The real face of protectionism
Day 922, 01:32
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Published in Belgium 
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by
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by Rithulme
Citizens of eBelgium,
A few hours ago new taxes on food were proposed, it is a First step towards the increase of the taxes on it to 99% and it will probably be the first step to Total protectionism on our manufacturing market. I for one do not like the road our congress has taken, I have always opposed these new measures and I will continue doing so. The idea of protectionism is to attract investors to our market and make the lives of company owners easier since there is no foreign competition anymore. The people that propose that are those who so called support the idea of an open market and have always fought the launch of state companies to help with the needs of new citizens because it’s unfair competition. Where is their free market ideal now? Or maybe they are just looking out for their own money?
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There was barely any foreign competition on our market, not in any of the manufacturing branches and still many people in the congress felt the need of this law. You might say: “well if there isn’t any competition nothing has changed and this law is useless, is it that bad then?”. Well it is that bad! I will take the example of Q1 food, since that is a basic good for new citizens and for me it is a health indicator of our economy since new citizens are the most important thing for a enation. The prices of Q1 food have steadily dropped the last few days, why was that? One of the reasons was the threat from foreign competition, we were amongst the most expensive markets for Q1 food and it became profitable to start importing that basic product. The company managers have reacted on that, lowering their prices. This motivation disappears now. I’m not claiming prices will start going sky high now but from the moment there is a shortage, because there are too few employees or something like that, the prices will rise. A few examples are eAustralia, eChile and eIndia where the Q1 food price is about 0,025 gold compared to 0,02 gold in eBelgium. This is the real consequence of protectionism, it makes live much harder for new citizens.
But the problem for news citizens will increase even further, we are a small country and there aren’t that much players with high enough capital to start their own company. So to expand our market we must attract investors from abroad that open their own company here. But a small population means small profit margins, so what must be the driving force to attract investors? Indeed, low wages. Combine low wages with high basic food prices and you get a social catastrophe where new citizens don’t get a chance to start in our nation and our economy will slowly die. That is the real consequence of protectionalism and I hope my fellow congress members will realize that soon.
Thank you all for reading,
Rithulme, congress member for Res Belgica in Wallonia
A few hours ago new taxes on food were proposed, it is a First step towards the increase of the taxes on it to 99% and it will probably be the first step to Total protectionism on our manufacturing market. I for one do not like the road our congress has taken, I have always opposed these new measures and I will continue doing so. The idea of protectionism is to attract investors to our market and make the lives of company owners easier since there is no foreign competition anymore. The people that propose that are those who so called support the idea of an open market and have always fought the launch of state companies to help with the needs of new citizens because it’s unfair competition. Where is their free market ideal now? Or maybe they are just looking out for their own money?
There was barely any foreign competition on our market, not in any of the manufacturing branches and still many people in the congress felt the need of this law. You might say: “well if there isn’t any competition nothing has changed and this law is useless, is it that bad then?”. Well it is that bad! I will take the example of Q1 food, since that is a basic good for new citizens and for me it is a health indicator of our economy since new citizens are the most important thing for a enation. The prices of Q1 food have steadily dropped the last few days, why was that? One of the reasons was the threat from foreign competition, we were amongst the most expensive markets for Q1 food and it became profitable to start importing that basic product. The company managers have reacted on that, lowering their prices. This motivation disappears now. I’m not claiming prices will start going sky high now but from the moment there is a shortage, because there are too few employees or something like that, the prices will rise. A few examples are eAustralia, eChile and eIndia where the Q1 food price is about 0,025 gold compared to 0,02 gold in eBelgium. This is the real consequence of protectionism, it makes live much harder for new citizens.
But the problem for news citizens will increase even further, we are a small country and there aren’t that much players with high enough capital to start their own company. So to expand our market we must attract investors from abroad that open their own company here. But a small population means small profit margins, so what must be the driving force to attract investors? Indeed, low wages. Combine low wages with high basic food prices and you get a social catastrophe where new citizens don’t get a chance to start in our nation and our economy will slowly die. That is the real consequence of protectionalism and I hope my fellow congress members will realize that soon.
Thank you all for reading,
Rithulme, congress member for Res Belgica in Wallonia
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Comments
Against protectionism.
For state companies in order to create a fair market.
We absolutely have to make sure young players can survive in our country and I don't think protectionism is a good idea in general.
If the import tax rises, it's not said every company will choose for high profits (altough state companies are preferable to regulate the prices I think).
In "free markets", the state has to mediate as less as possible, which doesn't say they shouldn't at all...
State companies are just joining the market and are not profit-maximizing, thus giving higher wages but preferably offer lower prices...
Very good article, I totally agree with you 😉
You shouldn't increase import tax above income tax, this will increae prices, increasing wages, increasing prices etc. It is even worse in small countries with no high regions. Follow the Polish model
http://www.erepublik.com/en/country/economy/Poland">http://www.erepublik.com/en/country/econ[..]oland
There is no reason at all for us to have Protectionism on our Food Industry.. We cannot supply some of the key high quality products ourselves.
NO VOTE, TOTTALLY DISAGREE, arguments enough on the forum,
hurray for the yes voters, don't let our economy down!
support our manufacturing market!
Damn, I was away for a while and belgium is going protectionist? I agree with you, this will not solve anything, and has the potential to make things much tougher for new players..
I don't understand why some people want to shield off the tiny ebelgian economy from foreign influence.
Also, we just lowered the import taxes about ten days ago, hopefully no foreign company bought a license, then it'd really be a dick move on our part
An ideology should be appropriate to the community it's applied to. eBelgium is too small, is low on workforce and has a quite young population, and it's the new citizens who will take the first blows (don't forget that the Gold for level 6 will only be available for them later on, because of the new rules). I think that Rithulme also has a point that some Congressmen might be defending their personal interests as company owners first.
Rise in prices is starting to show allready, Q5 food costs 0.2 gold now. Q1 food seems to be saved because of hard competition. intermediate food gone slightly up in price but not as much as Q5.
Meanwhile skill 4/5 wages in Q1 companies have stayed at level. I haven't looked in other skill levels.
wages are increasing already, more investors need to be attracted and the marketprizes will stabalise, its going good, but keep in mind this is long term project, we need more investors, hopefully the goverment will take some initiative so our economy has a future, if not then our goverment and the ruling parties failed, i hope the general public understands this.
The future off our country is at stack! the goverment needs to attract investors and stimulate the higher wages and support the higher import tax, question is will the goverment and the ruling parties do this?
how can you attract investors in Q3 or higher products to a country where only 1000 people are playing and maybe only 200 have the means to buy their products??
step by step process, more investors with a lack of workers results in increased wages => attracts more people => more products needed => prizes drop => more investors => ....
something like this
I think that "more people" is the biggest problem, since 1000 was an optimistic estimation (there are more people "living" in eBelgium officially, but there are actually far less who are still "alive" - StuBru babies who dropped out weeks ago). And I personally think that some businesses will go bankrupt first due to the higher wages (which will reflect on the prices as well) before a sufficient amount of laborers from abroad will arrive.
@ aldous, that's possible, but we can only know whit trying, i know there are a lot of gold diggers in this game, hopefully those gold diggers notice in time that belgium could be intresting to work in as well.
I oppose protectionism, and it was only 11 days ago that my proposal to REMOVE import taxes on food (well lower to 1😵 passed
http://www.erepublik.com/en/Belgium/law/34884">http://www.erepublik.com/en/Belgium/law/[..]4884