The word "regulation" was not mentioned once. "Government" was mentioned only twice. Legislating American industry out of existence and then blaming the results on "free trade" isn't really fair.
It goes without saying that I think we have suffered from too much regulation in too many areas. The arguments I made don't really depend on that, though, so I didn't go into them.
I'm going to echo Wreckage. If the regulations are such that it is virtually *impossible* to make anything at home, then we have a huge artificial perturbation in the free market system. Think back to three years ago. Whenever the government butts into the free market, things break and break badly. There's nothing inherently wrong with producing overseas. The trouble comes when companies are *forced* to produce overseas.
I see it as a compound effect. It’s not only that capital is mobile but that it is forced to be mobile, in turn forcing labour to be mobile, etc. in turn Empire must expand to protect what are in normal terms national assets, but pushed outside the borders.
So, the pattern is as our host has said; and it is doubled by the legislative response.
But the regulation and taxation, I propose, expand to consume all available trade surplus as a matter of ordinary consumption patterns; and the regulatory disparity means that with certain starting assumptions, you are legally required to produce in China not Christendom. (Me being a smart-arse about what The West really means)
Government regulation is nothing more than a tool in the woodshed. The Chinese use it (for instance) to orient all their corporations into becoming loyal CPC vanguards and whatnot when they enter foreign soil. This enables the Chinese to CRUSH the competition, regardless of how allegedly “innovative and creative” they happen to be, courtesy of (allegedly) coming from an “exceptional” nation. Such Hubris!
The Americans meanwhile.... when they do use it, they always cut themselves like rank amateur craftsmen. In particular, a segment of the population always seeks to undermine said efforts whilst another segment tries to pursue it without end. This Bipolar disorder is precisely why Murica is a complete basket case who will never amount to anything more:
A shitty craftsman always blames his tools for his own flaws at using them, as well as his overall lack of skill. The master craftsman meanwhile just keeps on winning using every tool in the woodshed. Quite simple really!
Yes, and the major difference is the American notion that competition between equals somehow renders high quality at low price when, in fact, circumstance will eventually favor on competitor to the point of creating a monopoly.
The solution was anti-trust legislation that broke up monopolies but really did little for quality or price, probably make them worse.
Germany simply regulated the cartels as "Camarilla" or common interest businesses with each other for national good, given workers had to be able to buy what they needed or the entire economy would collapse. Bismarck's social legislation was a major addition to Frederick's Camarill which serves today.
The French Reovlution had a lot to do with this, th e"Specter of 1789" hanging over ll the rulers' heads like the Sword of Damocles.
Over a century of war has driven our gov't k into a self-serving collusion with industry.
It's really never been a question of regulation or no regulation but of what kind of regulation.
Competition has utility insofar as the Rules of Engagement are constrained (and historically, Religious Authority kept this in check across the globe) and don't go beyond a certain sequence of escalatory moves.
When the Italian city states (for instance) decided to Normalize Usury, those constraints were broken, and the current state of affairs (i.e. the never ending pursuit of Monopoly as you correctly note) was all but guaranteed.
So yes, I do agree when you say "it's always been a question of What sort of regulation ?" rather than "NO regulation vs Regulation".
At the end of the day, the matter is simple: Secular, Modern Man has reached his Endpoint and Destination. He can choose one of two pathways:
1) Pursue "Rationality, Logic, Neutrality, etc" (Hint: None of these things work as advertised) and Summon the False Deity and Demonic Artificial Super Intelligence who will Harvest Mankind, Abolish Humanity and begin the Transhuman era.
OR
2) Reject Satan, his minions and all his Vile trespasses with every fibre of his being.... even it means that certain technologies, knowledge, pursuits, etc be Completely AXED. Thus once more going back to Normative protocols to run society.
>> This concept however (i.e. that such things noted earlier can ever be AXED and that they are NOT Inevitable as many falsely claim) is Foreign to most Tech-worshippers. Thus, at least most Westerners will not rest till they Summon the Demon and said Demon completes the Harvest of Blood, Innards, Skin, Minds, etc.
This is all *very* interesting, and I will need to put Fletcher's book on my to-read list!
But for any reader here who is not sold on Fletcher, let us keep in mind that in this age of welfare states and heavy income taxation, Free Trade Isn't! The United States has been under a system of subsidized outsourcing since the early Post War era. This was originally intentional. We were trying to keep what was left of the free world from going communist. Today, our policy subsidizes nominally communist (and actually national socialist) China.
Try this thought experiment: what would be the tax on a Chinese consumer product if we had the Fair Tax instead of our income and payroll tax system? Answer: 30%.
We would need 30% tariffs across the board just to have parity with what we tax domestic producers at the federal level. That's not being protectionist. That's just being neutral.
Consider that by moving widget factories offshore a company eliminates all requirements for compliance per widget sold, in: environmental, work safety, wages, planning, worker welfare/worker pensions/other ancillary worker protections.
The same widget that would see you do prison time made in USA is fine if imported from China.
This is a major legal disparity. Consider: what if all imports had to be proofed at site of manufacture by the SAME compliance systems that would apply if manufactured in the polity of sale?
Trade partners would accept a 30% tariff with a smile and a song if it was either 30% or COMPLIANCE.
Agreed. Throw in workplace safety, DIE, and environmental concerns, and you need more than a 30% tariff in order to achieve simple economic neutrality.
I'm trying to keep my argument simple. But yes, when there is room for complexity, hurl the kitchen sink at the internationalists.
In practice you can't do that if your factory is in China. You then depend on Chinese testers and Chinese regulations. The alternative would be to import a number of American techs and somehow keep them in an American enclave in Chinese territory.
Think about it - how much would you have to be paid to live in China for years on end under Chinese law, attempting to enforce American regulations against stuff produced in a Chinese factory, where the owners are either Party members or have an in with them?
There are means to all forms of compliance; my point is that compliance is a penalty applied only to domestic producers and as such is unfair law. The “even playing field” would at least partly exist if laws for the proper production of goods applied to those goods rather than to the dirt the factory was built on. And this in turn would make a flat tariff a trade CARROT. “Either comply, or simply pay a percentage fee for access to compliant markets”.
And, as I've said elsewhere, China wouldn't even be *close* to the Bogeyman it is, if WE hadn't been building them up since the late 1980's. Our Government Policies practically pushed Corporations over there, starting with us rewarding China with 'Most Favored Nation' trading policy almost immediately after Tienanmen Square.
Again with the Tangents, but it was strange- In my years as a PC Tech, I often ended up having big philosophical conversations with high-level Executives at the places I worked. When I was working at Rockwell Automation, one of the Senior VP's & I clicked & it was common for us to discuss large-scale topics. One time we got to talking about China (This was in 1999) & I asked him why would his company do business with a nation that made no secret of its use of Power & in particular, the utterly ruthless way it would use that power on its own people. Since in China, a Government Official could *also* be the head of a Company, doing business with them directly allowed that Official to gain more power & would, inevitably, be used against the commoners.
He said personally, he found it distasteful, but it was up to the Federal Government to dictate economic policy, who they could, or couldn't do business with. The personal morality of the executive staff was *irrelevant* when deciding whom to do business with.
Chine Rose *in spite of* Yankee Land, not because of it. Yankee-land's corporates "fled to China" because during that time period, China had the Burgeoning Middle Class (a la the mass poverty alleviation measures) to pull them in.
The Reason it was "built up" was because Chinese people had the capability to Outcompete, Outmanoeuvre, Outwork, etc Yankee-land. And their reward for this was Murican Corporates (who have NEVER been loyal to their homeland) kowtowing to them with the hopes of (a decades down the line) wresting control of the Chinese state away from the Natives (like they did many decades ago with the Muricans).
To their *shocked Pikachu face* sensibilities: Those Pesky Han Chinese folks saw right through their ruse and Whipped em (literally and physically) till they conformed and were brought to Heel. It would be an understatement to say that Giants like Nike, Apple, etc are MORE WILLING these days to Kowtow to the Chinese than they would to Yankee-land, the land of their Birth. Quite PATHETIC!
I must respectfully disagree. Once China was on the Most Favored Nation list, American Corporations went over there in a flood. With the excuse that all of our Labor-Protection laws made it too difficult to be profitable, all the Corpo's saw was the opportunity to make obscene profit, long-term consequences be damned.
(Of course, since I *AM* a Conspiracy Nutcase, I am fairly sure that the Elite of the Elite wanted EXACTLY that. America had been built up for their purposes & it is now time to shear the sheep.)
Well, these are plots & plans made by smart people who have access to tons of information we don't, do this as a profession & have had decades to mull all this over.
The most effective lie, is the truth, told in an ill-intended fashion.
Given the Ideology of 'Business' (Make money at all costs, it is the point of all existence, it is the only reason a 'business' exists, etc, etc, etc...) maneuvering people with such a belief isn't that hard.
Would it have been possible to have laws that were more nuanced, that treated workers decently & still allowed a Corporation to make large profits? Absolutely.
But given the generational business culture that makes maximizing profit Law One & doing anything else unthinkinable? Even with much better laws I would be shocked if there was a company that wouldn't want to pay its labor $1/day instead of $20/hr.
>> these are plots & plans made by smart people who have access to tons of information we don't, do this as a profession & have had decades to mull all this over <<
Having access to information does not necessitate normatively salient decision making. And just because someone does something for a living, does not make him adept at generating outcomes. Case in point: No Mainstream Economist (and I am reminded of the likes of Krugman et al who write all the textbooks for Macroeconomics) saw anything *close* to the World Order and International Situation we live in today (i.e. circa 2020s to 2030s) some 10-15 years ago.
The ruling "Elite" of a nation can have both the following attributes:
1) Skilled, Intelligent, etc in matters of Social Mobility, Networking, etc within their circles.
2) Utterly incompetent in administering (in part or full) the various facets of Empire.
In the Late Qing Dynasty, there was many a diplomat and foreign service worker under the Emperor who spoke over half a dozen languages (for instance) BUT in tandem had Zero Knowhow with regard to figuring out how to salvage the Imploding Empire.
Yankee-Land has now reached a similar Doomed Death Spiral whereby its Elites are simultaneously Incompetent and "Highly Learned".
Ultimately Satan's whisperings are what influence the behaviour of ALL such people. And so this much can be said:
Whatever it is they think they are in charge of and in control of.... that is nothing more than an illusion. They are simply Deluded and living in a make-believe fantasy world if they think their master Satan will just idly sit by and let his minions have all the sway, influence, power, etc.
Said minions get a small share; but ultimately Satan Harvests them as Pellets and Feed to properly Fertilize his Demonspawn and Demonlord minions + lackeys. Their ultimate purpose (in Satan's view) is to FEED to coming Demon into the Physical Realm. The Ritual is almost ready to start.
America is more a Basil Plant than a Sheep about to be Shorn.... it will be completely Devoured as nothing more than a "Flavour enhancing supplement" to the finished Salad; which in this case will be the False AI Deity.
I don't disagree that The corporates went over there expecting "a ripe harvest in a few years". What I do say is that *in tandem* to that, various other vectors (of the sort noted earlier) need to be factored and considered.
The game is not lost "because we screwed up, the refs favoured them AND we had a bad day". Rather, it is all of that in tandem with "the other team played better and got us good". That was the crux of the point being made.
You can defeat "free tradists" with one argument, if you want: Free trade advocates assume perpetually non-hostile trading partners. e.g. It sucks if whoever is supplying your food/medicine/energy suddenly decides to to jack the price up 20x, or sell it all elsewhere.
Or, if your nation is currently producing the World's Reserve Currency & they find out that, like an infantile 12-year-old, you will play political games with it, thus eliminating world confidence in said paper.
It continually amazes me that they had the ability to literally print money and hand it out to whoever, and they're destroying it because of some batshit crazy "rule the world to please our alien overlords on their impending return" prophesy.
But keep in mind that the ordinary elite peon doesn't really know this. Like Freemasonry you aren't told 'The Truth' until you've sunk to the Bottom. The Elite of the Elite intend to use their Regular Elite peons as sacrificial lambs, letting the ordinary schlubs have their pound of flesh.
Then, in the shell-shocked aftermath, they intend to build the 2nd NWO, their true demonic utopia.
I’m fully in Meme belief here. The reason isn’t specific people, it is the parasitic memes that are dominating them. It really is alien overlords, in the form of leftover memetic-warfare viral agents from a dead empire (the Communist bloc isolated, weaponised, lab-grew and deployed the memes)
Well, you have no reason to believe me, some Twit on the Interzone, but I would agree with your take, IF I hadn't had a personal confrontation with the Spirit of a Creature vastly more knowledgeable & more Ancient than a human could *ever* be.
There are Millions of these critters, many alive, most dead, but all causing deception & chaos at the behest of Spirits even greater *Yet*.
I’m not entirely averse to your vision. I believe I possibly once encountered something, but it was just... eerie and simple. In retrospect it may have been trying to get away from me, and this is all very subjective of a very strange experience. It might have been in my head, except that nothing like it has ever happened since. A psychosis, being inherent, would be expected to repeat.
I'm still a youthful free trade doctrinaire, living in the worst country possible for the doctrine of free trade: Spain.
But I am also in favor of national self-sufficiency or autarky. As much as possible. One example is the most obvious strategic area: energy self-sufficiency.
These years, they are destroying the last remnants of the autarky project of the Dictatorship: the project of hydroelectric generation.
Nothing makes sense. It's all crazier than ever before in Spain's very crazed history.
Soon, in Pentecost day, local elections. Later in the year, General elections.
I have no hopes of anything changing here. If something would change for the better in the US, maybe that would cause a ripple and Spain, being a vassal state, could see some changes too.
All parties are globalists. Even the so called "far right" party. And they are pro-Ukraine and pro-Israel too and pro-vax and pro-masks.
The covid con has destroyed Spanish culture. There is barely any self-respect left standing.
As you can see, I'm demoralized.
But I keep studying. I'm not a fanatic. If I'm wrong in my Austrian School beliefs, I want to know. I sincerely want the best for me and for my country, and I don't care about the unity of Spain or if Spain explodes in three thousand micro-nations.
I want peace and isolationism. So far, the free-market principles seem to me to be closer to the idea of peace, cultural recovery and political independence. But I will have to re-study everything under this new interpretation of American protectionism of Fletcher.
I prefer peace and prosperity to being right about economics. So I'm open to change.
I have a question: what are your views about pollution and environmentalism in general? Have you written something about those topics?
I have not written about pollution and environmentalism. My personal belief is that preserving the environment is important for the sake of mankind, but that we are almost entirely directing our attentions in the wrong direction. I believe the fixation on "climate change" and CO2 is a mistake. As a carbon-based lifeform I do not like the idea of "carbon neutral" and "carbon zero". and that we should be focusing on the effects of herbicides, pesticides, micro-plastics, and similar hazards to us and the animals and plants we depend on.
If the Lion's share of the so-called 'Environment Movement' hadn't been co-opted by the 'Humanity is a Virus' crowd, I might trust what they say more.
Might.
In 1980, when Mount St. Helens blew, it released more pollutants into the air than the ENTIRE Industrialized World up to that point. I will never stupidly say that humans have NO effect on the Earth, but if Mother Nature wants to kick up a few sandpiles at times, she can do it on a scale that makes all our ignoble efforts look puny.
If I had more brainpower I could remember the name of the event, but back in 1913, there was a meeting of the Beautiful People, who discussed various ideas to scare the jellybeans out of the Hoi Polloi & keep them in line. 'Looming Environmental CATASTROPHE! CAUSED BY HUMANS!' Was one of them.
One thing that worries me about the Kennedy campaign (this issue is likely to play a huge part in that) is that the oligarchs always seem to profit from environmental regulation, in one way or another. In the end, the whole scheme is capitalism for me, socialist poverty and tyranny for you. That's why in austro-libertarian circles people often say: small is beautiful.
Yet, here we are, fighting the covid tyranny and denouncing the killshots, and the political way out is through more regulation, more benefit for the oligarchs.
It's astonishing to me the similarity between some of the things that Kennedy said today and what you and Vox Day argue sometimes, like isolationism (never mentioned that word) and make America a fortress with big domestic industry and a big middle class. Of course, Kennedy says nothing about the racial observations. The other difference is that Kennedy seems to lament the loss of the Middle East strategy with the truce between Iran and Arabia, and the loss of international power of the USD. I think that's actually good for America, especially in environmental issues. Poverty at home means pollution and damage, and one cause of domestic poverty is the eternal wars everywhere.
