re: #498 freetoken

I’ve been thinking about the whole free-trade thing lately, and if my long time stance that it is fundamentally a good thing ought to be changed.

The tentative conclusion I’ve come to is that the problem our country is facing, at least one of them, isn’t that companies are so willing to move production overseas, but that America as a whole undervalues our labor. We really do. We put manual labors down at the bottom of the proverbial totem pole. Americans as a whole don’t suffer from over-valuing their hourly labor rates, but by undervaluing the importance of labor to our lives.

This might seem counter intuitive at first, but think about it: if we collectively enforced the idea that “cheaper” is not better, how would our society be different?

Modify that to ‘cheaper is not always better’ and I’m with you.

To some extent you see that kind of thing when national-chain supermarkets advertise that they carry local produce. (Back in happier times, I rewarded myself for a promotion at work. I wound up buying a business card case made by local artisans in wood and metal. It felt much more satisfying than the Tiffany case which I initially considered.)

My gut reaction is that you have an intriguing notion which might well work—if it happens as a voluntary, cultural shift more than a mandated, protectionist outcome. How that might play out—there’d have to more to it than ‘Buy American’—is too much to get my head right now. This late at night I’m only good for regurgitating opinions I already hold.