Where does this come from?

[james_davis_nicoll]

Two books written the better part of a century apart (For Us The Living and an upcoming book that I won't mention by name) have a similar plot development: after the old world [1] suffers a terrible calamity, the regions that were unaffected by the calamity cut off all trade to the affected region until such time as it recovers.

Why would this been seen as the right thing to do?

1: In the regional sense in the Heinlein and a more literal sense in the upcoming book.

Comments

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

Are we looking for an ethical reasoning behind it, or trying to fill a plot hole?

Was there a possibility that the calamity might spread, for example if it involved disease or mutation?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

It was a world war in FUTL and a planet-specific natural calamity in the upcoming book. As I recall FUTL, the US managed to sit out the war so having it spread wasn't the issue. The issue was what to do with a vast region that had been trashed by warfare and the solution seemed to be to let the locals rebuild their economies without any external trade.

[(Anonymous)]

Need a rationale? Well, if you're a serious antiglobalist or Communist, it's clear that establishing trade with the devastated area will only lead to underdevelopment as local industries are stifled by the competition of the un-smashed countries and the undoubtedly unfair and partial terms of trade they will establish. They must be left to recover on their own, for their own good, or something.

Bruce

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

I can imagine a mindset of avoiding "disaster cooties," for a variety of reasons. Some would be rational -- if the area had been hit by a plague, say -- some less so -- "The gods struck them down; we must avoid anything to do with them, lest the gods become angry at us also." Or many other justifications.

There's also complete disinterest, which has some historical precedent... the Chinese took a look around the world once upon a time, and decided there was nothing out there worth their time and pretty much ignored it from then on. Until the world came knocking with sufficient force, of course.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

This sounds like exactly the premise of the upcoming sfapocalyptica movie with Rhona Mitra, done by the director of Dog Soldiers and Descent. I found that pretty nonsensical, too.

[andrewducker]

That movie at least has an incurable plague as an excuse...

I had no idea what you were talking about ....

[tsm-in-toronto.livejournal.com]

... so I looked it up (http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809834146/info), and found a trailer (http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809834146/video/5955640/20080115/148/5955640-100-flash-s.55154954-,5955640-100-wmv-s.55154946-,5955640-300-flash-s.55154956-,5955640-300-wmv-s.55154948-,5955640-700-flash-s.55154958-,5955640-700-wmv-s.55154951-,5955640-1000-flash-s.55154960-,5955640-1000-wmv-s.55154952-).

Re: I had no idea what you were talking about ....

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Wow, how many cliches can you fit into one trailer?

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

If you mean outlaw contact, blockade, actively prevent trade, that needs some motivation/excuse, like contagion, gray goo, or whatever.

If you mean trade drops off to essentially nothing, I might believe that; what do they have to trade?

Also there needs to be some explanation for not offering any aid; it's kinda what we do.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

If you mean trade drops off to essentially nothing, I might believe that; what do they have to trade?

This might have been the authors' internal rationalization. It shows that they don't understand the notion of comparative advantage, though. The 'poor' side of the equation is a great source for cheap labor, and that's always in demand.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

There exist places that don't have any comparative advantage at all.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

For example?

(A community of poverty-stricken aristocrats too proud to work would do and by the oddest of coincidences, the book I should be reporting on instead of typing this had one)

[(Anonymous)]

Places where your plant manager has to worry about being chopped up by machetes? A certain modicum of political stablity seems necessary for there to be much investment.

Bruce

[kraig.livejournal.com]

If you've no ethics whatsoever, you give guns to 10% of them and pay them three times as much as the other 90%. Those 10% then have a reason to keep the plant managers safe, or at least safe enough. Give the plant managers incentives too - maybe draw personal staff/slave types from the 90%.

I guess using 10% of the population to keep the other 90 in check might qualify for your certain modicum, although I think we all know that it's not tenable indefinitely.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

But why? There almost certainly exist more stable locations which also provide cheaper labour.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

In theory, those stable locations are more desirable so the price of labour rises until the cheaper, unstable places become competitive. (As with a lot of economics and especially economic rationalism, theory not guaranteed to survive contact with reality.)

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

I question even the theory: "price of labour" includes far more than just wages - it includes the cost of finding employees, getting them to the workplace (which may include providing them housing), communicating with them (a nontrivial task in some nations eg Papua New Guinea and Haiti), training them, providing their security, etc. There's also the price of getting equipment to the workplace, getting goods to market, etc. Combined, in troubled/highly corrupt countries, these costs can easily being so high that even zero wages do not provide any competitive advantage.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

"price of labour" includes far more than just wages - it includes the cost of finding employees, getting them to the workplace (which may include providing them housing), communicating with them (a nontrivial task in some nations eg Papua New Guinea and Haiti), training them, providing their security, etc.

Certainly - but if nobody is hiring in PNG, and there's still a demand for labour, theory states that prices will keep going up in stabler countries until it becomes cost-effective to pay all those extras.

There's also the price of getting equipment to the workplace, getting goods to market, etc.

