Comment by arjie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arjie | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think you can have a "free and global market" when countries participate in large-scale state industrial policy. Given those constraints, you have to either enforce a zero-subsidy environment (the US has no power to do this) or you have to accept that trade control is one arm of your foreign policy goals and surrendering it entirely is unlikely to help your aims.

For the most part, free and open trade is beneficial to the Western world order. But I think it's quite straightforward to imagine conditions under which it is not, many of which are currently in effect.

US control of EUV technology is probably the most obvious present one, but limitations on nuclear proliferation are an obvious case where there is no free market. Even selling civilian nuclear technology is controlled.

You may think of it analogously to Free Speech. The dream is complete and total expression. The reality is that if you allow convincing enough liars, your society starts to falter. Consequently, certain kinds of expression are not permitted - notably defamation. Think of it as more a North Star navigation ideal constrained by the trade winds (I suppose the Westerlies would be more relevant, but I couldn't resist the pun).

If you want a couple of reads, I enjoyed A Splendid Exchange about the history of trade, which I followed by the resurgent-though-once-dismissed Zeihan's Disunited Nations (which is more a hypothesis book than a history book).

> I don't think you can have a "free and global market" when countries participate in large-scale state industrial policy.

All industrialized countries participate in large-scale state industrial policy. It's a pre-condition of industrialization. A nation cannot industrialize without large scale state policy. And once industrialized, all nations maintain large-scale state industrial policy. Are you saying there never has or can be a "free and global" market? Or just when china does it?

> You may think of it analogously to Free Speech.

It's nothing like free speech as free speech is a constitutional right granted within a nation.

> The reality is that if you allow convincing enough liars, your society starts to falter.

That's rich coming from someone peddling zeihan. I've always wondered what kind of morons actually believe his nonsense. Now I know.

The US industrialized without much in the way of large scale state industrial policy. The federal government was quite weak in the 19th century and, excepting tariffs on British goods, I can't think of any explicit policies it established that were intended to foster industrial capacity. And I think it's debatable how much tariffs actually helped the US develop its manufacturing capacity

> The US industrialized without much in the way of large scale state industrial policy.

What? From funding the Lewis&Clark missions, to forcing japan open, to clearing out the natives for railroad companies, to helping found colleges ( check out many engineering/tech focused colleges like MIT was founded in the 1800s ). You can even argue that american independence and the civil wars were about expanding state industrial policy.

> The federal government was quite weak in the 19th century

So "weak" that we went from 13 small states on the east coast and expanded 3000 miles all the way to the pacific? What the hell are you talking about?

> I can't think of any explicit policies it established that were intended to foster industrial capacity.

The US became the dominant industrial power in the 1800s and you can't think of any policies that helped? You think all the territories in the ohio valley, texas, oklahoma, california, etc chock full of oil were just given to americans by overly generous natives, brits or mexicans? Are you a moron?

If the US didn't have state industrial policy, the US would have never become and industrial power. We'd have just gone down the jeffersonian agrarian paradise road.

Having access to large tracts of land is not a necessary precondition to industrialization (see South Korea). Did the capital accumulation from the exploitation of resources in the American West make it easier to industrialize? Probably. But America would have industrialized if it never expanded beyond the Ohio River valley (access to coal probably was necessary).

Also, as an aside, yes, most of the American West was largely lucked into. America was lucky that France and Spain were dirt broke, that Britain was distracted by continental conflicts with France and Russia, and that native societies had been decimated by disease and a subsequent collapse in governance. That's not to say that there wasn't smart, farsighted leadership in American government, but it was a weak power.

> Having access to large tracts of land is not a necessary precondition to industrialization

But having access to large tracts of land with resources ( like oil ) is. I guess you missed the "chock full of oil" part.

> (see South Korea).

Perfect example. How did Korea industrialize? By being annexed by the japanese ( who went about acquiring tons of land with resources ) and then being annexed by the US with our global network of resource links.

> Also, as an aside, yes, most of the American West was largely lucked into.

It wasn't "lucked into". We won wars against the british and spanish and mexico. And we intimidated the french. And we fought wars against the natives.

> but it was a weak power.

Yes. Because major world powers cede a continent sized piece of territory with an infinite amount of resources to a "weak power".

If the US was a "weak power", then the french, british and russian empires in the 1800s must have been a joke.

Zeihan is wonderful if read as a post-modern, historical fiction novelist.

The characters and plots are obviously all exaggerations and fabrications of reality but there are many interesting themes in his novels.

Of course, reading him like he is Edward Gibbon would be pretty foolish but The End of the World is just the Beginning is a great book.

> Think of it as

did AI write this?

Boy, am I glad I wrote a killfile for Hacker News.

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