I am fairly sure that the average Peon wants what YOU want- Just to be left relatively alone & pursue your goals without being roughshod over OR trampling over others.
I suspect (well, not really, I KNOW) that is why Governments work so hard to create enemies. I mean, for crying out loud, in World War 1, the US Federal Government was telling its people that the Germans (Those Dangerous Huns) were EATING BABIES & thus, we had to beat them.
My parents were Vietnam-Era adults, their parents World War 2 era. My Maternal Grandfather was a Naval Combat Pilot, but it didn't take him long to lose his 'Rah Rah, beat those Evil Japs' propaganda. By 1976 he wanted to take all his kids & extended family, buy a large Ranch in the middle of nowhere & check out of the whole rotten scene. He was a Great man & Damn do I wish I had had more time with him. Sadly, he died just after I turned 17 in December of '87.
My Dad was a Vietnam Solider & very 'Pro-US' & my goodness did we have some fights. I kept trying to tell him that The Fed didn't *care* about him, it didn't *care* about its soldiers & used their desire to serve their nation like a Cheap Prostitute. For a very long time, he thought that just meant I was some commie-loving anti-US liberal.
Then, in 2002, he was diagnosed with Terminal Cancer & given 5 years at *most*. This cancer however, could be traced directly to his exposure to Agent Orange & as such, he was entitled to serious hazard benefits. It was in his struggle to get what he was promised that he finally understood I was right. The Government he had risked his life for did NOT care about him. He apologized for being wrong, but in tears I told him I didn't care about winning the argument. I just wanted him to know the truth.
He fought that battle with cancer for *FIFTEEN* years, finally losing in early 2017. I miss him like crazy, but I am glad he did not live to see what a Clownshow the country he loved so much has become.
Thank you. Much appreciated. Though I primarily put it up as an example of the personal cost all the lies we are told to get us to fight each other can cause.
In July I will 'celebrate' my 30th year of Chronic Pain. (Spinal Damage- Inoperable) Despite the Fire burning me inside, I still try to be kind. However, having a daily battle to hold on to who you *are*, can do wonders for your perspective on life. So I have few qualms about saying things most wouldn't, if I feel the situation merits it. (and sometimes being beyond normal social conventions is kinda fun.)
Actually, our Author on the Tree of Woe
(Tangent! I *assume* you know where that phrase he uses came from, right? 1982's 'Conan the Barbarian'? Excellent Film, very underappreciated for the time & that most of it was filmed in Spain? You live in a Beautiful Country. ^_^ )
would likely understand where I'm coming from, even though he has far more Social Graces than I do. Though he does not have CP, he has publicly made it known that his Wife, does. Watching the one you Love suffer, can have a very similar effect.
I am also much attracted to free trade. Over time I have come to consider tariffs “just another tax” rather than a trade restriction; after all, most nations have outright bans on many goods and trading partners, compared to which a tariff is mild.
In short I believe that the dispersal of assets, influence and self-determination into a nebulous and corrupt “globe” can be reduced while still enjoying the material and human benefits of trade.
It may be that free trade can only work in a spherical planet and not in a flat one, so, the future global government only needs to order its legislative chamber to decree that the earth is round, and then the Earth would become round and free trade totally doable.
One can also make this joke in reverse: that free trade can only work in a two-dimensional world, so the world government must make the globe as flat as possible so that the free trade can finally start.
But I'm more of the persuasion that our planet is a zero-dimensional world, and constitutes the only genuine Euclidean point in all the Universe, and due to the constraints in space in an object so small, it is impossible to have any kind of trade, so there is no need to regulate it.
Jokes aside I think the problem of tariffs is that it is a nationalistic and self-defeating concept. In order to avoid squabbling over definitions, I use "nationalism" in a different sense than the anti-free traders nationalists. If I understand their definition of nationalism correctly, it is based on the racialist idea that one nation (roughly the same as a race) should have its own country, that protects its own culture and traditions as much as the environment itself, the motherland. One consequence of this is that the laws regulating commerce with foreigners should be biased towards the nationals, and against the foreigners.
My definition of nationalism is different: in one country there is a gang of thugs who exerts violence over the rest of the population. The gang realizes that waiting for people to recover from the last plunder is boring, and they decide they want more consistent pillaging in the future, so they go to the slave market to buy philosophers and ask them to design a system of ideas that will cause the population being ruled by the gang to be more productive and accept, stoically, that they must never rebel against the gang no matter what. The philosophers then create ideas such as moral duty, skepticism, justice, equality, rights, culture, identity, symbology, fraternity, solidarity, hierarchy, authority and finally, the idea of the Nation as something greater than your momma. The application of all this in the practice of Nationalism implies inevitably the creation of internecine fights in the slave population, always meant to secure the position of dominance of the gang in charge.
One of the tactics to fan the flames of internal conflict is the practice of tariffs, which means favoritism for one national group over another national group, but ends up becoming more favorable to the foreign merchants if they are big enough to be partners of the gang of thugs who rule the country, as a payment of the help to create problems and because it makes the foreign merchants more powerful relative to other merchants. Over time, the slave-philosophers and the merchants will collide to destroy the gang and form their own gang.
That's why tariffs are self-defeating in this nationalistic picture: it does not favor the nation and it does not favor the government in the long term. Tariffs make them weaker and conquerable by the resentful.
If anything, the thugs should embrace full free-trade as that is the greatest insult against foreign merchants and philosophers. Also, one possible outcome of full free-trade is a pure government by might alone, by the most violent thugs. Reaching that "paradise" is more difficult when there are some philosophers and international merchants around, if I understand the ideology of the free-market correctly.
It's good that you have made a distinction between material benefits and human benefits of trade. In general, material and human are different. One of the problems of our free-market ideology is the insistence on materialism and the denialism of all the other parts of reality that cannot be explained in terms of what science understands as matter these days.
But more to your point, dispersion and concentration are two-edged swords. In the case of assets, dispersion can be bad sometimes, but it can help save them from the enemy in other occasions. Concentration of assets is generally good, but it attracts greedy people who want to take from them.
Self-determination seems too dispersed right now in the real world. Some people are now afraid to tell their children anything different that the Government imposes on them through educlamation. Kids are learning that self-anything is evil, criminal, deadly and contributes to global warming and you are probably an homophobe if any thought of yours diverges even one bit from what is written authoritatively.
It's very tough to grow up with the high speed Internet.
One funny example: people are told that democracy and "openness" is good, it's the right live politically everywhere, because the evil illiberal Plato was the father of all murderous totalitarianism, with his book the Republic. And I observe that the people who repeat that Plato's politics are bad and democracy is good, fail to see that all "democracy" around us is actually what they have been taught to hate, totalitarian Platonism, and they also do not see that power is completely separated from the People, through many corrupt institutions that serve as obstacles to collective political freedom. So in hating Plato, they love Plato.
This blindness is more noticeable in subdued countries like Germany, Italy, Spain or Austria, than in countries like France, the Netherlands, Norway or Sweden.
Both the anarchists and the nationalists have the obstacle of having to gain minds that are totally sequestered by thugs, merchants and philosophers.
(Why am I writing so much? Ah, yes, because I love substack.)
I'm not sure why you would subscribe to the communist theory that there exists some sort of common unity of mankind that could be awakened against necessarily exploitative and conman elites. Besides the fact that there exists no evidence whatsoever of this being true and you would be sitting among the communists waiting forever for international class consciousness to finally emerge, which you are perfectly free to do, absent a communist theory I'm not sure why you would assume elites could ever be gotten rid of. Or do you suppose that it is merely these elites, that have somehow managed to remain in power over centuries? I would say that hypothesis is rather dubious.
That aside, what makes you think that nations are artificial constructs? Who created them and when? Left alone by these shadowy puppet-masters, would humanity naturally form a common society across the globe? Do you think your family is some sort of artificial construct? Surely you must admit that a common living of siblings and mother at least is a natural rather than enforced or coerced phenomenon. And if you admit that then it follows that left alone for a long time people closer together would be more similar to each other than those far away? Such that they might naturally organize with people closer to them than those far away? And that they might favor people more similar to them than less similar, much as we work much harder to see our own children and siblings do well in life than for strangers? Surely you must also admit that people who do not favor similar people will be demographically replaced by people who do display such endophilia. Why then think that favoring kinsmen over foreigners is 1) artificial rather than natural, 2) immoral, and 3) undesirable?
It also is evident that between people thinking of themselves as deracinated, atomized, nationless individuals with no particular identity and people thinking of themselves as particular kinds of person who group and belong together, it is the former that is an artificial indoctrination and the latter that is a natural emergent phenomenon.
It really doesn't take that much more observation to also see that this deracination project exercised across the world has been a disaster for all people it has affected both socially and morally. People who think of themselves as having no nation, even no race, are some of the most dysfunctional, unhappy, immoral, and abysmally depressed people that human history has ever produced. The same cannot be said of "nationalized" humanity, which seems to be the default state. One might object that nationalism is a modern phenomenon, and it is, but it clearly builds on very natural and very solid foundations in mankind. Trying to create societies of human atoms on the other hand meets with continual frustration and instability, and obviously rests very heavily on the (current but declining) ability of the rich West to materially bribe the peoples it hosts into an uneasy and hardly frictionless détente of sad, masturbatory apathy while the project limps along, hoping things won't explode before utopia finally arrives.
As with all heaven-on-earth philosophies, it's nuts.
Topic-relevantly, historical evidence indicates protectionism and tariffs have served their societies (however imperfectly nationalist, though notably and inarguably far more nationally homogenous than today's "multiculturalism") very well, while free trade wherever practiced has been disastrous, whether the societies that practiced them be national or multinational. Much like communism, its apologists just insist that real free trade just hasn't been tried.
Of course, Marx thought that free trade would help destroy capitalism and thus usher in his post-national communist vision so maybe we're retreading old ground. Free trade to destroy shadowy elites that promote racial, national, or ethnic division to divide opposition against them doesn't really seem that different, does it?
Thanks for your reply. I think you are a good writer.
I read that Vox Day quoted you.
I'm Spanish, and I hate all forms of socialism.
In Spain there is no such thing as a race, there are only people who can't get along well enough to defend from the socialists. Those Spanish people who consider themselves whites have been brainwashed by stupid American propaganda.
Some authors argue that Spain was the first modern Nation, when the Reconquista was completed in 1492. The term Nation is thus anterior in time to the atheist concept of the State, which I think was invented by Hobbes against the Puritan's despotism (Puritans were mostly fake and gay, don't you agree? But Hobbes was kind of a bitch on his own merits.)
My point is that the political concept of Nation corresponds to a failed political program that was superseded by the State, which was successful, and it seems we are in the middle of the State 665th update.
But Nation as a cultural concept is not a program. It's natural. It's a tragedy to extract a person from his nation, by slavery or by destruction of his nation.
The elites conspire against the people everywhere. This is true everywhere, all the time, long before Aristotle. The people is more often than not amorphous and contradictory and easy to manage, but difficult to exploit because of the lack of abundance that comes from lack of organization. Leadership drives people to be more like a nation and be productive and defend itself. But Leadership corrupts itself. Usually because of excessive ambition, but not only that.
Then the people tends to enter into self-destruction mode. Because of the tendency to fight over minutia. Boredom is king.
There is no common unity in mankind, but there is the desire to survive and prosper. I lean towards anarchism of the libertarian kind, so for me the idea of self-organization is not far fetched. It seems to be natural that humans coalesce and separate naturally, and find friends and enemies and favor their friends and fight their enemies. Another issue is the treatment to strangers. Some individuals seem to be more inclined than others to help strangers, even to adopt them in their community and help them to grow a family. It makes no sense to favor strangers over you own people, but some strangers are preferable than some of your people who like to create trouble, which happen often when communities get too big.
This goes in line to the idea of selling legal nationality as a tentative solution to the migration problem: those who hate their country sell their rights for cash or another thing to a foreigner that desires to become a member of that country. This is better than catching slaves in the Balkan peninsula, watching them become libertos and starting families, and a few generations later you see the descendants of the libertos stupidly betraying their nation.
I would prefer to create a small country in Chad, for example and offer all the socialists a place there to rid all the countries of their presence. The Chadians are likely to become better actors than the socialists.
I consider myself a pacifist and anti-war. I feel that nationalism tends to create war. Before you chastize me as a hippy commie on stilts, I have to say that I consider conflict unavoidable and useful, but war is not conflict. War is like politics, a means to destroy nations, starting with your own. War is professional, it is artistic and it is unnatural. Conflict is natural and is part of human culture.
My current beliefs about race are that it is a linguistic concept and not a biological concept. Race is a classification according to trends in specialization, for example, Irish people like to argue and sing melodic songs, Germans don't like freedom of conscience and that's why they like a certain version of Buddhism, Spaniards are melancholic and passionate and generous (there is no better full moon in the world as the first summer full moon seen from Spain, and this is both self-evident and shameless tourism advertisement.) But I don't see specialization as a product of brain chemistry. It's more a matter of tradition and psychological heredity. In short, I don't think that human races are a similar concept as canine races.
The statistical trend seems to be confirming the biases of the racialists thinkers, but we have to ask where does the data come from. what are the ideological assumptions of the empirical sciences. For instance, there is a man, Jay Joseph, who argues that twins reared apart studies prove basically nothing because those studies are bogus. I hope I have summarized his views correctly in one sentence. This man is probably a mainstream liberal politically. So he is not the same kind of liberal as those classical liberals that support eugenics and scientific technocratic dictatorship for all humanity, the mindless do gooders. You could argue from that description that Joseph has an ideological bias against the results of his own science. But psychology has always been a war of all against all from all political tribes, and it's rare to find psychological research that has no bias, no matter how well they hide it.
I argue against the use of depression as being caused by anti-nationalistic policies: it is in part true, but it is not the whole story. Depression is in general a byproduct of societal decay, which is caused by economic disasters, politics, and war. We happen to see that the main culprits of economic disasters are the same actors who create general demoralization and cultural erosion, and promote victim mentality. But there are other political forms and other economic practices that also cause people to become hopeless. Ultimately, the way to change a bad situation to a better situation is by people overcoming the programming set up by their enemies, which sometimes rule directly over them. If this change in the anima of the individuals does not happen before the collapse, then it would happen after the collapse. Or death.
On family. It is natural, but there are some behaviors in modern family that are not natural. For instance, when there is a divorce (which is somewhat natural, and does not imply family dissolution anymore than the death of the father or the mother) people these days fight over ridiculous concepts such as parental visits. The problems of divorced families, the children who go through that, are artificial and a political weapon that has ravaged families over the last 40 years. People are at risk of thinking that the damage caused by Power over families is part of the natural dynamics of a family.
For people to have a nation is a good thing, in general, and it is so good that good people should have two or three nationalities, and accumulate rights and obligations with friends everywhere. This is a way to reduce politics and war and economic manipulations.
But the concept of identity is too close to zionism for my taste, so I don't love it.
I apologize if this reply seems scattered. But I'm here to learn. I learn from everyone, and I some my energies are dedicated to inspire random people to overcome their obsessions (truly a weapon) by asking questions and learning to discern. I don't expect much from those labors because the change is internal and voluntary and it's not in my responsibility to change people.
Hello. While I thank you for the compliment, on investigation you have me confused with a different writer by a similar name. I can't claim such fame or greatness, but allow me, if you will, to direct you: https://simplicius76.substack.com/ and apologize for the confusion.
I will respond briefly to your points if you don't mind.
I agree that the American conception of race is very loaded and particular to their circumstances. In my opinion it takes the usual place of ethnic division because of their unnatural state of extreme multiracialism. Unfortunately Europe is becoming similar in that regard due to mass immigration and so the American race concept is growing ever more applicable. That aside, as a purely taxonomical matter I do not think it is absurd to divide humanity into broad groupings whether those groupings be called "race" or not, and obviously this would apply anywhere, though not necessarily with practical application. Of course, being a matter of taxonomy the exact labels and demarcations would be subject to scientific revision.
I agree that the political conception of the "nation" is not timeless but quite modern, but as I said it rests on very solid foundations in human social behavior. While I can't claim expertise in Spanish history, I would quibble that the program has totally failed. Before modern immigration policy and avowed political intents to become "post-national", the nation-state appears to have been a very stable unit, able to create large realms that avoided bloody break-up like, for example, the end of the Hapsburg Empire in 1918.
