FlorianH

Informed not by meticulous study of lit on any of these points but by my subjective impressions 2 decades into learning/using and 5 years into teaching economics. While I don’t think I strawman, I simplify. On Econ ‘vs’ AI risks more broadly, Four ways learning Econ makes people dumber re: future AI makes (mainly) separate points that are though somewhat related and it was the nudge that finally made me bring the thoughts here to paper. Trade and geopolitics Trade is a win-win, basta. This, as basic result from voluntary exchange based on comparative advantage and specialization, is still the dominant lesson on trade taught in econ 101. Thanks to people like Dani Rodrik, it has at least become reasonably common to learn that actually things are a bit more complex in terms of distributive effects of trade within the concerned countries. Nevertheless, core tenet remains: trade = rather unquestionable "win-win". This is what we'll show in econ 101 problem sets ad nauseam. The somewhat less tangible distributive and geopolitical side-effects may be mentioned too, as add-on in the textbook chapters and elsewhere by the authors who today at last realize their simplified bottom lines don’t hold up. But being a bit too complex to quantitatively integrate in the most trivial trade models, this risks to quickly get binned by students who know there'll barely be exam questions on such 'qualitative' knowledge. But consider this scenario: somebody amasses power through foreign currency reserves while other countries inch closer toward default, and by accumulating cost advantage—or even unique capability—in producing all sorts of industrial and technological goods at scale for the entire globe, ultimately wielding enormous geopolitical power. This potentially rational non-equilibrium strategy doesn't fit so trivially into the econ equilibrium models, and thus—without anyone meaning evil—isn't taught in any detail comparable to the basic win-wins from trade. So even if import