"...and the role of the concept of fairness (truth)"

Fairness and truth are different things. Truth is a matter of saying of what is the case that it is the case and of what is not that it is not. Fairness is roughly a matter of equal treatment for equal claims. Two people can agree on what is and is not the case (the facts of the matter) and disagree about what fair treatment in that particular case will be: so two referees might agree that one player tripped another but disagree that a penalty should be given. Conversely, two people may agree about what is fair in a particular case whilst disagreeing about the facts of the matter: for example, two referees might agree that a penalty should be given whilst disagreeing as to what exactly happened to warrant it.

The problem you outline is mainly to do with fairness but not particularly to do with truth. There is presumably no dispute about e.g. the costs of the cheaper items or the names of the countries from which it is imported. But there is a dispute about whether the advantages and disadvantages accruing to interested parties are in proportion to their various claims, based e.g. on the benefits they bring to customers, the contributions they have made in terms of labour and capital etc.

If:
(1) Both accounts predict exactly the same bad things to happen.
(2) All the predictions that each make will happen.
(3) At least one of the accounts is true.

then

(4) the same bad things happen irrelevant of which is true.
IE: if (1),(2),(3). then (4)

I think (1) is unlikely, (2) is very unlikely, and (3) is false (since they might both be wrong). So if I was in your shoes, I'd look at what contrasts there are in the bad things they predict and how they predict them, then decide which is most likely to be true based on the contrasting elements.

Can two sides with conflicting views of truth both be right? If so, does the concept of truth remain? Can one side’s truth can be considered a greater truth that subordinates a lesser truth? Or, is the essence of a truth that it is a truth, and as such cannot be made less of a truth by another truth? — Mark Marsellli

This isn't about truth. This is about consequences that follow from certain actions.

To be specific, it's a dilemma.

Either you help impose anti-dumping measures or not. If you do then it's bad for wire manufacturers. If you don't then it's bad for wire rod producers.

So, whatever you do, you end up hurting the economy.

You have two options here:

1. Show that one side is incorrect. We can assess whether imposing anti-dumping measures truly hurt the economy or not.

2. Offer a counter-dilemma:

Either you impose anti-dumping laws or you don't. If you do then it's good for the wire rod producers. If you don't then it's good for the wire manufacturers.

So, either wire rod producers will benefit or wire manufacturers will benefit

Can two sides with conflicting views of truth both be right? If so, does the concept of truth remain? — Mark Marsellli

Truth is a proposition which accurately describes experience or reality (i.e., actuality).

Because the same phenomenon may produce (a) different effect(s) upon different subjects, experience is subjective for individuals, or intersubjective for social groups; and in both cases, real (i.e., actual).

So, different versions of truth may obtain with regard to the same phenomenon.

Can one side’s truth can(sic) be considered a greater truth that subordinates a lesser truth? Or, is the essence of a truth that it is a truth, and as such cannot be made less of a truth by another truth? — Mark Marsellli

By definition, degrees of truth do not obtain (i.e., a description is either accurate, or inaccurate), however; amounts of truth may obtain (i.e., a description may be either complete, or incomplete).

Can two sides with conflicting views of truth both be right? If so, does the concept of truth remain? Can one side’s truth can be considered a greater truth that subordinates a lesser truth? Or, is the essence of a truth that it is a truth, and as such cannot be made less of a truth by another truth? — Mark Marsellli

There is the old story of the blind men and the elephant: two parties who disagree are sometimes both right because they are describing different parts of something, and both wrong in thinking the part they're describing is the whole, or that the whole must be like that part. Both speak the truth but neither speaks the whole truth, and that is the source of conflict.

If there is a greater truth, it would be one that encompasses these smaller, partial truths. Imagine two people trying to invent the idea of trading: each is hesitant because she reasons, quite correctly, "If I give you this thing, then I won't have it." But there is a greater truth they need to find, that if they both give the other something, then they have made a trade. (And it is whether that trade is fair that must be judged.)

In your case, it's entirely possible that both sides are right, but neither seems to be putting forth a greater truth that encompasses what the other is saying. Unfortunately, if that greater truth is "the effect on the US economy," no one will be able to tell you what that is.

And that's one reason there might be such a rule as not considering downstream effects in anti-dumping cases, because it would be impossible ever to decide to do what you've already determined, for other, overriding reasons of policy, must sometimes be done.

