Complete globalization was always a very bad idea. Journalists like John Pilger have been trying to warn us for decades but were ignored by society because there was so much profit to be gained.
Admittedly the China we moved all our production to in the early 2000s wasn't that bad a business partner. However we've always known that countries can change very quickly and since Xi JinPing it's become a major geopolitical threat. Only now we're too invested and it will cost us a lot to pull out again. Still, it has to be done.
I hope we never make that mistake again and diversify in countries we can actually trust.
Personally I think leaving everything to "the market" is also a very bad idea since all the market cares about is money. Not the environment, not people, not society. Trying to get the market to take these into account makes for very awkward workarounds like carbon taxes/credits. There needs to be a balance between free markets and protecting our own interests, and those of the world as a whole.
But that's not the reality of both sides to that coin. The countries that produced cheaply were given that opportunity. The US (and others) have always had the ability to make those cheap products, but countries (both competitive and unfriendly) still wanted to participate in globalization to get a piece of the pie.
It's coming to an end, yes. But there's more nuance to the why than what's outlined in the article. I've been more and more impressed with Peter Zeihan's book "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" which is predicted on explaining the building blocks of globalization over the last 50 years and how and why it's coming to (and has been for some time) an end. It's very obvious why the US wants and needs chips being made state side at this point. It's a matter of national security and a long term protection of the country.
> Personally I think leaving everything to "the market" is also a very bad idea since all the market cares about is money. Not the environment, not people, not society. Trying to get the market to take these into account makes for very awkward workarounds like carbon taxes/credits. There needs to be a balance between free markets and protecting our own interests, and those of the world as a whole.
This isn't a problem with "the market", but how finance and stock markets are heavily biased with short-term thinking. Money _in the short term_, is the predominant issue.
The problem is that risk increases rapidly with time. Any system whose goal is to optimize the usage of money, which is what finance basically is, will almost always value short term thinking over long term thinking because of the much greater risk involved.
The way to counteract this is simple. Regulation and/or adding a monetary cost to the behavior you want to discourage.
Negative externalities haven’t been properly priced in because the cost of dumping carbon into the atmosphere is zero. Change the cost structure and even the short-term calculations change immediately.
> Money _in the short term_, is the predominant issue.
That's not just about money. Humans in general are bad at thinking long term and want immediate gratification. cf Marshmallow experiment, or how we are (not) tackling climate change.
At the time, the belief among most policy people was that China’s economic growth would lead to democracy. Obviously, that didn’t happen, but I don’t think it’s accurate to suggest they traded against the worlds interest for profit. In the early 90s after the fall of the communist bloc, it seemed to many that global liberal democracy was inevitable.
I did also think that, but I don't think many people had expected China to become more authoritarian as it has.
Though democracy isn't a guarantee that politics can't be hijacked by oligarch interests. Hungary and (until 5 days ago) Brazil are some typical examples.
We can dream but I fear its getting worse. IMO organizations like the WEF are spreading neo feudalism via globalism, empowering the corporations at the expense of the everyday individual and the environment.
> At the time, the belief among most policy people was that China’s economic growth would lead to democracy. Obviously, that didn’t happen
A late point to this discussion. Democracy is the wrong bar. Increased liberalism is the measurement, and the vast economic expansion was made possible by the same exact (slowly expanding) liberalism that was going on in China in the post Mao era. China was legitimately on a liberalization path, quite clearly, prior to Xi.
People very commonly get all of this confused. The thing - the cultural decisions - that made the economic opening possible, is the liberalization (letting people be more free in numerous ways, simply put). It wasn't the economic expansion that might lead to democracy, it was the same thing that was causing the economic expansion, that made that vast expansion possible. That expansion would not have been nearly so powerful if Xi had had the same control, he would have (by necessity of his survival) smothered much of it just as he's doing now.
And now Xi can't turn back, they (the remaining old power in the system) will kill him at this point. Xi would be executed for "corruption." So he'll have to keep going forward in terms of more rigid authoritarianism to protect himself, and it's obvious what that's going to cause.
Globalization never applied to national security, what’s changed is how chips are viewed through the lens of national defense. ITAR products were never built in China and never would have been.
globalization is dead is an overstatement, which has a shred of truth to it.
I'm not really sure what you are trying to convey, but if you want to import "materiel" (which is what ITAR covers mostly) from China and you have a valid export license from them you're mostly OK. Good luck ever getting it back out of the US. Also you can't import fully automatic weapons without the right license, but that is an NFA issue. Not ITAR.
What you can't do is just decide that you're going to outsource your manufacturing of something covered under ITAR to China and transfer all the knowledge and tooling to China to do that. Which is exactly what Hamilton Sundstrand did.
> Also you can't import fully automatic weapons without the right license, but that is an NFA issue. Not ITAR.
You can't import any sort of gun nor ammunition from China. Not rifles since 1993, nor any other sort of gun since 2003. NFA doesn't come into it because even single shot Norinco sporting shotguns are banned from import to America.
While you're correct, I was speaking broadly. You can't even import full-auto from Canada or Mexico, which we have very little trade restrictions with.
Various sanctions, initially justified because of some gangs/smuggling scandal, but really it's because Norinco is controlled by the PRC and allowing Americans do to business with Norinco is counter to American strategic interests.
And I'm sure it doesn't hurt that such a ban is good for American manufacturers too. You don't hear much from the NRA complaining about this ban.
Yep. The fact a Taiwanese company has opened a plant in the US so that it might be in a position to corner that particular market in that particular country if that particular country introduces further security policy changes is neither here nor there in the scope of a world where most consumer goods in most countries are imported
Globalization is dead when every country that uses chips has its own semiconductor plants...
And then it is only globalization for micro chips. For everything else...
Globalization is as old as humanity, there are traces of long distance trade as far back as the bronze age. Globalization will change, as will goods flows, but it will not go away.
Long distance trade is not the same as globalization. Globablization is the trend to optimize production capacities on a global scale. Even during times that followed the opposite trend --- if I remember correctly France did that in the 18th or 17th century --- long distance trade existed.
I am not going to pretend that I actually know the details of itar, but suffice to say my understanding is that it is in essence an export restriction on military technology.
Hence, while you can source certain aspects of the supply chain from abroad, you can’t offshore the whole industry wholesale, which is the main point.
Even with the hubbub about TSMC, the chip maneuvering is only about bleeding edge chips, not the chip industry as a whole.
Probably thinking of the various DFARS regulations, like you can only use stainless steel and various other metals that were melted in the U.S. or other allied countries for government/military projects. DFARS compliant 1/4-20 stainless fasteners are ~100 times more expensive than what you'd find at your local hardware store.
ITAR products most certainly sourced components from China. Yes, cutting edge image sensors and GPS modules aren't made in China. But if you waved a wand and made every Chinese-made component disappear a lot of ITAR products would stop working.
I don’t know if it’s a sudden distrust of globalization causing it, but I’ve noticed a huge upswing in the percent of customer support people with American accents over the last few years.
Anecdotally, I've noticed that in recent years many call centers are staffed by people that speak with accents and idioms that suggest they are from one of the "flyover" regions of the US. I suppose they could be faking an accent from somewhere overseas, but if that was the case I wouldn't expect them to borrow their English from those parts of the US.
I think with IOT, the scope of National security is larger than we have ever seen in the past. Simple Doodads might be globalized, but what happens when everyone’s Chinese made EV unexpectedly stops and can’t be restarted? At this point every smart device can be a security threat.
Sure, but how long is it going to take to design, produce, and install a few million such modules? Months? Years? If a security backdoor shutdown a few million cars all at once, there would be immense damage done within minutes as cars start slamming into eachother, hours as people deal with horrific traffic jams, and days as all those people who relied on those vehicles are stuck without their primary mode of transportation. If coordinated with other attacks (cyber or otherwise) it could easily be crippling to a response. Yeah we're not going to be permanently knocked out, but it's nice to avoid getting punched in the face to begin with.
