• HellsBelle
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    7 hours ago

    Global trade hasn’t helped anyone except Big Business and Wall St. Small businesses hardly ever prosper under the various tariffs and taxation rules, and the average person never benefits from all the plastic shit (including clothing) that forms a fair portion of trade.

    • Grimy@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      The only reason our shit is so cheap is because it’s made by children in other countries.

      Of course we’re benefitting from it. The ceos are keeping a big part of the pie but let’s not pretend we aren’t getting some of it too.

      • HellsBelle
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        2 hours ago

        So the average person doesn’t really benefit then.

        Especially when you remember that the US also has both child and slave labour, microplastics are everywhere-in everything-and everyone, that politicians who are supposed to be looking out for citizens have been bought off by Big Business, and governments often only do something about it when it benefits Big Business.

        • Grimy@lemmy.world
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          1 hour ago

          We benefit from low prices. Not that we shouldn’t invest in our own manufacturing capabilities, just that we receive benefits from globalization even if it predominantly benefits the corporations.

          Not to mention that everything you said would still happen regardless of where it’s built. As with many things, the actual problem is our economic system. Big business eating the earth, keeping most of the profits and feeding us poison is a symptom that doesn’t go away just by bringing back the factories.

      • SGforce@lemmy.ca
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        5 hours ago

        I’d like to add what I think is probably the biggest benefit. Economies of scale.

        For example, having a mine next to a steel plant next to a manufacturing plant is so much more efficient than shipping the ore to every corner of the earth that it would be impossible to have most of what we have today without doing such things.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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      7 hours ago

      Hence wanting the world globalized like in Star Trek and not like the way anyone is actually trying to do it.