Earlier today when I was doing my politics livestream I had a wide variety of users come into the channel. For the most part, I know most of my users, as they have been regulars of all my programming (video games and politics) for years, although in recent weeks we have slowly added new users. I love when new people come in and bring talking points, receipts, links, and empirical data. I’d like to give Twitch™ user JamoJokester a big shoutout because he is a new user who comes deep with his receipts.
I want to address two users who came in, and to offer a level of respect to them I’m going to refer to them as Red and Purple.
Red was a user on YouTube, and due to Twitch’s rules I cannot simultaneously show YouTube chat on Twitch, so the chat is only available on my YouTube video. The chat probably won’t be up for another day due to processing time.
Red began their argument by saying the US had invested $50-$60 billion in China’s economy since the 1980s. That is a falsehood. The United States, that being the Federal Government, has not invested in China. When I challenged the user, he then said, “Well big business,” and that is correct. Since the 1980s, big business has invested in China. Apple, Tesla, GM, Nike, Walmart, Microsoft, Intel, Boeing, and Pfizer have all built factories and entered into joint ventures with China.
The issue here is why.
Union wages and rising labor costs were a major factor that pushed American companies to invest in China and other low-wage countries, especially after China opened its economy in the late 1970s.
This statement is a factual statement that cannot be refuted.
It can be expanded on. You can say it was because of big corporate greed, the rich wanting to get richer, or large companies wanting to have more for themselves. All of those expansions to the core argument can be defended. You cannot begin that discussion without accepting the core argument that “union wages and rising labor costs were a major factor.” Otherwise, we cannot move in the discussion because one person is starting from a position of truth and the other is starting from a position of opinion.
Although the individual was obstinate about their take, eventually they seemed to reach a stage of enlightenment where they accepted what was being said. Shortly thereafter they returned and said, “I googled and…found nothing about big business moving factories overseas because of unions and labor costs.” (Paraphrased due to not being able to pull the exact quote). When I told them to hang out so I could finish the point I was making, they said, “You are being dishonest,” and left.
This individual represents the giant problem with the internet. People think they are right because of a Google search. Google is a tool, and it can only search the internet, which is littered with false facts and opinions. Google cannot give you reliable answers. Google can give you sources you must digest in order to arrive at answers you earn for yourself.
There are many studies that will say the unions were to blame for higher wages, and other studies that will say the threat of moving jobs overseas was enough to keep unions in check. Why then, did so many companies establish presences in low-labor-cost countries? The answer is because competing products began coming from those countries.
If I can make something for $5 and sell it for $10, I have a $5 markup and $5 potentially in profit. There are many things that determine markup vs. profit, so we leave it at "potentially in profit" so we don’t dive down a rabbit hole.
If my competitor can produce something in a foreign country and import it to the point of sale for under $5, my competitor will make more profit than me if he sells the item for $10. The problem is, if my competitor can produce the item and bring it to the point of sale for under $3, he can continue to have that $5 markup, even a $6 markup, and sell the item for cheaper than I can. This means he can dominate the market through price.
In this regard, I am limited in how low I can drop my price. I am fixed at not being able to drop the price any lower than $5 or I begin operating at a loss, while my competitor can drop his price to $5 and still make a profit (albeit a smaller one) and eventually drive me out of the market and raise his price with no competition.
Red’s argument is that this was solely on the shoulders of big business, but this impacts all businesses across the board.
For a hypothetical situation, we are going to build a 10-story building in Southern Illinois in a town that is near the railroad. I am not a big business company, I am a medium-sized construction company. For this we are assuming 10 stories, 2,150 square foot floors, we will need approximately 120,000 - 160,000 kg or 120-160 tonnes of steel. We are going to use 140t as the middle ground.
If I source that steel in America, I will pay $1,460 per ton. If I source it from Europe, I will pay $815 per ton. If I source it from China, I will pay $550 per ton.
My total cost then for the steel is:
- USA: $204,440
- Europe: $114,100
- China: $77,000
Now, there is also the transportation cost.
Factoring in rail-to-truck bulk transfer, I have assigned $105 per ton to the steel made in America for $14,700.
For Europe, factoring in ocean freight in a 40’ container, we are looking at $35,000 in freight, another $16,800 in U.S. port fees and rail, and $28,500 in tariffs for a total of $75,300.
For China, given their shipment, we are looking at $42,000 in freight, $16,800 for the U.S. port fees and rail, and $23,100 in tariffs for a total of $75,900.
So the total landed cost for all the steel I need is:
- USA: $219,100
- Europe: $189,400
- China: $152,900
Now, why is U.S. steel so much more expensive? Labor, government oversight and regulation, and lack of government subsidies found in other countries.
Yes, there are a lot of other variables, such as U.S. steel mills being decades old and the lack of market dominance by big business (because they force domestic prices to what the market could bear). However, the single largest data point is labor costs.
A U.S. steel worker earns $60k–$90k a year, while a Chinese steel worker earns $15k a year.
This is where Red said,
“So we should pay Chinese salaries,” and again, not my argument.
This is also where advocates of the Make America Great Again plan say we should tariff the goods to protect American business interests. That is a fair point. However, in order to tariff those goods to the break-even point, you would have to level a 77.2% tariff on European steel and a 167.2% tariff on Chinese steel. Even if you protected the American steelworker industry, you didn’t automatically protect them.
