Protectionism, pandemics, (Trump), and science fiction: The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi
One of the long-running themes in my commentary on Donald Trump has been the frustrating contrast between one of his few deeply held convictions-- trade protectionism-- and what modern economics have shown us about the value of trade. I won't take a public position on issues like abortion because such issues come down to philosophical questions that you must resolve for yourself. Trade, though, is about math, and I may as well restate it.
The Buchler-Gekko Rule: The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that math, for lack of a better word, is good. Math is right. Math works. Math clarifies, cuts through...
If your position violates basic math, we're gonna have a problem. Trade protectionism, mercantilism... No. Just... no.
But I've been through this before. On The Unmutual Political Blog, and even a bit here. Yet, something this week really grabbed my attention, and called out for what I've been doing on In Tenure Veritas.
In an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business, Trump tried to claim that COVID-19 is vindication for his trade protectionist beliefs. He also weirdly referred to himself in the third person, saying, "Trump was right," because of course he's the kind of person who talks like that.*
But there's actually interesting stuff here, and it relates to some of the things I have written in some previous science fiction posts on coronavirus. Trump claimed that everything happening economically demonstrates the problem with complex supply chains.
So let's talk about Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl. But, first we're going to take a few steps back, because this may actually sound familiar. I have actually written about COVID-19, supply chains and science fiction before. I wrote about this stuff in reference to John Scalzi's Interdependency trilogy, and Trump's comments might ring some bells.
Hold your consternation, though.
Quick summary of Scalzi's premise, before we get to Bacigalipu: the trilogy is about an interstellar empire dependent on a hyperspace river-like system in the process of collapsing. Individual systems are not created to be self-reliant, but rather... interdependent, and hence, reliant on that hyperspace river-like system called, "the flow."
Without "the flow," then, everything collapses because the supply chains collapse, and badness. It was a stupid system. More than that, it was a con. Read the books.
Does it follow from that that any system must avoid trade? No! (Sorrynotsorry, Trump.) Trade is a net-positive. There's that pesky math again. The problem with the Interdependency was that individual systems were created to be unable to survive independently, and not to make trade a net positive. Instead, the trade system in the Interdependency was set up around "rent," in the terminology of public choice economics. One family got a monopoly to produce one good in one system, with exorbitant profits, and another family got a monopoly to produce another good in another system with exorbitant profits. That rent-based system only worked with the con of the Interdependency. It wasn't a capitalist trade system. It was a rent-seeking arrangement, so the breakdown didn't show the necessity of protectionism, so much as the stupidity of bad supply chains.
And my commentary was about the importance of understanding the structure of supply chains, and the badness that ensues when they break down.
However, with a long windup, this brings us to Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl. Outstanding book. Read it. I will certainly assign it in a future course, so maybe some student will wind up reading this while pondering the text.
Anyway, here's the basic setup of Bacigalupi's world. Climate change and disease have run rampant throughout the world, and where this has become most problematic is in the destruction of the agricultural system. Blights spread throughout crop systems around the world, with names like "blister rust," and death tolls are staggering. The book takes place in Thailand, which has closed its borders and restricted importation as much as possible in order to try to prevent blights and diseases from killing off the Thai people. There are representatives of western biotech companies-- calorie men-- hanging around and looking for an opening to start selling bioengineered crops that would leave the country dependent on their companies, like Anderson Lake, who represents AgriGen (a stand-in for Monsanto). However, they face opposition within Thailand from officials who are trying to block any importation, and go around burning down anything with the hint of blight while trying to keep local crops growing.
That's enough of a sense of the world that it hopefully has your interest, and I didn't really spoil any plot points. It is an outstanding book, and you should read it.
Obviously, it isn't really a Trumpist book, being concerned with climate change. However, the book does take a sympathetic perspective towards the Thai officials who try to block importation of goods to prevent the spread of blight, while trying to maintain local crops. Supply chains broke down, within Bacigalupi's world, with the end of affordable fossil fuels anyway, but the calorie companies are still trying to establish trade, and AgriGen wants access to a seed vault in Thailand, but the cost is to start shifting Thai agriculture towards AgriGen's crops, which don't keep growing naturally. You gotta keep buyin' their seeds. Just like Monsanto. AgriGen has it all figured out.
