Year: 2012

Free Trade and Protectionism: The Story of Pierre. Part Four of a Series

Jacques Delacroix Liberty

This is the fourth installment of a continuing series of very small essays on protectionism and free trade. Those are daunting subjects neither the media nor schools explain well, I think. I am taking small steps on purpose. The first two installments were posted on the same day. All installments will comprise the word “protectionism” in their title for the sake of recognition.

Part Four

Of course, next door to Hans, in France, there is a guy named Pierre. He is in his mid-forties. He has been working in a government-owned industry for fifteen years. He is comfortable, with a good pension awaiting him, but he is tired of his job because it gives him no chance of ever making it big. Also he is bored with it. Pierre and his brother-in-law, Jean (of course) share an interest in wine; both their grandfathers made wine. Of course, they know there is no shortage of wine in France although there is a chronic shortage of good wines. They consult with me and I point out to them the immense, fast-growing, under-served, and uncritical market of urban China. Continue reading →

Free trade, (Protectionism) – Part Three

Jacques Delacroix Liberty

This is Part 3 of a slow long essay on the reasons free trade exists. Parts 1 and 2 were posted all at once few days ago,

Now, forget about Luis and me for the time being.

Just imagine a word where people everywhere are allowed to do what they want with respect to how they spend their resources. The first resource is their time, of course. Some people, not everyone by all means, will try to earn more. Note that I am not saying that everyone will act rationally. Some are too lazy; some are too stupid; some simply like what they are doing at low earnings. That’s fine. It does not undermine the explanation of free trade I am stretching out for you in small steps.

A farmer in Quebec thinks he is not earning enough herding and milking cows. He is thinking he would do better growing bananas. His friends point out that Quebec is not a good place to grow bananas because it’s cold much of the time and winter days are short there. If he is smart, he will follow their advice and look for some other improvement. If he is too dumb or obstinate and he goes on, reality will soon hit him on the head. He will find that he has no income from Canadian bananas most months, or even most years. Or his electricity bills will drown any profit. Either way, the unhappy cow farmer will have to try something else. He may discover that growing big pink organic-certified raspberries for the Montreal market, or for the New York City market, pays better than either cows or bananas. Or he may fail and return to cows. Or, he may become unemployed. The process is messy. Continue reading →

Protectionism; Free Trade, Step by Step

Jacques Delacroix Liberty

Here are the first two installments of a series of eight explaining something important that few people understand. The subject of protectionism is important because the concept is intuitively appealing and its implementation a recipe for poverty.

Part One

I hear more and more talk of protectionism, not only on the left where you would expect it, but among conservatives as well. “Protectionism” refers to any government policy intended to impede or slow down imports, merchandise and services produced somewhere else. The main idea behind protectionism is to “protect” the jobs of domestic, local workers. The idea goes like this: Americans need shoes. If you stop foreign shoes from coming into this country, Americans will have to make shoes for Americans. That means more jobs.

That’s an attractive idea and one that’s easy to grasp. Unfortunately, protectionism is actually the royal path to poverty. Even more unfortunately, the reasons are difficult to explain. You have to rely on counter-intuitive explanations to show why protectionism actually makes people poorer. Roughly, the reverse of protectionism is called “free trade.” (What is meant here is free international trade.) International trade simply means trade of merchandise and/or of service that crosses national boundaries: A pound of oranges grown in Mexico and sold in the US is an import. Continue reading →

Some Chinese Links

Brandon Christensen Links , , , , , , ,

I apologize again for my lack of blogging activity lately.  I will be done with Finals on Thursday!

I regularly read Shanghaiist, a webzine of culture in Shanghai specifically and China generally, and I just came across this great bit of reporting on the ouster of one of the Communist Party’s most outspoken reformers, Bo Xilai.

