Government = taxation = coercion = violence = immoral.
Nothing good can ever come out of violence.
Therefore nothing good can ever come from government. And before you say what about the roads or what about national security, etc, etc, ask yourself how much time and effort have you spent gaining knowledge of alternatives to violence as a means of social organization. Because no school or college or major media outlet will help you with this. (BTW, this economist is an idiot)
@furyofbongos violence =/= immoral. If this is your philosophical road to anarchy, you'll have to find a detour. There are plenty of cases of violence that are not immoral.
A woman is about to cross the street. You see a car that's about to hit her that she doesn't see. You have time to grab her and pull her out of harms way, and you grab her by the shirt and she thanks you for saving her life, or at least for keeping her from getting very badly hurt.
By the way, this example is not meant to justify government IUF, but simply to show that IUF can, in some cases, be moral, or at least not be immoral.
@ha I agree. I guess I will then need to categorize or qualify somehow the kind of IUF I'm talking about. Your example is benevolent IUF. Some would even argue that gov IUF is benevolent (roads, etc,,, -- I would disagree).
When IUF is used to extract money (for whatever reason including giving to the sick or poor) or to control behavior that is not infringing on anyone then that is immoral IMO. It is this usage of IUF that I am talking about in my earlier posts. Nothing good can come from it.
Free trade is always under attack. That faux-free trade policies like NAFTA often enrich a few politically connected groups while falling well short of actual free trade does not help people's perceptions of it.
Areas where USA now cant compete in exports: Hand made shoes, cloth, etc. Cheap plastic toys and blow up dolls of dubious quality. Processing of raw materials. Shipbuilding. Areas where USA can compete in exports: Medical, Science, and Engineering R&D Anything high tech Food production (until the greens get their way) Current biggest export: Worthless fiat currency. Over regulation, labor laws and to many stupid/lazy people coming out of bad pubic schools are killing industry, not free trade.
globalization and free trade has destroyed our heavy industry. our labor force can't compete with the third worlders, and our regulation, epa etc, handicap us also. for almost 200 years america had protectionist tariffs (until 1980) and we were doing fine.
@megagagnon1 Globalization destroyed American industry? Then why has American industrial output never been higher? We produce more industrial goods than any other country in the world.
@lordaltay5 A total of 3.2 million one in six U.S. factory jobs have disappeared since the start of 2000. Heavy industry is almost gone, industrial output is an illusion - our auto industry assembles lots of cars, doesn't manufacture them - yet the total value of the finished product is counted in the industrial goods total.
@lordaltay5 also counted in the american industry total - mining, oil (prices up, increase there), lumber, food processing (includes bottling plants, so beer consumption increases our "industry" total). the biggest rise in our manufacturing? making military armaments.
@lordaltay5 Manufacturing's share of the U.S. economy continues its 50-year decline. Last year, manufacturing GDP fell to an all-time low of just 12 percent of the economy, according to a Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI analysis of recent data from the Commerce Department.
@lordaltay5 In 1993, manufacturing as a percentage of the U.S. economy stood at 15.9 percent, down from its post World War II peak of 28.3 percent in 1953.
I think the "equality of opportunity" is the best measurement for trade. So sure, you can put a 50% tariff on all foreign goods, if all other foreign countries puts a 50% tariff on yours. But if one country has people experience with metalworking and another has a large resource of metal, you shouldn't have the latter country impose tariffs because their only inequality is the lack of experience.
Ownership of land may be a different matter however.
@megagagnon1 For certain things, yeah. And thats exactly how it is supposed to be. For assembly line production, if third world people can do it and create products that can compete with first world, then first world are definitely getting paid too much / too many benefits. People don't want to hear that, and of course consumers don't want to buy products 3-20x the price you see in walmart to support the accustomed lifestyle of first world workers.
I look at it more like we are willing to look the other way while populations in other places around the world are being treated unfairly by our standards. The reason this cuts our nose off to spite our face is because these populations could never earn enough to afford goods & services we want to sell. So we loose jobs with no real means or reason to create new jobs. It isn't free trade rather than just doing business with modern day slavers and paying the actual price.
@Vlaxitov This isn't all black and white, we create standards for ourselves, we try to improve our lives and we do. Sometimes not as fast as we'd like, so we borrow. Nearly every single country is in pretty serious debt. And it's not simply to each other, the majority is owed to banks, and the IMF. Thats a pretty sad statement.
Now there is the expectation to keep borrowed money living standards. The money, the resources just aren't there. No matter your moral stance.