Of course each side is making the case for a decision that would benefit them, and putting forth a partial truth. Sometimes people want to test a claim by generalizing it. In this case, would the wire rod consumers be happy to give up the protection they would deny the wire rod manufacturers? Not on your life. But that does not mean what they are saying is false. It's a mistake to think your part of the elephant is the whole elephant, but it's also a mistake to say your part isn't what you say it is unless it's the whole elephant.

Well, you could certainly model "true" yet opposite conclusions using paraconsistent logic, as i imagine might be particularly useful for complex supply chain analysis problems where there is a set of deductive rationales that might potentially lead to conflicting conclusions, or "dialetheia" from a shared set of premises.

Although, for simple problems representing straightforward conflicts, I can't imagine what an advantage such an approach would have over a simple model of the mutual utility of the individual actor's policies.

There are 3 truths you are talking about. Two are local and one is global.
The global truth you are asking about, is whether anti-dumping laws will have a net benefit or loss on the economy.
The two local truths are that given the same input one group will be affected negatively and the other positively.
But there is no conflict here. They are all true statements (with one unknown outcome).
I suggest you are asking about the global truth - the net effect on the economy, in which case, as it is not a moral dilemma, it is a number crunching exercise.

Everything in the real world has two sides. How about clean air? Nobody in their right mind would argue against clean air. So I will.

You can clean up the air in industrialized nations by burdening energy producers with expensive requirements. Retool power plants to put out cleaner exhaust and run it though super duper filters. Make utilities commit to a certain percentage of "clean" energy, in quotes since many clean energy sources turn out to be net dirtier than conventional oil and coal. But that's another discussion.

So we marginally raise the cost of energy by, say, 10 or 20%. The first-worlders with jobs in a functioning economy barely notice the increase. They live in cities and have liberal values and feel better about themselves for "healing the planet."

But energy is fungible. When you raise the cost in the first world you raise it everywhere. Energy costs go up in desperate third-world regions where running water is a luxury. Now maybe they can't afford the electricity to run the water pump. They die of malnutrition and disease associated with the lack of running water.

I don't know the numbers, I"m just making these up to illustrate my point. What if every part-per-thousand improvement in the cleanliness of the air in California causes 100,000 additional deaths in Sudan? The coastal elite in the US and their counterparts across the developed world would never hear about it. They are saving the planet and can't be bothered with the actual consequences of their viewpoint.

If you really cared about humanity -- and not just virtue signaling at the expense of wretched peasants whose death won't make the evening news -- you'd demand dirtier air. If you lower energy costs you give the developing world a huge hand up. Clean air exacerbates inequality. The liberal elite explicitly wants to raise energy costs. Humanity would be better served by lowering them.

I can't think of any area of public policy that doesn't have two morally compelling sides ... especially in areas where "everyone" agrees that one side is right and the other evil.

I did not read the PDF. However, I believe I have valuable advice to share with you.

True things that dictate opposite action can co-exist either in time or in aspect, but not in both time and aspect.

Thus, "Go West, Young man" is one advice, "Go East, young man" is one advice. Let's call them AW, and AE, for short (Advice go West, Advice go East, respectively.)

AW and AE can both be given at the same time, but not at the same respect: on the West Coast, AE is given, on the East Coast, AW is given.

AW and AE can both be given in the same aspect, but at different times. In Memphis, Tennessee, AW was given in the mid-1800s to go find gold and wealth. In the late 20th century, in the same place, also to aid the finding of wealth, AE was given.

In Chicago, or anywhere else, a good advice was never given "AE AND AW".

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Coming to your Trade Dispute, whether to protect domestic rod wire or to continue to let imports come in: It is a case I believe where the aspect is different. The time is obviously the same.

In case of the domestic protectionists, they bring up reasons to support their case which do not oppose the reasons of the cheap import supporters, and vice versa. The reasons both camps give are independent from the reasons of the other camp. Thus, the results of their findings can be different, and both can be true, because they do not address the same issues. Their ASPECTS are different.

My advice would be to convince the Committee or whoever that makes the final or interim decision on cheap imports, is to force the two camps to measure the same parameters and to present their cases on those bases. Then both the time will be the same, and the aspect as well.

I am not getting this out of my own head, or out of thin air. The ancients already established that "nothing can both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect." This is the law of the excluded middle.