But, according to the narrative in The Windup Girl, Thailand is doing far better than neighboring countries in part because it closed its borders, established strict procedures to control blights, and maintains that seed vault rather than letting itself become dependent on a calorie company, like AgriGen. It is... isolationist, and that is why it has been surviving, according to Bacigalupi.
Survive a plague through isolationism.
Um... that's... kind of what Trump is saying. Is Trump saying the same thing that Paolo Bacigalupi was saying in The Windup Girl? Without the climate change stuff, of course.
It is worth pointing out a few things. First, the Thailand of The Windup Girl isn't exactly a paradise, or even the Thailand of today. A lot of it is hellish. Somehow overcrowded despite a lack of sufficient food (bad plotting...), deteriorating, facing violence, and those blights and diseases are ever-present. In fact, from a realism-standpoint, the idea that Thailand's policies would actually succeed in containing this stuff is questionable at best, but as you read, you can ask yourself: is this a place I want to live? The answer will be, no.
Next, we aren't Thailand. We... are AgriGen. Was that not clear?
Trump thinks that you keep score by looking at the trade deficit, which is calculated based on net exports. If you export more to me than I export to you, then you beat me in Trump's simple-minded idea of a game. That's not actually how power works. We have been a net importer of stuff, getting more stuff from the rest of the world, so if you look at it in terms of the accumulation of stuff, we're "winning." We're not running a stuff deficit. We're running a stuff surplus. Is that the right way to look at it? No, it just shows the arbitrary stupidity of trying to keep score that way. The point is that Trump understands nothing of economics.
Power, though. We have historically set the rules of the game, and gotten our way on the world stage. That's ending, because other countries don't take Trump seriously. This is what happens when you obsess over an insignificant "score" at the cost of real power.
We're AgriGen, not Thailand. Understand that.
One last note for this morning: the process by which the Environment Ministry maintains its closed-borders policy to keep out blight and disease is brutal in the extreme. So brutal, in fact, that the brutality and corruption of the "white shirts"-- a phrase intended to be reminiscent of the "brown shirts"-- was precisely what motivated one character to become a mole for the Trade Ministry.
You may ask yourself how such brutality and corruption could be stable, in the long term. And... it generally isn't. What shouldn't be a spoiler: it isn't stable in the book. All such books end with the whole thing crashing down.
So here's the thing. If you go off by yourself and live in the woods, never interacting with anyone, you won't catch a human-transmitted disease. You'll probably have a life expectancy somewhat shorter than modern technology would permit, though. Isolated community of a dozen or so? Longer life expectancy, and you aren't going to get coronavirus. Other stuff... well...
Technology depends on trade. That trade depends on supply chains. Complete self-sufficiency of a small community, such that you are immune to supply chain disruptions, only comes when you give up the benefits of the technology that comes from the build-up of a supply chain. In John Scalzi's Interdependency trilogy, the problem was that the entire set-up of the Interdependency was a rent-seeking con in which the very survival of humans relied on the flow, and the collapse of the flow was an extinction-level threat that the founders of the Interdependency didn't plan for, being too busy setting up a rent-seeking arrangement that would make James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock simultaneously glow with pride and cringe with angst. You want to live on your own, on Earth? Not be dependent on trade? OK. Take yourself out of the supply chain. Take yourself out of the mathematical advantages of trade. Screw yourself. As in, you will be screwing yourself. I am not telling you, in the command form, to screw yourself. I am stating that you would be screwing yourself.
But, the blight'll get you anyway, realistically. As will climate change. And unless you want to go full "white shirt," the level of brutality necessary to maintain your system won't succeed, and if you try, you sow the seeds of your own defeat. And unlike AgriGen seeds, you'll sprout new generations of revolt.
