Sci-fi writer writer, conservative, and libertarian (with a small "l"), Jerry Pournelle had this to say about the consequences of "Free Trade" and the reposnibilties of government and business to citizens:
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First, if you are going to live in a liberal democracy, certain things are certain. One is that the franchise will expand to include as many as possible. Another is that the people will vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. You can try to slow that process -- National Review once said its mission was to stand astride the course of history and shout Stop! -- but you will not halt it.
Thus, given that there is no possibility of victory by a political party based on the proposition that government ought to contract a lot, and people have no economic claims on that government, the externalities I described in yesterday's commentary are fairly described as givens: things we 'must' do in the sense that given our political system they will happen. We can modify the benefits we hand out to people, but we will not eliminate them, and you will not win an election on a platform of "let them get religion" as Calvin Coolidge said when asked what the federal government would do for the unemployed.
Second, justice consists of giving each man his due (in the modern world each person his or her due). A just society is one that has the fixed and abiding intention of rendering to each man his due. What are the just desserts of a 45 year old sewing machine operator who has made over a million sweat suits, earned a good bit of profit for her company, and now finds that she has no salable skill while her job has been exported to Bulungi? I ask seriously. We as a society owe her nothing? We insist that she owes us loyalty, to the point of sending her sons to war; we insist that she obey the laws not merely from fear but from choice. But we owe her nothing economically?
Third, I am as aware as anyone and possibly more aware than most that if your goal is to maximize economic gains and make efficient investments, and that goal is so important that all other goals pale into insignificance, free trade and laissez faire capitalism are the proper choices to make, and economic regulations tend to muck up the system, sometime to the point of collapse. Command economies don't work.
There remains the question, is free trade laissez faire likely to lead to a just society? It certainly leads to Ariba and Global Crossroads if not to Enron. Efficiency demands that bubbles be allowed to build and to burst. Cotton mills move to the south, then offshore entirely. Manufacturing jobs vanish. Economic efficiency abounds.
But that is in the absence of the externality of politics. Political reality is that the US is divided deeply into nearly equal camps -- but both sides are agreed that there shall be a "safety net" and public benefits for those who through no fault of their own -- or even through their own lack of wisdom -- find themselves impoverished or even just greatly reduced in circumstances. You may find that reality monstrous or comforting, but absent a drastic modification in our political institutions, a modification possible only outside normal politics, it is still reality.
Burke said that for a man to love his country his country ought to be lovely. Certainly most of us would not find anything like The Great Depression lovely regardless of our personal economic circumstances. We don't want big socialistic government, but we don't want people sleeping in shanties and cardboard boxes, and we don't want the kind of thing you can find just outside Buenos Aries or Rio either. We don't want street gangs, and we don't want mercenary death squads.
We have developed a fairly workable system that by and large most of us find congenial and even agreeable.
My question was,
Given the externality that we must provide health care and some minimum life support to citizens, is it really cheaper to have free trade as opposed to tariff for revenue (which can be used to help pay for those put out of work by free trade)?
I have a lot of mail accusing me of socialism. I have yet to see any realistic refutation of the proposition that this is reality. And I have yet to get an answer to my question, which is, again, is not imposing a tariff calculated to maximize tariff revenue collected (and thus allowing inefficient industries to continue to operate and employ people) preferable to free trade with lower prices of goods but higher taxes to support the unemployed? I ask it as a purely economic question; I have asked it for years; and I have yet to see an actual economic analysis leading to an answer. My attempts with spread sheets and input/output models lead to ambiguous results -- and that's my point. I certainly prefer to keep people working, both for their good (they feel valuable and part of society, not alienated) and mine ( alienated people are very bad for a social order and their children tend to be criminals).
Understand. I am by temperament "libertarian" in that I like to be left alone and I have no great desire to mind anyone else's business. At the same time, I am quite certain that without strong government lawlessness would prevail. I have some experience in organization and attracting loyalty and I would probably do well as a pirate king, but it is not my preference as a way to live. I prefer a republic and if that includes tariffs that raise the prices of what I buy but save me in taxes to pay people to be unemployed, I'll gladly pay the higher price until someone shows me just how much higher those prices are likely to be.
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Which shows, to me, at least, that there are a lot of people thinking the same things about Free Trade, and what it does to our society. Dr. Pournelle is only concerened about how Free Trade afects Americans, but is well aware of its other consequences, if you read some of his science fiction. He would have been firmly in the Ross Perot faction opposing NAFTA. The past several years have shown the Perot, for all his other faults, was right on this one.
Posted by Chris at February 22, 2002 03:46 PM