Thanks for the reply Kbog.
Of course withdrawing from international markets would be a economically backwards thing to do. But, I don’t think that is what socialists are generally for. From what I’ve read socialism is all about greater economic cooperation, internationalism, abolishing the state and opposing nationalism & economic protectionism etc. These are some wikis that I think support this view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalism_(politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletarian_internationalism
I am absolutely against countries disengaging from the global market. What I was trying to say is that it might be easier under a socialist world economic system for economies to unite together to lift standards in unison, than compared to a liberal capitalist world economy. And by acting in unison, this would avoid a reduction in economic growth.
For example in our current capitalist economic system, we have a handful of countries like Ireland that have turned themselves into tax havens. Ireland benefits greatly economically by doing this when corporations like Apple headquarter there for tax purposes, but it does so to the detriment of other countries—and the overall effect is probably slightly negative due to overall lower tax collection and less money being spent overall in the public interest.
I think you could also make similar arguments for the Bangladesh and Vietnam economies with respect to labour laws in the garment industry.
Do you think I make a valid argument that there should be EA interest in socialism as international co-ordination might be easier in a post-capitalist world economy?
Also, I noticed Singer made a remark on this I thought I’d share just in case you did not know.
″ Capitalism is very far from a perfect system, but so far we have yet to find anything that clearly does a better job of meeting human needs than a regulated capitalist economy coupled with a welfare and health care system that meets the basic needs of those who do not thrive in the capitalist economy. If we ever do find a better system, I’ll be happy to call myself an anti-capitalist.” https://web.archive.org/web/20181028225703/http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/ethics_and_the_left/
Great post by the OP. But one thing I wished it touched more upon was the need for internationalism.
Under our current liberal capitalist world economy, countries are incentivised to weaken labour laws, safety conditions, environmental standards, taxes etc to remain competitive.
Both socialism and capitalism do have remedies to prevent/ temper this “race to the bottom” phenomenon. But I think socialists have a good argument to make that a socialist system might be better able to do this by lifting international standards. And this would be of great consequence to Effective Altruists.
Does the OP have any thoughts on this?