Free trade, technology, and "fairness".

[DanTex]

I've heard the argument that it's unfair for American workers to have to compete with people making $5 per day. And I have to say, it takes a pretty bizarre moral system to look at a world where one worker makes $20 an hour, another makes $5 a day, and conclude that victim of unfairness is the $20/hr worker who has to compete with the $5/day worker. Because, very clearly, the true unfairness is that one of these workers, due to what part of the world they were born in, earns a small fraction of the other.

But, hey, I get it. Since we're Americans, we're supposed to prioritize the well-being of people born on the American continent north of the Rio Grande above others. It's not enough that people born elsewhere live in poverty, we need to make their situation even worse by defending tariffs that make it more difficult for industrial plants that would employ them from even being built.

Sure, if there's a lottery to be won, I'd rather someone from my block win it than someone halfway across the earth.

What I don't get, is that the same people so opposed to the free trade policies that have dramatically increased the standard of living of the global middle class over the last few decades, have no problem with technological advances. After all, technology has had a much more significant effect on the loss of industrial jobs in the US than trade. But nobody is saying we should penalize companies that invest in industrial robotics. Nobody is saying we should levy a tariff on firms that develop technologies that might allow factories to produce more output with less workers. Why not?

You think it's "unfair" for an American worker to have to compete with a worker in Mexico or China? I'll tell you what's unfair. For a human to have to compete with a machine. 50 guys with shovels versus one guy with a Caterpillar, that's unfair.

But in the end, it's better to dig ditches with Caterpillars. That doesn't mean we don't have compassion for people who lose their jobs to technology or trade. We absolutely should. But trying to do so by opposing trade/technology is futile at best and counterproductive at worst.

We need to understand reality, and find solutions that will actually work. Things like a guaranteed basic income, and government investment in education and technological job training. But opposing free trade or technology is a losing proposition.

[elleng]

1. 'Things like a guaranteed basic income, and government investment in education and technological job

job training.'

[Skittles]

2. the $5 worker does not pay what I pay in rent

so there's more to it than just what someone earns

[DanTex]

3. True. Then again, robots pay nothing in rent.

And while their certainly are cost-of-living differentials, overall workers in Mexico and China have a much lower standard of living than workers here.

But the larger point is that whatever can be said against free trade is doubly true against technology.