Even scarier is the infrastructure threats. Lots of news about Hikvision cameras at the moment.
Most five eyes countries have warded off Huawei, but NZ is full steam ahead with them in backbone infra. Similarly China is trying to loan a lot of money to the Solomon Islands to build way more Huawei towers than they actually need.
Then you have those sketchy power transformers in the US that they surprisingly found were dialing home to China. Trump put restrictions on this, but Biden removed them his first day in office only to reintroduce them in the past few months.
Nobody is talking about it because it is still politically incorrect in our overall culture [1] to admit that globalization is collapsing. Our elites have banked too much of their reputation on this to change course quickly in public. To say globalization is dead is to say our elites were grotesquely, systematically, and with great consequences to all, wrong.
I find it very productive to look at the positions of various large entities and measure them against "what's the fastest these entities can change their official position without ever having to actually admit they were wrong". When you find a government agency or large company moving at that speed on some topic, it is advantageous for you as an individual to look at where they are going, and take appropriate actions without waiting for the official authority to finally get to the more justifiable position. It can be decades for one of these entities to get to a new position at this speed.
But there's plenty of actions being taken. This is merely a high profile one. Lots of little adjustments by lots of companies that add up to a lot. All the economies of the world are adjusting to the new realities.
[1]: By which I mean, the mainstream media, TV, large magazines, etc. I'm not too worried that I'm going to be hammered on the subculture of HN for this statement. Someone may disagree, but I don't expect anyone to try to shame me over this or something. But don't hold your breath for CNN or someone like that to air a one-hour special on Why Globalization Was A Big Mistake And Everyone Advocating For It Was Obviously Stupid.
Just did a search for "cnn globalization mistake" and found this article[1] from May of last year. Seems pro-globlization but reasonably even handed, presenting points for and against. The elite of elites, Powell, says "There is a real possibility that globalization will go into reverse."
I bring this to your attention in the hope that it may help you expand your bubble. If you're serious about the segment where people publicly admit their mistakes and that they were "obviously stupid" then best of luck.
Personally, I think there are many voices critical of globalization from across the political spectrum. The problem, as I see it, is opponents of globalization have failed to articulate a clear, compelling alternative that will "deliver the goods."
The post you're replying to appears to be trying to sidestep your "across the political spectrum" by blaming "elites" instead in a way that suggests they're party-agnostic.
I think this is still inaccurate, "Made in the USA" was an early version of this and has been non-marginal and found supporters amongst both "elites" and "regular" people for decades, in my experience.
They also slide towards another fallacy at the end - the one we saw a lot during Covid, of "changing your mind as new data arrives means you originally acted in, or are acting now in, bad faith." What's stupid is to assume that anything this complex is "obviously" a black and white must-do or must-not-do, versus something that will get adjusted over time.
This is what I mean by "moving as fast as they can without having to admit they were wrong". That speed is not zero. It is still not a popular opinion. The occasional trial balloon is part of the process.
"If you're serious about the segment where people publicly admit their mistakes and that they were "obviously stupid" then best of luck."
Of course that's obviously satirical. CNN does not run actual news segments with that name or anything like it. I picked it that way on purpose, for that effect.
I'm suspicious of any theory that requires every reporter and every producer to both remember everything anyone has said and adhere to a code to avoid contradicting it. These are younger, lower paid, liberal arts majors. To the extent there's any selection bias in the content, it's based on what the audience wants to read, not any long-game strategy to ensure alignment with what was written in the past.
You said, "Nobody is talking about it because it is still politically incorrect in our overall culture" and then cited CNN as an example. I provided an example where CNN is talking about the issue seriously. What I'm saying is, you're wrong about it being "politically incorrect" and that "no elites will talk about it". In fact, Powell is talking about it and being reported by CNN!
Furthermore, Trump and Bernie both ran strong campaigns on the question of globalization. As president, Trump took steps against globalization. A far cry from "politically incorrect" or something the public isn't debating. Likewise, today steps are being taken by Biden to onshore more industries, again clearly not "politically incorrect."
As far as "it's still not a popular opinion" I guess I don't know what that means. Taking my points above, it seems like we're actively debating the subject as a society with proponents on both sides. As I argued before, I think the "anti-globalization" crowd has yet to make their case convincingly. If it's just "a little less globalization, please" -- well then how is "globalization dead?"
Not the person you responded to originally. When you bring up Trump and Biden and globalization I see a pretty big difference. On one hand Trump basically never stopped running his mouth about it. He would take action then tell everyone he is taking action to bring x jobs back home. Meanwhile Biden does not do that. To me it seems if you are supported by the right, beating the "end globalization" drum is beneficial. Yet if you are supported by the left, I do not see the same benefit. In fact I would argue the left as a whole supports globalization so it may actually hurt Biden to talk about steps he is taking to end it.
Also you are saying its proven it is not politically correct because its talked about and Biden has taken action for onshore more industries yet that does not even jive with the definition of politically incorrect. I think you are just responded to the original poster saying its not being discussed because its politically incorrect but that statement in itself does not make sense either. Something is politically incorrect when someone does not avoid language or actions that may offend another group. Something can be politically incorrect and still be discussed to death.
As for the last part about the anti-globalization crowd has yet to make a case convincingly, the same can be said on the flip said. For example the pro globalization crowd has not made a convincingly case for why we need to use slave/child labor overseas to make Nikes and electronics. If we produced these in the US, slave/child labor is generally illegal and this would not be a problem. Another example would be the fact the pro globalization crowd has not shown a convincing case for why would should be supporting other countries that commit massive humans rights abuses. Why should we send money overseas to a country that has reeducation camps they force citizens into?
I don't think both parties are the same, but I do think both parties are having public, ongoing debates about globalization. Their answers vary over time and candidate. It's not being controlled by shadowy elites, nor is it being shamed as "politically incorrect" speech. Using your definition -- no one thinks this discussion is "offensive."
It's hard to see the major legislation being passed or presidential campaigns being run and say otherwise -- I think the onus is on you or the OP to submit evidence wherein the elites or whatever shut down the conversation or react with indignation. I've provided my evidence in this thread already.
As for globalization versus not. Again, what is the alternative? Be concrete. To me, globalization is capitalism or free marketism. Put another way, it's a market based economy.
Once upon a time, people believed that planned economies were an alternative to globalism, but I'd say the jury is in and no one really believes that anymore. So, seriously, what is the alternative?
I imagine most people agree that child / slave labor are abhorrent and that we should add safety rails to globalization to address those issues. But that's still globalization.
It is not my definition. It is the definition according to webster. You and OP are using the term incorrectly and I pointed that out. You and OP can make up your own definition of it, but unless one of you tells us what definition you are working off, the rest of us just are left guessing.
I never once said the elites shut down discussion yet you ask me to provide evidence for a point I never made? Its pretty hard to have a real discussion when one person decides to make stuff up out of thin air. If you read my last commit I even mention the OPs claim of no discussion because its politically incorrect does not make sense with the linked definition. Would this not be me providing evidence against the point you are asking me to prove? It seems like we both agree the OPs statement is incorrect so why are you trying to force me onto the other side of the argument?
As for the solution, I do not know a good solution. I use to think globalization was the answer but not anymore. That is why I asked you to explain why you are okay with globalization causing these serious issues. Based on your last sentence it seems like you agree these are bad and we should do something about them. Yet you don't mention the fact we have had a WTO for almost 2 decades that could address them and not one single country has tried too. For example WTO on child labor: https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/min99_e/englis...
In my eyes when decades have passed, its a pretty clear sign the safety rails are not wanted or going to be added by those that have the power to add them.
Setting aside semantic debates, I agree that progress is slow. In my opinion progress like this is always extremely slow and hard fought. People rarely give up power or resources out of the goodness of their hearts.
