Anonymous asked:

Maybe! Maybe it's a gamble and you think you'll find something you're even better at. Or maybe "relentlessly pursuing your current comparative advantage" isn't actually good for you, or something you want to do; it might make economic sense but have other downsides.

argumate answered:

general consensus seems to be that global trade was good for the US as a whole, but fucked over a bunch of people working in manufacturing, so what’s good for “the economy” may be harmful for any number of individuals; I think that solving this dilemma is a Big Challenge.

[poipoipoi-2016]

fucked over a bunch of people working in manufacturing

It functionally wiped out rural America.  

@kontextmaschine had a mild mental breakdown when he went back to the East Coast last Christmas, and it’s the exact same one I have every time I fly out of NYC at night.  

A) It doesn’t stop. It’s just… lights.  For hundreds and hundreds of miles.  They get darker and more spread-out, but it’s completely different than farm country.  West Coast “sprawl“ is adding an extra exurb onto your major city, East Coast sprawl goes from Maine to Virginia to Ohio without stopping.  

B) 90% of it is completely screwed in the new economy.  It’s not even farms, it’s these random warehouses by the side of the road 20 miles out of Lancaster, PA that have no reason to exist in 2018.  At least not in these numbers.    

( C) Based on domestic migration stats, we’re actively pushing people off the lifeboats).