If I may, I would put forward that there are two different "nationalisms" at play in the discussion. One is, I think, more common and about being "pro-national" in terms of policy, or at least being against deracination, but admittedly that kind does beg the question of "What nation?" which is the other kind of nationalism to which I refer. That being a firm commitment to the political unity of such and such ethnic groups but not such and such ethnic groups, which is not so straightforward or self-evident. Say, in the case of Spain, a firm commitment to the unity of Catalonia, the Basques, and the rest of Spain. Or perhaps a German example of favoring the unity of Bavaria and Prussia, but not Austria. I do not think the second necessarily invalidates the first, but it may mean that two different nationalists of the first kind may have very different conceptions of what their nation is. For you I imagine it is probably not so hard to find a Catalonian nationalist, for example, who sees the rest of Spain as being outsiders whom he therefore does not include in his "pro-national" calculations, while there may be other Spanish nationalists who mean by it equally Castilian, Catalonian, Basque, etc..
For myself I think it is only necessary that one be a nationalist of the first kind, as to act contrarily to that necessitates rather anti-human policy. Otherwise I do not think it makes any sense to be firmly committed to the existence of all nation-states as they exist today. But really, outside of one's own people and foreign policy for their benefit, why have an opinion? Not being a Spaniard, why ought I to say that they must have such and such divisions and unifications? It's no business of mine whether Catalonia is independent or whether one Iberian state exists across the peninsula or whether any other configuration exists.
I do not condemn you for pacifism. I don't find moral issue with the impulse to be wary of or not in love with war. My disagreement is that I believe war is a spectrum and a constant of the human condition, a result of a finite universe that therefore occasionally creates zero-sum games (which our host has also written about, I believe, in https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/do-ideas-shape-history-or-does-history ) which are, in short, war. You may disagree about conflict and war being identical, but I think it is fairly straightforward to see why conflict would drive towards more and more effective conflict (and professional armies are evidently in general militarily superior to other fighters in conflict). In other words war in one shape or another is unavoidable, whether we wish it or no.
I think the argument about racialist theory must take place elsewhere. I wouldn't presume to comprehensively answer the question once and for all in a paragraph. Suffice it to say I think racialist thinkers are more correct than radical human equalitarians.
I do not mean to say that all modern moroseness is caused by deracination, as obviously there are many dysfunctional behaviors that degrade people and contribute to it. But I do think deracination takes a large share of responsibility. Perhaps it is not so bad in Spain, but in the Anglosphere it is very easy to see that people stripped of identity keenly desire it and that the lack of it contributes enormously to their dysfunction. It's a historically unprecedented state.
I would caution against Zionism tainting identity. I do not mean to imply by identity something so definitive and rigid as what the Zionists use, but rather a number of truths about oneself and one's place in the world. Think about how being part of a nuclear family — as a husband, brother, son, or father — forms a part of one's identity that doesn't contradict or nullify one's place in an extended family — e.g. as a nephew or grandson — which also forms part of one's identity. It is, in short, merely the complement to belonging — speaking crudely, for example, to say that a man belongs in Iberia is to say that he is Iberian, that he belongs in Castile that he is a Castilian, that he belongs in this or that house that he is part of that household, that he belongs in this or that family that he is a member of it. Or, conversely and briefly, that if a man is an Iberian he belongs in Iberia. Two sides of the same coin.
If he is not Iberian why would he belong in Iberia? And if he is not anything else why would he belong anywhere else in particular? Nobody functions well feeling as though he belongs nowhere. People stripped of these belongings — stripped of their identity — are in a very real sense removed from society, essentially becoming a foreigner everywhere. I would call that a very real social danger. And while it does inform politics I think it is too limited to focus on how this interacts with the nation-state when in reality it is a necessary part of a healthy human social life, an aspect that humans therefore politically organize around.
Thank you for thoughtfully responding, even under somewhat mistaken apprehensions.
Analytical thought isn't easy these days, so I'll keep it short- I got informed about Free Trade via Lew Rockwell back in 1999. While there was far more I agreed with in it than the soporific nightmare of Keynsian Economics, I was always troubled by how much both it & Libertarianism ignored the illogical & emotional aspects of what the Spathi refer to as, 'Hunams'.
When I became a Christian back in '91, I asked God to, as much as humanly possible, see the world the way HE sees it. I didn't have a 'be careful what you wish for', experience. Though I did find out pretty darn quick it ain't gonna make you no Fans.
In Britain during the time of Smith and Ricardo, a free trade policy was progressive. Taxing food imports subsidized the nobility at the expense of the working class.
In the United States, tariffs were progressive. Tariffs taxed southern slave owners and boosted wages of northern factory workers.
Very eye opening, sadly though we are much nearer a undeveloped country than most people know. You mentioned scrapping are factories, and indeed we are and have. A year ago or so I met a guy riding on my road bike (I live on the trans northern Pacific-Atlantic bicycle way) and his job was traveling around the US buying old manufacturing equipment and wholesale factories and selling them on to China. He of course saw no problem here in gutting the US's capacity to build, well anything. He said his job was getting harder as there was becoming less old industrial facilities that had not been already sold off. So for us to reboot for whatever reason; war, trade, competitive advantage, is going to take starting all over.
Oh, only tangentially related (I love me some tangents), I just got a notice that Atari is planning on doing a massive reimagining of their huge game library. They just acquired Nightdive Studios (a decent bunch who's latest project is a nearly-complete remake of 'System Shock 2') to facilitate that end.
I won't post the email I got, but FIG is the platform they are using for all schlub-related investing. Coming as this is, directly after the failure of their latest videogame console doesn't fill me with confidence, but going software-exclusive worked like gangbusters for SEGA.
The Risk is likely high, but that's where the fun is, right? :-/ And while thinking about investing in games during the present cultural shenanigans might seem silly, the Film Industry grew explosively during the Depression. So, unless it's a 'try not to die from radiation while avoiding the rape-gangs' type of crisis, people will always need to be entertained.
.... If not any from (1) - (3), one ought to cut them loose asap.
Many a business owner often falls into a vicious cycle of debt, headaches, etc after which they are utterly ruined.... all for simply trying to use Mathematical Masturbation (of the sort you succinctly noted) and whatnot in order to supplant aforementioned Golden Rule in part or in full.
That is the micro level. At the macro level where we are dealing with nations + civilizations and their interaction with economies + industries; this analysis carries over (even though we were initially dealing with individuals + businesses and their interaction with employees and staff).
Put simply, The Golden Rule of Economy + Industry is as follows.... Developing an Industry and/or investing in a particular Segment of the Economy must be so that the Nation and/or Civilization:
1) Saves Time for other fruitful pursuits (prayer, charity, etc. Normative activity in general).
2) Saves Goods, Services, Money, etc for other similar Developments and/or Investments.
3) Saves some combination of the two Above.
.... If not any from (1) - (3), nations and civilizations ought to cut them loose asap.
"Free Trade" Dogma is merely one of the many weapons in the Arsenal; an Arsenal that seeks to Mathematically Masturbate away these Iron Rules adhered to since time immemorial by Civilizations and their derivate Nations.
The West (and the Empire in particular) has completely supplanted (1) in order to favour instead Demon Summoning. Meanwhile (2) is likewise being supplanted now with the erosion and Death of Manufacturing in its entirety. De-dollarization will cement this in a few more years.
As with the Business Owner who fell into Ruin.... there is only one way this ultimately ends; and it is not with the Nation (i.e. Yankee-Land) and the Wider Civilization (i.e. the West's) Salvation.
Speaking of 'Civilization', as a Video Games fan anyway, do you realize there exists not ONE nation-building/World-Building commercial simulation made EVER that will allow you to go into debt like real-world nations do?
I wonder why that is... 'Not Fun' (Unless you like watching things burn), but since there have been tons of games made that aren't any fun (and with Loot Boxes, MicroTransactions & 'Games as a Service', fewer all the time...) I don't think that's the main reason.
I don't really know why, but not wanting tens of millions of commoners to learn in a very personal way, what a colossal catastrophe the U.S.'s economic policies have been isn't the craziest idea out there.
I would actually say that Victoria 3 (built by Paradox Interactive) does actually let you go heavily in the red (by default, it is proportional to your gold reserve cap ie if it is 1 million GBP, then you can go 1 million in the red)
I used this often to my advantage whilst playing as Great Qing and conquered the world easy peasy in the game’s runtime (1836 to 1936) with time to spare simply because no matter how heavily I went in the red, everyone else went bankrupt first (and bankruptcy means your troops get heavy penalties for performance).
Also once you go communist in that game, the mere fact that you had some 400 million people with a standard of living of “Struggling” now getting dividends from manufacturing buildings directly meant that even a tiny increase in SoL generates loyal soldiers... throw em out into the world and just CONQUER all!
LOL Excellent. I stand corrected. Partially anyway, as there is a direct relationship between your GOLD reserve and what your creditors will lend you.
Still, a huge difference compared to most. But, of course, as the Younglings say today, it's still 'Problematic', as the agenda of the designers clearly interferes with the accuracy of the simulation. Communism is Good! With a game made in 2022, that's hardly surprising.
I don't know if it's a good thing that such propaganda is more blatant, as people's inability to *See* it, seems to rise in proportion. In 1992, 'Civilization' was a huge hit & was praised for its historical accuracy. When I first got 'CivNet' in '95, I noticed right away many things were agenda-driven. Democracy has NO CORRUPTION? Seriously?
It was nearly 30 years ago & the messaging was more nuanced then. Yet while many of that era would have seen today's 'Communism Good' as at least *slightly* Sus, they were as blind to the agenda of that time as well.
In Victoria 3, Communism is OP for a very simple reason:
The Buildings producing goods and services have an "Ownership" component.
Once you switch Ownership to "Worker Cooperative" (courtesy of Communism) the lower strata (i.e. labourers, machinists, clerks, etc) get access to Dividend Income *** IN ADDITION TO *** their wages for working at the building.
And because they now own the building themselves.... they give themselves raises. This means higher Standard of Living which in turn means more Money spent on Consumer Goods since the Lower Strata are the bulk of the consuming population in your country. All this means you start going RED, Deficit wise.
This is actually one of the Key strategies in the Game. Early game you basically Beeline your Research for Laissez Faire and Publicly Traded Buildings so that the Industrialists can line their pockets with insane amounts of wealth whilst keeping wages low and "optimal" such that the Buildings have high margins of profit.
Mid to Late Game you have loads of buildings producing goods and services and so now you can begin to "Go RED". but to do so you need a bunch of Poor Saps (this is where colonies and whatnot come in) who will have a "base wage rate" that is low to begin with (Hello Africa!)
Once you've CONQUERED a few Poor Saps and then Go Communist; you can now start Going DEEP RED (both in terms of Money and Blood spilt) and as mentioned above, switch Ownership from "Publicly Traded" to "Worker Cooperative". Now you have an endless swarm of LOYAL SOLDIERS to throw everywhere And Kill, Loot, Maim, etc without End.
If you start as Great Qing and DIRECTLY Become Communist (no need for a intermediary step), you can Kill all the Westerners in under 100 years. It's not even close. You have over 400+ million blokes whilst those Poor White boys have basically zilch to stop your Swarm tactics.
Would you say that computer software is an industry has high worker productivity without capital investment? I'm wondering if the US's expertise in computer software helps build national wealth as an alternative to manufacturing. Having said that, the wealth built by Google, Facebook, Microsoft has not been spread as widely across the population as would have been true for manufacturing.
I'm not sure. I'd have to give it a lot of thought. It seems to me there is "something different" about software that causes it to concentrate the wealth.
Software feels similar to a sport like soccer where the wealth accrues to a small number of top performers (and the owners). The cliche is that the top software developers have a 100X productivity advantage over the merely good developers. Maybe manufacturing skills are more equally distributed across the population.
It's effect has been very similar to Paper Money not based on any real goods. If you're near the top of the recipient pyramid, you can make a killing, but by the time it gets down to Joe-Six-Pack, the benefits are dubious, at best.
2) always thought of myself as a free-trader, but theoretically there’s no reason NOT to use tariffs to raise tax revenue and ease off other streams, AFAIK.
3) looked at another way, a heavy regulatory hand plus zero-T free trade is identical to financial and legal penalties on domestic production. I don’t think Ricardo had a notion of “and then government reliably eliminates the relative advantage, expanding to consume all trade surplus either as money or prestige”
4) the root of the Western economy isn’t any economic system, it’s giving historically impressively immutable property rights to the peasant class, IMO. An overall societal model saving 20% on traded goods will not have the same goods in hand (see Say) as one that creates incentives that drive +50% production for every individual, see “Yeoman’s work”.
Had to get those noted while my brain was working, definitely coming back to see which have been addressed by the comments.
George Resiman is long on Say's Law and I read his complete treatise, Capitalism. I referenced him earlier in the blog when I talked about where profit comes from.
The best example of how destructive is free trade, is Australia. Up to 1975, Australia enjoyed being the most prosperous and egalitarian nation on earth. I say this, not quoting from a book, but from a life lived in this then paradise. I have lived through WWII austerity and the decade of industrial and agricultural development that, thanks only to the trade unions, was shared between all Australians.
More specifically, every worker had a full time job, 10 days paid sick leave, two weeks paid annual holiday leave, was able to buy his own home if he so chose to, and invariablly had a new car plus a second older one for the maternal ruler of the home to do the shopping in.
Demographic studies needed to class seasonal workers as underemployed in order to provide a tiny poverty section on the graph, the remainder being an enormous rounded hill known as "the middle class bell curve". In point of fact, the seasonal workers... mainly fruit pickers and sheep shearers... invariably had their owned regional home, complete with small livestock holding, orchard, and vegetable garden. For them, employment was not needed for sustenance but for transport, fuel and sundry luxuries. This was the multi-generational regional Australian way of life.
Free trade was introduced by CIA agent Bob Hawke, who became Prime Minister thanks to support by Rupert Murdoch. His successor, Paul Keating, brought us free trade on steroids, plus deregulation of all protections, including tariffs.
Within twenty years, our unemployment was 19% and half the nation was living in poverty. It is much worse today. Meanwhile, all university students were taught that the previous history was one of industrial chaos and poverty, caused by the unions, and that free trade would cause trickledown wealth and prosperity. Most of those graduates still believe this.
Australiam prosperity was destroyed for a specific reason. As the only fully self-sustaining nation, that traded only because this made a certain sector wealthy, even while causing inflation, this meant that if Aussies refused to buy into the NWO, trade sanctions could not force them to comply. And military pressure would be logistically way too expensive, even for the US. Thus, the industrial economy had to be destroyed, just as it was in America.
Our plan is to restore tariffs, rebuild our industrial economy, and gradually wind down all trade, retaining only that needed to prevent financial imbalance. But that too, would end within four years, the sole exception being NZ. Obviously, we need to hang a whole lot of traitors before launching reconstruction. And, yes, we have covered all the angles. None of us are mere dreamers.
Thanks, Tree. Most Australians have no idea whats going on. It's only the over-70s who know what came before but most of these do not comprehend that the new generations live mentally in a different world. There will be no mass movement here. Our once chance of survival is former defence force people training a militia and taking the nation back by guerilla force. Even then, because US Marines have tanks here, we will only win if Americans tell their own Marines to back off, serruptiously even.
Baumol's Cost Disease applies to basic government services. Subsidized outsourcing is a major reason why we have higher taxes AND crappier government services. It's not the only reason, but it's a biggie.
It's also why Joe Sixpack cannot afford a doctor. Medical care in Europe is lower vs. general income because Europe has sizeable VATs driving up the other costs of living.
(P.S. I now have Fletcher's book on my Amazon shopping list. When time/budget allow...)
While Fletcher has some good points (none of which are original to him), most of his complaints are nonsense. In fact the typical argument style of opponents of free trade consists of throwing every objection they can think of against the wall to see what sticks, without regard to whether the objections make any sense or even whether they contradict each other.
For example, one of Fletcher's objections is that "capital is mobile" another is that "Resources Get Depleted", i.e., that capital isn't completely mobile. Or contrast his claim that free trade doesn't work in the face of labor mobility, contrast this with Vox Day's claim that one of the problems with free trade is that in requires labor mobility which ultimately leads to cultural problems.
