alt Hacker NewsCountries and institutions should always produce things where they are excellent at producing, in forms of specialization and compete in terms of comparative advantages.
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This is true until you add a layer of geopolitics to your analysis.
Supply chain advantages make the country that produces most of the stuff progressively better at doing everything.
While I agree in passing. I think saying you'll export all your work to places with worse labor laws is short-term thinking. Chinese companies are successful yes but they also don't necessarily compete fairly. We still can export large portfolios of goods to China. So to just say they are best because they have a government protected market, plus subsidies so we should abandon local is a bad optimization in the long term
Those thing are not static! Changing them can be a political decision. It was a political decision in China to become excellent at manufacturing.
That depends on if everybody gets along and is willing to trade
This attitude, if followed without qualifications, is dangerously naive and shortsighted, as the last few years of geopolitical events have shown.
Families should always eat at the restaurants that produce the most excellent cuisine. /s
We surely cant be this naive after the recent history of:
- China weaponizing the world's dependence on rare earth
- The US weaponizing the world's dependence on SWIFT
- Russia weaponizing Europe's dependence on natural gas
- Iran weaponizing the the world's dependence of oil supply through strait of Hormuz