In the piece, a list of outrages and speculation of Mr. Bo’s ouster are reprinted from Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter.  Here are a few of them: Continue reading →

Shipping Jobs Overseas: The Export of American Manufacturing Jobs and Lousy Education

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , , , , ,

I had a troubling encounter in the past few days. It was on Facebook and it was with a stranger. Here is how it went: I patronize several organizations’ and people’s Facebook pages, to stay informed and also to learn from them. There is a man, X, who is my Facebook “friend” and whose page I like because he is a libertarian, or a libertarian conservative like me, who knows useful things I don’t know. X has a talent for firing up debates on Facebook. In one debate a propos of I don’t remember what, one person, followed by several others, kept referring to the de-industrialization of America, its putative loss of manufacturing industries specifically.

I intervened calmly and politely to point out that there was no such thing. I remarked that the height of American industrial production was either 2008 or 2007, or maybe even 2006, not 1950 as they seemed to believe. I directed the debate participants to a couple of government sources. One woman responded almost insultingly, alleging that I was trying to send her on a wild goose chase. She appeared to think that I was referring her to the whole Census with its thousands of pages of documents. I took the trouble – obligingly, if I say so myself – to direct her through Facebook to a source I though was easy to read, NationMaster. In addition I summarized what NationMaster had to say on the topic.

Here is the summary: Continue reading →

The Little Greatness of America

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , , ,

A Celtic music band plays loudly on the stand. Three little girls look at one another demurely, they exchange a few words and pretty soon they are dancing in front of the stand. The little blonde took the initiative and the lead, but the black girl twirls in the air with the grace of a young gazelle. The third girl is Asian, as luck would have it. She copies assiduously the blond girl and the black girl. What can I do? I am not deliberately creating or reinforcing stereotypes; I am calling the play as it unfolds before my eyes.

I must add, for the sake of the integrity of my reporting, that the little black girl seems surprisingly well-prepared. Her eight braided queues make her look adorable. That hairdo must have taken hours to create. She came wearing black tights and a matching short black skirt with sequins. Her elegant performance looks a little premeditated. I compliment her mother as they are leaving. Mom thanks me brightly but do I detect a bit of smugness in her smile?

My small town is having its annual summer Arts and Wines Festival. Some of it is a little pokey, of course, because this is a small town. Having heavy wine breath in the sunny afternoon would be an example of pokey by my standards. Much of the weekend festival is good, or even very good, like many artsy-craftsy things are in Santa Cruz. Continue reading →

Immigrants – A Story Pregnant with Deep Meaning

Jacques Delacroix Politics , , , , ,

They are a pretty young couple. He is a thin, blond Dutchman in his early thirties. Yasmina, his younger wife, is a honey-skinned beauty, and all curves. The day I met them, she was wearing a short, tight silky dress over a black push-up bra that was doing its job quite well, indeed. She is Pakistani by way of Toronto. They have come to seek their fortune in California.

Peter, the Dutchman, is working for a local software company. He is a language specialist in a generic sense, if there is such a thing. He began an advanced degree in Sanskrit, at Oxford. He did not finish because he could not “raise” the 35,000 pounds ($50,000) required. He spent a couple of years in India studying Sanskrit with a guru. When I asked him why he had not sought admission to an American doctoral program that would have supported him, one way or another, as is the custom, he gave me an answer I did not quite understand. It was something about changing priorities and about the infernal American demand for scholarly publications. Peter and Yasmina met at Oxford, where she completed an undergraduate degree. Or maybe not.

A Muslim by birth, Yasmina drinks wine with gusto, a sure sign of aristocratic upbringing. She speaks English perfectly and very fast. Peter discusses wines with much competence. His parents own a winery and vineyard in the heart of Continue reading →

More Musings on Colonialism

Brandon Christensen History , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I recently attended an excellent lecture at Cabrillo College, located in central California, by an International Relations scholar who focused on the effects of colonialism. We took a solid look at the ‘World Systems Theory’ of why the developing world is, well, developing, and it was great to go over this school of thought’s main arguments.