Lesson for the morning: read Paolo Bacigalupi.
*I just coin terms like, "The Buchler-Gekko Rule." Totally different. What?!
The Buchler-Gekko Rule: The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that math, for lack of a better word, is good. Math is right. Math works. Math clarifies, cuts through...
If your position violates basic math, we're gonna have a problem. Trade protectionism, mercantilism... No. Just... no.
But I've been through this before. On The Unmutual Political Blog, and even a bit here. Yet, something this week really grabbed my attention, and called out for what I've been doing on In Tenure Veritas.
In an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business, Trump tried to claim that COVID-19 is vindication for his trade protectionist beliefs. He also weirdly referred to himself in the third person, saying, "Trump was right," because of course he's the kind of person who talks like that.*
But there's actually interesting stuff here, and it relates to some of the things I have written in some previous science fiction posts on coronavirus. Trump claimed that everything happening economically demonstrates the problem with complex supply chains.
So let's talk about Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl. But, first we're going to take a few steps back, because this may actually sound familiar. I have actually written about COVID-19, supply chains and science fiction before. I wrote about this stuff in reference to John Scalzi's Interdependency trilogy, and Trump's comments might ring some bells.
Hold your consternation, though.
Quick summary of Scalzi's premise, before we get to Bacigalipu: the trilogy is about an interstellar empire dependent on a hyperspace river-like system in the process of collapsing. Individual systems are not created to be self-reliant, but rather... interdependent, and hence, reliant on that hyperspace river-like system called, "the flow."
Without "the flow," then, everything collapses because the supply chains collapse, and badness. It was a stupid system. More than that, it was a con. Read the books.
Does it follow from that that any system must avoid trade? No! (Sorrynotsorry, Trump.) Trade is a net-positive. There's that pesky math again. The problem with the Interdependency was that individual systems were created to be unable to survive independently, and not to make trade a net positive. Instead, the trade system in the Interdependency was set up around "rent," in the terminology of public choice economics. One family got a monopoly to produce one good in one system, with exorbitant profits, and another family got a monopoly to produce another good in another system with exorbitant profits. That rent-based system only worked with the con of the Interdependency. It wasn't a capitalist trade system. It was a rent-seeking arrangement, so the breakdown didn't show the necessity of protectionism, so much as the stupidity of bad supply chains.
And my commentary was about the importance of understanding the structure of supply chains, and the badness that ensues when they break down.
However, with a long windup, this brings us to Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl. Outstanding book. Read it. I will certainly assign it in a future course, so maybe some student will wind up reading this while pondering the text.
Anyway, here's the basic setup of Bacigalupi's world. Climate change and disease have run rampant throughout the world, and where this has become most problematic is in the destruction of the agricultural system. Blights spread throughout crop systems around the world, with names like "blister rust," and death tolls are staggering. The book takes place in Thailand, which has closed its borders and restricted importation as much as possible in order to try to prevent blights and diseases from killing off the Thai people. There are representatives of western biotech companies-- calorie men-- hanging around and looking for an opening to start selling bioengineered crops that would leave the country dependent on their companies, like Anderson Lake, who represents AgriGen (a stand-in for Monsanto). However, they face opposition within Thailand from officials who are trying to block any importation, and go around burning down anything with the hint of blight while trying to keep local crops growing.
That's enough of a sense of the world that it hopefully has your interest, and I didn't really spoil any plot points. It is an outstanding book, and you should read it.
Obviously, it isn't really a Trumpist book, being concerned with climate change. However, the book does take a sympathetic perspective towards the Thai officials who try to block importation of goods to prevent the spread of blight, while trying to maintain local crops. Supply chains broke down, within Bacigalupi's world, with the end of affordable fossil fuels anyway, but the calorie companies are still trying to establish trade, and AgriGen wants access to a seed vault in Thailand, but the cost is to start shifting Thai agriculture towards AgriGen's crops, which don't keep growing naturally. You gotta keep buyin' their seeds. Just like Monsanto. AgriGen has it all figured out.