Yep, this is one of the places where the theory falls down - see my comment below. The theory of comparative advantage assumes that transport costs are negligible and that it's easy to switch between different types of production, neither of which are always true in the real world.

(Another of the assumptions is that you can't shift production capacity between countries, which also isn't a safe bet - IRL, it may work out cheaper to ship the labourers from a poor country rather than getting them to do the work over there, in which case cheap labour doesn't translate into trade per se.)

[kraig.livejournal.com]

I was taking it as a given that there weren't, although maybe I missed it.

If there's only hypothetically other places with cheaper labour, there's maybe hypothetically other other places with inroads there already; maybe your preferred choice is gone, so you go with your next bet.

[tsm-in-toronto.livejournal.com]

If you've no ethics whatsoever, ...

Huh!? Maybe I'm not understanding your content, or your intent, or (Cyberian communications being what it is) your tone -- but how can imposing the rule of law by monopolizing the use of force, so as to set up industries and an economy that will raise the local standard of living (by e.g. making trade more profitable than theft), etc. -- how can that be "unethical"?

History in general isn't about ideal choices in respect of how to set up utopian, idyllic realms -- it's typically about choosing between circles in Hell. As the British art historian, Sir Kenneth Clarke put it, at the start of his book / series Civilization [citation needed? Google $='civilization sir kenneth clarke']: "All Civilization begins with fighting."

Is establishing civilization by force of arms ethical?

Or (possibility freely conceded) am I just not understanding your point, at all?

[(Anonymous)]

"Is establishing civilization by force of arms ethical?"

The question here is not is it ethical: it it profitable? (Arming and paying all those people to maintain orders seems rather expensive, and probably more so than going to a slightly less poor country which can maintain a modicum of internal order).

Bruce

[kraig.livejournal.com]

Guns are cheap, and poor people don't need much to be paid off.

[kraig.livejournal.com]

That's a potential genocide brewing; just look at Rwanda. Maybe it makes the local situation better, probably it doesn't. (You also missed the point about giving local slaves to the plant managers. :) )

Just because that's how it works In The Real World doesn't mean it's ethical.

Ah.

[(Anonymous)]

That's a potential genocide brewing; just look at Rwanda. Maybe it makes the local situation better, probably it doesn't.

Now I understand the point of that previous posting. Thanks.

(You also missed the point about giving local slaves to the plant managers. :) )

Yes, I did. (Actually, I skipped it, because it seemed like a separate topic, but point taken.)

Re: Ah.

[tsm-in-toronto.livejournal.com]

Sorry -- that was me.

Re: Ah.

[kraig.livejournal.com]

Nope, that's how you give incentive for the plant managers to stay, despite the danger. Cheaper than danger pay.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Southern Sudan leaps to mind. Burkina Faso, which is a very nice country I liked very much, but which doesn't do anything economically better than its neighbours, who also have cheaper labour. Large parts of Papua New Guinea, a poverty-stricken land which is actually quite expensive, has wretched infrastructure, and is prone to violence. The entirety of Somalia outside of Somaliland. The entirety of present-day Zimbabwe outside of the eastern highlands, which at least have valuable minerals.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Smallish islands also seem to be particularly bad at comparative advantage in many cases. All the scattered islands of the Pacific spring to mind. Imports of everything to a small market make it expensive to live there and almost nothing they export is unique enough to command prices equal to the cost of shipping it off. Tourism does work to some extent for those island nations that get the air links, but it seems there are just as many that remain backwaters because their beaches are not pretty enough or something.

Some sparsely inhabited parts of the US, the bits being depopulated due to farm/ranch abandonment, are also probably examples of not having a comparative advantage. They cannot produce anything agriculturally less expensive than other places in the US and they don't have any other resources like minerals or a scenery that makes people want to movie their corporate headquarters there.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

There's at least one small island in the Pacific that's surviving by running an ISP and offering domains with their TLD.

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

.There's at least one small island in the Pacific that's surviving by running an ISP and offering domains with their TLD.

You're probably thinking of Tuvalu (.tv). There are others active in this area. Tonga (.to) also does this sort of thing, but it is a small part of the economy.

[armb.livejournal.com]

Yes, my first thought was "maybe if the calamity is a plague that trade would spread". Infectious zombies or vampires or something.

[j-larson.livejournal.com]

I suspect bad economics, something like this: "Because their industries are devastated, we can produce everything more efficiently than they can, and therefore if we allow free trade, they won't be able to compete, and will all end up destitute. We therefore have to allow the region to recover by sealing it off economically, so their industries can rebuild by serving the internal market."

It makes a certain sense, if you've never hear of comparative advantage, and don't stop to think how hard it will be to rebuild without access to external capital.

[avram]

Y'know how, nowadays, if there's a disaster someplace, the price off all sorts of goods goes way up, and you get people complaining about price gouging? I can sort of imagine an economically stupid nation (or trans-national government) blocking off a devastated region to prevent people from being taken advantage of by evil capitalist price-gougers, but then I imagine there'd also be lots of pressure to just give the devastated region free (or cheap subsidized) aid.

