D

And an onshore manufacturing capability that the world gave up on and delegated to your country of living. Protectionism's best advert has been the logistics disruption of Covid and the recent breakdown in diplomatic relations between the West and China

This is pretty true. I think this whole thing has been an argument for a low across-the-board tariff, to internalize the risk of supply chain disruptions.

Maybe a tariff inversely related to domestic production of the good and directly related to its necessity. If your country produces zero units of a necessity (e.g. 7nm silicon), the tariff should be high. Zero units of beanie babies, low tariff.

Agreed, tariffs should be used as a tool to price the risk of losing that supply chain.

I can feel the salt on those downvotes to AP.

Not his fault he grew up in a country the rest of the world thought they were taking advantage of.

Definitely no salt from me. Just gave them an upvote to compensate. They have a legit point, and so do I, I reckon.

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