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Some will win and some will loose without free trade as well. Or do you think without free trade everybody will be great?

For me consumerism seems much worse than free trade. Buying clothes and use it once, change the car each year or other similar behaviors seem unsustainable because nobody cares about the generated garbage or the energy/material requirements.

Sure, now in some countries we can associate free trade with consumerism, but it's not everywhere the same.



> For me consumerism seems much worse than free trade. Buying clothes and use it once, change the car each year or other similar behaviors seem unsustainable because nobody cares about the generated garbage or the energy/material requirements.

I don't believe in putting the responsibility on individuals. Billions upon billions of whatever currency are being poured into ads, marketing, influencing, lobbying, propaganda (and whatever other manipulation mechanism I'm not thinking of), employing some of the most brilliant mind of this generation, to ensure that individuals are consumerist. Because that's what will make companies the most money, and "making more money" is the only incentive this society has in place.

Show me the incentive and I show you the outcome: the outcome is enormous externalities. We need to fix the incentives, not expect individuals to somehow act against them en masse.


Not sure what you are arguing for, if it is that something should be done about consumerism/externalities, I definitely agree. People are not "act against free trade en masse" either, it is a policy choice with various impacts, which I doubt will be "great" for most, just different.

> "making more money" is the only incentive this society has in place

Which society? I lived in 3 different societies (more than a couple of years), and while it is true that money is one of the incentive I think there were fundamental differences that were not obvious about what makes people tick. And by looking at the political situation around the globe - my impression that people care about many more things than their bank account.

That does not mean I propose specific solutions, I am just very skeptical that without free trade things will be better on average for more people than without, if anything is just a red herring so that nobody deals with the more complex issues.




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