What is Reddit's opinion of Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

The thing is that Trump is not completely wrong (although he would have been a bit more correct about the currency manipulation a few years ago). The Japanese, South Korea, Taiwanese... and now the Chinese got rich protecting their own markets/currencies and selling to markets in North American and Europe (they did it by applying variations on what's called the 'developmental state" model). You could buy a South Korea car in the US long before you could buy an American car in South Korea. Their explicit national policy was to prioritize their growth over and above any "free market" considerations. In other words, they ignored the rules of free trade when it suited them. This is in fact not free or fair, and the costs of these policies are often borne by a concentrated unlucky few (even though everyone else benefits).

There is a fairly established literature on the politics surrounding trade, if anyone is interested. (I always tell people to start here and here to get in the proper analytical mindset). Notice that that NYT article never really quoted political economists, but only economists? That because the math of economics pretends the political consequences of trade do not exist. Trade absolutely needs to be accompanied by a generous welfare state to compensate the losers and keep them invested in the process.

Don't dismiss the anger of working class democratic voters. It's not sourced in irrationality.

I posted this over in the Hillary Clinton sub. I don't expect anyone over there will appreciate because it's a rather loud echo chamber...

The thing is that Trump is not completely wrong (although he would have been a bit more correct about the currency manipulation a few years ago). The Japanese, South Korea, Taiwanese... and now the Chinese got rich protecting their own markets/currencies and selling to markets in North American and Europe (they did it by applying variations on what's called the 'developmental state" model). You could buy a South Korea car in the US long before you could buy an American car in South Korea. Their explicit national policy was to prioritize their growth over and above any "free market" considerations. In other words, they ignored the rules of free trade when it suited them. This is in fact not free or fair, and the costs of these policies are often borne by a concentrated unlucky few (even though everyone else benefits).

There is a fairly established literature on the politics surrounding trade, if anyone is interested. (I always tell people to start here and here to get in the proper analytical mindset). Notice that that NYT article never really quoted political economists, but only economists? That because the math of economics pretends the political consequences of trade do not exist. Trade absolutely needs to be accompanied by a generous welfare state to compensate the losers and keep them invested in the process. And when it no longer benefits a country, they abandon it.

more to the (IR) point. People need to get it out of their heads that trade is universally good. Trade is no more universally good than alliances are universally good. You can talk all you want about Pareto frontiers, but the truth of it is that trade that deprives you of an industrial base weakens your defense capability and is therefore bad on that metric.