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An interesting note: some recent findings (in the last 50-100 years) in the area of Quantum Mechanics belied with empirical evidence that this intuitive, and seemingly unassailable truth of the law of the excluded middle holds. The famous (albeit metaphorically meant at the time) statement by Heidegger, or was it Himmler, or maybe Alzheimer or Heimlich-Goebbels, or Erwin Schwartzinger, (I'm bad with German last names) was "The cat is both alive AND dead". This was an explanation, but it has been shown by experiments that it is true.

Thanks for the comments. I struggled a bit with the use of the word "truth." I know people involved in this process, well-meaning folks, and I think it is fair to describe their collective perspectives (facts) as their "truth." As the four wire rod companies -- which also have wire product manufacturing plants -- employ far fewer people than do the overall wire manufacturers, is it fair to decide a case based on the greater potential loss of employment?

Of note, in Canada and the EU, there is another element of the process known as the Public Interest Test, whereby they can consider whether imposing anti-dumping measures case harm to the populace.

Thanks for the comments. I struggled a bit with the use of the word "truth." I know people involved in this process, well-meaning folks, and I think it is fair to describe their collective perspectives (facts) as their "truth." As the four wire rod companies -- which also have wire product manufacturing plants -- employ far fewer people than do the overall wire manufacturers, is it fair to decide a case based on the greater potential loss of employment?

I doubt there's any way to unambiguously evaluate which is the better choice. I've tried to come up with two 'recipes for deciding in an unambiguous way' - so the result may be uncertain but at least the methods' fairnesses can be evaluated.

I think if the bolded bit were the only criterion by which the case was decided it's not quite right. Imagine that account 1 predicts collection of horrible circumstances X, and account 2 predicts collection of horrible circumstances Y; the only deciding factor for whether we act in the manner suggested by account 1 or (xor, exclusively) 2 is the one which makes the most horrible predictions. In the absence of trying to evaluate which is the most likely or well reasoned the biggest crier-of-wolf would win.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Method A
____________________________________________________________________________________________
If you must assume that X and Y (the predictions from account 1 and account 2 respectively) are equally likely, then going by the one which generates the most unfavourable circumstances would probably be the best (in the sense that it mitigates the worst things that are expected to happen).

So:
(1) comparative study: evaluate whether X or Y (the sets of horrible predictions) is more likely to happen
(2) comparative study: evaluate whether X or Y is more horrible.
(3) if both (1) and (2) agree OR account 1 is more likely then account 2 but both are equally horrible OR account 1 is as likely as account 2 but account 1 is more horrible OR the converse two statements (replacing account 1 with account 2 in between the ORs), go with the most likely one with the most horrible consequences.
(4) if they do not agree: comparative study: find areas of disagreement between account 1 and account 2, which parts of account 1 and account 2 are the most horrible and how likely are they to occur?
____________________________________________________________________________________________Method B
____________________________________________________________________________________________

Another perspective - if both accounts are compatible (like in @Srap Tasmaner's story) - assume one is true (that X will happen or that Y will happen), how likely is the other to happen?, find cites of contradiction and disagreement between them to evaluate how likely you are to be fucked in the other way and in both ways given both accounts and implementing all mitigating strategies for one.

If both seem unfair, back to the drawing board.

If foreign wire rod manufacturers produce cheaper because they are subsidised you have an actual problem. If they are producing cheaper because of economic circumstances, implementing anti-dumping duties only causes product prices to rise for consumers and would support an inefficient production sector which is a drain on resources that could be better allocated elsewhere.

WAI members compete with their domestic suppliers in downstream markets, and the Department of Commerce isn't concerned about the downstream impacts of AD/CVD. How does this situation allow WAI members to compete fairly in foreign and domestic markets?

Also, to what extent do governments subsidise industry and/or require consumers to purchase domestic products?

The International Wire Product Market appears to be a cooperative, asymmetric, zero-sum, sequential, discrete, many-player, Bayesian game where players/coalitions probably have:

1) Incomplete information of game features (i.e., number and type of players/coalitions, their strategies and payoffs), and
2) Imperfect information regarding game state/condition.

The challenge is to allocate the payoff among players/coalitions in a fair manner.

Players:
1 & 2: Domestic and foreign wire rod producers.
3 & 4: Domestic and foreign wire product manufacturers.
5 & 6: Domestic and foreign wire product consumers.
7 & 8: Domestic and foreign governments.

Yes, because truth does not exist only perspective.

1) Can two sides with conflicting views of truth both be right? 2) If so, does the concept of truth remain? 3) Can one side’s truth can be considered a greater truth that subordinates a lesser truth? 4) Or, is the essence of a truth that it is a truth, and as such cannot be made less of a truth by another truth?