For example, on these pages I see plenty of debate about whether we should expand healthcare, tax the wealthy, enforce stricter environmental laws, and so forth. If the netizens of Slacker News can't reach consensus how can we expect the wide world to come together?
Personally, I try not to get swept up in all these currents. I'm just another worker ant in the colony. So I try to focus on what I can do myself and around me.
I mean the question we are both trying to address "what alternative to globalization is there that doesn't have x and y issues but still keeps the world running" is really trillion dollar question at this point. If one of us had the answer I would hope we would out trying to implement it and not on HN.
I would argue that the slow progress on human rights/labor issues coupled with the failure of globalized supply chains during covid really point towards us needing to rethink our current system. Maybe modifying the current system will be enough, I do not know. However in my eyes our current form of globalization is problematic and that needs to be addressed.
You seem to have missed or misunderstood the term trial balloon. Not everything you read that is presented as a serious article is actually a serious article.
edit: Apparently I should either stop trying to make points in the nuance or stop suggesting that news articles are managed because people think agreeing requires a tinfoil hat.
I mean I think you’re both right in ways, but you seem to be equating “elites testing talking about it publicly” with “elites privately lobbying for funding that fixes it” which are not at all the same thing, and the difference is part of the point GP was trying to make.
Your references are also anachronistic to the narrative you’re constructing.
> Nobody is talking about it because it is still politically incorrect in our overall culture [1] to admit that globalization is collapsing.
Arguably it is politically in vogue in the US to be against absolute globalization.
For example, the EV tax credits in the IRA are exclusively for US assembled vehicles.
This caused a great deal of upset among foreign carmakers who don't have significant assembly operations in the US. The IRA went even further in requiring the key component of the EV, the battery, to have it's materials sourced in US free trade partners.
Vehicle manufacturing is among the most politically visible and sensitive of industries.
The consensus across the right, left, and center is towards rebuilding domestic industrial capacity in strategic industries.
"The consensus across the right, left, and center is towards rebuilding domestic industrial capacity in strategic industries."
The quiet consensus of those taking action, yes, absolutely. That's part of my point. The adjustments are being made all over the place.
Those who have banked a lot on talking up globalization for the past 20-30 years will get there too. It will just be a slow process of very gradually tweaking their position a little bit every year at the maximum speed they can get away with while making it look like it's just little tweaks and they were never at any point actually wrong.
There was also never 100% globalization; tariffs never went to zero, etc. But a lot of that would still fall under the class of quiet actions under the hood, while the loud rhetoric was all about free trade. I've actually interacted with plenty of people on HN over the years who didn't realize that tariffs were in fact a thing, always had been, and were engaged in by all countries in the world to at least some extent, depending on their local needs. The rhetoric was "free trade! free trade! free trade!", but the reality has always been more complex.
You seem stuck on hostile score keeping. This is not a productive way of being. Also, you met some ignorant people on the internet and extrapolated that into something you thought was meaningful?
Fighting a deceitful propaganda machine with individual deceitful propaganda seems like fair game to me.
You and many others seem to take this system seriously, as if it is genuine and legitimate. A lot of other people disagree, and some will act accordingly (prompting more deceitful propaganda, and so forth and so on).
What is so unserious, disingenuous, and illegitimate about the “system”? I’m sure it isn’t perfect, but here I am using the “system” and living my life.
Where would you rather be and what is your improvement on the “system”? Sorry to pose questions at you but I see so many strange comments on the internet that sound like “red-pilled” nonsense. If you have a good personal value proposition to society and aren’t completely entropic, life is good. If you aren’t, it’s hard. That’s been modern western life for a while now and it’s not bad. Could it be better and is there room for improvement? Absolutely. But living in parallel red pill reality is an absolutely unhelpful endeavor.
I’m reminded of the Oracle at Delphi. “Know who you are” which means know your place in society (father, son, farmer, king etc and your responsibilities) and “everything in moderation”.
Red pillers ignore that ancient wisdom and live in and obsess over an alternate almost completely fabricated virtual reality of no real value. Hanging out with suspicious and cynical strangers on the internet who share deep distrust of reality is depressing and isolating. After-all, you use the real system to have a life and so does everyone else. Might as well face that fact and truly engage with flesh and blood in the meat space rather than whatever or whoever is on red pill virtual land.
How it is (in part) perpetuated, in my estimation:
- I’m sure whatever the system is it isn’t perfect. But here I am using the “system” and living my life. [rationalization]
- I see so many strange comments on the internet that sound like “red-pilled” nonsense. [training-based heuristic pattern matching to ~bad/dumb/wrong]
- Could it be better and is there room for improvement? Absolutely. But living in parallel red pill reality is an absolutely unhelpful endeavor. [training-based heuristic pattern matching to ~bad/dumb/wrong + cultural normalization of hallucination of reality (in this case: the future)]
- After-all, you use the real system to have a life and so does everyone else. Might as well face that fact and truly engage with flesh and blood in the meat space rather than whatever or whoever is on red pill virtual land. [Stay within the Overton Window of ideas and behaviors one has been trained on]
> Where would you rather be and what is your improvement on the “system”?
a) How about something like "The contents of the tin (upon substantial, fine-grained inspection) matches what's on the label"?
b) we shall see, maybe
> If you have a good personal value proposition to society and aren’t completely entropic, life is good. If you aren’t, it’s hard.
Simplistically, and largely only in theory (as I don't doubt you'd agree with if we were to dig into the nitty gritty details, which we won't as that is contrary to well-established cultural norms, at least).
> That’s been modern western life for a while now and it’s not bad.
Not bad for a subset, of Westerners....but we are only a minority slice of the whole.
> I’m reminded of the Oracle at Delphi. “Know who you are” which means know your place in society (father, son, farmer, king etc and your responsibilities) and “everything in moderation”.
I will decide my place in society, despite where society [has been trained to] believe I "should" fit in, and behave. I like the "Oracle at Delphi" idea though, perhaps there's some unharvested utility there.
> Red pillers ignore that ancient wisdom and live in and obsess over an alternate almost completely fabricated virtual reality of no real value. Hanging out with suspicious and cynical strangers on the internet who share deep distrust of reality is depressing and isolating.
Know what's interesting about this: you don't actually know who red-pillers are, or what they are or believe. And you do not know you do not know, because of culture (which is composed of many things, most of them sub-perceptual, and many of them downright taboo).
None of this is a pragmatic approach to life whatsoever! And again proves my points.
You and I are peasants in the last western empire, you have to deal with that reality. Not everything is a fraud. Simply go to the grocery store and look around. Do you know how each of those products is produced from field, processed, packaged, and shipped? Do that for ICE and EV vehicles and anything else you want.
Also I absolutely know who red-pillers are and it’s trivially easy to identify them. I couldn’t “white pill” you here.
> Those who have banked a lot on talking up globalization for the past 20-30 years will get there too. It will just be a slow process of very gradually tweaking their position a little bit every year at the maximum speed they can get away with while making it look like it's just little tweaks and they were never at any point actually wrong.
Is there a list of specific people here, who have aggrieved you so? Who are you even talking about?
Globalization also isn't really collapsing but it definitely is changing. Is Apple now making their iPhones in the US? Nope, but they are moving production to other countries so it doesn't only take place in China.
This will result in higher prices short-term, but will likely result in more globalization and supply-chain resilience in the longer term.
Yeah, I think of it more as a pendulum swing than an absolute. As a deliberate extreme example, shipping your entire industrial base to another country is obviously stupid. (The US did not literally do that. By most measures our industrial output has been flat, rather than necessarily "declining", over the previous couple of decades. It's just our needs grew as our output didn't.)
But on the flip side, demanding that everything be sourced from within your "own" economy (however you'd even define such a thing) is going to be stupid on roughly the same time frame too. Any self-contained economy is going to have a hard time competing with one using a larger base.