[tsm-in-toronto.livejournal.com]

If I am reading you right (maybe I'm cluelessly not reading you right), it sounds as if you've just debunked the reasoning behind the Star Trek universe's so-called "Prime Directive".

Interesting.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

It makes a certain sense, if you've never hear of comparative advantage

I have no idea whether this is relevant to James' examples, but the existence of comparative advantage does not guarantee that trade will be viable. Scenario:

Alice and Bob both want McGuffins, which are made by combining a widget with a sprocket. Alice can make two sprockets or three widgets a day, while Bob can make three sprockets or two widgets a day. If they don't trade, the best they can achieve is a total of twelve McGuffins in five days (six each); if they can trade freely, OTOH, they could make fifteen McGuffins in that time.

Unfortunately, widgets are heavy. Getting a single widget from Alice's place to Bob's (or vice versa) takes a full day of work for one of them, during which that person can't manufacture anything. If Alice pushes the wheelbarrow, she's going to want at least two sprockets in return to make up for her lost production time, and trading two sprockets for a widget doesn't make sense for Bob - why would he trade two-thirds of a day's work for something he could make in half a day? And if Bob pushes the wheelbarrow, he's just spent an entire day - and some sprockets in trade - acquiring a widget that he could've made in half a day.

When factors of production aren't completely mobile within a country, it can also be worthwhile to forgo trades that look advantageous in the interests of preserving self-sufficiency. For instance, you probably don't want to become dependent on an unstable or potentially-hostile nation for your supply of strategic resources, no matter how good a rate they're offering you.

[zeborah]

How heavy are sprockets? How much does it cost to hire someone else to push the widgets or sprockets?

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

How heavy are sprockets?

Same as widgets. But only because I'm currently too lazy to work out the exact costs required for McGuffin transportation to make trade unviable. (If sprocket transport costs are negligible, Bob and Alice can make fifteen McGuffins every five days between them by shipping all the sprockets to Alice's place, but then Alice ends up with all the McGuffins, so transport costs arise in recompensing Bob.)

How much does it cost to hire someone else to push the widgets or sprockets?

Similar rates; Alice and Bob aren't exceptionally skilled, so would-be widget-pushers have the same sorts of options open to them. Again, because I'm too lazy to come up with slightly-cheaper-but-still-uneconomical numbers, but they do exist :-)

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

If the devastated planet doesn't have anything to trade that would be worth the transportation costs, I can sorta see it.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

In Heinlein's case, it's because the recent examples of economic revival were autarkic. I don't doubt it resonated with Heinlein's ethos, common to both his socialist and his libertarian periods, of self-reliance.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I don't think I'd call his SoCred period socialist, as such.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Sinclair's EPIC was pretty socialist, though you could argue that Sinclair had shifted somewhat to the right since his younger days (when he was a capital-S Socialist), and that Heinlein was on the rightwards edge of the movement. Still, by current standards, far to the left of (say) Kucinich.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Ah, here's a nice quote from Sinclair:

The “EPIC” (End Poverty in California) movement proposes that our unemployed shall be put at productive labor, producing everything which they themselves consume and exchanging those goods among themselves by a method of barter, using warehouse receipts or labor certificates or whatever name you may choose to give to the paper employed. It asserts that the State must advance sufficient capital to give the unemployed access to good land and machinery, so that they may work and support themselves and thus take themselves off the backs of the taxpayers.

Trade autarky, open credit, compulsory FDI. Somewhat weird by modern standards (though less so than even ten years ago).

[andrewducker]

See also:Batman - No Man's Land.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

No relation to We, the Living I take it?

From Edgar Rice Burroughs, maybe?

[tsm-in-toronto.livejournal.com]

In 1915, he wrote a quasi-similarly themed book, which I once half-read and totally forget, which was entitled Beyond Thirty, and republished years later as The Lost Continent, and which is discussed on the Interweb Tubes (among other places), here: http://www.corndancer.com/fritze/fritze_001019/fritze005.html

(I neither endorse nor un-endorse that link -- I'm just providing it for reference, and because it's approach to that book is kind of pseudo-on-point to James' query -- I'm sure that appropriate search-fu will turn up other relevant sites for those interested.)

Re: argh

[tsm-in-toronto.livejournal.com]

it's ---> its

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

Nalo Hopkinson's Brown Girl in the Ring was ruined for me by the idea that the authorities would ever abandon Downtown Toronto, but not the suburbia. Even in the bad, ol' 1960s when no one who could afford it lived downtown, the investment in infrastructure downtown was far to great for it to ever be abandoned while the suburbs were still viable.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

There was some facile futurism inspired by the urban crises and white flight of the 1960s/70s that imagined city centers just turning into abandoned no-man's lands, or walled prisons, or some such thing--"Escape from New York", etc. The world decides that these regions are so intrinsically screwed that there's nothing they can gain from paying attention and nothing they can do.

Actually, I guess that Deep Space Nine story about the "Bell Riots" was the same sort of thing only vaguely inspired by 1990s South Central Los Angeles and the Rodney King riots; of course, the central notion there was that the abandonment was wrong and had to end.

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