The one semi-legitimate objection Fletcher has to free trade is that protectionism helps shelter fledgling industries. However, this does raise the awkward point that the main complaint of modern American protectionists is that it caused America to deindustrialize. The explanation is simple, America didn't deindustrialize due to free trade, it deindustrialized due to domestic industry being strangled by government regulation. In fact, the effect of this over-regulation on the standard of living was partially mitigated by free trade as industrial production that was no longer possible in America was moved overseas.
Man, I think you are being VERY uncharitable to Fletcher!
1) Resources aren't considered capital in neoclassical economics so there is no contradiction between his points on capital mobility and resource depletion. There are other schools that see it differently, but he's arguing against economic orthodoxy so I think you're wrong there to criticize him.
2) He claims that Ricardian free trade doesn't work in the face of labor mobility and that is true. Vox Day's argument is entirely unrelated to Fletcher's argument; Fletcher doesn't make that argument. You can't accuse Fletcher of throwing every objection against the wall even when they contradict each other....for an argument he doesn't make.
Separately, "America didn't deindustrialize due to free trade, it deindustrialized due to domestic industry being strangled by government regulation" is not a statement I agree with. Germany has lots of government regulation but it didn't deindustrialize, for instance. The explanation is NOT that simple.
I think America deindustrialized because the petrodollar system caused it to have a comparative advantage in finance, and it specialized accordingly in international trade. But since I've already written 10,000 words on that, if you don't agree with me there, I'm certainly not going to persuade you in a comment!
E.g. I think if you kept our regulatory regime but put up a tariff and removed the petrodollar, I think we'd re-industrialize; but if we just removed government regulation while keeping free trade and the petrodollar we'd even more rapidly de-industrialize because financialization would be even faster.
After we stop being able to buy cheap foreign goods because our currency has collapsed in value, there will be profits to be made from re-industrializing America. The regulatory regime will ultimately follow the money.
Regulations don't exist "outside" of the market. They are both shaping and shaped by it, via regulatory capture. Often big business wrote the regulations you're criticizing to the detriment of small business. I wrote a separate essay about this. It's a major reason I left libertarianism behind. People don't change alignment from "chaotic evil" to "lawful good" when they switch from a .gov to .com email address. They're all evil, they all want power, and they all need to be kept in check.
There will definitely be a re-industrialization of CONUS... using nano machines and cyborg drones courtesy of the new Demon regime.
Money wise, it’s tricky.... would the False AI deity and Demon overlord care about any money or currency other than Human offerings? Hard to say! Maybe it will grow and nurture an appetite for shiny metals like we did!
It's important of course to remember(and I am not accusing you of doing this; I read your essays on the matter and you did not pursue this route):
Deindustrialization is a two way street. For Party A to Deindustrialize; Party B (and probably a few others as well) have to Industrialize to make up for that loss of manufacturing prowess (unless of course we are speaking about defunct industry... which is a rare scene when it comes to essentials like food, metals, minerals, etc).
It's not MERELY the case that Yankee-Land Deindustrialized because of aforementioned pursuit of its comparative edge in Finance... that was Necessary but not Sufficient for it to FALL. Rather, the other Team (i.e. the Eurasians) also pitched in:
Russia for instance went out of its way to recapture all of its Natural Resource Hubs back from the clutches of the International Cabal. Once those entities were Nationalized; it was the end of the era of "Easy Commodities" for the US. Goodbye Capital/Resources!
Similarly, China captured the Labour market a la lifting some 800+ million people from poverty into the middle class (the largest middle class in human history to date).
Given such a massive pool of Humanity, it became a Magnet for firms who wanted a piece of that middle class AND that enticing "cheap labour". And this came at the expense of the US Middle Class and labour force. Goodbye Labour + Human resources!
This is another classic case of "We Lost Pathetically.... not merely because we sucked at playing, but likewise also because the other team BEAT us good".
> Deindustrialization is a two way street. For Party A to Deindustrialize; Party B (and probably a few others as well) have to Industrialize to make up for that loss of manufacturing prowess (unless of course we are speaking about defunct industry... which is a rare scene when it comes to essentials like food, metals, minerals, etc).
Um, no. "Tech level" can regress, e.g., see what happened in most of Africa as the Whites left or lost power.
The "Whites" leaving and losing power was normatively optimal for the entire Continent precisely because Invaders in general never have the natives' best interests at heart anyhow.
Whatever non-objective criteria being used to talk about "regression of technology" meanwhile... that's all Mental Masturbation and nothing more.
Technology is not a quantifiable metric like distance, time or speed (i.e. the "atomics") which can be measured and Categorized.
So a Chimpanzee with a Stick on the one hand VS the International Space Station on the other.... there is no yardstick of an Objective sort that can be used to compare the two and made sense of.
The only thing that can be done is if you have some presuppositions regarding what Value is vs isnt... then you can generate some Normative principles which in turn can be used as a qualitative yardstick for "Technology progressing or regressing". This however is non-Objective.
tl;dr Version: You're uninformed- "Tech-level" has no Objective criteria to it that can be classified in said manner; ergo any talk of "progress vs regress" is forever constrained by our starting Normative presuppositions.
> Resources aren't considered capital in neoclassical economics so there is no contradiction between his points on capital mobility and resource depletion.
Neoclassical economics can easily be modified to take both into account without affecting the results. Also, one of the examples of resource constraints is limited farmland, this is also an example of immobility of capital.
> He claims that Ricardian free trade doesn't work in the face of labor mobility and that is true.
Actually it does. If you redo Ricardo's calculations with labor and capital mobility, you'll see everyone still benefits (ignoring non-economic effects due to cultural problems). But notice that even those effects are worse in a world with labor mobility and no free trade.
> Germany has lots of government regulation but it didn't deindustrialize, for instance.
Germany also has free trade. My understanding is that German regulations were less onerous than American regulation, although Germany is now trying to catch up.
> you redo Ricardo's calculations with labor and capital mobility, you'll see everyone still benefits (ignoring non-economic effects due to cultural problems).
I've honestly never seen a Ricardian argument that persuades me that everyone is better off with labor and capital mobility. I'm willing to believe such arguments exist, but I've not read one that I found persuasive.
What I *have* seen is a sleight of hand: "everyone benefits" in that there are more goods overall, but not everyone benefits because the distribution is skewed. Those in high wages countries see their wages decline while those in low wage countries sees their wages increase. A number of spillover effects occur from there that enrich the 1%, especially in the context of the petrodollar system. That's essentially what we have now, and for the American worker, that's not a good deal at all.
As for Germany, Germany does not have the reserve currency like we do, and it began opening itself to trade after it was an industrial powerhouse. America went free trade after it had the reserve currency and that is a disastrous combo (just as it was for Britain).
Germany I do not believe has free trade in the libertarian sense -- the Germans rejected neoliberal economics in favor of ordoliberal economics. Today Germany participates in the EU Integrated Tariff of the European Union. It imposes custom duties on almost all imports and a 19% VAT tax. Friedrich List of the American School was also a prominent member of the German Historical school. I think their regulations are more sensible than ours, in some ways, I agree there.
I'm not ultimately sure what you are for or against. Do you think labor mobility is good or bad? What regime are you advocating for? I want deregulation too, but I don't think it should be our #1 priority as reformers who hope to save America.
Is that Economics (the field) and Economists (the profession and people) are even suited, qualified, etc to speak about what it even means for Men to be "better off" in the first place.
If anything, given the Pseudoscientific Nature of Economics (Hint: it gets Human Nature completely wrong from the get-go), one ought to be skeptical regarding its overall prowess in delivering said results. Not to mention that its practitioners are as uneducated as they come regarding Ethics-"the Philosophical field".
Is it any wonder then that the "Free Trade"-advocates of today are so heavily in bed with the Davos Crowd and Internationalists?
Why on earth would such a Lowly Calibre of people even be *capable* of parsing out what would make men "better off"?
> I've honestly never seen a Ricardian argument that persuades me that everyone is better off with labor and capital mobility. I'm willing to believe such arguments exist, but I've not read one that I found persuasive.
Hint: note that the Ricardian argument is agnostic to where people physically reside.
> Today Germany participates in the EU Integrated Tariff of the European Union. It imposes custom duties on almost all imports and a 19% VAT tax.
So Germany has free trade with the rest of the EU, and a VAT-based tax system that applies to both domestic and foreign production.
Germany does have a 19% VAT. While not as much as the 30% national sales tax that Gary Johnson was pushing in 2016, it is still more than most state sales taxes in the US.
The nature of an incorrect theory is that it is self-contradictory. The fact that true free trade requires labor mobility — since labor is something that can be traded — and that this destroys Ricardo's argument for free trade hardly proves that anti-free trade advocates are incoherent. If the argument is that Ricardo really would be right if labor wasn't allowed to be mobile and free trade really would truly finally actually work in that scenario that's a proof by contradiction that free trade is false, since restricting labor mobility is not free exchange of resources. Whether you want to argue that this sort of restricted trade wherein Ricardo's simple argument holds is actually real is irrelevant to the point that that isn't free trade.
Both Fletcher and Day's arguments exploit this fact from different angles. True free trade requires completely free labor mobility. Fletcher says that labor mobility destroys Ricardo's justification: true! Day very separately says that labor mobility by definition is mass immigration: also true! Your objection is nonsensical.
Why do you assume free trade is the default anyway and that any other policy needs to be justified? That's the patented dishonest rhetoric every bad modern policy on the planet is justified by, acting like they're immutable and eternal norms rather than the historical anomalies they really are, thought normal only by the temporally myopic and historically ignorant.
> Both Fletcher and Day's arguments exploit this fact from different angles. True free trade requires completely free labor mobility. Fletcher says that labor mobility destroys Ricardo's justification: true! Day very separately says that labor mobility by definition is mass immigration: also true! Your objection is nonsensical.
That's a deflection. Is free trade the complete freedom to exchange or not? Because if you're going to say that exchanging everything except labor, which you are not allowed to exchange, is "free trade" then free trade is any trade other than completely prohibited trade. If you're being reasonable, a trade with restrictions on exchange is not free trade but restricted trade, which is not as rhetorically powerful but much more honest.
As for your second point, you clearly assume the burden of proof is on non-free traders to justify their policies and that if they can't we should have free trade. If you don't have this standard then free trade can be dismissed without further argument, since the very fact this debate exists is proof of its inadequate justification.
> Is free trade the complete freedom to exchange or not? Because if you're going to say that exchanging everything except labor, which you are not allowed to exchange, is "free trade" then free trade is any trade other than completely prohibited trade.
I'm not interested in playing pointless semantic games.
> If you don't have this standard then free trade can be dismissed without further argument, since the very fact this debate exists is proof of its inadequate justification.
Wait, you're literally making the "this is controversial, therefore it is false" argument?
Question: do you not feel the need to respond honestly or do you simply not understand what's being written? You chose to have a pointless semantic game by quibbling with my use of the word "true" rather than anything else in those posts. Logic suggests you simply do not have a counterargument.
After all, we're now just on a spectrum of what's okay to be restricted from exchange. You ban labor, other people ban labor + more. Not as rhetorically compelling, is it?
"Wait, you're literally making the "this is controversial, therefore it is false" argument?"
Don't dodge. Do you assume free trade is default or don't you?
> Question: do you not feel the need to respond honestly or do you simply not understand what's being written? You chose to have a pointless semantic game by quibbling with my use of the word "true" rather than anything else in those posts.
You're the one who made a pointless semantic objection to my initial comment.
Also I stated my position on the substance of the question elsewhere in the thread.
The deindustrialization of Yankee land has primarily taken place because it is uncompetitive, weak and pathetic relative to its adversaries. The Chinese coal worker willing to risk lung cancer working 16 hour shifts will ultimately beat the lazy latte sipping Democrat/liberal who has no real skills.
“Government regulation” is what Yankee land’s adversaries used to defeat the much vaunted “American dream” in the simplest way possible: make it so that said nation cannot defend itself against corporate entities from overseas who have the full backing of their respective nation states.
Libertarianism is a weak, feckless ideology for a very simple reason- in wartime, the individualist is always surrounded on all sides and mauled to death; regardless of how “good his math, tech and science skills” happen to be.
See, there’s a really interesting cycle there. A perverse incentive. There’s no loss to a pure liquid asset Capital Class if industry offshores. Politicians belong to this class almost exclusively. Knowing offshoring will mitigate the disaster of absurd promises further incentivises the broken behaviour. It’s a vicious cycle and it would have the same effect as Malignant Free Trade (TM) (assuming it exists with all enumerated characteristics for the sake of argument).
It would be quite difficult, but not impossible, to differentiate the causes.
"The famous doctrine of laissez faire, laisser passer, will prove dangerous if accepted in too literal a manner. It is necessary to act on this maxim with prudence and discrimination."—Napoleon
"Free trade for thee but not for me!" —Colonialists
I remember being a 'Free Trade' person, as it was part of my Austrian / Libertarian / near zero gov't stage of my career. I owe that era a great debt, but this article, along with "The System is Down" series has advanced my knowledge base greatly.
I've read Vox's material on this on his blog and it was eye opening that the Ricardo Free Trade theory didn't mention labor at all. After all, with NAFTA, GATT, and all the other free trade policies put in by our Foreign Ruling Elite, you'd think that the economy of America would be better than ever. Yet, we have a huge immigration problem (movement of people for labor and handouts), serious issues with the currency, and a hollowed out manufacturing sector. Going back and listening to the critics of NAFTA I see that everything they said would happen has. The Neo-Con lizards aggressively defending NAFTA back then seemed to be hiding their religious desire to use the USA as a stepping stone for their World Gov't, or destroying an independent, reasonably free, citizen-led USA. Such a country simply cannot exist if you wish to rule this realm in all its totality.
"Fletcher goes on to explain that the gospel of free trade was developed by the British after they had industrialized, and it was, Fletcher argues, a strategy specifically designed to prevent other countries from industrializing." I'm reminded of what is still called a 'conspiracy theory', that C. Columbus' bearings in his captain's logs were so off, it was Spain's attempt to mislead the Portuguese and give them the wrong coordinates - send them off to the wrong area so the New World could be Spain's alone. "The Great Navigator's" information in his log is so bad, the Court Historians have a very difficult time explaining it away. How can he be "The Great Navigator" if he is a cloddish, mistake prone Captain so inept as to put amateurishly bad coordinates in the log. I won't go into the writings that the entire story of who CC was is ridiculous, as no way the son of a weaver / cheesemonger would be allowed to marry into a Noble line. ... but I digress.
Anyway, this was a great read. A bit unnerving to think I spent all of that time talking about how protectionism and tariffs were bad. However, I do enjoy learning, and the Fletcher argument and is compelling and fills in some huge gaps when it comes to Ricardian free trade.
The word "regulation" was not mentioned once. "Government" was mentioned only twice. Legislating American industry out of existence and then blaming the results on "free trade" isn't really fair.
It goes without saying that I think we have suffered from too much regulation in too many areas. The arguments I made don't really depend on that, though, so I didn't go into them.
I'm going to echo Wreckage. If the regulations are such that it is virtually *impossible* to make anything at home, then we have a huge artificial perturbation in the free market system. Think back to three years ago. Whenever the government butts into the free market, things break and break badly. There's nothing inherently wrong with producing overseas. The trouble comes when companies are *forced* to produce overseas.
I see it as a compound effect. It’s not only that capital is mobile but that it is forced to be mobile, in turn forcing labour to be mobile, etc. in turn Empire must expand to protect what are in normal terms national assets, but pushed outside the borders.
So, the pattern is as our host has said; and it is doubled by the legislative response.
But the regulation and taxation, I propose, expand to consume all available trade surplus as a matter of ordinary consumption patterns; and the regulatory disparity means that with certain starting assumptions, you are legally required to produce in China not Christendom. (Me being a smart-arse about what The West really means)
Government regulation is nothing more than a tool in the woodshed. The Chinese use it (for instance) to orient all their corporations into becoming loyal CPC vanguards and whatnot when they enter foreign soil. This enables the Chinese to CRUSH the competition, regardless of how allegedly “innovative and creative” they happen to be, courtesy of (allegedly) coming from an “exceptional” nation. Such Hubris!
The Americans meanwhile.... when they do use it, they always cut themselves like rank amateur craftsmen. In particular, a segment of the population always seeks to undermine said efforts whilst another segment tries to pursue it without end. This Bipolar disorder is precisely why Murica is a complete basket case who will never amount to anything more:
A shitty craftsman always blames his tools for his own flaws at using them, as well as his overall lack of skill. The master craftsman meanwhile just keeps on winning using every tool in the woodshed. Quite simple really!
