I’ve just been thinking about this recently. Remote work is getting quite common, if a job can be done remotely there is no reason it can’t be sent overseas. If you’ve read Marx you know that commercial capital does not add value, all it does is bring things from areas of low demand to those of higher demand to bring in profit.
What jobs would be left in the first world in this case? Service jobs. I’m skeptical on service jobs alone being enough to hold an economy together. They are low paying and largely serve those who make more than them. A major if not main portion of which are office workers. It seems like this will at least cause the unemployment rate to skyrocket if not collapse the economy entirely.
Been thinking about this recently.
It’s not just tree-based products; there’ll still be domestic food production, for example. Either way, if the Global South continues to drift toward China (etc.), yes, capitalism will become worse and worse for the people in the imperialist countries as they run out of foreign workers to exploit
I mean, I thought most food production (except for that which spoils to quickly) was foreign due to it being cheaper too produce.
AFAIK most countries still grow/produce a lot of staple foods domestically, for domestic consumption by households and industry, because the cost of transportation would be too high to justify outsourcing it (e.g. corn in Amerika)
I see. I’m surprised. I thought most developed countries largely imported foods.
they certainly do import a huge amount; many countries in the imperial core only produce a few types of food, and it’s often mostly high-carbohydrate (grain, potatoes, etc. rather than legumes), so people wouldn’t necessarily have access to sufficiently nutritious food
Do carbohydrates generally not hold well or are they too bulky to be worth transporting?
many can remain edible for a long time (e.g. flour and sugar), but just eating carbohydrates and/or fat (e.g. corn oil) without protein isn’t feasible long-term, so you’d need some meat/plant-based source of protein
Yes but this is more asking about why it isn’t imported from poorer countries.
as I mentioned earlier, it’s just cheaper to produce some crops domestically than to buy and transport them from abroad, especially if you can abuse cheap labour from refugees for a significant part of it