The most bizarre thing about the economical systems is that there indeed were cases where former workers of the industries that collapsed/disappeared indeed went the way of the dodo.
BTW see also https://www.edge.org/conversation/gin-television-and-cogniti...
That reduction happened over a long period but it wasn't without its problems. Even now there are old coal mining villages that have never really recovered economically.
Are villages the correct unit to look at there though? Do individuals from these villages now have worse opportunities than they had before?
Ultimately the manufacturer wins the horse-shoe battle because they are cheaper. And the consumers in the village prefer cheap shoes to locally made (expensive) ones.
Fundamentally consumers like cheap stuff. Manufacturing shifts happen because as soon as there's a cheaper output, you've won. Consumers will reliably switch to cheap. At the start there may be some brand loyalty, there may even be a quality difference, but both those erode quickly.
Lots of people promote the idea of buying locally, even if it's more expensive. But it's a hard message to sell, and a tough one to buy. I'm sorry for the blacksmith, but times are hard and I need my horses shod.
It's easy to blame capitalism or factory owners or foreign cheap labor or any other convenient political scapegoat. But the root of the problem is consumer preference for cheap (even if inferior) to the exclusion of everything else.
This is perhaps culturally most evident where the premise above is false. In the US for example food is low quality, but plentiful. In Europe food generally costs more, but is of a much higher standard. Portions are smaller. Quality is more important than quantity.
This is not by accident. Europe has deliberately fostered local food markets, local food production, and promoted a narrative around history and good production. Cheap food is available, but quality food has a strong foothold.
Is this actually true?
As to your general point, I don't think the blame can lie with the consumer as the consumer almost always does not have the expertise to recognize quality and understand the consequences of buying lower quality. Nor can you expect everyone to be an expert in everything. Without that expertise, buying a more expensive product is a gamble while a lower priced one is at least a known quantity even if it isn't the theoretically best deal.
There is difference between the political power and the economical power. The economical power of the aggregate consumer is vast, but it's unconsolidated, and doesn't usually translate into the political power. The economical power of several centralized/monopolized producers is also vast, but it's consolidated and usually does translate into the political power. Plus, you know, class consciousness and all that — the gentlemen and the nobles in the Parliament may bicker and backstab each other, but the moment the peasants revolt against the Enclosure Acts, they put their differences behind them and start the hangings.
> Ultimately the manufacturer wins the horse-shoe battle because they are cheaper.
Yeah, but they can speed their victory up by paying the legislature (or straight up being a large part of that legislature) to crack down on those small-scale manufacturers. License the blacksmithing itself, require obtaining certificates of quality for horseshoes for sale, and tax shoe-fitting unless it's done with the authorized horseshoes — and that's only barely scratching the surface.
More people can afford to buy a toilet than ever before. The same may not be true of affording a plumber to install it.
And the idea that one location making all the horseshoes means each village is minus one living is ignoring the other effects.
Now, all the villagers can get cheaper horseshoes, so they don’t have to spend as many resources on shoes for their horses, and can now invest more into what their village is best at, and sell those goods to other villages.
Basic Ricardian Economics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardian_economics
Of course, that doesn’t mean the blacksmith isn’t out of a job, but I always hate that so many people think the solution to that problem is to just give up the economic benefits of specialization instead of working to improve the distribution of the gains.
Ignoring all the possitive other effects as well.
You are probably right that we need to have less stuff, but if we are going to have less, I would rather work less, too.
And for a village that had 50 such specialties... they can make do with 49 specialties. Then with 48. And 45 as well. 25 eventually. But some day in the future, their great-grandchildren wake up, and there are no jobs. That Korean factory even ships in tractors, so there's no farm labor work to be had for the 200 who didn't have a specialty. But the food still costs money. And it doesn't matter if the village is gone because those people moved to the city, there's not much work there either. And maybe there are even fewer people to worry about this, because when the moved to the city, those people stopped having children.
Who is this good for? Is it good for you?
> Who is this good for? Is it good for you?
Well, as a global population reduction is sorely needed, this is good for pretty much everybody. There's absolutely no way we can keep extracting resources and polluting at the rate demanded by our current enormous population (which has more than doubled in my life time).
Unfortunately, your theory isn't working, as the population still grows.
Retards in the 1960s believed such. But the reality is that it's not even needed a little. And subreplacement fertility isn't "population reduces for a bit, then stabilizes"... subreplacement fertility is actually "the population continues to shrink, accelerating and shrinking faster until extinction inevitably ensues".
So you're not really a "I want a lower population", you're part of a death cult that wants humans gone. Forever.
>this is good for pretty much everybody.
It hasn't been good for anyone, except some tiny minority that is measured as much less than 1%.
>There's absolutely no way we can keep extracting resources and polluting at the rate demanded by our current enormous population (which has more than doubled in my life time).
Already shrinking. Visibly, indisputably shrinking. And the western world isn't doing the polluting.
>Unfortunately, your theory isn't working, as the population still grows.
No, it already stopped growing. Ran out of gas, but as the car coasts to a stop you can delusionally pretend that the engine's still on, and that we aren't coasting up the hill. If somehow I were wrong, it wouldn't be unfortunate at all, it'd be a wondrous miracle.
The factory is now all robots, and only 3 people have a job there.