We hope to present several replies (100 words or less) — Mark Marsellli

100 words or fewer - lol! But a decent challenge!

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1) For us - me - truth is the quality of a proposition that is true with respect to a set of criteria. Your criteria, your truth; their criteria, their truth. Of course both can be true. And this is just Rhetoric in action, a subject of study for 2400 years, and more likely at least double that. The trick is to surmount the difference - a whole other topic.

2, 3, 4) Truth remains, but properly understood is irrelevant.

References, Aristotle, Rhetoric; Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Metaphysices of Morals ; Fisher, Ury, Patton, Getting to Yes.

Can two sides with conflicting views of truth both be right? If so, does the concept of truth remain? Can one side’s truth can be considered a greater truth that subordinates a lesser truth? Or, is the essence of a truth that it is a truth, and as such cannot be made less of a truth by another truth? — Mark Marsellli

How could conflicting statements about matters of fact each be true in every regard? Where then is the conflict?

Mediation must interpret competing claims to show that the conflict concerns matters of fact, or that the conflict does not concern matters of fact, or that there is no conflict.

What objective criteria do you use to determine the correctness of two conflicting predictions about undesirable outcomes for the industry?

If both predictions are deemed correct on objective grounds, what standards do you use to determine which set of outcomes is more undesirable? What methods or norms might promote compromise by identifying an alternative that mitigates or avoids both undesirable outcomes?

As with any complex system or "engine" the amount of variables can be astronomical. It isn't so much that there isn't absolute truth but that the absolute truth is hard to get a hold of. A system with 100 variables is easier to measure or predict than a system with 10 million or 10 trillion variables. Each variable can be hard to judge or discern in and of itself.

This problem would have to be systematically addressed piece by piece. Part of the problem we are all facing is many of us get our idea of how the world works from over simplistic hollywood movies.

I do believe there are free market ways around supporting someone like Trump, however Trump opposes globalism because anti globalism leads to more factories in each individual nation. This ofcourse leads to $200 toasters but i believe most people would be happier with a more suitable income but at the same time owning less stuff.

I'm not going to systematically go through that pdf at this point in time. I'm sure you are capable of of breaking a complex problem into 30,000 parts. I'm speaking to the quire but you take a large problem and break it down into layers and each layer is broken down into even smaller and smaller layers until the bottom of the "pyramid" is extremely simple concepts. As you well know absolutely everything in existence can be quantified and applied to a spectrum including a person's personality.

As we all know restricting a market by trying to limit foreign goods (key word limit but not completely prohibit) will raise prices on that good, however this can benefit the typical worker in the sense that it creates factory jobs. It also makes things more complicated for those depending on that good. What we must remember is that if we are rejecting globalism to some measure, as long as we are getting food, clothing and shelter and at the same time keeping with a free market, there is no way around the set backs associated with ant-globalism, if anti-globalism was our original goal.

The software industry is saturated in the sense that other than Artificial intelligence and video games, most software has already been written. Most business logic has be written and rewritten 10,000 times over which is why software such as SalesForce and others have been created.

To continue down the globalist path (which started largely over 200 years ago with the industrial revolution) will push us towards a hybrid socialist/capitalist society that will very much resemble modern China. I do however believe embracing modernized building codes adjusted for globalized factory material production saturation or in other words adjusted for whatever benefits there are due to modern globalism, we can push back a global socialist government.

I believe after some period of time (5 years or 500 years) total globalization will occur and we will have the dreaded socialism many of us hate.

It should also be noted that a free market is to some degree contigent on whether a nation wants to have a global international bean counter free market where 1% of the population has 85% of the world's financial currency. This is how it is now.

Or

Do we want each nation to have less goods to have sold in its markets but each person has access to real jobs that pay a higher wage that can buy them a moderate life style.

I would argue there are ways to make either of these options work, through the use of building codes that reflect the international or in the case of the latter local markets.

I believe modernized building codes is the key to making globalism (the current path) work.

However i'm not against Trump's anti-globalist policies.

I do however see that many of the people in that pdf would like us to see the international bean counter's interests as some sort of normal set of interests that some how have a linear (as opposed to exponential or inverse exponential) relationship to the guy who works as a line cook at a restaurant.

Once again i would like to stress that modernized building codes that take into account globalized buidling materials available in the market, is an alternative to fretting over whether this world continues down the current path of increasing globalization.