What you're describing literally is us losing it. We lost in the market. Price was above all for the market and we didn't adapt and lost. I agree with the point you're trying to make but we did lose it in the sense that we do not have the manufacturing capacity we once did

Choosing the lowest price is rational for the consumer. Setting the trade policy that allowed that lowest price -- the USA has less protection for the semiconductor industry than it has for textiles -- was the mistake.

Free trade does result in the best prices but it has other, negative effects, and it is when we think as policy makers -- as citizens, not consumers or business owners -- that we are accountable for those effects.

Homo economicus' desire for a 'good deal' or 'a bargain' will kill us.

> We're repeating the same pattern with online shopping, malls and stores everywhere are closing because of our collective actions, we're not losing them like I lost my keys.

A huge part of that is rents. Basically, a store that owns their property outright or even on mortgage has far less worries when business turns down during a crisis. Take Covid - a year or two, depending on where you were, in more or less lockdown conditions.

A store that was owner-owned? No big deal. Staff was paid for by government assistance, not much ongoing cost for the building. Owned but mortgaged? Cut a deal with the bank, no bank wants to go through a 2007ff event again and they also got assistance for loans. But a store that was rented? Yeetie yeetie. Commercial renters have zero protections anywhere, and landlords are nonforgiving - especially when they are backed by REITs and other investment vehicles.

Recent history is filled with examples of investment funds that behave like vultures - seek out a company that has sizable owned real estate, buy stocks, force the management to sell off the real estate in a heavily biased sale-and-lease-back maneuver, put the acquisition debt on the company's ledgers, sell off the real estate and let the husk of the company wither.

We collectively decided nothing.

Our political/ruling class wanted more of the pie for themselves, dropped the trade barriers protecting American industry, and gorged themselves on the arbitrage as manufacturing flowed to our chief geopolitcal rival, who was quite happy to accept such a generous gift.

>We're repeating the same pattern with online shopping, malls and stores everywhere are closing because of our collective actions

Are you talking about the small mom-n-pop shops that are only open when most people are at work, while with online shopping you can do it any time 24/7? The same mom-n-pop shops that refused to take returns, and had poor selection and would take weeks to order something for you, at a ridiculous price?

There are a lot of really good reasons online shopping has put so many stores out of business.

Who's we?

The college educated white collar professionals who are grossly over-represented in policy discourse?

Middle america, the formerly industrial northeast and the former bulk industry west have been complaining about this shit policy for over a generation.

Implicitly shuttering our manufacturing and heavy industry by subjecting it to policy that we knew would make it increasingly noncompetitive at the margin and would prevent continuing investment was a macro/federal level economic policy choice that was actively pursued for approx 50yr.