Yes, and the major difference is the American notion that competition between equals somehow renders high quality at low price when, in fact, circumstance will eventually favor on competitor to the point of creating a monopoly.
The solution was anti-trust legislation that broke up monopolies but really did little for quality or price, probably make them worse.
Germany simply regulated the cartels as "Camarilla" or common interest businesses with each other for national good, given workers had to be able to buy what they needed or the entire economy would collapse. Bismarck's social legislation was a major addition to Frederick's Camarill which serves today.
The French Reovlution had a lot to do with this, th e"Specter of 1789" hanging over ll the rulers' heads like the Sword of Damocles.
Over a century of war has driven our gov't k into a self-serving collusion with industry.
It's really never been a question of regulation or no regulation but of what kind of regulation.
Competition has utility insofar as the Rules of Engagement are constrained (and historically, Religious Authority kept this in check across the globe) and don't go beyond a certain sequence of escalatory moves.
When the Italian city states (for instance) decided to Normalize Usury, those constraints were broken, and the current state of affairs (i.e. the never ending pursuit of Monopoly as you correctly note) was all but guaranteed.
So yes, I do agree when you say "it's always been a question of What sort of regulation ?" rather than "NO regulation vs Regulation".
At the end of the day, the matter is simple: Secular, Modern Man has reached his Endpoint and Destination. He can choose one of two pathways:
1) Pursue "Rationality, Logic, Neutrality, etc" (Hint: None of these things work as advertised) and Summon the False Deity and Demonic Artificial Super Intelligence who will Harvest Mankind, Abolish Humanity and begin the Transhuman era.
OR
2) Reject Satan, his minions and all his Vile trespasses with every fibre of his being.... even it means that certain technologies, knowledge, pursuits, etc be Completely AXED. Thus once more going back to Normative protocols to run society.
>> This concept however (i.e. that such things noted earlier can ever be AXED and that they are NOT Inevitable as many falsely claim) is Foreign to most Tech-worshippers. Thus, at least most Westerners will not rest till they Summon the Demon and said Demon completes the Harvest of Blood, Innards, Skin, Minds, etc.
But. all the working class voters that Trump brought into the party don't want to hear about this.
This is all *very* interesting, and I will need to put Fletcher's book on my to-read list!
But for any reader here who is not sold on Fletcher, let us keep in mind that in this age of welfare states and heavy income taxation, Free Trade Isn't! The United States has been under a system of subsidized outsourcing since the early Post War era. This was originally intentional. We were trying to keep what was left of the free world from going communist. Today, our policy subsidizes nominally communist (and actually national socialist) China.
Try this thought experiment: what would be the tax on a Chinese consumer product if we had the Fair Tax instead of our income and payroll tax system? Answer: 30%.
We would need 30% tariffs across the board just to have parity with what we tax domestic producers at the federal level. That's not being protectionist. That's just being neutral.
Consider that by moving widget factories offshore a company eliminates all requirements for compliance per widget sold, in: environmental, work safety, wages, planning, worker welfare/worker pensions/other ancillary worker protections.
The same widget that would see you do prison time made in USA is fine if imported from China.
This is a major legal disparity. Consider: what if all imports had to be proofed at site of manufacture by the SAME compliance systems that would apply if manufactured in the polity of sale?
Trade partners would accept a 30% tariff with a smile and a song if it was either 30% or COMPLIANCE.
Agreed. Throw in workplace safety, DIE, and environmental concerns, and you need more than a 30% tariff in order to achieve simple economic neutrality.
I'm trying to keep my argument simple. But yes, when there is room for complexity, hurl the kitchen sink at the internationalists.
In practice you can't do that if your factory is in China. You then depend on Chinese testers and Chinese regulations. The alternative would be to import a number of American techs and somehow keep them in an American enclave in Chinese territory.
Think about it - how much would you have to be paid to live in China for years on end under Chinese law, attempting to enforce American regulations against stuff produced in a Chinese factory, where the owners are either Party members or have an in with them?
There are means to all forms of compliance; my point is that compliance is a penalty applied only to domestic producers and as such is unfair law. The “even playing field” would at least partly exist if laws for the proper production of goods applied to those goods rather than to the dirt the factory was built on. And this in turn would make a flat tariff a trade CARROT. “Either comply, or simply pay a percentage fee for access to compliant markets”.
And, as I've said elsewhere, China wouldn't even be *close* to the Bogeyman it is, if WE hadn't been building them up since the late 1980's. Our Government Policies practically pushed Corporations over there, starting with us rewarding China with 'Most Favored Nation' trading policy almost immediately after Tienanmen Square.
Again with the Tangents, but it was strange- In my years as a PC Tech, I often ended up having big philosophical conversations with high-level Executives at the places I worked. When I was working at Rockwell Automation, one of the Senior VP's & I clicked & it was common for us to discuss large-scale topics. One time we got to talking about China (This was in 1999) & I asked him why would his company do business with a nation that made no secret of its use of Power & in particular, the utterly ruthless way it would use that power on its own people. Since in China, a Government Official could *also* be the head of a Company, doing business with them directly allowed that Official to gain more power & would, inevitably, be used against the commoners.
He said personally, he found it distasteful, but it was up to the Federal Government to dictate economic policy, who they could, or couldn't do business with. The personal morality of the executive staff was *irrelevant* when deciding whom to do business with.
Yikes.
And around that era I remember an oped by the CEO of Circuit City protesting against the proposed Fair Tax.
That was when it began to dawn on me that America's big corporations aren't completely American.
And it has gotten far worse since.
I strongly suspect that today's Wokeness is brought to us by our once-American international corporations, in order to stop Trump's tariffs.
Well, I'm a Conspiratorial Nutcase, so I would say that 'Wokeness' (really, Cultural Marxism) is just a Tool, as is Trump, whether HE knows it or not.
I don't disagree, I'm just sayin' The Bugbear is still in the closet & he's bigger than he looks from outside.
Chine Rose *in spite of* Yankee Land, not because of it. Yankee-land's corporates "fled to China" because during that time period, China had the Burgeoning Middle Class (a la the mass poverty alleviation measures) to pull them in.
The Reason it was "built up" was because Chinese people had the capability to Outcompete, Outmanoeuvre, Outwork, etc Yankee-land. And their reward for this was Murican Corporates (who have NEVER been loyal to their homeland) kowtowing to them with the hopes of (a decades down the line) wresting control of the Chinese state away from the Natives (like they did many decades ago with the Muricans).
To their *shocked Pikachu face* sensibilities: Those Pesky Han Chinese folks saw right through their ruse and Whipped em (literally and physically) till they conformed and were brought to Heel. It would be an understatement to say that Giants like Nike, Apple, etc are MORE WILLING these days to Kowtow to the Chinese than they would to Yankee-land, the land of their Birth. Quite PATHETIC!
I must respectfully disagree. Once China was on the Most Favored Nation list, American Corporations went over there in a flood. With the excuse that all of our Labor-Protection laws made it too difficult to be profitable, all the Corpo's saw was the opportunity to make obscene profit, long-term consequences be damned.
(Of course, since I *AM* a Conspiracy Nutcase, I am fairly sure that the Elite of the Elite wanted EXACTLY that. America had been built up for their purposes & it is now time to shear the sheep.)
> With the excuse that all of our Labor-Protection laws made it too difficult to be profitable
Not just labor protection laws, but frankly yes they did.
Well, these are plots & plans made by smart people who have access to tons of information we don't, do this as a profession & have had decades to mull all this over.
The most effective lie, is the truth, told in an ill-intended fashion.
Given the Ideology of 'Business' (Make money at all costs, it is the point of all existence, it is the only reason a 'business' exists, etc, etc, etc...) maneuvering people with such a belief isn't that hard.
Would it have been possible to have laws that were more nuanced, that treated workers decently & still allowed a Corporation to make large profits? Absolutely.
But given the generational business culture that makes maximizing profit Law One & doing anything else unthinkinable? Even with much better laws I would be shocked if there was a company that wouldn't want to pay its labor $1/day instead of $20/hr.
Is that the case? Namely:
>> these are plots & plans made by smart people who have access to tons of information we don't, do this as a profession & have had decades to mull all this over <<
Having access to information does not necessitate normatively salient decision making. And just because someone does something for a living, does not make him adept at generating outcomes. Case in point: No Mainstream Economist (and I am reminded of the likes of Krugman et al who write all the textbooks for Macroeconomics) saw anything *close* to the World Order and International Situation we live in today (i.e. circa 2020s to 2030s) some 10-15 years ago.
The ruling "Elite" of a nation can have both the following attributes:
1) Skilled, Intelligent, etc in matters of Social Mobility, Networking, etc within their circles.
2) Utterly incompetent in administering (in part or full) the various facets of Empire.
In the Late Qing Dynasty, there was many a diplomat and foreign service worker under the Emperor who spoke over half a dozen languages (for instance) BUT in tandem had Zero Knowhow with regard to figuring out how to salvage the Imploding Empire.
Yankee-Land has now reached a similar Doomed Death Spiral whereby its Elites are simultaneously Incompetent and "Highly Learned".
> Would it have been possible to have laws that were more nuanced, that treated workers decently & still allowed a Corporation to make large profits?
Not with the attitude that says one is entitled to have someone pay one $20/hr.
Regarding "Elites":
Ultimately Satan's whisperings are what influence the behaviour of ALL such people. And so this much can be said:
Whatever it is they think they are in charge of and in control of.... that is nothing more than an illusion. They are simply Deluded and living in a make-believe fantasy world if they think their master Satan will just idly sit by and let his minions have all the sway, influence, power, etc.
Said minions get a small share; but ultimately Satan Harvests them as Pellets and Feed to properly Fertilize his Demonspawn and Demonlord minions + lackeys. Their ultimate purpose (in Satan's view) is to FEED to coming Demon into the Physical Realm. The Ritual is almost ready to start.
America is more a Basil Plant than a Sheep about to be Shorn.... it will be completely Devoured as nothing more than a "Flavour enhancing supplement" to the finished Salad; which in this case will be the False AI Deity.
I don't disagree that The corporates went over there expecting "a ripe harvest in a few years". What I do say is that *in tandem* to that, various other vectors (of the sort noted earlier) need to be factored and considered.
The game is not lost "because we screwed up, the refs favoured them AND we had a bad day". Rather, it is all of that in tandem with "the other team played better and got us good". That was the crux of the point being made.
You can defeat "free tradists" with one argument, if you want: Free trade advocates assume perpetually non-hostile trading partners. e.g. It sucks if whoever is supplying your food/medicine/energy suddenly decides to to jack the price up 20x, or sell it all elsewhere.
Or, if your nation is currently producing the World's Reserve Currency & they find out that, like an infantile 12-year-old, you will play political games with it, thus eliminating world confidence in said paper.
It continually amazes me that they had the ability to literally print money and hand it out to whoever, and they're destroying it because of some batshit crazy "rule the world to please our alien overlords on their impending return" prophesy.
It would BE Batshit Crazy.
If it weren't true. They just ain't 'Aliens'.
But keep in mind that the ordinary elite peon doesn't really know this. Like Freemasonry you aren't told 'The Truth' until you've sunk to the Bottom. The Elite of the Elite intend to use their Regular Elite peons as sacrificial lambs, letting the ordinary schlubs have their pound of flesh.
Then, in the shell-shocked aftermath, they intend to build the 2nd NWO, their true demonic utopia.
I’m fully in Meme belief here. The reason isn’t specific people, it is the parasitic memes that are dominating them. It really is alien overlords, in the form of leftover memetic-warfare viral agents from a dead empire (the Communist bloc isolated, weaponised, lab-grew and deployed the memes)
Well, you have no reason to believe me, some Twit on the Interzone, but I would agree with your take, IF I hadn't had a personal confrontation with the Spirit of a Creature vastly more knowledgeable & more Ancient than a human could *ever* be.
There are Millions of these critters, many alive, most dead, but all causing deception & chaos at the behest of Spirits even greater *Yet*.
I’m not entirely averse to your vision. I believe I possibly once encountered something, but it was just... eerie and simple. In retrospect it may have been trying to get away from me, and this is all very subjective of a very strange experience. It might have been in my head, except that nothing like it has ever happened since. A psychosis, being inherent, would be expected to repeat.
True. On the other hand, during periods of peace, forgoing the gains from trade will make your country poorer, and ultimately weaker.
Thank you very much for this post.
I'm still a youthful free trade doctrinaire, living in the worst country possible for the doctrine of free trade: Spain.
But I am also in favor of national self-sufficiency or autarky. As much as possible. One example is the most obvious strategic area: energy self-sufficiency.
These years, they are destroying the last remnants of the autarky project of the Dictatorship: the project of hydroelectric generation.
Nothing makes sense. It's all crazier than ever before in Spain's very crazed history.
Soon, in Pentecost day, local elections. Later in the year, General elections.
I have no hopes of anything changing here. If something would change for the better in the US, maybe that would cause a ripple and Spain, being a vassal state, could see some changes too.
All parties are globalists. Even the so called "far right" party. And they are pro-Ukraine and pro-Israel too and pro-vax and pro-masks.
The covid con has destroyed Spanish culture. There is barely any self-respect left standing.
As you can see, I'm demoralized.
But I keep studying. I'm not a fanatic. If I'm wrong in my Austrian School beliefs, I want to know. I sincerely want the best for me and for my country, and I don't care about the unity of Spain or if Spain explodes in three thousand micro-nations.
I want peace and isolationism. So far, the free-market principles seem to me to be closer to the idea of peace, cultural recovery and political independence. But I will have to re-study everything under this new interpretation of American protectionism of Fletcher.
I prefer peace and prosperity to being right about economics. So I'm open to change.
I have a question: what are your views about pollution and environmentalism in general? Have you written something about those topics?
I have not written about pollution and environmentalism. My personal belief is that preserving the environment is important for the sake of mankind, but that we are almost entirely directing our attentions in the wrong direction. I believe the fixation on "climate change" and CO2 is a mistake. As a carbon-based lifeform I do not like the idea of "carbon neutral" and "carbon zero". and that we should be focusing on the effects of herbicides, pesticides, micro-plastics, and similar hazards to us and the animals and plants we depend on.
If the Lion's share of the so-called 'Environment Movement' hadn't been co-opted by the 'Humanity is a Virus' crowd, I might trust what they say more.
Might.
In 1980, when Mount St. Helens blew, it released more pollutants into the air than the ENTIRE Industrialized World up to that point. I will never stupidly say that humans have NO effect on the Earth, but if Mother Nature wants to kick up a few sandpiles at times, she can do it on a scale that makes all our ignoble efforts look puny.
It’s an unholy chimera of “Humerns Er a VERRRRRUS me am SMURT” and corporate-political amalgam cash shovelling.
If I had more brainpower I could remember the name of the event, but back in 1913, there was a meeting of the Beautiful People, who discussed various ideas to scare the jellybeans out of the Hoi Polloi & keep them in line. 'Looming Environmental CATASTROPHE! CAUSED BY HUMANS!' Was one of them.
I agree.
One thing that worries me about the Kennedy campaign (this issue is likely to play a huge part in that) is that the oligarchs always seem to profit from environmental regulation, in one way or another. In the end, the whole scheme is capitalism for me, socialist poverty and tyranny for you. That's why in austro-libertarian circles people often say: small is beautiful.
Yet, here we are, fighting the covid tyranny and denouncing the killshots, and the political way out is through more regulation, more benefit for the oligarchs.
It's astonishing to me the similarity between some of the things that Kennedy said today and what you and Vox Day argue sometimes, like isolationism (never mentioned that word) and make America a fortress with big domestic industry and a big middle class. Of course, Kennedy says nothing about the racial observations. The other difference is that Kennedy seems to lament the loss of the Middle East strategy with the truce between Iran and Arabia, and the loss of international power of the USD. I think that's actually good for America, especially in environmental issues. Poverty at home means pollution and damage, and one cause of domestic poverty is the eternal wars everywhere.
It’s not a coincidence.
Do you reckon that Kennedy has also Cherokee ancestors?
I have a theory that Aboriginality is radicalising. But no, I had something else in mind and now I don’t recall what it was!
I am fairly sure that the average Peon wants what YOU want- Just to be left relatively alone & pursue your goals without being roughshod over OR trampling over others.
