Sometimes the bad guys do us all a big favor, by openly stating what they stand for after spending years denying it. I recently received exactly this sort of favor from an economist, one Don Boudreaux, at the renowned libertarian Cato Institute, a hotbed of free-trade thinking. He wrote:
Why should you or I celebrate less an improvement in the welfare of a South Korean than we celebrate a comparable improvement in the welfare of a South Carolinian? (original here)
That's it. So finally we have it: after years of telling us that libertarian economics -- deregulate this, deregulate that, believe that the free market is always right -- is best for America, they admit that, in the end, they just don't care.
This philosophy has the perverse virtue of perfect logical consistency: if you don't care about what's good for Americans, why not have free trade? I must grant -- and the reader should, too -- that the entire policy of free trade makes perfect sense if one adopts this premise.
The idea of caring equally about the well-being of people all over the world sounds, of course, like a very sweet and humanitarian philosophy. And in a perfect world, maybe it would be. But there are two very big realities that get in the way:
1) We live in a world of ruthless economic rivalry, so if Americans aren't willing to stand up for the economic interests of Americans, we just get rolled by multinational corporations and foreign powers that lack such delicate qualms.
2) Libertarianism, for all its pretensions of universalist humanitarianism, is in fact a notoriously selfish philosophy. Someone once defined a libertarian as "an anarchist with a credit card;" they were onto something.
The South Korea Free Trade Agreement, America's largest free-trade agreement since NAFTA, is back on the front burner. So when the libertarians speak up on this issue, as they will, just remember where their hearts are.
And as another poster said, free trade isn't a zero sum game. Other countries don't have to suffer for the US to benefit. When businesses bring jobs to third world countries they are bringing back cheaper goods to the US, that's called a win-win.
Turns out that the corporate think tank he works for, the US Business & Industry Council, which grandly declares itself “Fighting for American companies, fighting for American jobs†(as if those goals were synonymous in a 21st century, global economy), wants the government to intervene to “protect†their businesses from competition. Fletcher and his backers are not only dredging up mercantalist fallacies as if they had not been definitively disproven long ago, but also the xenophobia, jingoism, and nationalist fervor that characterizes the paranoid, introverted, zero-sum, anti-free trade mindset. Free-market capitalism, by contrast, fosters global cooperation and peace, innovation, cosmopolitanism, and prosperity.
It is dishonest of Fletcher to not mention that obvious that his special interest corporate pleadings cost consumers (who have to pay more for goods and services), taxpayers (who pay higher taxes to support the bureaucracy required to command and control the economy), workers (who lose or don’t have the opportunity to compete for jobs that free-trade would have created), and the overall economy (in the form of lower efficiencies, lower capital investments, and hence lower growth).
It takes a strong understanding of economics to write a satire like this. Where did you study?
Aside from the theory that economic progress is a zero-sum game (Americans can only benefit if non-Americans lose), this is an interesting definition of "selfish."
Your ideological bent blinds you from drawing this otherwise obvious conclusion.
Don was right -- you are unintentionally hilarious. Keep 'em coming!!!
It's irrelevant that libertarians stick up for what they /believe/ are the economic interests of Americans.
They've already conceded that, as a matter of fundamental principle, they don't care about the interests of Americans vs. anyone else.
And it's not just a matter of Mr. Boudreaux saying it. If pure freedom is your only value, there's no basis for caring about any one particular community.
You can tag on afterwards, "I care," but it contradicts your own principles.
Free trade breeds lasting peace, protectionism breeds hate mistrust and war. The fact that free trade also benefits the poor in other nations is incidental, other than it proves that the criticism of Libertarians is absolute hypocracy where in fact it is your side that advocates use of force to enrich the already rich at the expense of the poor of other nations, and that of your fellow Americans.
A = the quotation from Boudreaux
and
B = libertarians don't care about America
Here is his apparent reasoning: "We live in a world of ruthless economic rivalry, so if Americans aren't willing to stand up for the economic interests of Americans, we just get rolled by multinational corporations and foreign powers that lack such delicate qualms."
But, this reasoning collapses if, as is of course the case, Boudreaux and most other libertarians believe that eliminating protectionist measures (yes, unilaterally) IS "stand[ing] up for the economic interests of Americans."
Because libertarians do stick up for what they perceive to be the economic interests of Americans, Fletcher is incorrect in concluding that libertarians don't care about America.
It would seem that in Fletcher's admittedly frightening world, every patriotic citizen of every country that is not the United States is anti-American. For they all must promote the interests of their own nation and these necessarily damage the interests of every other nation. Perhaps the U.S.A. would be better off if there were no other nations. And, as Boudreaux himself might point out, perhaps each of the 50 states would be best off without the other 49.
Boudreaux's worldview seems to be that any person is better off when their fellow citizens do not tax their purchases based on geographic origin. The interesting thing is that anyone sees this as anti-American.
Personally, I'm a libertarian on principle, not pragmatism. Even if there was a negative short-term consequence, the whole world would benefit from the rise of Asian or Latin American economies through free trade.
If you need a translation or interpretation: What Don is saying is that if North Koreans prosper, it is a GOOD THING, just as much as when North Carolinians prosper, it is ALSO A GOOD THING! It is entirely wrong to say that Don does not care. It would be a much more reasonable interpretation to say that he cares about BOTH.
Don is also claiming in that article that BOTH benefit, long term, from free trade. It may be that some people lose their jobs to competition temporarily, but new jobs are made possible by the reduced prices of the goods both countries import from each other.
Whether you agree with this idea or not is irrelevant to this Ian Fletcher person's ad hominem attack on Don and Libertarians. Don certainly believes it, and the passion with which he argues it, and the benefits for all that he argues trade will bring show that he DOES CARE.
If you want to try to argue against free market ideas, first GET A CLUE ABOUT WHAT THEY ARE! And learn to read English!
Libertarians hate America? Has the left finally transmuted itself into what the right used to be? Wow! Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, I suppose.
I'm sorry we don't share your view that the USA should eb the dominate economic empire of the world. We believe that free trade agreements should be unnecessary, since if you are trading freely, why the hell would you need government agreements? Individuals trade, not countries.
How are libertarians utopianists? Utopianists are planners that want to force their perfect world onto everyone else. Libertarians are in favor of spontaneous order. We also make no promises about what that spontaneous order will look like, so it is hard to call us utopianists in that sense. If you want to know about libertarianism, try asking actual libertarians.
Libertarians come in a wide variety, from people who simply believe in "less government than today" to people who are pretty close to anarchists. Even Hayek wasn't really against the welfare state. You obviously believe that government has a role in "helping the poor," but think of this: the government spends 20,000 dollars per man, woman, child, and senior. I know a alot of families of four that would be much better off if the government simply wrote them a check for their share. That would pretty much eliminate the need for every other government program.
Based on what I'm taking from his drivel above, no, apparently he doesn't.
GET A CLUE!
Ralph Nader
And for the record, you can make an argument (as libertarians often do) that supports indifference to human suffering that's based on logic. Many libertarians do it all the time...the whole 'government taxes is theft' argument that suggests it's evil to "take" money and "redistribute" it (which is what ALL taxes do, even the taxes you like...and by like, I mean provide direct benefit to YOU and no one else) to...*gasp*...PEOPLE IN NEED! How dare they, when we all know that if we just allowed people to help on their own, those in need would be better off.
If not, why is the involuntary transfer of wealth via taxes so loudly lauded by the Left?