| Matthew Rosewarne on 27 Oct 2007 02:21:49 -0000 |
|
On Friday 26 October 2007, zuzu wrote: > but yeah, lookup how global trade and comparative advantage work, for > starters. today agriculture and manufacturing is SO EASY (as such a > maturely developed human action) that only relatively poor regions can > do it for a relative profit. The US still is an agricultural powerhouse, but in large part due to our government subsidies and trade agreements. There's no real reason why the US and the poorer countries couldn't _both_ perform mass-manufacturing at a profit, as its worked that way quite well before. The problem is our rush to ditch industry in the US, since it's not seen as profitable enough. The folly of that approach is the massive damage it will do to our own ability to compete at all, let alone satisfy jumpy analysts. Take Toyota, for example: They slowly and steadily moved industry into the US, and are now making windfall profits. If more people in this country understood what Toyota did, this whole mess would never have started in the first place. > the real question isn't "how do we make lots of stuff?" but rather > "what the hell should we even make?" real wealth growth in a healthy > capitalist world economy derives from research and development (R&D, > aka creativity / innovation). I didn't say we don't need development, just that we _do_ need to have an industrial backbone to support that brain. Innovation and production isn't an either/or, as we've been very good at doing them both for most of the 20th century. Attachment:
signature.asc ___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
|
|