We went too far in one direction. It doesn't take a very deep knowledge of history to expect we will overcompensate too far in the other direction. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Well that is the big advantage the US has. Is that we have the population for it, in comparison the US population is around 300 million whereas the entire EU is only 350 million. So the US has enough of a market, and it also has the resources to be able to manufacture most things locally, honestly a long with Canada and Mexico NA could be largely self contained without too many issues inside of NA.
It's the rest of the world that has benefited from globalization, from the raising the standard of living in Asia to getting cheap goods to Euorpe, but things can and will change.
It’s 332M USA vs 447M EU. And be assured, nobody benefits from isolation. Chances you outcompete everybody at everything are slim. I would also argue that SV would never grow so much without relatively free trade.
Even in the unlikely case that you do outcompete everybody, free trade is still a significant benefit. Many don't understand the economic principle of comparative advantage, it is counterintuitive.
Because globalization is not dead, nor will it ever be. The only thing changing is countries trying to bring production of strategic items or high value products to keep all the profits.
They may bring chip manufacturing back to USA, but all the flags, hats and freedom merch for Fourth of July will still be produced in China and that is never changing no matter how hard you try. People don’t like paying more money and that is not going away.
> To say globalization is dead is to say our elites were grotesquely, systematically, and with great consequences to all, wrong.
This is not a good take at all. It shows a very static view of the world, as if globalization (or anything) is either eternally right or eternally wrong.
Horses are dead as a means of local transportation. Does that mean our elites were grotesquely wrong about the value of horses... in the 1800's?
The gold standard is dead... does that mean our elites were grotesquely wrong through most of history?
> But don't hold your breath for CNN or someone like that to air a one-hour special on Why Globalization Was A Big Mistake And Everyone Advocating For It Was Obviously Stupid.
That's because it is terrible take. For one, globalization completely dissolved the threat of nuclear war. Also, globalization is the only reason why the economy hasn't stagnated. Our biggest economic successes operate in globalist spaces (tech and finance), but the biggest failures operate in heavily protectionist spaces (healthcare, construction, and the auto industry prior to rise of foreign subsidiaries).
Globalization may be the reason that the economy hasn't stagnated, but it's also the reason the economy hollowed out, with the working-class jobs disappearing, with pretty heavy societal damage.
Were we better off with the economy growing but the blue-collar jobs disappearing? That's at least debatable.
>For one, globalization completely dissolved the threat of nuclear war.
This is an interesting assertion to make given the very strong argument that can be made that we are closer to nuclear war right now than any time in human history.
For one, globalization completely dissolved the threat of nuclear war
That's simply untrue. Europe outsourced its natural gas needs to Russia in an attempt to strengthen ties (ostensibly to avoid nuclear war, among other things). Despite that, no one would be surprised if 2023 had at least one nuclear warhead detonated at some point.
There's a big difference between between acknowledging the existence of power gradients in the world and expressing the belief that the many opinions expressed in mainstream media consist of a single 'elite' view on globalization.
How you square that with a real world in which some of the most influential people and publications in international policy in recent years in many countries have focused on attacking trade deals, demanding withdrawal from supranational organizations and implying that entire systems are rigged in favour of specific rival countries, I do not know.
> To say globalization is dead is to say our elites were grotesquely, systematically, and with great consequences to all, wrong.
dead != wrong
I would also argue that it isn't dead but it is in a decline because of some disturbing moves toward nationalism and fascism all over the world over the last five years
I can see why you might think that but I disagree that it's not 'PC'. I don't even think it's hugely controversial really. There's been chatter for some time and it's not even a 'sided' political issue really there seem to be a variety of opinions.
It's hard to call something politically incorrect when the last American presidential election was a contest between explicitly protectionist, anti-globalization candidates. Morris Chang wasn't predicting the future so much as recognizing a fait accompli.
> Nobody is talking about it because it is still politically incorrect in our overall culture [1] to admit that globalization is collapsing.
True. It's been collapsing since at least 2015. The political upheavals in the US and the UK were backlashes against globalization. Since then, both countries have moved way from the late 20th century global vision that developed in the post WW2 era.
For a while, in the US, there was the narrative that this was purely about Trump, but Biden is walking in the same direction re trade. It's a big change and it seems like it will endure across many administrations.
This reminds me of the Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention[0]: "No two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell's, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain.
I think this has largely proven true, and as certain supply chains look to onshore, this can have geopolitical implications.
Variants of this are always stated, and always made false in relatively short order. Many claimed Europe was too interdependent for continental warfare, then WWI happened. No two countries with McDonald’s went to war, and then Ukraine was invaded. Prior to WWII, France was Germany’s largest trading partner. It is wishful thinking to assume that money or financial systems will keep peace — in part because there is massive incentive to invade other countries as means of theft.
Actually it was untrue even before the quote was first stated in 1996, the first war between countries with McDonalds was the US invasion of Panama in 1989.
> No two countries with McDonald’s went to war, and then Ukraine was invaded
Russian McDonald's have since been rebranded, so it remains kind-of true when viewed as state instead of cause-effect. I imagine the truth to these general statements is more like, McDonald's never opened a franchise in two places that were at war with each other.
In all those examples cooperation was the deterrent that made them think multiple times before going to war.
And lack of it would have meant easier and multiple wars.
deterrent are a vital part of peace. And peace is like a stack of cards built on multiple deterrents.
you can see examples of lack of deterrent during history when wars where happening on the desire of a king and you can also see the beginning of deterrent working when kinds and queens married their children between them to keep peace going as long as possible.
> In all those examples cooperation was the deterrent that made them think multiple times before going to war.
Trade generally? Sure, but we have centuries of wars happening despite international trade so it's obviously not the sort of panacea people make it out to be. McDonalds specifically making countries think twice about war? Please. Shitty burgers are not that important.
Differences in degree matter. International trade under mercantilism is hardly the same as present-day multinational corporations under neoliberalism. They’re both international trade per se in the same way a house cat and a lion are both cats.
Not really. I don't see much of a correlation between trade linkage and conflict or lack thereof. The only thing that seems to prevent conflict is a hegemon, or an 800-pound gorilla keeping the peace.
I don’t think I would. The defining conflict of the latter 20th century was the Cold War, a war in which one side (the USSR) was essentially dependent on American food exports. Moreover, the USSR’s economy was totally integrated between each of the SSRs, yet its shattering led to the vast number of late 20th century, early 21st century conflicts within the European world. So too was Yugoslavia’s economy. When it fell apart, it led to a series of bloody conflicts and genocides. The former USSR states and the former Yugoslavian states were more interdependent than any transnational organization, yet their post collapse conflicts define the existence of entire regions.
The USSR was only dependent on the US for food imports during its final years, by which point there was little real concern about war between the two powers, and indeed the US was trying to actively prop up the USSR because it was worried about the power vacuum that could result from a collapse.
The whole issue with the Yugoslavian and Soviet states was that they weren't separate states with trade relations but were instead held together as single nations by force.
Even if it isn’t absolutely true, globalization does increase the cost of war and make it less likely. Of course, economics can’t stop tanks once they’re rolling.
I fully acknowledge the unfalsifiability of the above as well.
The Great Depression more-or-less disrupted or destroyed vast swathes of international trade.
It might be fair to say economic entanglement is a risky strategy for peace because depressions can always come along, but I don't know it's fair to say that economic entanglement doesn't improve the odds of peace if our counter-example is a global breakdown.
Plus France, and to a lesser extent other countries, inflicted extremely punitive economic costs on Germany following WW1 that were arguably designed to reduce Germany to client/vassal status. Whereas the victors of WW1 had a wholly legitimate argument for the abolition of the German monarchy, elimination of the German general staff and so on, the German public suffered disproportionately to their degree of political agency.