In the seventies the Japanese sold electronics to America for less than it cost to make, and continued to do this till our electronics manufacturing was destroyed. I think the the Japanese Gov actually subsidized the companies that were doing it. Many American factories failed.
I'm opposed to protectionism but what do we do when a country is deliberately attacking us?
@Buffalo122333 The solution to that situation would be that the American electronics company's would buy the "cheaper than the cost to make" electronics and resell them at a higher price or make a better product that is has a higher demand.
Sooo Why is putting tariffs on imports a bad idea? Wouldn't it increase the cost on imports making it more economical to manufacture in the US, therefore creating more jobs in the US?
@Zooksboardshop Tariffs are only advantageous if the other country doesn't start taxing your imports in response. If both countries tax any imports by say 30% its simply a drag on both sides. You can't tax your way to economic competitiveness, you just have to make a better product at a better price.
This comment has received too many negative votesshow
No surprise that Reason TV supports job destroying free trade and brings up the non sequitar of Smoot Hawley. Fact is China is engaging in currency manipulation, other countries dump product here below cost and foreign government subsidized ect that is killing american jobs. The trade war is going on for a long time destroying the middle class. The USA doesn't fight back is all.
Hope some law breaking greenie popping Mexican trucker runs over your ass.
@robertmike57, "job destroying free trade." You miss the big picture. Protectionism only protects a small special interest group temporarily at the expense of others. The net effect is a burden on most people. Higher prices, lower quality, misallocation of resources, failed businesses, a less competitive work force & eventual job loss. You can't rely on government to fight your battles. It does not serve your long term interest. It only serves itself. Government coercion is never the answer.
@truthadvocate Protectionism worked for the US in encouraging America products to be bought by Americans during its industrial revolution. The cost may have been a little higher, but it created a booming manufacturing industry that was able to perfect cars and planes that other countries around the world desired. People forget that China's goods were horrible for a long time, but when strong US manufacturing started diminish, China was able to takeover and advance it's own product line.
@Venue0309, If a product serves the desires of consumers you don't need to use coercion to sell it to anybody. Protectionism is coercion. It's the government preventing people from making voluntary mutually beneficial exchanges in order to benefit a special interest group at the expense of others. It's the opposite of freedom. Protectionism was not the reason we had the industrial revolution. Our industry excelled because we had more liberty than the rest of the world & we embraced capitalism.
@truthadvocate American workers can't compete against Chinese or Indian workers - unless you want to make $5 a day. And if you point towards highly skilled workers, we're losing ground there also. Globalization is good for the transnational corporations, bad for the working class.
Speak for yourself. "American workers" consists of hundreds of millions of unique individuals you don't know. Every American worker that is physically able to move his body from one place to another & conscious, can gain access to a library or the Internet. That's all you need to gain the knowledge to make yourself more competitive. In my opinion, if you encourage Mommy government to use force to protect you from competition you don't deserve a job, welfare entitlements or charity.
@truthadvocate My point stands. Many individuals in america improve their skill set, but that won't change the fact that globalization drives down wages. I said nothing about entitlements, i said working class, though now for millions of americans that's ex-working class. No heavy industry, most manufacturing in third world countries (where workers have no rights). The middle class is in decline and that will continue.
Economic globalization is good for the human race. Allowing every person on earth to trade with each other voluntarily would create an explosion of peace, cooperation & wealth. Since I'm rooting for the human race, I don't care if someone that happened to be born geographically close to me sees a wage decline. The majority of human beings will see their quality of life go up.
Globalization of government is a different story. That is extremely bad for the vast majority of humans.
@truthadvocate Consider the effect of NAFTA. It hurt american workers, put lots of factory work south of the border, out of the reach of the EPA. It hurt mexican farmers, who couldn't compete with the subsidized american agri-corps. No workers on either side of the border were helped, the only winners were the corporations.
You & I use different definitions for the word "globalization." I define economic globalization as the integration of national economies into the international economy through trade, foreign direct investment, capital flows, migration & the spread of technology.
What you describe as globalization is a twisted combination of bad "trade agreements" that stifle free trade, migration prohibition & coercive government institutions including corporations, another bad government creation
@truthadvocate Let's imagine all countries simultaneously agreed to absolutely free trade. How could you possibly imagine in such a scenerio that the workers would prosper? Maybe third worlders would be better off, but that's not saying much. Supply and demand - 6 billion workers competing for jobs - it would be a race to the bottom for wages.
You see only an increase in potential workers. You fail to see the increase in potential employers or the increase in potential buyers. The allocation of resources would be directed by consumer purchases, not bureaucrats & lobbyists. This would increase the production of things consumers value. As a result a worker's money would go a lot farther to improving one's life. Plus money would be far more stable without the inflation that results from government mandated fiat currencies.
