Okay! Okay! Perhaps they’re not that fun, but enlightening I hope.
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
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
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
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
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.
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 readingCo-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.
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
Finals are coming up for a lot of us, so blogging and responses may be slow coming back. Thanks for your patience!
Stupid fundamentalist Protestants in Florida burn a Koran publicly because it’s their constitutional right. Stupid Muslims in New York, who say they are not fundamentalists, insist on their right to build a mosque near Ground Zero because it’s their constitutional right.
It all sounds very malicious and moronic but fair.
Speaking of morons, I catch a bit of the far-left show “Democracy Today” on the radio. Some guy whose name I did not catch sermonizes the West about the lack of clean water access for millions of people in the underdeveloped world. He intones that one week of the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would be enough to provide clean water wells to most of those who lack them.
The speaker does not seem to know the basic facts of life: In places like Afghanistan, in most of the underdeveloped world, if you give the government money to dig wells in the countryside, it ends up in Switzerland or on the French Riviera. The solution, of course is to entrust the money to NGOs (voluntary non-government organizations). Oops, NGO workers are targeted for assassination in places like Afghanistan! The assassins are the very people our military are trying to control. There are very mean people who are mean to their own people. Deuh!
Money is not the issue. If his figures are right (they might be), the costs, technical, constructions cost, of providing clean water to nearly everyone could be covered by voluntary subscription in the US and in a handful of other developed countries in one week. We are not selfish or stingy, you left-lib moron!
I keep wondering how an adult man can have the shamelessness to preach on the radio in full ignorance of such basic facts, of facts everyone can ascertain. Oh, well, the President does it all the time.
Obstinate ignorance and the insanity of the sane: Two topics that interest me endlessly. They tend to merge into each other.
Jacques Delacroix continues his vendetta against Ron Paul.
Dr. Ninos Malek points out the obvious in regards to guns and public schools
Fred Foldvary has a wonderful piece in the Progress Report on Turkey joining NAFTA
Brian Gothberg (with Gregory Christainsen) writes on property rights and whaling technology
Professor Jeffrey Rogers Hummel on Ben Bernanke versus Milton Friedman (pdf) in the Independent Review
Have a great weekend!
I don’t have any witty comments or analysis because I have not been watching any of the debates or following them with any vigor. I heard Romney won both Michigan and Arizona last night, which means he’ll probably get the nomination.
What are the chances that he will have a smooth ride through the GOP convention? I think Santorum and Gingrich will fall in line and support him, but Ron Paul is quietly sweeping up delegates and I think he is going to make a major stink at the convention. He will not get too radical because of his son’s future in the Party, but he’s going to force Romney to make some concessions.
I think Paul will press him on a number of issues, but Romney will only capitulate to the Federal Reserve argument Paul so often speaks about. Gold Commission 2013?
None of this matters, of course. Obama will be re-elected. From a pragmatic point of view: he has killed bin Laden, waged a successful air war against a now-dead dictator in the Middle East, and not managed to get us into any more quagmires (yet). Continue reading
I’m plowing through Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations for the first time this quarter, and I recently came upon this sociological gem:
Fear is almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency. To attempt to terrify them, serves only to irritate their bad humor, and to confirm in them an opposition which more gentle usage perhaps might easily induce them […]
I count this as a sociological gem because of its insights into how people with strong libertarian streaks are apt to view their government. If there is one thing that a libertarian despises most, it may just be the pretension of governments everywhere to demonize and demagogue a foreign people with the use of fear.
In fact, our co-blogger Jacques Delacroix has continually used this disgusting tactic to justify the violent use of force overseas to attain what he sees as benevolent ends: that of implementing democratic regimes throughout the post-colonial world. Indeed, he writes: Continue reading
Over at the Progress Report, Dr. Fred Foldvary writes on how we can extirpate poverty from the world.
Jacques Delacroix calls out Ron Paul’s statement about Iran being surrounded by the U.S. government.
Professor Jeffrey Rogers Hummel tackles the issue of slavery head-on in a Freeman article.
Brian Gothberg writes about the potential technology has to start protecting the ocean’s resources through property rights.
And our newest blogger, Dr. Ninos Malek, defends stereotyping (defending the undefendable is why I love being a libertarian!).
I have this ongoing discussion by email, Facebook, and occasionally on this blog, with a female friend, a young woman I know pretty well. She is a Lutheran from a foreign country, and a hard-working person. I suspect she never reads though.
My friend claims that Lutherans are persecuted in America and in other countries. She thinks there is a deep-rooted anti-Lutheran prejudice causing the persecution. Of course, I tend to take her at her word: “Prejudice” means “prejudgment,” evaluation in advance of hard facts or, by extension, in the absence of hard facts. But facts matter and they do influence the judgment of people who are rational, intellectually honest, and unprejudiced.
My friend will easily emote on Facebook because of restrictions some countries officially place on some Lutherans’ clothing predilections. The restrictions are usually mild, applied to minors, or enacted only when police or security matters are in play, as in photographs on driver’s licenses. It turns out, the only country applying systematically restrictions on female attire, specifically, that country is 95% Lutheran.
Of course, when crazy, or simply fanatical, individuals commit individual crimes against Lutherans, my friend cries out bitterly. Yet, when a crazed non-Lutheran attacked a Jewish memorial site in Washington DC and murdered an innocent security guard of unknown religious identity, she expressed neither outrage nor sympathy. Continue reading
Notes On Liberty 