Adam Smith and Free Trade

Great stuff Fletch!

If I want to buy all my groceries from China, and spend the money to have them shipped here, then what business is that of the government's, or anyone else's, for that matter.

And if the objection to free trade is that it "destroys American jobs", what I'd like to know is why the populists feel it necessary to encumber me with the responsibility to provide other people with a job through paying higher prices.

And why aren't they as motivated to attack technology, which surely "destroys" as many jobs (if not more) as trade has done.

Have you read P.J. O'Rourke's book on Adam Smith?

Fresh Blog Available!

The new format has one drawback. Sometimes the research is killing me. The installment for Chapter 3 will be a bit late (hopefully up on Monday) but an assessment of the failure of social programs was a larger task than I could completeby Thursday. It isn't that the argument is hard; it's just that there is so much material, its hard to zero in on the appropriate pieces. The breakdown of Social Security alone took a week.

cav, don't give the Left any ideas. The Luddites are more than willing to come back just as there are those believing that jobs are lost to "outsourcing" when, in fact, it creates more and better paying jobs here.

BTW, I've read excerpts from O'Rourke's take but have not undertaken the whole volume as yet. It's on my 2009 list.

Is this not the same F1etch that debated with me a few years ago that I was wrong about the out of control lending issues? You were wrong about that and you are wrong about this!

Who was right about the problems with lending and debt years ago you or me?

BOTTOM LINE

Adam Smith via FREE MARKET SYSTEM

NO SLAVE LABOR (rights to negotiate wages)
NO MONOPLIES IE BIG ON ANTI-TRUST LAWS ( does not the Chinese government own part of every company in China?)

A proper legal system with real justice ie Intellectual property rights, enforceable contracts……….

MORE FACTS YOU LEFT OUT!

FROM

Adam Smith

One definite difference between Smith and most modern believers in free markets is that Smith favored retaliatory tariffs. Retaliation to bring down high tariff rates in other countries, he thought, would work. “The recovery of a great foreign market,” he wrote “will generally more than compensate the transitory inconvenience of paying dearer during a short time for some sorts of goods.”

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Smith.html

What side would you have been on durring our Civil War pro slave or pro freedom?

CHEAP GOODS FROM CHILD AND SLAVE LABOR


As far as labor and environmental standards in trade deals. This can be negotiated in any trade deal with a factor used to equalize the difference. In the business world we call this horse trading.

Your view as well as Bush, Clinton, Gore, McCain…. Of turning a blind eye to Countries that are controlled by brutal dictators is not free market economics according to Adam Smith. The father of free market economics Smith was a big advocate of human and labor rights, which economist like you never mention nor teach! BTW this debate about cheap goods at the expense of exploitation was had in our own COUNTRY during the time of the civil war years.

FROM THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR (member of History Channel)

“While some in the North hated slavery because they felt that it was wrong, most people held no opinion of it at all, and some even condoned it because abolishing it would be bad for business”. “Without slaves there would be no cotton. Without cotton the textile industry would suffer”. “To many it was just that simple”.

We also had the debate about child labor and sweatshops read the Jungle by Sinclair.
BTW our economy did fine after freeing slaves and stopping child labor abuses.

http://controlcongress.com/uncategorized/cheap-goods-from-c hild-and-slave-labor

The Legacy of Ayn Rand

This article does a great job of explaining the atheist view of economics promoted by Rand. The difference between Adam Smith and Rand in their economic philosophy is Smith believed in a balance of greater good of community and capitalism. I do not think you have to believe in God to think there is a concept of greater good, but it does help.

TH-As theologian John Piper puts it, Rand’s work manifests a “complete rejection of a divine or supernatural dimension to reality.” The absence of God causes Rand to get human nature wrong as well.

In Atlas Shrugged and her other writings, Rand articulated a philosophy she called “objectivism.” Among other things, objectivism teaches that man’s “highest value” and “moral purpose” is his own happiness.