@truthadvocate If this did work as you are imagining it, third worlders developing economies, the planet is simply incapable of supporting 6 billion prosperous folks. But i don't imagine this happening anyway, there's something like 4 billion people living on 2 bucks a day, that's a whole lotta nut to crack.
@robertmike57 Do you realize that their currency manipulation is actually funding our government entitlements at below market rates? By doing so they allow the United States to buy more and sell more at lower tax rates and therefore it creates more jobs? The middle class is moving to states with lower taxes such as Texas Arizona South Dakota. But states with high taxes and government regulations like the Northeast Detroit the "middle class" isn't doing so well.
I liked it that a foreigner scrutinized this topic.
felpaluche 2 months ago
ameriKKKa will trade terrorism ENGINE SEARCH DAVID HEADLY CIA TERRORIST.
INDIANS please be careful with NAZI ZION ameriKKKa.
REMEMBER they wiped out 100MILL NATIVE INDIANS, it is in their blood.
ameriKKKa- RACIST anglo saxon TERRORIST.
TheBENGALHANNIBAL 1 year ago
Trade is simply I scratch your back, you scratch my back. A mutual exchange. China manufactures our goods, in exchange we open up walmarts in China.
Ramshobraja 1 year ago
Best one I saw this month! -> Perfect online @
watch --- last --- movies. com (delete ---'s)
vernaspeck365 1 year ago
The Republocrats are one socialistic bigger government who are against independent libertarian freedom.
End the Fed and the inside 911 wars will end with them Bring home our troops Republocrat war mongers.
The FEDS will SELECT PAY - LAND the FEDS will love to tell her what she needs to do
Allamericom 1 year ago
@furyofbongos why is this guy an idiot? Other than his Obama cheerleading...
mamaway 1 year ago
Government = taxation = coercion = violence = immoral.
Nothing good can ever come out of violence.
Therefore nothing good can ever come from government. And before you say what about the roads or what about national security, etc, etc, ask yourself how much time and effort have you spent gaining knowledge of alternatives to violence as a means of social organization. Because no school or college or major media outlet will help you with this. (BTW, this economist is an idiot)
furyofbongos 1 year ago
@furyofbongos violence =/= immoral. If this is your philosophical road to anarchy, you'll have to find a detour. There are plenty of cases of violence that are not immoral.
hahahaspam 1 year ago
@hahahaspam
I would agree in the case of self defense. Please allow me to clarify:
gov = taxation = initiation of the use of force (IUF) = immoral.
Nothing good can ever come from IUF.
Does this make a difference?
I'm open to being wrong. Can you think of something good coming out of the initiation of the use of force?
furyofbongos 1 year ago
@furyofbongos
A woman is about to cross the street. You see a car that's about to hit her that she doesn't see. You have time to grab her and pull her out of harms way, and you grab her by the shirt and she thanks you for saving her life, or at least for keeping her from getting very badly hurt.
By the way, this example is not meant to justify government IUF, but simply to show that IUF can, in some cases, be moral, or at least not be immoral.
hahahaspam 1 year ago
@ha I agree. I guess I will then need to categorize or qualify somehow the kind of IUF I'm talking about. Your example is benevolent IUF. Some would even argue that gov IUF is benevolent (roads, etc,,, -- I would disagree).
When IUF is used to extract money (for whatever reason including giving to the sick or poor) or to control behavior that is not infringing on anyone then that is immoral IMO. It is this usage of IUF that I am talking about in my earlier posts. Nothing good can come from it.
furyofbongos 1 year ago
Excellent interview.
jawayetti 1 year ago
Free trade is always under attack. That faux-free trade policies like NAFTA often enrich a few politically connected groups while falling well short of actual free trade does not help people's perceptions of it.
nonantianarchist 1 year ago 2
The Chinese give the US lots of poorly made crap.
We give them IOUs and lots of worthless paper fiat currency.
I still think the US is getting the best part out of the deal.
XCritonX 1 year ago 2
XCritonX 1 year ago 2
@XCritonX
Great comment.