But, according to the narrative in The Windup Girl, Thailand is doing far better than neighboring countries in part because it closed its borders, established strict procedures to control blights, and maintains that seed vault rather than letting itself become dependent on a calorie company, like AgriGen. It is... isolationist, and that is why it has been surviving, according to Bacigalupi.
Survive a plague through isolationism.
Um... that's... kind of what Trump is saying. Is Trump saying the same thing that Paolo Bacigalupi was saying in The Windup Girl? Without the climate change stuff, of course.
It is worth pointing out a few things. First, the Thailand of The Windup Girl isn't exactly a paradise, or even the Thailand of today. A lot of it is hellish. Somehow overcrowded despite a lack of sufficient food (bad plotting...), deteriorating, facing violence, and those blights and diseases are ever-present. In fact, from a realism-standpoint, the idea that Thailand's policies would actually succeed in containing this stuff is questionable at best, but as you read, you can ask yourself: is this a place I want to live? The answer will be, no.
Next, we aren't Thailand. We... are AgriGen. Was that not clear?
Trump thinks that you keep score by looking at the trade deficit, which is calculated based on net exports. If you export more to me than I export to you, then you beat me in Trump's simple-minded idea of a game. That's not actually how power works. We have been a net importer of stuff, getting more stuff from the rest of the world, so if you look at it in terms of the accumulation of stuff, we're "winning." We're not running a stuff deficit. We're running a stuff surplus. Is that the right way to look at it? No, it just shows the arbitrary stupidity of trying to keep score that way. The point is that Trump understands nothing of economics.
Power, though. We have historically set the rules of the game, and gotten our way on the world stage. That's ending, because other countries don't take Trump seriously. This is what happens when you obsess over an insignificant "score" at the cost of real power.
We're AgriGen, not Thailand. Understand that.
One last note for this morning: the process by which the Environment Ministry maintains its closed-borders policy to keep out blight and disease is brutal in the extreme. So brutal, in fact, that the brutality and corruption of the "white shirts"-- a phrase intended to be reminiscent of the "brown shirts"-- was precisely what motivated one character to become a mole for the Trade Ministry.
You may ask yourself how such brutality and corruption could be stable, in the long term. And... it generally isn't. What shouldn't be a spoiler: it isn't stable in the book. All such books end with the whole thing crashing down.
So here's the thing. If you go off by yourself and live in the woods, never interacting with anyone, you won't catch a human-transmitted disease. You'll probably have a life expectancy somewhat shorter than modern technology would permit, though. Isolated community of a dozen or so? Longer life expectancy, and you aren't going to get coronavirus. Other stuff... well...
Technology depends on trade. That trade depends on supply chains. Complete self-sufficiency of a small community, such that you are immune to supply chain disruptions, only comes when you give up the benefits of the technology that comes from the build-up of a supply chain. In John Scalzi's Interdependency trilogy, the problem was that the entire set-up of the Interdependency was a rent-seeking con in which the very survival of humans relied on the flow, and the collapse of the flow was an extinction-level threat that the founders of the Interdependency didn't plan for, being too busy setting up a rent-seeking arrangement that would make James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock simultaneously glow with pride and cringe with angst. You want to live on your own, on Earth? Not be dependent on trade? OK. Take yourself out of the supply chain. Take yourself out of the mathematical advantages of trade. Screw yourself. As in, you will be screwing yourself. I am not telling you, in the command form, to screw yourself. I am stating that you would be screwing yourself.
But, the blight'll get you anyway, realistically. As will climate change. And unless you want to go full "white shirt," the level of brutality necessary to maintain your system won't succeed, and if you try, you sow the seeds of your own defeat. And unlike AgriGen seeds, you'll sprout new generations of revolt.
Lesson for the morning: read Paolo Bacigalupi.
*I just coin terms like, "The Buchler-Gekko Rule." Totally different. What?!
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