@ponca Dan, do you also share a moral responsibility?
- Thread starter CBradSmith
- Start date
Moral responsibility to subscribe to the Financial Times? No, I do not share such responsibility.
I'm sure @Ponca Dan is okay with the US importing Chinese electric cars based on stolen Tesla technology. No tariffs ever.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/07/11...gn=homepage&utm_medium=internal&utm_source=dl
https://www.engadget.com/2019/07/11...gn=homepage&utm_medium=internal&utm_source=dl
Maybe at some point American business should stop giving chinese our trade secrets? Now the taxpayer is supposed to step up when Tesla is hiring these Chinese communists? Am I missing something? This isn't exactly a new dynamic.
Can one assume you're good with Trump attempting to level this playing field? Those companies aren't "giving" away their secrets.
American companies shouldn't do business with known thieves. What happened to small government, laissez faire, etc? Can't let business business?
I read your link, but I did not see a connection of theft to tariffs. In fact I didn’t see anything in the article about tariffs.
If your insinuation is that because I oppose tariffs I therefore condone theft you are mistaken. I oppose both tariffs and theft.
Being opposed to theft should be self evident to any person with a functioning moral code.
The same holds true for tariffs. Suppose WalMart complained to the government that it was experiencing severe shoplifting in its stores, and demanded the government take action to stop it. So the government responds by posting federal police officers outside every WalMart whose job it was to charge anybody who entered a store a fee before being allowed in. Because some people stole from WalMart the government’s solution is to make everybody pay restitution. That’s the same principle used to charge tariffs on everyone because someone stole someone else’s technology.
Being opposed to tariffs does not make one an apologist for theft.
So American companies should just forget about doing any business in China while the US government allows Chinese companies to do business in the US without the same restrictions that US companies face in China. That sounds like an excellent idea. I think Dan calls that the "free" market.
Is the government an advocate for U.S. businesses (and, by extension, employees and shareholders) in instances like this, or nah?
Government "advocacy" for one interest sounds suspiciously like big government, Brad.
I don’t know if you brought me into your reply because you wanted a response from me. Assuming that is the case I will respond.
Leaving the “theft element” out of the equation• economists almost universally agree that free markets are superior to those that are interfered with. Any country that practices a free market will always be more prosperous than one that does not. Even when such opposite economies trade with each other.
As it happens in the trade between China and the US, Chinese subsidies to their companies and imposed tariffs on American imports into China are far more damaging to Chinese citizens than American. If the US retaliated by giving equivalent subsidies to American countries and imposing equivalent tariffs on Chinese imports int the US, the harm would be greater to American citizens than Chinese.
So the advice given by most American economists is indeed for the US to ignore the harmful economic polices the Chinese government is foisting on its own citizens, open our markets to free trade and enjoy the fruits of success.
• I leave out the “theft element” in this discussion because you didn’t include it in your hypothetical, and enforcement of theft should not be part of an economic policy, but rather should be handled by the appropriate legal authorities.
I'm not leaving the theft element out of the equation. Why are you?
Because theft is the reality and Dan prefers to talk philosophy and theory.
What do I win? Chicken dinner?
Similar threads
