Comments by "Luredreier" (@Luredreier) on "Vox"
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+Larry Vasquez
Because sometimes the quality isn't the same, or those workers are better utilized producing something else that another country does not have access to or that the US is better at then another country.
Norway does have some tarrifs on food in order to ensure that the gap between what we produce ourselves and what we have to import isn't too big (so we can manage for longer in case of for instance a blockade, since the last one we experienced caused starvation...)
But we're still importing food, and should import food, spreading the wealth to countries that's better at food production then we are.
In the case of US steel, I don't know exactly why local steel is being defeated in the US market.
But there's a number of possible reasons.
It could be a matter of quality.
For instance during the napoleonic wars Denmark-Norway had a protectionistic trade policy leaving us only with access to the inferior locally produced steel instead of buying the higher quality steel produced in other countries.
That had many consequences for other parts of our economy and society.
Other companies that need that high quality steel in the US might be unable to produce their products if they're limited to a lower quality product, if that is the issue in the US.
Alternativly, and this might not apply so much to steel as to the iron used to make the steel, when you have a mine or drilling hole or some such that does have a product but where the economic viability of the resource is near the end of its lifetime then the effort needed to effectivly use that resource is higher then for competing mines or oil platform or whatever.
This is the case many places here in Norway, the oil is becomming more and more expensive to extract and as a result production is falling.
You can argue that since our oil production is more enviromentally friendly we should continue producing more at all cost, or because we are the ones earning the money on that extraction...
However quite frankly, given the amounts of energy and effort needed to extract those resources it's quite frankly better to leave them in the ground and use the minds and machinery more efficiently elsewhere.
We're still competitive in terms of highly educated population.
And even if the production happens elsewhere we'd still be competitive in producing supplies for the oil companies in other countries and in teaching them how to do so more enviromentally friendly, safer for the enviroment and the oil workers, more efficiently etc, etc, etc.
And those that can't work with that can quite frankly find other jobs.
Sure, it hurts a bit that we have fewer jobs these days then during the local peak oil, but right here and now we're not really all that competitive when extracting those harder to extract deposits.
Perhaps one day all the oil in the world elsewhere runs out and we need those resources, then they can be extracted, or perhaps there's a huge crisis of some kind, a war in a oil producing country, then we'd be able to start producing more ourselves as a response to the new prices.
Or perhaps oil is replaced, then that's good and the enviroment will be better off, and we'll have moved on to other ways of making a living here in Norway.
Getting stuck in old ways isn't how you make a efficient economy, instead you adapt.
Yes, I agree with you that there are issues that we need to address.
Norway is trying to address some by experimenting with electrically powered shipping, currently mostly short distance ones between fjords and within fjords.
But as the technology improves we'll be able to increase the range just like with cars, and we'll be able to do trade with mainland Europe using electric ships.
And eventually with the US across the Atlantic with a pitstop in Iceland and with Japan and China with another pitstop either in Canada and one in Alaska, or optionally in nothern Russia.
I don't expect electric ships to do circumnavigation of the globe anytime soon, but we can probably address our most important markets with them in comming years if we can get the infrastructure going.
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+batata
The spiral towards the bottom in terms of prices is not a good thing...
However for various reasons the productivity of different nations for different products differ.
If country 1 can produce product A in 2 hours and product B in 3 hours and country 2 can produce both in 2,5 hours then it makes sense for country A to buy product B from country 2 and for country 2 to buy product A from country 1 as both countries can make more of the product they're better at in the same amount of time leading to higher total production for the two combined.
And the resource being saved don't need to be time, it can be raw materials or anything else too.
Highly educated labour is cheaper in countries like Norway, my own country due to the free education we have, the universal healthcare etc, etc.
So a company can for instance design microchips in Norway (the Mali iGPU used on ARM CPUs is one such example) at a lower cost then in the US since they don't have to pay their employees enough to pay down a huge student loan, pay enough for them to have a health ensurance etc, etc, etc.
On the other hand, there's a lot of other things that's way, way, way cheaper to produce in the US then in Norway.