Steve83B 1 year ago
globalization and free trade has destroyed our heavy industry. our labor force can't compete with the third worlders, and our regulation, epa etc, handicap us also. for almost 200 years america had protectionist tariffs (until 1980) and we were doing fine.
megagagnon1 1 year ago
@megagagnon1 Globalization destroyed American industry? Then why has American industrial output never been higher? We produce more industrial goods than any other country in the world.
lordaltay5 1 year ago
@lordaltay5 A total of 3.2 million one in six U.S. factory jobs have disappeared since the start of 2000. Heavy industry is almost gone, industrial output is an illusion - our auto industry assembles lots of cars, doesn't manufacture them - yet the total value of the finished product is counted in the industrial goods total.
megagagnon1 1 year ago
@lordaltay5 also counted in the american industry total - mining, oil (prices up, increase there), lumber, food processing (includes bottling plants, so beer consumption increases our "industry" total). the biggest rise in our manufacturing? making military armaments.
megagagnon1 1 year ago
@lordaltay5 Manufacturing's share of the U.S. economy continues its 50-year decline. Last year, manufacturing GDP fell to an all-time low of just 12 percent of the economy, according to a Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI analysis of recent data from the Commerce Department.
megagagnon1 1 year ago
@lordaltay5 In 1993, manufacturing as a percentage of the U.S. economy stood at 15.9 percent, down from its post World War II peak of 28.3 percent in 1953.
megagagnon1 1 year ago
@lordaltay5 America produces more industrial goods than any other country in the world? Who told you that?
averagejoe040 1 year ago
I think the "equality of opportunity" is the best measurement for trade. So sure, you can put a 50% tariff on all foreign goods, if all other foreign countries puts a 50% tariff on yours. But if one country has people experience with metalworking and another has a large resource of metal, you shouldn't have the latter country impose tariffs because their only inequality is the lack of experience.
Ownership of land may be a different matter however.
sirellyn 1 year ago
@sirellyn free trade means american workers compete with third worlders - we know how well that is going.
megagagnon1 1 year ago
@megagagnon1 For certain things, yeah. And thats exactly how it is supposed to be. For assembly line production, if third world people can do it and create products that can compete with first world, then first world are definitely getting paid too much / too many benefits. People don't want to hear that, and of course consumers don't want to buy products 3-20x the price you see in walmart to support the accustomed lifestyle of first world workers.
sirellyn 1 year ago
@sirellyn
I look at it more like we are willing to look the other way while populations in other places around the world are being treated unfairly by our standards. The reason this cuts our nose off to spite our face is because these populations could never earn enough to afford goods & services we want to sell. So we loose jobs with no real means or reason to create new jobs. It isn't free trade rather than just doing business with modern day slavers and paying the actual price.
Vlaxitov 1 year ago
@Vlaxitov This isn't all black and white, we create standards for ourselves, we try to improve our lives and we do. Sometimes not as fast as we'd like, so we borrow. Nearly every single country is in pretty serious debt. And it's not simply to each other, the majority is owed to banks, and the IMF. Thats a pretty sad statement.
Now there is the expectation to keep borrowed money living standards. The money, the resources just aren't there. No matter your moral stance.
sirellyn 1 year ago
"So they're more into justice and we're more into fairness."
Either he suffers from a SERIOUS mix-up of terminology, or this guy's an idiot.
chopsky 1 year ago
In the seventies the Japanese sold electronics to America for less than it cost to make, and continued to do this till our electronics manufacturing was destroyed. I think the the Japanese Gov actually subsidized the companies that were doing it. Many American factories failed.
I'm opposed to protectionism but what do we do when a country is deliberately attacking us?
Buffalo122333 1 year ago
@Buffalo122333 The solution to that situation would be that the American electronics company's would buy the "cheaper than the cost to make" electronics and resell them at a higher price or make a better product that is has a higher demand.
Darkwizzrobe 1 year ago
Sooo Why is putting tariffs on imports a bad idea? Wouldn't it increase the cost on imports making it more economical to manufacture in the US, therefore creating more jobs in the US?
Zooksboardshop 1 year ago
@Zooksboardshop Tariffs are only advantageous if the other country doesn't start taxing your imports in response. If both countries tax any imports by say 30% its simply a drag on both sides. You can't tax your way to economic competitiveness, you just have to make a better product at a better price.
sdfkjllshadflhadfshl 1 year ago 6
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
bertly71 1 year ago
This comment has received too many negative votes show
No surprise that Reason TV supports job destroying free trade and brings up the non sequitar of Smoot Hawley. Fact is China is engaging in currency manipulation, other countries dump product here below cost and foreign government subsidized ect that is killing american jobs. The trade war is going on for a long time destroying the middle class. The USA doesn't fight back is all.