I suspect (well, not really, I KNOW) that is why Governments work so hard to create enemies. I mean, for crying out loud, in World War 1, the US Federal Government was telling its people that the Germans (Those Dangerous Huns) were EATING BABIES & thus, we had to beat them.
My parents were Vietnam-Era adults, their parents World War 2 era. My Maternal Grandfather was a Naval Combat Pilot, but it didn't take him long to lose his 'Rah Rah, beat those Evil Japs' propaganda. By 1976 he wanted to take all his kids & extended family, buy a large Ranch in the middle of nowhere & check out of the whole rotten scene. He was a Great man & Damn do I wish I had had more time with him. Sadly, he died just after I turned 17 in December of '87.
My Dad was a Vietnam Solider & very 'Pro-US' & my goodness did we have some fights. I kept trying to tell him that The Fed didn't *care* about him, it didn't *care* about its soldiers & used their desire to serve their nation like a Cheap Prostitute. For a very long time, he thought that just meant I was some commie-loving anti-US liberal.
Then, in 2002, he was diagnosed with Terminal Cancer & given 5 years at *most*. This cancer however, could be traced directly to his exposure to Agent Orange & as such, he was entitled to serious hazard benefits. It was in his struggle to get what he was promised that he finally understood I was right. The Government he had risked his life for did NOT care about him. He apologized for being wrong, but in tears I told him I didn't care about winning the argument. I just wanted him to know the truth.
He fought that battle with cancer for *FIFTEEN* years, finally losing in early 2017. I miss him like crazy, but I am glad he did not live to see what a Clownshow the country he loved so much has become.
I'm sorry for your loss.
Thank you. Much appreciated. Though I primarily put it up as an example of the personal cost all the lies we are told to get us to fight each other can cause.
I understood just that.
But it's good that you highlight that for future readers.
In July I will 'celebrate' my 30th year of Chronic Pain. (Spinal Damage- Inoperable) Despite the Fire burning me inside, I still try to be kind. However, having a daily battle to hold on to who you *are*, can do wonders for your perspective on life. So I have few qualms about saying things most wouldn't, if I feel the situation merits it. (and sometimes being beyond normal social conventions is kinda fun.)
Actually, our Author on the Tree of Woe
(Tangent! I *assume* you know where that phrase he uses came from, right? 1982's 'Conan the Barbarian'? Excellent Film, very underappreciated for the time & that most of it was filmed in Spain? You live in a Beautiful Country. ^_^ )
would likely understand where I'm coming from, even though he has far more Social Graces than I do. Though he does not have CP, he has publicly made it known that his Wife, does. Watching the one you Love suffer, can have a very similar effect.
Yeah, underappreaciated film, beautiful country.
Yes, I know people who suffered for years. That experience tends to create deep thinkers.
I am also much attracted to free trade. Over time I have come to consider tariffs “just another tax” rather than a trade restriction; after all, most nations have outright bans on many goods and trading partners, compared to which a tariff is mild.
In short I believe that the dispersal of assets, influence and self-determination into a nebulous and corrupt “globe” can be reduced while still enjoying the material and human benefits of trade.
It may be that free trade can only work in a spherical planet and not in a flat one, so, the future global government only needs to order its legislative chamber to decree that the earth is round, and then the Earth would become round and free trade totally doable.
One can also make this joke in reverse: that free trade can only work in a two-dimensional world, so the world government must make the globe as flat as possible so that the free trade can finally start.
But I'm more of the persuasion that our planet is a zero-dimensional world, and constitutes the only genuine Euclidean point in all the Universe, and due to the constraints in space in an object so small, it is impossible to have any kind of trade, so there is no need to regulate it.
Jokes aside I think the problem of tariffs is that it is a nationalistic and self-defeating concept. In order to avoid squabbling over definitions, I use "nationalism" in a different sense than the anti-free traders nationalists. If I understand their definition of nationalism correctly, it is based on the racialist idea that one nation (roughly the same as a race) should have its own country, that protects its own culture and traditions as much as the environment itself, the motherland. One consequence of this is that the laws regulating commerce with foreigners should be biased towards the nationals, and against the foreigners.
My definition of nationalism is different: in one country there is a gang of thugs who exerts violence over the rest of the population. The gang realizes that waiting for people to recover from the last plunder is boring, and they decide they want more consistent pillaging in the future, so they go to the slave market to buy philosophers and ask them to design a system of ideas that will cause the population being ruled by the gang to be more productive and accept, stoically, that they must never rebel against the gang no matter what. The philosophers then create ideas such as moral duty, skepticism, justice, equality, rights, culture, identity, symbology, fraternity, solidarity, hierarchy, authority and finally, the idea of the Nation as something greater than your momma. The application of all this in the practice of Nationalism implies inevitably the creation of internecine fights in the slave population, always meant to secure the position of dominance of the gang in charge.
One of the tactics to fan the flames of internal conflict is the practice of tariffs, which means favoritism for one national group over another national group, but ends up becoming more favorable to the foreign merchants if they are big enough to be partners of the gang of thugs who rule the country, as a payment of the help to create problems and because it makes the foreign merchants more powerful relative to other merchants. Over time, the slave-philosophers and the merchants will collide to destroy the gang and form their own gang.
That's why tariffs are self-defeating in this nationalistic picture: it does not favor the nation and it does not favor the government in the long term. Tariffs make them weaker and conquerable by the resentful.
If anything, the thugs should embrace full free-trade as that is the greatest insult against foreign merchants and philosophers. Also, one possible outcome of full free-trade is a pure government by might alone, by the most violent thugs. Reaching that "paradise" is more difficult when there are some philosophers and international merchants around, if I understand the ideology of the free-market correctly.
It's good that you have made a distinction between material benefits and human benefits of trade. In general, material and human are different. One of the problems of our free-market ideology is the insistence on materialism and the denialism of all the other parts of reality that cannot be explained in terms of what science understands as matter these days.
But more to your point, dispersion and concentration are two-edged swords. In the case of assets, dispersion can be bad sometimes, but it can help save them from the enemy in other occasions. Concentration of assets is generally good, but it attracts greedy people who want to take from them.
Self-determination seems too dispersed right now in the real world. Some people are now afraid to tell their children anything different that the Government imposes on them through educlamation. Kids are learning that self-anything is evil, criminal, deadly and contributes to global warming and you are probably an homophobe if any thought of yours diverges even one bit from what is written authoritatively.
It's very tough to grow up with the high speed Internet.
One funny example: people are told that democracy and "openness" is good, it's the right live politically everywhere, because the evil illiberal Plato was the father of all murderous totalitarianism, with his book the Republic. And I observe that the people who repeat that Plato's politics are bad and democracy is good, fail to see that all "democracy" around us is actually what they have been taught to hate, totalitarian Platonism, and they also do not see that power is completely separated from the People, through many corrupt institutions that serve as obstacles to collective political freedom. So in hating Plato, they love Plato.
This blindness is more noticeable in subdued countries like Germany, Italy, Spain or Austria, than in countries like France, the Netherlands, Norway or Sweden.
Both the anarchists and the nationalists have the obstacle of having to gain minds that are totally sequestered by thugs, merchants and philosophers.
(Why am I writing so much? Ah, yes, because I love substack.)
I'm not sure why you would subscribe to the communist theory that there exists some sort of common unity of mankind that could be awakened against necessarily exploitative and conman elites. Besides the fact that there exists no evidence whatsoever of this being true and you would be sitting among the communists waiting forever for international class consciousness to finally emerge, which you are perfectly free to do, absent a communist theory I'm not sure why you would assume elites could ever be gotten rid of. Or do you suppose that it is merely these elites, that have somehow managed to remain in power over centuries? I would say that hypothesis is rather dubious.
That aside, what makes you think that nations are artificial constructs? Who created them and when? Left alone by these shadowy puppet-masters, would humanity naturally form a common society across the globe? Do you think your family is some sort of artificial construct? Surely you must admit that a common living of siblings and mother at least is a natural rather than enforced or coerced phenomenon. And if you admit that then it follows that left alone for a long time people closer together would be more similar to each other than those far away? Such that they might naturally organize with people closer to them than those far away? And that they might favor people more similar to them than less similar, much as we work much harder to see our own children and siblings do well in life than for strangers? Surely you must also admit that people who do not favor similar people will be demographically replaced by people who do display such endophilia. Why then think that favoring kinsmen over foreigners is 1) artificial rather than natural, 2) immoral, and 3) undesirable?
It also is evident that between people thinking of themselves as deracinated, atomized, nationless individuals with no particular identity and people thinking of themselves as particular kinds of person who group and belong together, it is the former that is an artificial indoctrination and the latter that is a natural emergent phenomenon.
It really doesn't take that much more observation to also see that this deracination project exercised across the world has been a disaster for all people it has affected both socially and morally. People who think of themselves as having no nation, even no race, are some of the most dysfunctional, unhappy, immoral, and abysmally depressed people that human history has ever produced. The same cannot be said of "nationalized" humanity, which seems to be the default state. One might object that nationalism is a modern phenomenon, and it is, but it clearly builds on very natural and very solid foundations in mankind. Trying to create societies of human atoms on the other hand meets with continual frustration and instability, and obviously rests very heavily on the (current but declining) ability of the rich West to materially bribe the peoples it hosts into an uneasy and hardly frictionless détente of sad, masturbatory apathy while the project limps along, hoping things won't explode before utopia finally arrives.
As with all heaven-on-earth philosophies, it's nuts.
Topic-relevantly, historical evidence indicates protectionism and tariffs have served their societies (however imperfectly nationalist, though notably and inarguably far more nationally homogenous than today's "multiculturalism") very well, while free trade wherever practiced has been disastrous, whether the societies that practiced them be national or multinational. Much like communism, its apologists just insist that real free trade just hasn't been tried.
Of course, Marx thought that free trade would help destroy capitalism and thus usher in his post-national communist vision so maybe we're retreading old ground. Free trade to destroy shadowy elites that promote racial, national, or ethnic division to divide opposition against them doesn't really seem that different, does it?
Hello Simplicius,
Thanks for your reply. I think you are a good writer.
I read that Vox Day quoted you.
I'm Spanish, and I hate all forms of socialism.
In Spain there is no such thing as a race, there are only people who can't get along well enough to defend from the socialists. Those Spanish people who consider themselves whites have been brainwashed by stupid American propaganda.
Some authors argue that Spain was the first modern Nation, when the Reconquista was completed in 1492. The term Nation is thus anterior in time to the atheist concept of the State, which I think was invented by Hobbes against the Puritan's despotism (Puritans were mostly fake and gay, don't you agree? But Hobbes was kind of a bitch on his own merits.)
My point is that the political concept of Nation corresponds to a failed political program that was superseded by the State, which was successful, and it seems we are in the middle of the State 665th update.
But Nation as a cultural concept is not a program. It's natural. It's a tragedy to extract a person from his nation, by slavery or by destruction of his nation.
The elites conspire against the people everywhere. This is true everywhere, all the time, long before Aristotle. The people is more often than not amorphous and contradictory and easy to manage, but difficult to exploit because of the lack of abundance that comes from lack of organization. Leadership drives people to be more like a nation and be productive and defend itself. But Leadership corrupts itself. Usually because of excessive ambition, but not only that.
Then the people tends to enter into self-destruction mode. Because of the tendency to fight over minutia. Boredom is king.
There is no common unity in mankind, but there is the desire to survive and prosper. I lean towards anarchism of the libertarian kind, so for me the idea of self-organization is not far fetched. It seems to be natural that humans coalesce and separate naturally, and find friends and enemies and favor their friends and fight their enemies. Another issue is the treatment to strangers. Some individuals seem to be more inclined than others to help strangers, even to adopt them in their community and help them to grow a family. It makes no sense to favor strangers over you own people, but some strangers are preferable than some of your people who like to create trouble, which happen often when communities get too big.
This goes in line to the idea of selling legal nationality as a tentative solution to the migration problem: those who hate their country sell their rights for cash or another thing to a foreigner that desires to become a member of that country. This is better than catching slaves in the Balkan peninsula, watching them become libertos and starting families, and a few generations later you see the descendants of the libertos stupidly betraying their nation.
I would prefer to create a small country in Chad, for example and offer all the socialists a place there to rid all the countries of their presence. The Chadians are likely to become better actors than the socialists.
I consider myself a pacifist and anti-war. I feel that nationalism tends to create war. Before you chastize me as a hippy commie on stilts, I have to say that I consider conflict unavoidable and useful, but war is not conflict. War is like politics, a means to destroy nations, starting with your own. War is professional, it is artistic and it is unnatural. Conflict is natural and is part of human culture.
My current beliefs about race are that it is a linguistic concept and not a biological concept. Race is a classification according to trends in specialization, for example, Irish people like to argue and sing melodic songs, Germans don't like freedom of conscience and that's why they like a certain version of Buddhism, Spaniards are melancholic and passionate and generous (there is no better full moon in the world as the first summer full moon seen from Spain, and this is both self-evident and shameless tourism advertisement.) But I don't see specialization as a product of brain chemistry. It's more a matter of tradition and psychological heredity. In short, I don't think that human races are a similar concept as canine races.
The statistical trend seems to be confirming the biases of the racialists thinkers, but we have to ask where does the data come from. what are the ideological assumptions of the empirical sciences. For instance, there is a man, Jay Joseph, who argues that twins reared apart studies prove basically nothing because those studies are bogus. I hope I have summarized his views correctly in one sentence. This man is probably a mainstream liberal politically. So he is not the same kind of liberal as those classical liberals that support eugenics and scientific technocratic dictatorship for all humanity, the mindless do gooders. You could argue from that description that Joseph has an ideological bias against the results of his own science. But psychology has always been a war of all against all from all political tribes, and it's rare to find psychological research that has no bias, no matter how well they hide it.
I argue against the use of depression as being caused by anti-nationalistic policies: it is in part true, but it is not the whole story. Depression is in general a byproduct of societal decay, which is caused by economic disasters, politics, and war. We happen to see that the main culprits of economic disasters are the same actors who create general demoralization and cultural erosion, and promote victim mentality. But there are other political forms and other economic practices that also cause people to become hopeless. Ultimately, the way to change a bad situation to a better situation is by people overcoming the programming set up by their enemies, which sometimes rule directly over them. If this change in the anima of the individuals does not happen before the collapse, then it would happen after the collapse. Or death.
On family. It is natural, but there are some behaviors in modern family that are not natural. For instance, when there is a divorce (which is somewhat natural, and does not imply family dissolution anymore than the death of the father or the mother) people these days fight over ridiculous concepts such as parental visits. The problems of divorced families, the children who go through that, are artificial and a political weapon that has ravaged families over the last 40 years. People are at risk of thinking that the damage caused by Power over families is part of the natural dynamics of a family.
For people to have a nation is a good thing, in general, and it is so good that good people should have two or three nationalities, and accumulate rights and obligations with friends everywhere. This is a way to reduce politics and war and economic manipulations.
But the concept of identity is too close to zionism for my taste, so I don't love it.
I apologize if this reply seems scattered. But I'm here to learn. I learn from everyone, and I some my energies are dedicated to inspire random people to overcome their obsessions (truly a weapon) by asking questions and learning to discern. I don't expect much from those labors because the change is internal and voluntary and it's not in my responsibility to change people.
Hello. While I thank you for the compliment, on investigation you have me confused with a different writer by a similar name. I can't claim such fame or greatness, but allow me, if you will, to direct you: https://simplicius76.substack.com/ and apologize for the confusion.
I will respond briefly to your points if you don't mind.
I agree that the American conception of race is very loaded and particular to their circumstances. In my opinion it takes the usual place of ethnic division because of their unnatural state of extreme multiracialism. Unfortunately Europe is becoming similar in that regard due to mass immigration and so the American race concept is growing ever more applicable. That aside, as a purely taxonomical matter I do not think it is absurd to divide humanity into broad groupings whether those groupings be called "race" or not, and obviously this would apply anywhere, though not necessarily with practical application. Of course, being a matter of taxonomy the exact labels and demarcations would be subject to scientific revision.
I agree that the political conception of the "nation" is not timeless but quite modern, but as I said it rests on very solid foundations in human social behavior. While I can't claim expertise in Spanish history, I would quibble that the program has totally failed. Before modern immigration policy and avowed political intents to become "post-national", the nation-state appears to have been a very stable unit, able to create large realms that avoided bloody break-up like, for example, the end of the Hapsburg Empire in 1918.