By “happiness” Rand meant “rational self-interest.” For her, “virtue” consisted of doing what “secured” your life and well-being.

Where did that leave altruism and self-sacrifice? As vices. For Rand, altruism and self-sacrifice represented a betrayal of what should be a person’s “highest values,” that is, his life and well-being. Similarly, justice would be possible only where you never sought for nor granted unearned or undeserved results, “neither in matter nor in spirit . . .”

But without altruism and self-sacrifice, how do people relate to one another? Ayn Rand says through exchanges that promote mutual advantage, what she called a “trade.” In other words, as if each of the parties were businesses, not people.

READ MORE

http://townhall.com/columnists/ChuckColson/2007/10/16/the_l egacy_of_ayn_rand

Many of you support oil independence, but not manufacturing independence. Help me understand the difference relative to all the arguments for oil independence? And do you feel comfortable knowing communist China controls everything from money supply, clothes, computers………?

China: We Are Socialists!

Beijing (FORTUNE) – Senior U.S. officials, led by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, arrived inside the Stalinist-style Great Hall of the People Thursday morning, briefed and breakfasted and eager to offer guidance to Chinese leaders on how to become a “responsible stakeholder” in the global economy

According to the English translation of her remarks, she repeated six times that China was “sticking to” its “new path of industrialization,” and three times that China was

“continuing to improve” on reforms already in place. Substantial free-market change wasn’t part of the equation. “By following a path of building socialism with Chinese characteristics in an independent and self-reliant manner,” she said, “we have scored glorious achievements that attracted worldwide attention.”

At debate is China not playing by the rules of the trade agreement.

CNN-But Paulson said earlier this week China could and should do more to reduce its massive trade surplus and revalue its currency. And a WTO report released Monday complained bitterly about continued rampant counterfeiting and piracy, policies limiting imports and regulatory barriers to U.S. service companies

“We see troubling indications that China’s momentum toward reform has begun to slow,” US Trade Representative Susan Schwab, a participant in this week’s meeting, wrote in the Financial Times.

http://controlcongress.com/uncategorized/the-art-of-economi c-hypocrisy

…has been refuted by me before (all of it where he originally posted these nuggets on Walter Williams’ column, but this one is worth repeating lest some newcomer get sucked in.

Adam Smith argued AGAINST retaliatory tariffs: "Those workmen ... who suffered by our neighbors' prohibition will not be benefited by ours On the contrary, they and almost all the other classes of our citizens will thereby be obliged to pay dearer than before for certain goods."

"To lay a new tax upon them [retaliatory tariff] ... and because they already pay too dear for the necessities of life, to make them likewise pay too dear for the greater part of other commodities, is certainly a most absurd way of making amends."

The quote you chose was taken completely out of context. The full quote is here: “There MAY be good policy in retaliations of this kind, when there is a probability that they will procure the repeal of the high duties or prohibitions complained of. The recovery of a great foreign market will generally more than compensate the transitory inconveniency of paying dearer during a short time for some sorts of goods. To judge whether such retaliations are likely to produce such an effect does not, perhaps, belong so much to the science of a legislator, whose deliberations ought to be governed by general principles which are always the same, as to the skill of that insidious and crafty animal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician, whose councils are directed by the momentary fluctuations of affairs. When there is no probability that any such repeal can be procured, it seems a bad method of compensating the injury done to certain classes of our people to do another injury ourselves, not only to those classes, but to almost all the other classes of them (emphasis added).”

Smith goes on to conclude that the probability of procuring that repeal is negligible.

Sorry, no comments on the post - I followed the link from where you were debating Max in the Saunders AGW column thread, hoping to say 'Thanks' for your standing up to him.

I'ts nice to see you're even-handed with that: From what I've seen that Konop has posted elsewhere, I would say you're willing to debate anyone who's in the wrong.

I humbly request that, should you find my logic in any thread or blog posting to be in error, you please poke holes in it and show me where I have failed. Thank you.