When I was younger I considered economic sanctions a far preferable alternative to the brutality of kinetic warfare, in line with the prevailing view of western statecraft. Over time I've come to think it's significantly worse, little more than a form of state terrorism in which populations are politely murdered. While the architects of such policies talk about accountability, containment, etc in reference to unfriendly leaders they'd like to displace, starving children and blaming it on someone else is fundamentally genocidal and in my view constitutes a grave moral crime. I was disgusted by the eulogies heaped upon the late Madeline Albright, because when I think of her I can only remember her assertion that the deaths of 1/2 a million Iraqi children in the 1990s was 'worth it.'
The thing is, The Great Illusion isn't wrong. Economic interdependency is a deterrent to war. It's just that its not a very good one, because the capitalism singularity is not powerful enough to overthrow the nationalism singularity[0]. Cultural ties can provide another deterrent: for example, you wouldn't imagine, say, New York and New Jersey going to war[1]. But even then, Russia and Ukraine were rather close and still are despite the former trying to genocide the latter.
The most effective deterrent to war is to put the fear of death in the people who decide whether or not to start wars. MAD theory, while technically wrong, was a good enough story that it averted several catastrophic nuclear attacks. If only because the people with their fingers on the buttons second-guessed themselves long enough for reports to come in that it was actually just the light reflecting off the ocean and not an incoming American ICBM.
[0] Yes, I mean this in the same context that one might refer to a technological singularity. Social existence today is a nested hierarchy of supra-individual social structures, of which superhuman AGI will merely be one of its subagents.
[1] Though they did come close in the 1800s over Staten Island. They call it the Empire State for a reason.
> The Great Illusion isn't wrong. Economic interdependency is a deterrent to war. It's just that its not a very good one,
The premise of The Great Illusion is that international trade is a very good deterrent to war. The book doesn't argue that it's an 'okay-ish' deterrent to war, it claimed that WW1 was extremely unlikely to occur and that if it did, it would be over quickly. Not only did WW1 happen, so did WW2 a few years later. Neither war was short, and even more and bloodier wars after WW2 would have been a damn good bet if not for the invention of nuclear bombs.
Isn't this just the 'democracies don't fight wars' conjecture of International Relations extended to corporate entities? It seems like a hubristic assertion of business over demographic interests that will look increasingly quaint in the future, much like the power fantasies about the East India Company do now.
This kind of hardcore position really irritates me. Can one really say that globalism is "dead" when the very example, a TSMC factory in Arizona, is a transnational investment?
The analogy is autocracy: A "Tyrant" can indeed be useful in a crisis (Churchill was as close to this point as you can find in recent history) but if they steer wrong, or if there is no crisis, history shows they are a disaster. Likewise, nativism in manufacturing can have some limited benefit (consider manufacturing for your military) but in a greater sense leads to disaster.
The way to think of this issue is resilience. You want to have a diversity of suppliers and have them have independent failure modes. Likewise you don't want local monocultures (Detroit and cars, West Virgina and coal, the loss of the semi mfg infrastructure by Silicon Valley) because all-eggs-in-one-basket is the opposite of resilience.
Also Westfalian boundaries are pretty arbitrary for this issue. Should California have its own solar panel industry instead of buying from China? Or would it be OK to buy from Idaho?
Silicon Valley still has quite a diversity of technical domains while SF evolved late and remained more of a monculture (and thus is losing a small amount of share to NYC, which SV is not). Is anyone wringing their hands over this? I don't think so, and nobody should be.
We're talking about it on HN page 1. And I hear a lot of talk among the macro and policy people I follow about friendshoring.
2)
The author makes an argument that the fact that TSMC had to send US engineers to Taiwan for training was a sign of a talent shortage. But earlier the author said this:
> TSMC is arguably the one company that most epitomizes all the forces of globalization – free trade, hyper specialization...
Hyperspecialization to me implies that you need to go to HQ to understand how everything works and it will take a while to understand it all. So the earlier argument about a shortage of talent in the US seems tenuous to me.
Yeah, from that perspective the author is just wrong. I posted this the last time HN discussed this article, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33957643, but despite the author saying "No American, or any Western media outlet for that matter, bothered to cover this speech", I first read about it on an article on the front page of the NY Times website.
The author seems to have missed that TSMC previously failed to transplant TSMC culture into the USA. In nearly thirty years they probably realized they need more than just semiconductor expertise transfer — they need a transfusion of Taiwanese culture.
One way to do that is to send an entire employee base from Taiwan, but then how do you maintain or integrate in the US? Splitting the employee base in half seems more likely to succeed, probably with process/engineering roles predominantly Taiwanese and more external-facing roles skewing American.
There are lots of Japanese and Chinese companies with substantial presences in the US. TSMC probably realizes it's a learning process and they need to get on with it.
My experience with those (and German companies) is that it tends to be using the US employees as an innovation hub, which in practice means we get the projects that are more likely to fail, because that is less culturally embarrassing here.
This approach can’t work with advanced semiconductor manufacturing for a number of reasons but primarily the same factors that drove Intel’s adoption of “Copy Exactly!”
Globalism isn't dead. It has just diminished slightly from its height in 2007-9 after the global economic collapse, which should be called a double dip recession first in 2007 and again in 2013. It has gone from 60 percent of the world's trade to 55%. Not exactly the end.
You have to account for percent of global GDP, the fact that there was a big covid recovery between 2020 and 2022, and the fact there is inflation in the USD.
If you look at the overall trend, trade is a percent of GDP globally peaked in 08 and it's actually been on a slow decline ever since then.
I'd be interested in the longer trend (which I assume it also upward). But it would behoove us all to never use 2020-22 as examples of any larger trends, for obvious reasons.
Pretty sure trade will keep increasing, just because the global population is increasing and many countries are coming out of poverty and starting their local manufacturing revolutions.
But the social globalization is dying. People are finally realizing that some cultures aren't compatible.
Currently at war: Russia and Ukraine, with a shared cultural history going back (depending on how you count) a thousand years or past recorded history.
Currently not at war: The US and China, with little overlap before 1844.
I don't think we can draw a broad conclusion concerning cultural compatibility and peaceful relations.
Globalization is a term without any kind of defined meaning and that very old cartoon about the different people trying to describe the part of the elephant that they're holding seems to apply.
And even taking something concrete like Brexit, which people might think fits in with the end of Globalization, I'd argue was driven by a flood of propaganda and money from global capital trying to drive a wedge between the UK and EU for their profit ("divide and conquer" strategy). I doubt you're going to get everyone to be able to look at a single policy like that and decide if the result is due to Globalization or anti-Globalization. When Globalist entities exploit anti-Globalist sentiment to promote policies which are beneficial to them, what do you call that?
It's way too premature to say it's dead. More like it stalled out. America's global culture reach is wider than ever, nor has trade slowed much. The US-China trade deficit is still where it was in 2013 or so.
It's amusing how nobody is really even trying to level up with US in soft power. China and India's soft power are multitudes less than Korea (k-pop, k-drama, k-beauty), Japan (anime, tech), and Mexico (music).
There is a lot more to unpack here than the author addresses in terms of a 91-year-old founder complex process of saying goodbye to his and Taiwan’s semiconductor supremacy in a politically tenable way.
From a global perspective, allowing one geopolitically contested island nation be the intellectual and physical home of the most advanced semiconductor manufacturing on the planet is not a good outcome.
The global progression seems to have been something like: minimal trade -> increasing trade -> increased specialization -> emergence of SPOFs -> redistribution/redundancy (we are here)
It seems pretty healthy, but it means the SPOFs will lose their statuses as the center of their respective worlds.
Not even that; TSMC hasn't closed its factories, and Samsung is as strong as ever. Sony still makes excellent image sensors. Bosch and Siemens still churn out colossal amounts of power and control semiconductors. Etc.