So yeah, we sell components to NASA and ESA, you guys sell us Teslas and Fords, among other things.
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+MC_Master
"+Luredreier But my point is that the two "factions" have equivalent power. therefore, everything that gets suggested turns into endless bickering instead of actually legislating anything. while the US actually has a system where one party can actually make a decision either through the president supporting that party or holding the majority in congress or both for that matter"
This description fits the US system, not ours.
You're assuming that the same parties will always work together on the same things, but aligances shift for different suggested laws and with multiple parties there's no loyalty to a single faction like that.
For instance here in Norway, when the center party suggested immigration reforms during "the immigration crises" the labour party, progress party and conservatives all cooperated with them in making a deal limiting immigration to Norway making compromises with the more immigration friendly parties like the christian democrats and liberals.
The Green party and the socialist left party did not take part in that deal, despite the socialist left party actually being a part of the cabinet at the time.
Also, when the labour party failed to make sufficient compromises with its coalition partners the voters for those parties simply switched to other parties that where not as wedded to cooperating with them but that still wheren't on the right wing, losing them the election in 2013 leading to the current conservative-progress party cabinet winning with support from two parties in the political center, they've won two times in a row now, but if they fail to keep the support of the parliament they do risk to be replaced midterm, no election required, just the parliament voting to replace them.
A law is passed if a majority of the representatives in the parliament votes in support of a motion.
Sometimes a majority is reached with the three biggest parties going together about something, in other cases the smaller parties cooperate with one or more of the big parties to get something done.
The socialist left party (far left) and the progress party (far right) have actually made political deals about individual laws getting them through the parliament together with individual members of other parties who voted according to their own beliefs and not according to the party whip.
Some political parties care about urbanization, others about decentralisation.
Some about increasing public spending (including some on the right as far as taxation goes) some want to reduce public spendings.
Some care about the elderly, some about the young, some about parents, some about the schools, some about the enviroment, some about deregulation and so one and so forth.
Each of those different axis got people with different opinions.
And because there's not two party whips but several what suggestions get a majority shifts in each of these fields.
Sometimes the labour party gets a bill about workers rights or pensions for the elderly through, sometimes the conservatives get a pension reform through, both during the same term.
Changes are made as compromises first and formost, pretty much no law survives without modifications, but they all keep nudging our society in various directions depending on what people vote.
I can't remember last time we had a gridlock of any kind...
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+Sharann
That 51% rule is one of the few things I think is wrong with the german election system.
Here in Norway the result of the 97 election was that Kjell Magne Bondevik, the leader of the Christian Democrats won the election, but he and his two coalition partners together only had 26,1% of the voters behind them directly with the rest of the voters voting for political parties that either only accepted that cabinet or failed to come up with a viable alternative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_parliamentary_election,_1997
If the cabinet had lost the support of the parliament and the parliament where able to offer another alternative with more representatives behind it then a new cabinet would take power without any election needing to take place.
Basically our political parties know that they have to work with the election results at hand.
And parties don't have to keep supporting a cabinet all the way through a term.
Of course if something makes them change their mind but the cabinet get the support of another party instead they stay in power.
Also, political parties won't dethrone a cabinet just for minor issues, they have to lose the trust of the majority of the parliament to lose power and a viable alternative has to be presented at the same time.
If you don't like what the cabinet is doing but can't make a deal with other parties to create a different cabinet, then tough luck, they're staying in power, but you don't need to support them in every single case.
You can vote for a different budget proposal then the one presented from the cabinet, you can vote for different laws etc...
That leads to a very dynamic parliament and cabinets that know how to cooperate with the different political parties in the parliament.
The "Jamaika Coalition" mentioned above could for instance exist without Die Grüne" actually taking part in the cabinet, but just accepting a minority cabinet in return for political favours and then they could work together with CDU, FDP or SPD + other parties on a case by case basis if you guys had our system.
Or perhaps FDP could be left out.
Heck, if CDU where to do a good enough job of horse trading they could perhaps even lead alone.
The labour party has done so plenty of times with roughly that amount of voters behind them.
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