I was reading about free trade, so I decided to read the Wikipedia page on Economic Nationalism.
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So Wikipedia used that as an example!? In Econ they (I think Ricardo) use a common example to explain how trade works, and the example they use supported a political conflict going on at the time, it was NOT as random as it appears. Let me try to remember it.
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I made that up, but they did point out that Economic Nationalism can support colonies. Since the nation won’t trade for the stuff, they will take over some place with the stuff, and then, maintain that it’s coming from part of the nation.
The article didn’t get into imperialism - but in a way, imperialism does the same thing, by controlling the colony’s trade, so the capitalists at the imperial core get first crack at the colony’s resources and goods.
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Economists DO play those kinds of games, that is why I wasn’t sure. I remember the example.
Ricardo’s theory of Comparative Advanage if English workers are relatively better at producing cloth than wine compared to Portuguese workers, England will produce cloth, Portugal will produce wine, and at least one of these two countries will be completely specialized in one of these two sectors.
The real reason that example was used because they wanted to show how Portugual was awesome and wanted to give “scientific” reason why they couldn’t work with France, as it was just “not scientific.”
This is why your joke—-I wasn’t quite sure as that is what WE do…lol
Oh! I had no idea that the Portugese wine example was about knocking France. I just posted a link to Ricardo and a few others, because I thought I should go and read the original material.
I want to read the example where the Portugese make everything cheaper, but he explains that Britain should still make cloth, and Portugal should specialize in wine.
I’m sure people today would be, like, “I have this spreadsheet, and it shows that that scenario stops working pretty quickly, and Britain should just go and invade a country that’s even less developed than Portugal.”
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Promoting economics (capitalism) as a “science” makes all the horrible things it does to you seem “less” personal, but if you know algebra (why not calculus, because really if you know algebra, that’s good enough, its not that complicated) and think a bit, you realize all of the concepts are off, looking at the wrong item on purpose,
Ideology is an essential component in the support of economics as a science (Wisman, 2022). It is easier to promote an idea, when the math of microeconomics supports it, but it doesn’t support it, the ideology makes you not question that math.
IF ECON was a science people would have built on concepts and developed better models and yet we’re still using the same theories and models (we have computers, so why?), in fact you can look at papers written within the last five years discussing how Ricardo’s model of Comparative Advantage is still relevant today…WTF….it wasn’t relevant when he was alive. It is relevant, but not because of the science behind it, the ideology behind it is what makes Ricardo a genius.
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Yeah, every model tells a story. That’s the point.
It has a viewpoint and it’ll feel like a bias.