That is, globalization of semiconductors is still there, but suddenly it has less Shenzhen and Hong Kong in it.
Top 10 semiconductor manufacturers (countries with significant chip fabs) include also Israel, Malaysia, Netherlands, and the UK [1].
Smaller semiconductor fabs, and non-chip semiconductor (like MOSFET or LED) manufacturers are even more widely spread.
OTOH EU is now considered sort of one quasi-state, so the massive cross-Europe trade, which would be considered a sign of globalization in 1923, just passes as an unnoticed baseline in 22023.
exactly. covid basically ushered in "globalization" for skilled (or even unskilled) workers. now I'm much more open to think hiring 50% of my dev teams in places like Estonia or Mexico compare to just 5 years ago.
I see a lot of interesting but fundamentally incorrect comments here, likely reflective of an "intuitive" understanding of globalization, something I, myself, would have shared until quite recently. My two cents on this is, if you really want to understand globalization and its demise now underway, you need to understand the Bretton Woods agreement, the role the US played as the worlds maritime security enforcer, the end of asset-backed currencies and geopolitics in general.
and one of the points that constantly comes up is the importance of oceanic trade and maritime borders, and how the geopolitics of that is dominated by a small number of vitally important choke points - the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab-el-Mandeb, the Strait of Malacca, the Bosporus Strait, the Strait of Gibraltar and the Panama and Suez canals. One of the reasons things seem so fucked up is how many countries are entirely dependent upon control - or at least access - to these choke points even - and especially - when they're thousands of miles away from them, and so their geopolitical interest involves meddling in those regions.
Geopolitics would be orders of magnitude simpler if we lived on the super-continent Pangea.
You have to take the CEO of TSMC with a grain of salt. As CEO of a Taiwanese company, his statements are colored by the fact that his company is ground zero for political maneuvering. Free trade was always secondary to politics.
Globalization is not dead. If it was, Apple (mentioned in the article for being interested in American chips) would be manufacturing computers and iPhones in the US. No, this is clearly a pullback from China.
Globalization is a big word. It will only die in a meaningful sense if we undergo socioeconomic collapse of unprecedented magnitude (which is certainly within the realm of the possible but hopefully not the likely scenario).
What is dead (or at least being hastily patched) is a particular form of aggressive labor cost arbitrage, primarily between the US / Western Europe and East Asia economies. That monetary optimization was premised on the absence of geopolitical risk.
Ignoring or socializing all sorts of risks and externalities has been the modus vivendi and key source of "profitability" for the entire system for a very long time. The term permacrisis is simply a reflection of these long-tail risks eventually reasserting themselves.
We are likely to see some re-localization which will hopefully increase resilience. But emissions and viruses know no political borders. The destiny of our species is to be globalized (colonize every nook and cranny of the planet) and the sooner we can achieve this in a peaceful, sustainable, equitable manner, the less wasted life, the less damage to ourselves and the planet.
> The unfortunate second-order effect of the death of globalization that no one likes to talk about is the rising cost of all kinds of goods and products
These aren’t second-order effects or some kind of dirty secret. Anyone with a high school education in econ understands that buying American is more expensive. What is a far more interesting question is why we are now willing to pay that cost, and how we got here. It’s worth noting that this is largely a counter-current movement within the semi conductor industry, since a lot of industries post-Covid are actually more global, more remote, and less local than ever before. Would be interesting to touch on this.
This pseudo-conspiratorial thinking, that somehow the increased costs of domestic production are a secret the “elites” are trying to “hide,” is just a convenient way to make a very basic observation seem clever and insightful.
The idea that seems to have been disproven is that trade liberalization will lead to political liberalization. Turns out you just end up with super rich dictators and authoritarian single party bureaucracies.
If anything it’s gone the other way with authoritarian ideas being imported into democracies and dependencies on overseas supply chains making companies into hostages to authoritarian regimes.
The latter effect seems like a large scale version of what forums and social media has taught us: that the least tolerant people end up controlling the discourse. The only way to stop this is to paradoxically be incredibly intolerant to the intolerant.
Personally I think we should have free trade with free countries and high “slavery tax” tariffs on authoritarian countries. An argument can be made that all labor in a country that doesn’t meet some minimal human rights threshold is slave labor and should at least be taxed.
> The only way to stop this is to paradoxically be incredibly intolerant to the intolerant.
I don't see this playing out well either. Instead, the subjective definition of "intolerance" stretches to the point where it becomes "stuff I don't like", resulting in continually-increasing polarization, with groups becoming more intolerant to other groups because those other groups are "intolerant" towards them.
There is no simplistic algorithm describing "a way to stop this". These are complex social phenomena...emergent behavior in an overwhelmingly complex system with 8 billion non-rational actors. Karl Popper was a genius, but I think he's wrong on this.
That's an excellent way to put it. The "paradox" branding has always seemed flawed to me, like it's making the concept more complicated than it needs to be and opening up the position to claims of hypocrisy . But tolerance doesn't work that way - if we become tolerant of intolerance, then we've given up our goal. Tolerance should be an active effort to fight against intolerance, not an indifferent armchair theory.
> The only way to stop this is to paradoxically be incredibly intolerant to the intolerant.
Keep in mind this is geopolitics, not national politics.
Geopolitics is playground rules. There are no adults around to complain to. It's lawlessness. Might makes right. That's the way it's always been.
Look at the Russia situation. They want what they want. You can't talk them out of it, except by force. Playground rules. Hopefully the Ukraine conflict remains small.
The fact we have a "western liberal rules based world order" at all is kind of a miracle, largely put in place based by the major world powers after the lessons learned in WWII. The winners of that war agreed to follow a general set of common rules and principles between nations, and it's kept the us out of major world conflicts for close to 80 years. We don't have to agree with Russia/China on value systems, we just need to agree to leave each other alone on the playground.
Trade helps nations get along, as both then have skin in the "peace" game, we both have something to lose by going to war. The fact that there's a pull back from global trade is a sign that we're no longer getting along, and lines are being drawn on the playground.
As was said here elsewhere, China and Russia are "rocking the boat" so to speak. They want to redefine who owns the parts of the playground nearby them. Trade will necessarily pull back, as nations can't be vulnerable to other nations on the playground looking to pick a fight. Hopefully sanity prevails, and China/Russia realize it's better for them to stay within established playground lines, and then trade will resume.
Geopolitics is an ugly business. Little room for idealism like "tolerance" and "diversity". You save that kind of idealism for national politics and policy (making your own country better). It's not about tolerance for China. It's about avoiding major world conflict.
Before we go knocking geopolitics, remember that keeping the world at peace allows everyone to improve conditions at home. We mind our house, EU minds theirs, China theirs, etc. That's a pretty good/stable arrangement.
"Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."
Popper was flawed on this. He neglected the game theory aspect of his maxim. Each side of a conflict sees themselves as the tolerant ones facing intolerance, so it just escalates or plays to a draw, a standing conflict.
If you follow that philosophy on intolerance, escalating polarization is the inevitable result. A small few people on the extreme ends being intolerable to each other put on a show of conflict that draws more people into the conflict.
I mean, the article's not wrong. This fab is a hedge against China invading Taiwan. Which will almost certainly happen because of the West's weak response to Russia invading Ukraine. China will invade Taiwan and the US will need semiconductors. Taiwan is a better US ally than the US is a Taiwanese ally and will supply them. That's what this is about.
Globalisation is still a thing, ish, but it's doomed. We thought the rest of the world (cough Russia, China and their rag-tag group of dictator allies) cared more about economic well-being than expansionism and petty grievances but guess what, we're the idiots and they don't. They want to dominate the world with their shitty dictatorships and we are too naive to see it.
“Globalisation is still a thing, ish, but it's doomed. We thought the rest of the world (cough Russia, China and their rag-tag group of dictator allies) cared more about economic well-being than expansionism and petty grievances”
Why should the US all the way on the other side of the world be depriving these two modern superpowers of their neighboring resources?