For those of you who don’t know, World Systems Theory is a Marxian analysis that basically states that poor countries are poor because of the effects of colonialism, and the evidence supporting their claims is pretty damn solid. Basically, the World Systems theorists argue that when the various European powers gained outright control of non-European lands (this process in itself took centuries, by the way, and I deplore the historical narrative that argues Europeans set out to conquer foreign lands and divide up the spoils of war for reasons outlined in the link provided), the European powers set up states that were designed specifically to export raw agricultural materials to European factories, to be produced by European workers, and to be consumed by European (and elite non-European) consumers.

This is pretty much what happened, and explains why most of the developing world is dependent upon raw commodity exports (that are shipped to European markets) for most of their well-being. Unfortunately, the very solutions that the World Systems theorists propose to dismantle the structural inequalities that exist in this world will (and have) actually led to more of the same structural inequality.

Allow me to explain. Continue reading →

Colonialism: Myths and Realities

Brandon Christensen Current Events, History, Liberty , , , , , , , ,

My only claim to fame in regards to colonial scholarship rests on a paper I wrote for an Honors course in Western Civilization as an undergraduate. The paper won a spot at an Honors consortium held at Stanford, so I was able to do even more research on the subject. The following post is a summation of my research in blog form.

The first task I have is to explain what colonialism is not. Colonialism is not a European invention or concept designed specifically to keep non-white people down. The myth of the evil white colonialist is one of the most pernicious myths espoused today, and for a couple of big reasons. The first reason is that colonialism has been around for a long time. Today, the Han practice colonialism through the fascist Chinese state. In the 19th century, the Ashanti practiced colonialism throughout their slave-trading empire. The Ottoman Turks practiced colonialism until their empire collapsed in 1923 (and with it a 600 year period of colonialism). The theocratic Javanese state of Mataram practiced colonialism until its demise in the 17th century. The Incan state was also well-versed in colonial practices.

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It is important to remind readers of colonialism’s history because of a lack of criticality on society’s part. This lack of critical thinking skills stems from the condescending view of non-Western societies that the modern Western citizen has adopted. As co-blogger Jacques Delacroix so eloquently states:

Liberals profess to reject American military intervention abroad because of a strong myth of people of color’s virtuousness. According to this liberal myth, people of color, non-whites, seldom ever do anything wrong by any standard. When they do, as when they eat their neighbors, for example, it’s always somehow because of something or other that Westerners, Whites, usually Americans have done to them, or to someone else. Or something. And then, of course, you shouldn’t do anything to them or in connection with them.

The idea that Western civilization is somehow responsible for inventing and propagating colonialism is actually a condescending one, and, conveniently enough, permits me to segue into reason number two for combating the pernicious myth that White European society is to blame for all the world’s problems: the myth doesn’t allow for any intrigue or guile or cunning or Realpolitik on the part of colonized societies.

Continue reading →

Thanks A Lot America!

Jacques Delacroix Economics ,

My wife and I sit on the living room couch watching television while eating a simple lunch. She is an immigrant like me, born and reared in India. She is a woman of tremendous intelligence and of impressively bad taste. We are watching “Real Housewives of Atlanta.”

One white, white-trash woman is having a mean argument with her friend, a black white-trash woman. Both are spilling out of the top of their blouses. The air appears to me to be filled with the smell of acrid estrogen. (I can’t be sure; this is taking place on-screen.) The topic of the argument is who of the two is the greatest ho. It seems to me it’s a matter of fine gradations but I am not expert. It’s all quite wonderful.

The thought strikes me: If I had stayed in France instead of emigrating, I would now be watching a replay of a visit of an obscure part of the the Louvre, about some obscure aspect of obscure Etruscan culture. The visit would be commented for French television by a retired lady professor at the Sorbonne, with very short hair plastered to her skull.

Another reason to love America!

And don’t go all supercilious on me, silly woman. I watch the History Channel too. I could give you a list of its mistakes that would make your hair stand on end. I have read all the books you have read and many you haven’t. I have read books the titles of which you can’t even pronounce. I have even published a couple of books and a number of articles myself. That’s not even counting my short stories. I make established scholars at prestigious universities tear up. You can’t even begin to diss me. American television is great!

Thank you America!