If I may, I would put forward that there are two different "nationalisms" at play in the discussion. One is, I think, more common and about being "pro-national" in terms of policy, or at least being against deracination, but admittedly that kind does beg the question of "What nation?" which is the other kind of nationalism to which I refer. That being a firm commitment to the political unity of such and such ethnic groups but not such and such ethnic groups, which is not so straightforward or self-evident. Say, in the case of Spain, a firm commitment to the unity of Catalonia, the Basques, and the rest of Spain. Or perhaps a German example of favoring the unity of Bavaria and Prussia, but not Austria. I do not think the second necessarily invalidates the first, but it may mean that two different nationalists of the first kind may have very different conceptions of what their nation is. For you I imagine it is probably not so hard to find a Catalonian nationalist, for example, who sees the rest of Spain as being outsiders whom he therefore does not include in his "pro-national" calculations, while there may be other Spanish nationalists who mean by it equally Castilian, Catalonian, Basque, etc..
For myself I think it is only necessary that one be a nationalist of the first kind, as to act contrarily to that necessitates rather anti-human policy. Otherwise I do not think it makes any sense to be firmly committed to the existence of all nation-states as they exist today. But really, outside of one's own people and foreign policy for their benefit, why have an opinion? Not being a Spaniard, why ought I to say that they must have such and such divisions and unifications? It's no business of mine whether Catalonia is independent or whether one Iberian state exists across the peninsula or whether any other configuration exists.
I do not condemn you for pacifism. I don't find moral issue with the impulse to be wary of or not in love with war. My disagreement is that I believe war is a spectrum and a constant of the human condition, a result of a finite universe that therefore occasionally creates zero-sum games (which our host has also written about, I believe, in https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/do-ideas-shape-history-or-does-history ) which are, in short, war. You may disagree about conflict and war being identical, but I think it is fairly straightforward to see why conflict would drive towards more and more effective conflict (and professional armies are evidently in general militarily superior to other fighters in conflict). In other words war in one shape or another is unavoidable, whether we wish it or no.
I think the argument about racialist theory must take place elsewhere. I wouldn't presume to comprehensively answer the question once and for all in a paragraph. Suffice it to say I think racialist thinkers are more correct than radical human equalitarians.
I do not mean to say that all modern moroseness is caused by deracination, as obviously there are many dysfunctional behaviors that degrade people and contribute to it. But I do think deracination takes a large share of responsibility. Perhaps it is not so bad in Spain, but in the Anglosphere it is very easy to see that people stripped of identity keenly desire it and that the lack of it contributes enormously to their dysfunction. It's a historically unprecedented state.
I would caution against Zionism tainting identity. I do not mean to imply by identity something so definitive and rigid as what the Zionists use, but rather a number of truths about oneself and one's place in the world. Think about how being part of a nuclear family — as a husband, brother, son, or father — forms a part of one's identity that doesn't contradict or nullify one's place in an extended family — e.g. as a nephew or grandson — which also forms part of one's identity. It is, in short, merely the complement to belonging — speaking crudely, for example, to say that a man belongs in Iberia is to say that he is Iberian, that he belongs in Castile that he is a Castilian, that he belongs in this or that house that he is part of that household, that he belongs in this or that family that he is a member of it. Or, conversely and briefly, that if a man is an Iberian he belongs in Iberia. Two sides of the same coin.
If he is not Iberian why would he belong in Iberia? And if he is not anything else why would he belong anywhere else in particular? Nobody functions well feeling as though he belongs nowhere. People stripped of these belongings — stripped of their identity — are in a very real sense removed from society, essentially becoming a foreigner everywhere. I would call that a very real social danger. And while it does inform politics I think it is too limited to focus on how this interacts with the nation-state when in reality it is a necessary part of a healthy human social life, an aspect that humans therefore politically organize around.
Thank you for thoughtfully responding, even under somewhat mistaken apprehensions.
Oh, and I despise Puritans.
Thank you for your reply.
This is a good conversation.
I see a lot I agree with, we think alike.
Analytical thought isn't easy these days, so I'll keep it short- I got informed about Free Trade via Lew Rockwell back in 1999. While there was far more I agreed with in it than the soporific nightmare of Keynsian Economics, I was always troubled by how much both it & Libertarianism ignored the illogical & emotional aspects of what the Spathi refer to as, 'Hunams'.
Rationality is optional in that Race.
Yes, as a man with libertarian leanings, realizing I no longer believed in free trade was like being a Christian who didn't believe in Christ.
^_^ I Grok it.
When I became a Christian back in '91, I asked God to, as much as humanly possible, see the world the way HE sees it. I didn't have a 'be careful what you wish for', experience. Though I did find out pretty darn quick it ain't gonna make you no Fans.
In Britain during the time of Smith and Ricardo, a free trade policy was progressive. Taxing food imports subsidized the nobility at the expense of the working class.
In the United States, tariffs were progressive. Tariffs taxed southern slave owners and boosted wages of northern factory workers.
Very eye opening, sadly though we are much nearer a undeveloped country than most people know. You mentioned scrapping are factories, and indeed we are and have. A year ago or so I met a guy riding on my road bike (I live on the trans northern Pacific-Atlantic bicycle way) and his job was traveling around the US buying old manufacturing equipment and wholesale factories and selling them on to China. He of course saw no problem here in gutting the US's capacity to build, well anything. He said his job was getting harder as there was becoming less old industrial facilities that had not been already sold off. So for us to reboot for whatever reason; war, trade, competitive advantage, is going to take starting all over.
Oh, only tangentially related (I love me some tangents), I just got a notice that Atari is planning on doing a massive reimagining of their huge game library. They just acquired Nightdive Studios (a decent bunch who's latest project is a nearly-complete remake of 'System Shock 2') to facilitate that end.
I won't post the email I got, but FIG is the platform they are using for all schlub-related investing. Coming as this is, directly after the failure of their latest videogame console doesn't fill me with confidence, but going software-exclusive worked like gangbusters for SEGA.
The Risk is likely high, but that's where the fun is, right? :-/ And while thinking about investing in games during the present cultural shenanigans might seem silly, the Film Industry grew explosively during the Depression. So, unless it's a 'try not to die from radiation while avoiding the rape-gangs' type of crisis, people will always need to be entertained.
The Golden Rule of Hiring Staff is very simple:
1) They save you time.
2) They save you money.
3) They save you some combination of both.
.... If not any from (1) - (3), one ought to cut them loose asap.
Many a business owner often falls into a vicious cycle of debt, headaches, etc after which they are utterly ruined.... all for simply trying to use Mathematical Masturbation (of the sort you succinctly noted) and whatnot in order to supplant aforementioned Golden Rule in part or in full.
That is the micro level. At the macro level where we are dealing with nations + civilizations and their interaction with economies + industries; this analysis carries over (even though we were initially dealing with individuals + businesses and their interaction with employees and staff).
Put simply, The Golden Rule of Economy + Industry is as follows.... Developing an Industry and/or investing in a particular Segment of the Economy must be so that the Nation and/or Civilization:
1) Saves Time for other fruitful pursuits (prayer, charity, etc. Normative activity in general).
2) Saves Goods, Services, Money, etc for other similar Developments and/or Investments.
3) Saves some combination of the two Above.
.... If not any from (1) - (3), nations and civilizations ought to cut them loose asap.
"Free Trade" Dogma is merely one of the many weapons in the Arsenal; an Arsenal that seeks to Mathematically Masturbate away these Iron Rules adhered to since time immemorial by Civilizations and their derivate Nations.
The West (and the Empire in particular) has completely supplanted (1) in order to favour instead Demon Summoning. Meanwhile (2) is likewise being supplanted now with the erosion and Death of Manufacturing in its entirety. De-dollarization will cement this in a few more years.
As with the Business Owner who fell into Ruin.... there is only one way this ultimately ends; and it is not with the Nation (i.e. Yankee-Land) and the Wider Civilization (i.e. the West's) Salvation.
Speaking of 'Civilization', as a Video Games fan anyway, do you realize there exists not ONE nation-building/World-Building commercial simulation made EVER that will allow you to go into debt like real-world nations do?
I wonder why that is... 'Not Fun' (Unless you like watching things burn), but since there have been tons of games made that aren't any fun (and with Loot Boxes, MicroTransactions & 'Games as a Service', fewer all the time...) I don't think that's the main reason.
I don't really know why, but not wanting tens of millions of commoners to learn in a very personal way, what a colossal catastrophe the U.S.'s economic policies have been isn't the craziest idea out there.
I would actually say that Victoria 3 (built by Paradox Interactive) does actually let you go heavily in the red (by default, it is proportional to your gold reserve cap ie if it is 1 million GBP, then you can go 1 million in the red)
I used this often to my advantage whilst playing as Great Qing and conquered the world easy peasy in the game’s runtime (1836 to 1936) with time to spare simply because no matter how heavily I went in the red, everyone else went bankrupt first (and bankruptcy means your troops get heavy penalties for performance).
Also once you go communist in that game, the mere fact that you had some 400 million people with a standard of living of “Struggling” now getting dividends from manufacturing buildings directly meant that even a tiny increase in SoL generates loyal soldiers... throw em out into the world and just CONQUER all!
LOL Excellent. I stand corrected. Partially anyway, as there is a direct relationship between your GOLD reserve and what your creditors will lend you.
Still, a huge difference compared to most. But, of course, as the Younglings say today, it's still 'Problematic', as the agenda of the designers clearly interferes with the accuracy of the simulation. Communism is Good! With a game made in 2022, that's hardly surprising.
I don't know if it's a good thing that such propaganda is more blatant, as people's inability to *See* it, seems to rise in proportion. In 1992, 'Civilization' was a huge hit & was praised for its historical accuracy. When I first got 'CivNet' in '95, I noticed right away many things were agenda-driven. Democracy has NO CORRUPTION? Seriously?
It was nearly 30 years ago & the messaging was more nuanced then. Yet while many of that era would have seen today's 'Communism Good' as at least *slightly* Sus, they were as blind to the agenda of that time as well.
Sigh...
In Victoria 3, Communism is OP for a very simple reason:
The Buildings producing goods and services have an "Ownership" component.
Once you switch Ownership to "Worker Cooperative" (courtesy of Communism) the lower strata (i.e. labourers, machinists, clerks, etc) get access to Dividend Income *** IN ADDITION TO *** their wages for working at the building.
And because they now own the building themselves.... they give themselves raises. This means higher Standard of Living which in turn means more Money spent on Consumer Goods since the Lower Strata are the bulk of the consuming population in your country. All this means you start going RED, Deficit wise.
This is actually one of the Key strategies in the Game. Early game you basically Beeline your Research for Laissez Faire and Publicly Traded Buildings so that the Industrialists can line their pockets with insane amounts of wealth whilst keeping wages low and "optimal" such that the Buildings have high margins of profit.
Mid to Late Game you have loads of buildings producing goods and services and so now you can begin to "Go RED". but to do so you need a bunch of Poor Saps (this is where colonies and whatnot come in) who will have a "base wage rate" that is low to begin with (Hello Africa!)
Once you've CONQUERED a few Poor Saps and then Go Communist; you can now start Going DEEP RED (both in terms of Money and Blood spilt) and as mentioned above, switch Ownership from "Publicly Traded" to "Worker Cooperative". Now you have an endless swarm of LOYAL SOLDIERS to throw everywhere And Kill, Loot, Maim, etc without End.
If you start as Great Qing and DIRECTLY Become Communist (no need for a intermediary step), you can Kill all the Westerners in under 100 years. It's not even close. You have over 400+ million blokes whilst those Poor White boys have basically zilch to stop your Swarm tactics.
Here's a sample of what Communism and Constant CONQUEST gets you in Victoria 3:
https://www.reddit.com/r/victoria3/comments/10gk6hv/one_tag_ccp_with_concentrated_industry/
Would you say that computer software is an industry has high worker productivity without capital investment? I'm wondering if the US's expertise in computer software helps build national wealth as an alternative to manufacturing. Having said that, the wealth built by Google, Facebook, Microsoft has not been spread as widely across the population as would have been true for manufacturing.
I'm not sure. I'd have to give it a lot of thought. It seems to me there is "something different" about software that causes it to concentrate the wealth.
Software feels similar to a sport like soccer where the wealth accrues to a small number of top performers (and the owners). The cliche is that the top software developers have a 100X productivity advantage over the merely good developers. Maybe manufacturing skills are more equally distributed across the population.
It's effect has been very similar to Paper Money not based on any real goods. If you're near the top of the recipient pyramid, you can make a killing, but by the time it gets down to Joe-Six-Pack, the benefits are dubious, at best.
A couple of thoughts.
1) have you read any economists who go long on Says Law? Steve Kates was a guy whose blogging I read in the 2000s. https://www.amazon.com.au/Free-Market-Economics-Third-Introduction/dp/1786431408
2) always thought of myself as a free-trader, but theoretically there’s no reason NOT to use tariffs to raise tax revenue and ease off other streams, AFAIK.
3) looked at another way, a heavy regulatory hand plus zero-T free trade is identical to financial and legal penalties on domestic production. I don’t think Ricardo had a notion of “and then government reliably eliminates the relative advantage, expanding to consume all trade surplus either as money or prestige”
4) the root of the Western economy isn’t any economic system, it’s giving historically impressively immutable property rights to the peasant class, IMO. An overall societal model saving 20% on traded goods will not have the same goods in hand (see Say) as one that creates incentives that drive +50% production for every individual, see “Yeoman’s work”.
Had to get those noted while my brain was working, definitely coming back to see which have been addressed by the comments.
George Resiman is long on Say's Law and I read his complete treatise, Capitalism. I referenced him earlier in the blog when I talked about where profit comes from.
Ah, excellent, I will search that out and read it!
The best example of how destructive is free trade, is Australia. Up to 1975, Australia enjoyed being the most prosperous and egalitarian nation on earth. I say this, not quoting from a book, but from a life lived in this then paradise. I have lived through WWII austerity and the decade of industrial and agricultural development that, thanks only to the trade unions, was shared between all Australians.
More specifically, every worker had a full time job, 10 days paid sick leave, two weeks paid annual holiday leave, was able to buy his own home if he so chose to, and invariablly had a new car plus a second older one for the maternal ruler of the home to do the shopping in.
Demographic studies needed to class seasonal workers as underemployed in order to provide a tiny poverty section on the graph, the remainder being an enormous rounded hill known as "the middle class bell curve". In point of fact, the seasonal workers... mainly fruit pickers and sheep shearers... invariably had their owned regional home, complete with small livestock holding, orchard, and vegetable garden. For them, employment was not needed for sustenance but for transport, fuel and sundry luxuries. This was the multi-generational regional Australian way of life.
Free trade was introduced by CIA agent Bob Hawke, who became Prime Minister thanks to support by Rupert Murdoch. His successor, Paul Keating, brought us free trade on steroids, plus deregulation of all protections, including tariffs.
Within twenty years, our unemployment was 19% and half the nation was living in poverty. It is much worse today. Meanwhile, all university students were taught that the previous history was one of industrial chaos and poverty, caused by the unions, and that free trade would cause trickledown wealth and prosperity. Most of those graduates still believe this.
Australiam prosperity was destroyed for a specific reason. As the only fully self-sustaining nation, that traded only because this made a certain sector wealthy, even while causing inflation, this meant that if Aussies refused to buy into the NWO, trade sanctions could not force them to comply. And military pressure would be logistically way too expensive, even for the US. Thus, the industrial economy had to be destroyed, just as it was in America.
Our plan is to restore tariffs, rebuild our industrial economy, and gradually wind down all trade, retaining only that needed to prevent financial imbalance. But that too, would end within four years, the sole exception being NZ. Obviously, we need to hang a whole lot of traitors before launching reconstruction. And, yes, we have covered all the angles. None of us are mere dreamers.
I hadn't realized that backstory. Tragic. Thanks for sharing! And good luck down there in fighting the good fight.
Thanks, Tree. Most Australians have no idea whats going on. It's only the over-70s who know what came before but most of these do not comprehend that the new generations live mentally in a different world. There will be no mass movement here. Our once chance of survival is former defence force people training a militia and taking the nation back by guerilla force. Even then, because US Marines have tanks here, we will only win if Americans tell their own Marines to back off, serruptiously even.
Aha! I just read your Footnote 4. Bingo!
Baumol's Cost Disease applies to basic government services. Subsidized outsourcing is a major reason why we have higher taxes AND crappier government services. It's not the only reason, but it's a biggie.