We have military proxy states set up all around Russia and China. The US has been the dominant power in the world for around 100 years.
Not that I don’t benefit from it, but it seems willfully ignorant to act like it’s US good guy Russia/China bad guy. We’d do the same expansionist thing, as evidenced by Ukraine and Taiwan themselves…
> depriving these two modern superpowers of their neighboring resources?
Wow so people are just resources to be exploited eh?
> We’d do the same expansionist thing
Mexico is kind of shitty yet the US hasn't invaded. Cuba is straight up hostile, yet there they are, an independent country. The US basically conquered parts of Germany, Italy and Japan and not only let them be independent countries, even helped them rebuild.
No, your theory is shit. The US has had all the opportunity to expand yet hasn't.
I was in Europe during the Iraq war, sentiment was pretty anti-American. I'm in Europe today, it's more pro-American than I ever could have imagined. More anti-Russian than ever.
If Russia and China wanted less hostile neighbours, maybe they should have been less shitty. Ukraine has been very pro-Russian at times, Zelenskiy himself even tried to make peace (he was the "pro-Russian" candidate during his election if you didn't follow Ukrainian elections regularly). Taiwan used to believe in "one country, two systems" but China fucked HK.
I'm in Czech Republic right now, used to be part of the Warsaw pact. Yet the frontrunner in the presidential election is a former Chair of the NATO military committee and all the politicians who were previously friendly to Russia have disavowed. There's Ukrainian flags everywhere and Russians are banned from getting visas here. Despite the refugee and energy crisis I've never seen a more anti-Russian sentiment.
Even Karlovy Vary, which used to have a ton of Russian tourists, has no sign of Russia anywhere. No tourists, no flags, nothing. Just yellow and blue flags everywhere.
I really wish he would cite his sources for a bunch of the specifics of his research. Like China's navy not being able to go more than 500 miles off shore, or German solar/wind capacity being so over-built out that the theoretical (given endless sun and wind) power generation is twice that of the actual power generation. When I try to look up publicly available data on his claims, either I get nowhere or the data I can find is nowhere near as drastic as his summaries.
I also find it baffling how someone so clearly intelligent and willing to burst bubbles seems to not be able to consider the US breaking down internally along with the break down of globalization. He's ignoring that the country is on the edge of long term civil conflict (or based on your view, has already begun the descent).
> Like China's navy not being able to go more than 500 miles off shore
This has been basically true until recently. china certainly has individual ships capable of long distance expeditionary activities but lacks the supply chain to project a large and sustained force globally, and not even in large numbers to places it cares about like the middle east (to protect oil shipments from piracy or state meddling). This is why they are investing in bases like Djibouti, gwadar, sri Lanka, but even so key choke points like Malacca are still vulnerable and those bases are not likely to be able to support say more than a small carrier group anytime soon
I had a friend that worked in carrier supply. Let's just say it's a very involved system where you HAVE to have a network of extra national allies to do it well, you can't go it alone which is increasingly what china seems like it will have to face given its diplomatic attitude of late
Yeah but when I look at a map, all they would need to maintain access to Persian gulf oil is a partner in the Indian Ocean and a partner in the Malacca straits. They have strong relationships with Sri Lanka and Singapore and Malaysia. Warrior wolf diplomacy probably did kill the larger belt and road initiative (eg, getting a stronger supply chain to Europe and pulling Europe out of the American sphere) but keeping the lights on vis a vis oil seems quite possible for China.
> I also find it baffling how someone so clearly intelligent and willing to burst bubbles seems to not be able to consider the US breaking down internally along with the break down of globalization. He's ignoring that the country is on the edge of long term civil conflict (or based on your view, has already begun the descent).
I think from what I read of his previously, it's more of a "we're not as bad off as them" and less of a "it can't happen here". But I don't see the US really breaking down in the near term politically because as bad and heated as words have gotten nothing substantial has really changed. It's mostly business as usual.
If you will also recall back when we didn't really "know" what the pandemic was going to be the whole country was pretty united. There was some toilet paper hoarding but that was about it.
I do think some of the homogeneity of the US will be lost and that will cause some local instability and terrorism like the terrorists who attacked power substations and such, but things have really calmed down and have been continuing to do so. We'll lose homogeneity because of the Internet and because we don't have a unifying voice or cause to crusade, but even white nationalists go to the movies and eat ice cream.
People jumping to the conclusion that everything is terrorism in the absence of concrete evidence is part of the problem. They caught the Washington State substation attackers; it was caused by a couple of not-very-smart criminals attempting an ordinary burglary in a creative way.
Actual terrorism is incredibly rare in the US, no matter how hard the media tries to find some.
Of course it's rare (this supports my assertion that the US is stable), but Washington State wasn't the only attack [1] and won't be the last, and that's just a specific type of attack on specific infrastructure. We can move all sorts of goal posts around what is or isn't terrorism, but you can apply the easy rule which is if Islamic people did this would we consider it terrorism. If yes, then it's also terrorism when white supremacist groups do it too (or any politically motivated group).
> But I don't see the US really breaking down in the near term politically because as bad and heated as words have gotten nothing substantial has really changed. It's mostly business as usual.
> If you will also recall back when we didn't really "know" what the pandemic was going to be the whole country was pretty united. There was some toilet paper hoarding but that was about it.
Also riots across the country and a whole bunch of "autonomous zones"...
Yea the riots were annoying (in the sense of an annoyance to the established democratic government) but like other riots they went away. It’s pretty much back to business as usual.
> Peter Zeihan has been talking our ears off on this topic for a while, if one can be bothered to listen.
He can be interesting to listen to, but I find that he typically paints the worst case picture - what will happen if no one reacts to the bad things coming down the pipeline. But when he's talking about stuff that's coming decades out, that's a pretty unrealistic premise.
still waiting on acknowledgement and/or crow-eating for the hundreds of posts claiming that Elon Musk will never succeed in buying Twitter (but he might be forced to pay for it anyway)…!
And depending on your definition free trade either always had been dead, or is something you kinda really don't want as a normal citizen or isn't dead but not thriving but also had been that way for most countries since decades.
I feel like Morris Chang in his retired days has been following the likes of Peter Zeihan who claims globalization is dead because the United States Navy can no longer protect the world's shipping lanes, which is absurd. I could only make it through half this video because he just seems very wrong to me.
Peter Zeihan: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization
Globalization is very much not dead. What we have now is a final roadbump before the ultimately connected, para-governmental world. The governments of countries who feel that they are excluded from globalism (Russia, China etc) are currently rocking the boat, but they will not prevail.
We will have the end of history 2.0 in the next 5-7 years.
There are many potential futures in front of us, but my gut says this explanation (or something similar) is closer to what's happening here. Not wagering on it, but paying close attention.
Globalization isn't going to die, but will for sure contract for a while. Not sure this is the final roadbump in the overall process, but it's a big one. Not even sure it's the end of globalization, it may simply be an economic crossroads between an ambitious China, an opportunistic Russia, and the existing (western liberal) world order.
As you said, a few countries are rocking the boat and we either all learn to play well together, or the west will take it's economic "ball" and go home. I don't believe any developed nation is so short sighted as to cut off it's own nose to spite the west's face. The west has resolve on this as the lessons of WWII still resonate with us.
There is a potential future in front of us where globalization collapses due to widescale political instability brought about by climate change. But I don't see that happening just yet.
No-one is listening because this is not a new or especially insightful observation. Nor is it wholly unknown territory, because we have many years of nationalist/protectionist/industrialist economic history to draw upon when trying to make predictions or investment decisions.
This does not bode well for Taiwanese national security. I’m surprised Taiwan allowed it. Considering that dependence on Taiwan for chip production has got to be one important reason why the US would defend Taiwan in case of an attack by China.
