Let’s see, it was going something like this when the thread, having jumped off the highway, went deep into the woods:
It’s impossible to say. Some countries will find it to their advantage to import food, some to export it. The nature of comparative advantage alone is so potentially complex that no smart person would hope to guess how things would work out, and of course any number of factors could change what can be produced where; emerging economies, global climate change, new technologies, trends in what foods are desired, and so on. What is for sure is that food would probably be more plentiful and cheaper.
I’m fine with much of what you say, as long as all externalities are properly priced in. Currently, this frequently does not happen.
For example, hypothetically a country could produce a food product cheaper, but only by pumping it full of pesticides and synthetic chemical fertilizers. Cheap product, but at the cost of damaging the environment. If this damage to the environment is considered to be “free”, then importing this “cheaper” food would not be good.
Any country that does not price in externalities like this could then produce food “cheaper”. We have to choose; Do we want to properly price in things like damage to environment, pollution, C02 emissions, overuse of water, etc. to global trade? OR are we happy to simply go to the lowest common denominator, and let countries with the worst record in protecting common resources get the best share of the market?
Or, if a
I would have to nitpick that artificial fertilizers are not necessarily bad for the environment and have probably saved billions of people from starvation. So that’s good.
Of course it’s theoretically possible a country could make food cheaper by, say, using something that is very polluting. That said
That doesn’t mean Canada will end up importing it. Countries will end up trading based on comparative advantage, not competitive advantage.
At the risk of, again, pointing out the crazily obvious, this happens NOW. Canada has stronger labour protections and environmental regulations than the great majority of countries we trade with and yet we are not overwhelmed by foreign stuff - because, again, things being cheaper don’t mean it’s to our comparative advantage to import them. In essence, the Canadian dairy farmer isn’t competing with the New Zealander dairy farmer; he is competing with Canadian machine shops, plastic injection molding factories, and software companies. The dairy industry has successfully used politics to extract money from those industries and take it for themselves, thus increasing their welfare at the expense of everyone else.
This is a really important concept to get.
I’m all for the world coming to agreement on, say, carbon emissions, but if you think Canada’s dairy farmers are insisting on protected status and government handouts to save the world from CO2 emissions, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn you can have for a good price. Those are different issues, and politically corrupt protectionism is absolutely not going to help the world avoid externalities like the ones you describe.
Right. Increased production leading to increased prosperity.
Here’s the problem: We already live in what economists of a century ago would have considered a “post-scarcity” level of productivity; poverty still exists. It will never be enough to simply “produce” our way out of poverty. Who is entitled to the profits, who has ownership, still matters.
Comparative advantage is measured on an average level, like GNP; free trade still screws over many persons within the society. Unless you’re proposing some kind of neo-Blanquist wealth-sharing, free trade is socially counter -productive.
Look up phosphate-induced algal blooms and get back to me, Pollyanna.
In any case, what you’re calling “artificial” fertilizers are made of mined phosphate, and that supply will get more expensive and scarcer. Feeding people a fossil resource is unsustainable.
It wasn’t really about high-yield ag, I just felt like sniping, since phosphate runoff is one of those things conservationists get bothered about all the time. We use a truly crazy (and unsustainable) amount of phosphate, and get a crazy amount of pollution. Hopefully someone will find a better way soon.