Hope some law breaking greenie popping Mexican trucker runs over your ass.
robertmike57 1 year ago
@robertmike57, "job destroying free trade." You miss the big picture. Protectionism only protects a small special interest group temporarily at the expense of others. The net effect is a burden on most people. Higher prices, lower quality, misallocation of resources, failed businesses, a less competitive work force & eventual job loss. You can't rely on government to fight your battles. It does not serve your long term interest. It only serves itself. Government coercion is never the answer.
truthadvocate 1 year ago 18
@truthadvocate Protectionism worked for the US in encouraging America products to be bought by Americans during its industrial revolution. The cost may have been a little higher, but it created a booming manufacturing industry that was able to perfect cars and planes that other countries around the world desired. People forget that China's goods were horrible for a long time, but when strong US manufacturing started diminish, China was able to takeover and advance it's own product line.
Venue0309 1 year ago
@Venue0309, If a product serves the desires of consumers you don't need to use coercion to sell it to anybody. Protectionism is coercion. It's the government preventing people from making voluntary mutually beneficial exchanges in order to benefit a special interest group at the expense of others. It's the opposite of freedom. Protectionism was not the reason we had the industrial revolution. Our industry excelled because we had more liberty than the rest of the world & we embraced capitalism.
truthadvocate 1 year ago
@truthadvocate American workers can't compete against Chinese or Indian workers - unless you want to make $5 a day. And if you point towards highly skilled workers, we're losing ground there also. Globalization is good for the transnational corporations, bad for the working class.
megagagnon1 1 year ago
@megagagnon1,
Speak for yourself. "American workers" consists of hundreds of millions of unique individuals you don't know. Every American worker that is physically able to move his body from one place to another & conscious, can gain access to a library or the Internet. That's all you need to gain the knowledge to make yourself more competitive. In my opinion, if you encourage Mommy government to use force to protect you from competition you don't deserve a job, welfare entitlements or charity.
truthadvocate 1 year ago
@truthadvocate My point stands. Many individuals in america improve their skill set, but that won't change the fact that globalization drives down wages. I said nothing about entitlements, i said working class, though now for millions of americans that's ex-working class. No heavy industry, most manufacturing in third world countries (where workers have no rights). The middle class is in decline and that will continue.
megagagnon1 1 year ago
@megagagnon1,
Economic globalization is good for the human race. Allowing every person on earth to trade with each other voluntarily would create an explosion of peace, cooperation & wealth. Since I'm rooting for the human race, I don't care if someone that happened to be born geographically close to me sees a wage decline. The majority of human beings will see their quality of life go up.
Globalization of government is a different story. That is extremely bad for the vast majority of humans.
truthadvocate 1 year ago
@truthadvocate Consider the effect of NAFTA. It hurt american workers, put lots of factory work south of the border, out of the reach of the EPA. It hurt mexican farmers, who couldn't compete with the subsidized american agri-corps. No workers on either side of the border were helped, the only winners were the corporations.
megagagnon1 1 year ago
@megagagnon1,
You & I use different definitions for the word "globalization." I define economic globalization as the integration of national economies into the international economy through trade, foreign direct investment, capital flows, migration & the spread of technology.
What you describe as globalization is a twisted combination of bad "trade agreements" that stifle free trade, migration prohibition & coercive government institutions including corporations, another bad government creation
truthadvocate 1 year ago
@truthadvocate Let's imagine all countries simultaneously agreed to absolutely free trade. How could you possibly imagine in such a scenerio that the workers would prosper? Maybe third worlders would be better off, but that's not saying much. Supply and demand - 6 billion workers competing for jobs - it would be a race to the bottom for wages.
megagagnon1 1 year ago
@megagagnon1,
You see only an increase in potential workers. You fail to see the increase in potential employers or the increase in potential buyers. The allocation of resources would be directed by consumer purchases, not bureaucrats & lobbyists. This would increase the production of things consumers value. As a result a worker's money would go a lot farther to improving one's life. Plus money would be far more stable without the inflation that results from government mandated fiat currencies.
truthadvocate 1 year ago
@truthadvocate If this did work as you are imagining it, third worlders developing economies, the planet is simply incapable of supporting 6 billion prosperous folks. But i don't imagine this happening anyway, there's something like 4 billion people living on 2 bucks a day, that's a whole lotta nut to crack.
megagagnon1 1 year ago
@robertmike57 Do you realize that their currency manipulation is actually funding our government entitlements at below market rates? By doing so they allow the United States to buy more and sell more at lower tax rates and therefore it creates more jobs? The middle class is moving to states with lower taxes such as Texas Arizona South Dakota. But states with high taxes and government regulations like the Northeast Detroit the "middle class" isn't doing so well.
davidmesaaz 1 year ago
5 stars
EconomicImperialist 1 year ago
thumbs up
yougiberishtube 1 year ago