Ways global forces are ever more present in our lives:
- more and more of how we work, socialize, consume media, etc is through software produced by large multinational companies
- many of us seem to be emotionally or politically invested in movements in other countries. Americans who could not place Ukraine on a map 15 months ago are using its flag and taking stances on what kind of military aid is appropriate today. People who have never been to Iran are feeling alignment with ongoing protest movements there, etc etc.
- media is increasingly global, at all scales:
- hollywood movies get tweaked to be viable in China
- small-scale content producers regularly reach international audiences or do international collabs
- we even become aware of, and beholden to foreign regulations! US-based startups commonly now know and plan for their GDPR obligations.
I think globalization may be changing, but it's not dying.
Globalization is dead the day the math of specialization and division of labor is no longer relevant. Until then we are just flirting with unsustainable inefficiency.
Probably not many who regularly hang out in the HN comment section.
As for others in the U.S., I imagine some would choose it over picking produce in the hot sun. Or working in an Amazon warehouse. Particularly if the pay is better.
iPhone factory workers in China get paid more than field workers in China. The same will be true in America.
> iPhone a lot more expensive.
Yeah, so what? There's plenty of slack in the wasteful consumption habits we've developed generally, and with phones specifically. If an iphone becomes twice as expensive, then simply compensate by buying one half as frequently. Instead of wastefully buying new phone every year because you've just got to have the latest trendy fashion gadget, buy a new one every ten years. As consumer expectations shift, so will the products. Instead of thin and disposable phones to chase fashion trends, we'll get robust and serviceable phones if that is what people come to demand.
The neoliberals didn't integrate human rights, pollution, climate change, national security, food security etc. into their framework and so well, uhh, yeah, it didn't work out so well did it?
I honestly don't think it's a huge surprise to most people - every one of us is interested in at least one of those externalized issues, and so we've pondered the problem.
We're going to need a new framework obviously.
Pragmatically, since we don't do things very well internationally, I suppose we'll see adjustments: supply chains for national security, collective government pushback on China after a lot of behind the scenes worries it'll now be public, energy realignment forced largely due to Putin, probably some kind of strategic engagement of 'Rest of Asia' by the USA, a tightening of NATO and integration of Japan and Korea and Australia into that extended framework, probably the UN will lead some initiatives on Human Rights but I am sad to say I don't foresee a lot of progress. The situation in E. China is morbid, but China can very effectively keep the noise levels low by allowing very few people there, coercing various media entities and reliably depending on our own complacency.
If you play a game of monopoly it always goes the same:
- Everyone wants to scoop up as many resources as possible before everyone else.
- People lament the fact that certain players got lucky and have a head start.
- The majority of the board stops being salty and plays nice/negotiates to continue accumulating property.
- Eventually everything is purchased, the pecking order is firmly established, there is no negotiation because you either already have what you need or you lack resources to barter with, and the slow downward spiral begins until the game is over.
We are simply in the endgame now. The “you scratch my back, I scratch yours” phase of capitalism is over until we start a new game.
Globalization (the definition) comes to borderless states with transparency and intercommunication.
Which will not happen because of individualism, nationalism, and war. Democratic, liberal ideals push for globalization for their one world agenda but they fail to understand libertarian views for personal and property rights.
Here is a poorly mic'd but audible version of the remarks of Morris Chang, the now-91-years-old founder of TSMC several speakers prior to Biden's own remarks: https://youtu.be/urlwF0B9-hw?t=747
I think the post-Covid economic boom and acute shortages played a bigger role than the alleged end of globalization. NO one could have foreseen in early 2020 at the depths of such a serious pandemic that things would recover so fast, such as home prices, stock prices, GDP, consumer spending, truck sales, tech, etc.
> The most powerful, and somewhat uncomfortable, part of Chang’s speech is his declaration that:
> “Globalization is almost dead. Free trade is almost dead. And a lot of people still wish they would come back, but I really don’t think they will be back for a while.”
This is a horrible take, globalization's demise is a blessing not a curse. Globalization has propped up repressive regimes willing to provide child slave labor at the behest of capitalists the world over. At the same time this was taking jobs away from people in the west, and ending good factory jobs with pensions where a single breadwinner could support a family of 4. We might be able to go back to that paradigm which is important so that a child can have at least 1 parent available at all times and such if we end globalization and go back to localized supply chains.
I'd gladly pay more if it meant everybody in America could be homeowners (if they actually wanted to, and put in effort i.e. 9-5 at a FACTORY job for 40 years, to retire w/ a decent pension, and the works), you know like 90% of baby boomers had, but current generations do not have. We're already at a point where nobody will own anything anymore, everything is rented. Owning a home is out of reach unless you make over 200k.
When China does something crazy like Russia we have to be ready to cut economic ties with them - and the TSMC story (and Intel building fabs in Ohio and Europe) are the first steps towards that.
That's about as likely as the rest of the world cutting economic ties with the US when it does something crazy, like invading a middle eastern country to satisfy it's presidents ego. (Finishing the job Dad started.[1])
Russia is not China, all it brought to the table was exporting a single commodity, while being utterly dependant on imports. And either way, India and China didn't play ball with sanctions.
[1] There were a few other causes for that conflict, but 'Colin Powell lies his ass off in front of the UN' wasn't any better, and neither was 'we paid defectors money until we found one that would sing to the tune we wanted to hear'.
I'm often surprised by what I learn of the Russian economy, especially over the past year.
- Nobles gases used for the production of semiconductors are produced in large part by Russia. I've seen and forgotten some other examples where I said to myself 'huh, I didn't know that was made in Russia... ooops'.
- Russia produces significantly more cereals than Ukraine. Worth mentioning, since it comes up frequently.
- Hydrocarbons are the biggest combined export but the relative amount and the very low cost of production are impressive, downright advantageous.
- Russia's GDP is often understated (see nominal vs PPP basis), making its true economic size comparable to that of Germany while far less dependant on services.
- Russia has an enormous appetite for imports (luxury goods and consumer electronics come to mind) but it's worth noting that shelves are far from empty and the Russian agricultural and food transformation industries have really stepped up their game in the past 10 or so years.
There's a lot of condescension towards the Russian economy that is propelled by western 'Russia experts' who frankly aren't very smart or honest. Downright dangerous if you ask me, since western politicians may very well base their decisions on incomplete or incorrect information.
Imports from China are vastly more important for regular consumer. Without China there are no phones, no cars can be built, no household appliances and so on. Almost everything you have at home is made in China. That's why people assume China is the world global economy.
China isn’t sending Food, cars, housing, medicine, which is the vast majority of the average households budget.
China produces a great deal of stuff like clothes, toasters, tv’s, and phones but so does the rest of the world. Malaysia is manufacturing meany of the things people think of as cheap Chinese crap because Chinese factory workers are getting a little too expensive for various things.
That’s wildly incorrect. America gets ~1.5 Billion dollars a year worth of Medicine from China, which is 1% of the total drug imports let alone what happens when you include domestic production.
GDP is a horrible way to think about actual international trade, because western GDP is pumped up by services, IP (and monumentally expensive machines that are mainly IP wrapped in steel). Meanwhile China exports actual stuff. In a real "embargo China" situation, China and their sphere of influence could easily replace Europe and the US while the opposite is not true.
Food, cars, medicine, housing etc make up a huge chunk of the real economy dwarfing much of what we think of as IP industries. As an example, 90% of toilet paper used in the US is manufactured in the US and that’s fairly common in most industries.
Music is a great example of this it plays an outsized role in peoples minds but is a tiny fraction of the economy.
China is a major part of the worlds supply chain and the kinds of things people buy regularly with disposable income but we can get cheap shoes and electronics elsewhere. Hell many companies are moving manufacturing out of China.
Anyway, take a deeper dive at China’s imports not just exports and I think you would be surprised.
