Free Trade and Its Enemies | Jeffrey M. Herbener

[@GSD-]

Keep up the good work Dr. Herbener!!!

[@levibaer18]

I’m confused by his usage. He’s using the more broader sense, which encompasses free trade of labor?

[@andrewalaimo2872]

Thanks for the uploads, they're great! Can you guys upload 'the opioid epidemic' and 'Venezuela crisis'? I missed a few others live that aren't uploaded, I would watch those too.

[@josephinhiding3595]

Question. Do you consider it counterproductive not to protect an industry producing goods for domestic consumption when there is unemployment in the economy. I can't help but think that employing people in productive work provides a marginal benefit rather than paying them to do nothing. Does Hume consider unemployment when considering his arguments against mercantilism?

[@josephinhiding3595]

+Christopher. Sure but let's take the argument to absurd limits to highlight how wrong it is to generalize in those terms. Say there can only be one person who can be productive in the entire US. All other goods are imported. Does this look like a balance? Does this look sustainable.

[@somethings90]

Are we assuming that only the single productive person is capable of exporting?

[@BobWidlefish]

*@Christopher Almquist* your argument is both economically sound and well-stated, kudos to you! I’m curious what you think about a (mostly) different topic: the trade-offs that result from living in a statist world where state actors can be malicious. Specifically, imagine a scenario where China or similar imposes violations of natural rights to keep their domestic labor artificially cheap (making some kinds of production cheaper) and at the same time also permanently keeps their currency weak by pegging it to the dollar in a ratio that functions to at least slightly subsidize US consumers of Chinese goods by essentially taxing their citizens through inflation and discounting US purchases with the tax revenue. Further imagine that the Chinese regime maintains this pegging of currency exchange in part by buying US assets (of any kind) for (in part) some kind of nefarious purpose (theft, war, take assets off the market to sabotage industry, etc). In this scenario, would you support restrictions on trade with China? Maybe preventing them from buying certain asset classes like real estate or land? Just to exaggerate the idea we could say: should we have unfettered bilateral free trade with a totalitarian regime like the Nazi’s while we’re at hot war with them? Can we trust that the goods won’t be sabotaged or poisoned or implanted with spy devices? How about the Soviet Union while we’re in a cold war with them? How about North Korea that makes all products via totalitarian slavery and all revenue goes to the state? Economic warfare is a real thing: how do you deal with it? How do you deal with these kind of ugly problems where the ethics of the situation might weigh against free trade? What’s are we to advocate for to deal with the problem of economic warfare even against an ancapistan free society? How about in the practical reality of today?