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For a thorough economic analysis, I recommend Patrick Boyle. The gist is that tariffs are redistributive: They take income from the household sector and transfer it to protected businesses — both within the US. Whether Canada will be thrown into a recession depends on how badly Canadian goods are demanded by US consumers.
The basic economic incentive for international trade is the same why we have different professions for people: by dividing labor, countries can specialize and be more efficient in producing particular good or service, making it cheaper for everyone. Yes, you can grow bananas in Canada, but it's just way cheaper to do it in warm climate. The flip side is that Canada will never gain the expertise needed to grow bananas, and will not have any bananas if the other countries close down shop. This is fine without bananas, but if you replace "banana" with "weapon", then some people start worrying about "natural security".
This is not directly related to your questions — but I'm genuinely curious. How would you describe the harm that the left has done to you and your loved ones, and how would you say the mainstream media misrepresents Trump?
The reason why I'm asking is that I'm firmly anti-Trump — I have no hate for him, but I do believe that he will make the lives of almost everyone worse, including his own supporters, except for the direct beneficiaries of his authoritarian rule.
And I'm bringing this up with you because I'm curious why his own supporters would support him, even though he will harm them. Obviously, that doesn't make sense to me. 😅
Before I expand on that, I'd like to expound that my core value systems is humanism — essential, every human being is worth caring for. That includes you, every Trump supporter, all leftists, and people of all colors. However, it appears to me that Trump supporters do not necessarily see it the same way, and then it becomes a question of how much care I can afford for a human that is fine with harming me.
Now my quick rundown of Trump: The key tactic of populist figures is to deceive about the actual benefit of their policies. Will Trumps' tarrifs improve the lives of most American consumers? Judging by argument above, the answer is "no". Does Trump care? The answer is — "no". Why would he care? Why would he not lie to everyone? His good character? But he doesn't seem to have a good character? And will people be able to tell the difference? The answer is "no" — that's why the deception works. Most people do not understand well enough what effect tariffs have — and they will harm themselves if they belief they work while the reality is that they don't. It's the discrepancy between belief and reality that is the source of harm. And the populist strategy is to play exactly that: Tell people what they want to believe, reinforce it, throw new beliefs at the wall and see what sticks, without any regard for reality. Everyone who is in on that deception will win, everyone who is not will lose out.
As Henry George put it in his 1879 book "Progress and Poverty":
“A theory that, falling in with the habits of thought of the poorer classes, thus justifies the greed of the rich and the selfishness of the powerful, will spread quickly and strike its roots deep. This has been the case with the theory advanced by Malthus.”
I can’t answer for the user you’re replying to, but can for me. The answer is immigration. Until mass immigration ends, immigration is the only issue that matters. Every normal policy can be quickly reversed, but in human history, mass immigration is usually (albeit not always) forever, especially under liberal democracy.
A huge global recession caused by Trump’s tariffs policies would be awful, but the alternative was acquiescing to the most harmful policy of the last 70 years of Western civilization. If my voice is heard (and of course it isn’t really), it must be for that.
Thanks!
🤔 But — could you describe how immigration harms you personally?
I'm asking because the general argument against immigration is an indirect economic argument. The argument typically goes like this: The land can support a certain size of population. If more people come in, the land will not be able to produce enough food for everyone.
The trouble is just: This argument is precisely the Malthusean theory that my quote of Henry George refers to. And it is unfortunately not an accurate model of reality — it's not true. And hasn't been since 1879. 😅 After the invention of fertilizers, land size is not a big issue anymore — the economy now runs on goods and services that people produce for each other. Sure, immigrants lead to more consumption of goods and services — but in order to be able to buy these, they also need to work to produce them. In other words, "land" has been replaced by "labor" — and while an immigrant can, by definition, not bring the resource "land" with them, they can and do bring the resource "labor" with them anywhere they go.
Why would something need to harm you personally for you to be justified in being against it?
I'm not particularly aware of any other category of harm that requires that- certainly you can be anti-murder without being murdered, anti-theft if you aren't the one being stolen from, and so on. Nor does your family have to have suffered, or your close friend group, or your extended friend group, or any other varient of increasingly extended relations. Some of the evils of history are stopped not by those who personally suffered, but those who were entirely orthoganal (outside intervention) or even responsible (anti-colonialism movements).
It would seem by plethora of examples that [things that harm others] is also a valid basis of prioritizing issues. At which point, the condition of 'personally' is just semantic gerrymandering.
That's a fair point. But there is a difference between being "anti-murder" and being "anti-immigration", because "murder" is obviously violating the bodily integration of a person, whereas it's more difficult to argue that "immigration" is harmful on a personal level — that's what I wanted to hone in on by using the word "personally", though missed the mark by being too specific on the interlocutor.
It's not more difficult if you don't insist on semantic gerrymandering. It does not matter if it is harmful on a 'personal' level- it matter if it harms, period, because all harms are personal on some level.
Indirect economic harms are still economic harms. Harms to social trust by unilateral disregard of legitimate laws is still harm to social trust. Criminal harms by criminals who partisans protected from deportation because they wanted to spite or defy their outgroup are still harms. Self-righteous support for human trafficking that corresponds with the significant smuggling of addictive and harmful substances that fund violent criminal groups domestically and abroad even as the smuggled migrants compete with citizens for public goods and services while disrupting local social equilibriums is a whole host of harms to be encountered by various people in various ways at various times.
If you want to argue that immigration doesn't harm anyone, then just say immigration doesn't harm anyone. But if you can't do that because it wouldn't be believable, don't try to introduce a qualifier that only serves to disqualify all the types of harm that might be relevant to others.
No. Indirect economic "harms" are trade-offs. For example, if the price of chocolate rises, then some people cannot afford the amount of chocolate they used to buy. That's not a harm — yes, the chocolate buyer is worse off, but there is a chocolate producer on the other end, who would in turn be worse off if the price were lower.
I'm after a precise definition of "harm" here, because that's relevant to my core values, Humanism. Do not harm human beings. One primary source of harm is loss of integrity of your own body (being subject to violence, …). Higher chocolate prices are ok, a threat to your existence is not. Let me call it "bodily harm" for the sake of discussion. (At some point, economic
I would agree that these are either bodily harms or do border on bodily harms, yes. But the point is: Are these caused by immigration — or are these caused by how immigration is handled?
Much of what you are attributing to "immigration" is actually "consequence of current handling of immigration". This is a policy question. The thinking that you can stop people who are very desperate does not work out.
This is not about outgroups, this is about core value, humanism: Do not inflict bodily harm on other people, regardless of whom.
Many economic trade-offs are harmful. You are aware of this, hence why your economic example is of someone not getting a luxury confectionary, as opposed to someone losing their job, losing access to affordable housing, having to live in less-safe / more dangerous neighborhoods, enduring significant stresses and related health and social consequences due to economic consequences that benefit other people.
And this is without further accounting for the not 'just' economic changes that can accompany macroeconomic changes, such as changes to culture, crime rates, and various other things that come with the macroeconomic trends and hurt people.
No, you may not, because the discussion is that you do not get to waive aside harms on the basis of semantic gerrymandering just because you do not want to acknowledge that your policy preferences hurt people, but you don't want outright admit you find that acceptable. You especially don't get to on the basis of a 'core value' that is routinely violated by both any action or inaction at a policy level.
Don't dodge the discussion, make your stand: does mass migration cause no harm, or does it cause harms but you are okay with that?
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