Why? Without factoring in all the other costs for the building, if we keep it at just one singular cost, if my client (the person paying for the building) can afford to pay $195,000 to build the building and not a penny more, then I can build the building using European or Chinese steel, but I cannot afford to build it using American-made steel. It just cannot happen, the budget simply does not allow it.
If protective tariffs are put into place, then the building isn’t getting built. Period.
My client will have to find a new alternative, because they do not have $219,100 to build the building. Now the steel doesn’t get bought, so the steelworkers might not need to run third shift that day. The train company doesn’t get paid to transport it, the truck driver doesn’t get paid to move it, and my workers don’t have the work to build the building.
Red says that we should blame big business, but this problem doesn’t reside strictly with big business. This problem resides at all levels of business. You could argue that big business shouldn’t have moved steel overseas to begin with, but that’s ignoring the fact that we were able to spend the 80s, 90s, and 2000s expanding due to the cheap cost of materials imported from other countries.
While transportation is stable, and unemployment rates in that industry are 4.5%, trucking is down about 33,000 jobs year-over-year since May of 2024. From February 2024 to February 2025, truck transport employment fell by about 1% or 15k jobs. If imports continue to decline due to tariffs, that industry may see a further decline.
In the end, the individual visited the channel, didn’t really want to have a genuine argument, and relied on Google to try to make a compelling argument or more specifically to discredit my argument. Speaking of discrediting arguments, let’s move on to Purple.
Purple came in and didn’t like how I was speaking to Red. Then when I mentioned Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple modes of intelligence, he said, “gardner is thoroughly debunked.”
As with most things, I conceded the point to the individual that yes, scientifically (through empirical evidence), cognitive sciences have rejected the idea of distinct cognitive systems. Physiological testing does not support fully separate intelligences, and general intelligence has been proven.
However, for something to be "thoroughly debunked" it has to be rejected entirely (hence the key word thoroughly), and while Gardner's theories have been rejected scientifically, they are still widely accepted, used, and cited in American education.
This absolutely set off Purple because they kept repeating the same thing:
- Jul 4, 12:52 PM "you're making an 'argument from authority' - logical fallacy"
- Jul 4, 12:53 PM "that's an argument from authority"
- Jul 4, 12:53 PM "that's an appeal to authority fallacy"
Ironically at 12:48 PM, they said:
"i was trying to figure out which fallacy you were employing a minute ago, but have moved on to this one: Argument from repetition (argumentum ad nauseam or argumentum ad infinitum) – repeating an argument until nobody cares to discuss it any more and referencing that lack of objection as evidence of support for the truth of the conclusion"
Ironically, this individual was doing that exact thing just six minutes prior. They were also sure I was making an argument from authority that they wouldn’t answer two yes or no questions.
The first question was: "Do you have formal training in education?" They were so caught up in whether I was going to make an appeal to authority argument that I eventually had to just assume no and move on to the next question: "Have you read Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher, PhD?"
The individual said they had not read it, and then I questioned: since it is not scientifically proven with empirical data, should teachers be using it as a starting point to understand how the behaviors of abused adolescent girls are different from their peers? This, of course, led to a complete shift in their discussion.
Situations like clinical case studies are not empirical research, but that does not mean they do not have value. Anecdotal evidence from case studies is still evidence, but it is subjective and interpretive. Clinical case studies can lead to more structured scientific studies, or they can lead to understanding.
When challenged, Purple would not turn their own analysis inward to determine nor declare what fallacy they were using. There is a logical fallacy called the fallacy fallacy. What this individual was doing was attacking how something was being said rather than what was said.
Some arguments begin strong and end with the right conclusions, yet they have a fallacy in the middle. This does not make the argument wrong provided the conclusion is right. It means the argument needs to be refined and strengthened, but only because it came to the right conclusion. If the conclusion is wrong, throw the entire argument away. It is the same principle behind why high school geometry students are taught to do proofs. You had the problem, you had the correct answer, but you can’t defend the answer.
Interestingly enough, this individual also engaged in the strawman argument, misrepresenting my entire argument (multiple times saying appeal to authority) when I was asking a simple series of questions. Just because you believe a speaker is about to use the appeal to authority fallacy doesn’t mean they are. My question about being trained in education is a question to see what door I should go down. If you have that level of training, I can go to a higher academic level discussion. If you lack that training, then I need to make sure I’m not arguing from a position of authority by accidentally assuming you are a peer (and in this term I mean academic peer).
Freud once said,
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
George Carlin said,
“Oh yeah? Well, sometimes it’s a big, brown DICK. A big brown dick with a fat, arrogant, white collar business criminal asshole sucking on the wet end of it.”
If that offends you, that’s ok. You have the right to be offended. George Carlin, like myself, had the right to be offensive. What you don’t have is the right to be like Red and run around the internet and project your Google searches as reality. You don’t have the right to be like Purple and accuse other people of making fallacious arguments while making the very same fallacious argument you are accusing the other person of engaging in.
I understand that I will never grow to be a popular creator. I am an overthinker, I am opinionated, and I do not accept nonsense to be presented as fact. I accept facts as facts. Purple was correct, Gardner’s MI model has been debunked scientifically, and I conceded that point at the beginning. But when you start throwing around the word semantic, then you are admitting that words don’t matter.
If words don’t matter, then keep your fingers in your pockets and your lower lip attached to your upper lip.