It's also why Joe Sixpack cannot afford a doctor. Medical care in Europe is lower vs. general income because Europe has sizeable VATs driving up the other costs of living.
(P.S. I now have Fletcher's book on my Amazon shopping list. When time/budget allow...)
While Fletcher has some good points (none of which are original to him), most of his complaints are nonsense. In fact the typical argument style of opponents of free trade consists of throwing every objection they can think of against the wall to see what sticks, without regard to whether the objections make any sense or even whether they contradict each other.
For example, one of Fletcher's objections is that "capital is mobile" another is that "Resources Get Depleted", i.e., that capital isn't completely mobile. Or contrast his claim that free trade doesn't work in the face of labor mobility, contrast this with Vox Day's claim that one of the problems with free trade is that in requires labor mobility which ultimately leads to cultural problems.
The one semi-legitimate objection Fletcher has to free trade is that protectionism helps shelter fledgling industries. However, this does raise the awkward point that the main complaint of modern American protectionists is that it caused America to deindustrialize. The explanation is simple, America didn't deindustrialize due to free trade, it deindustrialized due to domestic industry being strangled by government regulation. In fact, the effect of this over-regulation on the standard of living was partially mitigated by free trade as industrial production that was no longer possible in America was moved overseas.
Man, I think you are being VERY uncharitable to Fletcher!
1) Resources aren't considered capital in neoclassical economics so there is no contradiction between his points on capital mobility and resource depletion. There are other schools that see it differently, but he's arguing against economic orthodoxy so I think you're wrong there to criticize him.
2) He claims that Ricardian free trade doesn't work in the face of labor mobility and that is true. Vox Day's argument is entirely unrelated to Fletcher's argument; Fletcher doesn't make that argument. You can't accuse Fletcher of throwing every objection against the wall even when they contradict each other....for an argument he doesn't make.
Separately, "America didn't deindustrialize due to free trade, it deindustrialized due to domestic industry being strangled by government regulation" is not a statement I agree with. Germany has lots of government regulation but it didn't deindustrialize, for instance. The explanation is NOT that simple.
I think America deindustrialized because the petrodollar system caused it to have a comparative advantage in finance, and it specialized accordingly in international trade. But since I've already written 10,000 words on that, if you don't agree with me there, I'm certainly not going to persuade you in a comment!
E.g. I think if you kept our regulatory regime but put up a tariff and removed the petrodollar, I think we'd re-industrialize; but if we just removed government regulation while keeping free trade and the petrodollar we'd even more rapidly de-industrialize because financialization would be even faster.
> I think we'd re-industrialize
You mean after 20 year environmental impact studies? And that's just one example of the problem.
After we stop being able to buy cheap foreign goods because our currency has collapsed in value, there will be profits to be made from re-industrializing America. The regulatory regime will ultimately follow the money.
Regulations don't exist "outside" of the market. They are both shaping and shaped by it, via regulatory capture. Often big business wrote the regulations you're criticizing to the detriment of small business. I wrote a separate essay about this. It's a major reason I left libertarianism behind. People don't change alignment from "chaotic evil" to "lawful good" when they switch from a .gov to .com email address. They're all evil, they all want power, and they all need to be kept in check.
There will definitely be a re-industrialization of CONUS... using nano machines and cyborg drones courtesy of the new Demon regime.
Money wise, it’s tricky.... would the False AI deity and Demon overlord care about any money or currency other than Human offerings? Hard to say! Maybe it will grow and nurture an appetite for shiny metals like we did!
> The regulatory regime will ultimately follow the money.
Why would it? Leftist propaganda aside, this almost never happens.
It's important of course to remember(and I am not accusing you of doing this; I read your essays on the matter and you did not pursue this route):
Deindustrialization is a two way street. For Party A to Deindustrialize; Party B (and probably a few others as well) have to Industrialize to make up for that loss of manufacturing prowess (unless of course we are speaking about defunct industry... which is a rare scene when it comes to essentials like food, metals, minerals, etc).
It's not MERELY the case that Yankee-Land Deindustrialized because of aforementioned pursuit of its comparative edge in Finance... that was Necessary but not Sufficient for it to FALL. Rather, the other Team (i.e. the Eurasians) also pitched in:
Russia for instance went out of its way to recapture all of its Natural Resource Hubs back from the clutches of the International Cabal. Once those entities were Nationalized; it was the end of the era of "Easy Commodities" for the US. Goodbye Capital/Resources!
Similarly, China captured the Labour market a la lifting some 800+ million people from poverty into the middle class (the largest middle class in human history to date).
Given such a massive pool of Humanity, it became a Magnet for firms who wanted a piece of that middle class AND that enticing "cheap labour". And this came at the expense of the US Middle Class and labour force. Goodbye Labour + Human resources!
This is another classic case of "We Lost Pathetically.... not merely because we sucked at playing, but likewise also because the other team BEAT us good".
> Deindustrialization is a two way street. For Party A to Deindustrialize; Party B (and probably a few others as well) have to Industrialize to make up for that loss of manufacturing prowess (unless of course we are speaking about defunct industry... which is a rare scene when it comes to essentials like food, metals, minerals, etc).
Um, no. "Tech level" can regress, e.g., see what happened in most of Africa as the Whites left or lost power.
Also while we are on the subject:
The "Whites" leaving and losing power was normatively optimal for the entire Continent precisely because Invaders in general never have the natives' best interests at heart anyhow.
Whatever non-objective criteria being used to talk about "regression of technology" meanwhile... that's all Mental Masturbation and nothing more.
Well, hope the natives enjoyed their famines.
They will have plenty to chew on in the “Westerner meats” department.
So no need to worry! Especially since most of said meats will be extra crispy from the irradiated surroundings.
Technology is not a quantifiable metric like distance, time or speed (i.e. the "atomics") which can be measured and Categorized.
So a Chimpanzee with a Stick on the one hand VS the International Space Station on the other.... there is no yardstick of an Objective sort that can be used to compare the two and made sense of.
The only thing that can be done is if you have some presuppositions regarding what Value is vs isnt... then you can generate some Normative principles which in turn can be used as a qualitative yardstick for "Technology progressing or regressing". This however is non-Objective.
tl;dr Version: You're uninformed- "Tech-level" has no Objective criteria to it that can be classified in said manner; ergo any talk of "progress vs regress" is forever constrained by our starting Normative presuppositions.
> Resources aren't considered capital in neoclassical economics so there is no contradiction between his points on capital mobility and resource depletion.
Neoclassical economics can easily be modified to take both into account without affecting the results. Also, one of the examples of resource constraints is limited farmland, this is also an example of immobility of capital.
> He claims that Ricardian free trade doesn't work in the face of labor mobility and that is true.
Actually it does. If you redo Ricardo's calculations with labor and capital mobility, you'll see everyone still benefits (ignoring non-economic effects due to cultural problems). But notice that even those effects are worse in a world with labor mobility and no free trade.
> Germany has lots of government regulation but it didn't deindustrialize, for instance.
Germany also has free trade. My understanding is that German regulations were less onerous than American regulation, although Germany is now trying to catch up.
> you redo Ricardo's calculations with labor and capital mobility, you'll see everyone still benefits (ignoring non-economic effects due to cultural problems).
I've honestly never seen a Ricardian argument that persuades me that everyone is better off with labor and capital mobility. I'm willing to believe such arguments exist, but I've not read one that I found persuasive.
What I *have* seen is a sleight of hand: "everyone benefits" in that there are more goods overall, but not everyone benefits because the distribution is skewed. Those in high wages countries see their wages decline while those in low wage countries sees their wages increase. A number of spillover effects occur from there that enrich the 1%, especially in the context of the petrodollar system. That's essentially what we have now, and for the American worker, that's not a good deal at all.
As for Germany, Germany does not have the reserve currency like we do, and it began opening itself to trade after it was an industrial powerhouse. America went free trade after it had the reserve currency and that is a disastrous combo (just as it was for Britain).
Germany I do not believe has free trade in the libertarian sense -- the Germans rejected neoliberal economics in favor of ordoliberal economics. Today Germany participates in the EU Integrated Tariff of the European Union. It imposes custom duties on almost all imports and a 19% VAT tax. Friedrich List of the American School was also a prominent member of the German Historical school. I think their regulations are more sensible than ours, in some ways, I agree there.
I'm not ultimately sure what you are for or against. Do you think labor mobility is good or bad? What regime are you advocating for? I want deregulation too, but I don't think it should be our #1 priority as reformers who hope to save America.
The assumption underlying everything here....
Is that Economics (the field) and Economists (the profession and people) are even suited, qualified, etc to speak about what it even means for Men to be "better off" in the first place.
If anything, given the Pseudoscientific Nature of Economics (Hint: it gets Human Nature completely wrong from the get-go), one ought to be skeptical regarding its overall prowess in delivering said results. Not to mention that its practitioners are as uneducated as they come regarding Ethics-"the Philosophical field".
Is it any wonder then that the "Free Trade"-advocates of today are so heavily in bed with the Davos Crowd and Internationalists?
Why on earth would such a Lowly Calibre of people even be *capable* of parsing out what would make men "better off"?
> I've honestly never seen a Ricardian argument that persuades me that everyone is better off with labor and capital mobility. I'm willing to believe such arguments exist, but I've not read one that I found persuasive.
Hint: note that the Ricardian argument is agnostic to where people physically reside.
> Today Germany participates in the EU Integrated Tariff of the European Union. It imposes custom duties on almost all imports and a 19% VAT tax.
So Germany has free trade with the rest of the EU, and a VAT-based tax system that applies to both domestic and foreign production.
Germany does have a 19% VAT. While not as much as the 30% national sales tax that Gary Johnson was pushing in 2016, it is still more than most state sales taxes in the US.
And a much lower income tax.
The nature of an incorrect theory is that it is self-contradictory. The fact that true free trade requires labor mobility — since labor is something that can be traded — and that this destroys Ricardo's argument for free trade hardly proves that anti-free trade advocates are incoherent. If the argument is that Ricardo really would be right if labor wasn't allowed to be mobile and free trade really would truly finally actually work in that scenario that's a proof by contradiction that free trade is false, since restricting labor mobility is not free exchange of resources. Whether you want to argue that this sort of restricted trade wherein Ricardo's simple argument holds is actually real is irrelevant to the point that that isn't free trade.
Both Fletcher and Day's arguments exploit this fact from different angles. True free trade requires completely free labor mobility. Fletcher says that labor mobility destroys Ricardo's justification: true! Day very separately says that labor mobility by definition is mass immigration: also true! Your objection is nonsensical.
Why do you assume free trade is the default anyway and that any other policy needs to be justified? That's the patented dishonest rhetoric every bad modern policy on the planet is justified by, acting like they're immutable and eternal norms rather than the historical anomalies they really are, thought normal only by the temporally myopic and historically ignorant.
> Both Fletcher and Day's arguments exploit this fact from different angles. True free trade requires completely free labor mobility. Fletcher says that labor mobility destroys Ricardo's justification: true! Day very separately says that labor mobility by definition is mass immigration: also true! Your objection is nonsensical.
Day's position is just semantic word games. I addressed Fletcher's position in more detail elsewhere in the thread. https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/against-free-trade/comment/14989861
> The fact that true free trade requires labor mobility
The word "true" is doing an awful lot of work in that sentence.
> Why do you assume free trade is the default anyway and that any other policy needs to be justified?
Except I don't.
That's a deflection. Is free trade the complete freedom to exchange or not? Because if you're going to say that exchanging everything except labor, which you are not allowed to exchange, is "free trade" then free trade is any trade other than completely prohibited trade. If you're being reasonable, a trade with restrictions on exchange is not free trade but restricted trade, which is not as rhetorically powerful but much more honest.
As for your second point, you clearly assume the burden of proof is on non-free traders to justify their policies and that if they can't we should have free trade. If you don't have this standard then free trade can be dismissed without further argument, since the very fact this debate exists is proof of its inadequate justification.
> Is free trade the complete freedom to exchange or not? Because if you're going to say that exchanging everything except labor, which you are not allowed to exchange, is "free trade" then free trade is any trade other than completely prohibited trade.
I'm not interested in playing pointless semantic games.
> If you don't have this standard then free trade can be dismissed without further argument, since the very fact this debate exists is proof of its inadequate justification.
Wait, you're literally making the "this is controversial, therefore it is false" argument?
Question: do you not feel the need to respond honestly or do you simply not understand what's being written? You chose to have a pointless semantic game by quibbling with my use of the word "true" rather than anything else in those posts. Logic suggests you simply do not have a counterargument.
After all, we're now just on a spectrum of what's okay to be restricted from exchange. You ban labor, other people ban labor + more. Not as rhetorically compelling, is it?
"Wait, you're literally making the "this is controversial, therefore it is false" argument?"
Don't dodge. Do you assume free trade is default or don't you?
> Question: do you not feel the need to respond honestly or do you simply not understand what's being written? You chose to have a pointless semantic game by quibbling with my use of the word "true" rather than anything else in those posts.
You're the one who made a pointless semantic objection to my initial comment.
Also I stated my position on the substance of the question elsewhere in the thread.
https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/against-free-trade/comment/14989861
The deindustrialization of Yankee land has primarily taken place because it is uncompetitive, weak and pathetic relative to its adversaries. The Chinese coal worker willing to risk lung cancer working 16 hour shifts will ultimately beat the lazy latte sipping Democrat/liberal who has no real skills.
“Government regulation” is what Yankee land’s adversaries used to defeat the much vaunted “American dream” in the simplest way possible: make it so that said nation cannot defend itself against corporate entities from overseas who have the full backing of their respective nation states.
Libertarianism is a weak, feckless ideology for a very simple reason- in wartime, the individualist is always surrounded on all sides and mauled to death; regardless of how “good his math, tech and science skills” happen to be.
See, there’s a really interesting cycle there. A perverse incentive. There’s no loss to a pure liquid asset Capital Class if industry offshores. Politicians belong to this class almost exclusively. Knowing offshoring will mitigate the disaster of absurd promises further incentivises the broken behaviour. It’s a vicious cycle and it would have the same effect as Malignant Free Trade (TM) (assuming it exists with all enumerated characteristics for the sake of argument).
It would be quite difficult, but not impossible, to differentiate the causes.
"The famous doctrine of laissez faire, laisser passer, will prove dangerous if accepted in too literal a manner. It is necessary to act on this maxim with prudence and discrimination."—Napoleon
"Free trade for thee but not for me!" —Colonialists
"Yay free trade!"—Rootless cosmopolitan merchants
I remember being a 'Free Trade' person, as it was part of my Austrian / Libertarian / near zero gov't stage of my career. I owe that era a great debt, but this article, along with "The System is Down" series has advanced my knowledge base greatly.
I've read Vox's material on this on his blog and it was eye opening that the Ricardo Free Trade theory didn't mention labor at all. After all, with NAFTA, GATT, and all the other free trade policies put in by our Foreign Ruling Elite, you'd think that the economy of America would be better than ever. Yet, we have a huge immigration problem (movement of people for labor and handouts), serious issues with the currency, and a hollowed out manufacturing sector. Going back and listening to the critics of NAFTA I see that everything they said would happen has. The Neo-Con lizards aggressively defending NAFTA back then seemed to be hiding their religious desire to use the USA as a stepping stone for their World Gov't, or destroying an independent, reasonably free, citizen-led USA. Such a country simply cannot exist if you wish to rule this realm in all its totality.
"Fletcher goes on to explain that the gospel of free trade was developed by the British after they had industrialized, and it was, Fletcher argues, a strategy specifically designed to prevent other countries from industrializing." I'm reminded of what is still called a 'conspiracy theory', that C. Columbus' bearings in his captain's logs were so off, it was Spain's attempt to mislead the Portuguese and give them the wrong coordinates - send them off to the wrong area so the New World could be Spain's alone. "The Great Navigator's" information in his log is so bad, the Court Historians have a very difficult time explaining it away. How can he be "The Great Navigator" if he is a cloddish, mistake prone Captain so inept as to put amateurishly bad coordinates in the log. I won't go into the writings that the entire story of who CC was is ridiculous, as no way the son of a weaver / cheesemonger would be allowed to marry into a Noble line. ... but I digress.
Anyway, this was a great read. A bit unnerving to think I spent all of that time talking about how protectionism and tariffs were bad. However, I do enjoy learning, and the Fletcher argument and is compelling and fills in some huge gaps when it comes to Ricardian free trade.