1. Obviously quarantine works against infectious disease. It is unpleasant but in sufficiently bad crises, like now, it makes sense. It isn't xenophobic in this case. The US should have done it sooner.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @EricRWeinstein
2. the broader issues under the umbrella of "nationalism"/"internationalism" are trade and immigration. so let's talk about that.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @EricRWeinstein
3. Trade: I'm basically convinced that a.) the *immediate* cause of the 2000-present sharp drop in US manufacturing jobs was due to opening trade with China, and b.) that countries that get their "heavy industry" (steel production etc) from abroad are sacrificing long-run growth.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @EricRWeinstein
4. I blogged about these two points here.https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2016/11/19/industry-matters/ …
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @EricRWeinstein
5. There's also an efficiency-robustness tradeoff, always and everywhere. Domestic production and stockpiles are robust against disasters; global supply chains and just-in-time inventory are cheaper but more fragile, all else equal.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @EricRWeinstein
6. All that said, I'm *really* not convinced that slapping tariffs and trade restrictions would "force" US manufacturing to become stronger and more robust. Maybe we'd just get poorer. It's a gamble with everyone's livelihood. Deregulating industry is safer, economically.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @EricRWeinstein
7. You *notice* it when tariffs go up. My landlord is going out of business because of tariffs. An important deal for my company fell through because of the tariffs. We *feel* that shit. Now, that's not an argument that tariffs are *net* bad, but a lot of people forget.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @EricRWeinstein
8. I've never understood the immigration thing, truly, I don't. I just don't get it. Immigrants are good. I can't do justice to the econ case better than
@bryan_caplan already did. I just...I'm confused. You're obviously neither stupid nor xenophobic. You're Jewish. WHY.2 replies 0 retweets 5 likes -
9. My best model of your position is some kind of Straussian-cynical thing, like "Chinese grad students are obviously not going to be personally powerful in US society, because they're foreign, so this diminishes the power of scientists as a class, relative to other classes."
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Eric’s argument, as far as I’ve understood it, is that open immigration makes (scientific) labor cheaper - which doesn’t serve the already in the domestic market (scientists or else)
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no shit competition lowers the prices of things, but do you really *wanna* be a cartel?
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Not sure what his exact position is, but I think he gives his longest take on this (that I’ve seen) in the David Epstein episode of The Portal. Need to listen to that again before I’d feel confident to speak about his position further.
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