Gas Prices Are Too Damn High

Brandon Christensen Liberty, Links , , , , ,

Co-editor Fred Foldvary explains why gas prices are so high at the moment.

David Henderson keeps his eye on the ball when it comes to higher gas prices.

Co-blogger Jacques Delacroix has his suspicions as well.

Catching the Killer Kony: What Trends for Tools Can Tell Us About Political Structures

Brandon Christensen Current Events, History, Politics , , , , , , , , , ,

I am more than amused at the current trend of teenage boppers and serious college students catching up with the decades-long war happening in the Congo basin. It makes feel superior! If we really want to solve the problem of war in the Congo basin (and everywhere else in the post-colonial world) then we are going to have start looking at the political structures that have been left behind by the colonialists and enhanced by the indigenous (and socialist-educated) elite.

I have a quick blurb that may be of use. I say “may be” because I have decided to use Nigeria as an example rather than Uganda because it is a region I am much more familiar with, but the underlying concept is still the same. My more intelligent readers will no doubt grasp this nuance right away, but it may be harder to grasp for those readers not well-versed in social theory. I would, as always, be grateful for critiques and comments alike.

Religion has virtually nothing to do with the current conflict tearing Nigeria apart, and everything to do with the legacy of British imperialism (which went hand-in-hand with socialist legislation in the late decades of the 19th century). Continue reading →

Life with an Accent*: Twenty-Five Unimportant Complaints From A Happy Immigrant Plus One Confession

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , , ,

I am a very happy immigrant, practically a poster-boy for American, and especially for California, immigration. Nevertheless, there are some recurrent irritants in my life as an immigrant, specifically. I have held my peace for forty years; in the end, I have earned the right to vituperate a little.

Since I was born and lived in France until I was twenty-one, it’s not surprising that many of my complaints have to do mostly with language and food. Here they go:

Statements that irritate me:

“I just love your accent.” The same accent I have tried to get rid of for forty years.

If I limped, would they just love my limp?

“I get my French and Spanish confused.”

They never know either.

“My French is rusty.”

They are lying to themselves. There was never enough metal to rust.

“I only know conversational French” (always a woman, saying that).

“I be American. I would wanted ate French,” isn’t conversation, honey; its baby-talk. Continue reading →

Somalia and Anarchy: Links Edition

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Economics, Links , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
  1. I am too lazy to write much more on Somalia right now (you can always check out my latest piece again if you are really itching for something satisfying), so I have compiled a list of great pieces I have read over the past couple days on Somalia, Anarchy, and the idea that post-colonial states ought to fail more often than not.
  2. Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills argue over in Foreign Policy that the Congolese state needs to fail if the region is to ever know peace again.
  3. Over in the New York Times, Alex de Waal argues along the same lines that I have: that Somalia as it stands is a bad idea, and that much more decentralization is needed for it to effectively flourish.
  4. The Mises Institute has two wonderful articles (one by an anthropologist and one by a lawyer) on why anarchy has been great for Somalia, despite the government interventions imposed upon the Somalis by the West over the past two decades (and, really, much longer than that, but I digress).
  5. Political Economist Chris Blattman raises the flag of caution, though.  How do we really know that more states will be better for the people living in these regions?
  6. Co-editor Fred Foldvary defends anarchism’s good name after the (government-initiated) looting in Iraq.
  7. And last but not least, Cato Unbound, one of my favorite places to visit, had an excellent symposium on anarchism awhile back (like, 5 years ago).  Here is Pete Leeson’s lead essay, in which Somalia is specifically used to illustrate his points.  Be sure to read the responses of the other members in the exchange, too.

Have a great weekend, and have fun with all the reading!  One of the things that really bothers me is the example of Somalia that is thrown out in favor of government over liberty.  I really hate having to take the time to explain to people that the problems in Somalia are created by the government!  It’s like screaming at a brick wall…

Apologies

Brandon Christensen Liberty

Finals are coming up for a lot of us, so blogging and responses may be slow coming back.  Thanks for your patience!