Author: VD

Mailvox: debate responses

We had a nice turnout for the Day-Murphy debate on free trade last Friday, and most of the 250+ registrants showed up for it. It generated more than a few questions, and here are some that later showed up in my email. NC wonders about the role of the state:

I greatly enjoyed the debate. Thank you broadcasting the debate and the work you put into the arguments.  I found the debate valuable as I mull over my own thoughts.

I’m curious if you have thoughts on this:  I think that your arguments depend on the existence of the state.  I compare your arguments to a similar case of discriminately acting on relationship principles; that is, if one is interacting with a sociopath, one would not act on relationship principles of openness and honesty, for the sociopath would not conform to those principles, exploiting them for advantage.  I think Trump emphasizes “good deals” over free trade because of the realities of coercive government institutions–nation-states which would violate principles of free trade like a sociopath would violate principles in a relationship.

If, after a generation of peaceful parenting, the nation-state dissolves, would not a free trade environment be the principled and logical environment of such a society?

No, my arguments depend upon the existence of the nation, not the state. If there is no coherent group of self-identified people sharing traditions, characteristics, and values, then there is no need to concern ourselves with their collective fate, as we owe nothing to them, share nothing with them, and can abandon them and ignore their interests without a thought. This, of course, is one reason why the globalist elite wants to destroy cohesive, coherent nations, for much the same reason they want to destroy the family. The individual is easily corrupted or destroyed, the nation, not so readily.

The dissolution of the nation-state on the basis of peaceful parenting does not logically lead to a free trade environment, moreover, it is about as credible as a monetary system that relies upon leprechauns distributing gold harvested at the rainbow’s end. That is pure libertarian fantasy babble, which is even less coherent than the Marxian withering away of the state leading to the worker’s paradise.

GO also thought rather well of the debate, a transcript of which will be provided to Brainstorm members:

I thoroughly enjoyed the debate. I have enjoyed Mr. Murphy’s writings over the years. I thought he mildly tried to take you on personally. You didn’t do that and stuck to the debate issue making excellent points. I also like Tom Woods. I think they both learned a lot by getting involved with you. I have begin to wonder about the rigidness of some of the Austrians. I am happy to see a challenge to them from a non-communist or socialist perspective.

I was actually quite pleased that Bob was sufficiently concerned by the arguments I presented in the Miller debate to view me as a potential threat to the conceptual status quo. This is extremely unusual, as for the most part, free traders consider their position to be utterly unassailable. As for Tom, he was not only an excellent moderator – I was very impressed by him and think he would make a great talk radio guy – but he made a very interesting comment when we met the day before the debate to make sure everyone’s system was working correctly.

He commented that the free traders had not helped strengthen their own position by failing to seriously consider the arguments on the other side. This is understandable, as for two centuries, their underlying assumptions more or less held. And it was easy to dismiss the impact of the Japanese mass-immigrating to Australia, as Mises did, so long as they weren’t actually doing it.

So, I think that even if I’m not able to convince either Bob Murphy or Tom Woods of the inimical nature of free trade, I suspect this debate may mark a step towards stronger Austrian arguments in defense of free trade. Unless, of course, I am able to convince the entire Austrian School that a rethink of its core position on the subject is required.

JK saw the same flaw in one of Bob’s arguments that I did:

Great brainstorm yet again! I was annoyed by Bob’s use of a country giving a bunch of free SUVs to the US as a reductio ad absurdum, but a country might use that strategy to destroy another country’s infrastructure, and that would definitely not enrich the country who receives the goods.

But  I would have loved to have asked him this, had I thought of it: if the receiving country is enriched by cheaper imports then surely if the other country produces all things and therefore the receiving country nothing, then that country should be infinitely enriched, no?

Well done Vox.

I wasn’t annoyed by the argument, I was amused by it. There is a very good reason dumping, or selling goods below their cost, is legally prohibited by most countries, and that is because it is correctly seen as harmful to the recipient. As I mentioned in the debate, I don’t think Bob quite grasped how damaging the welfare analogy is to his neo-Bastiat “free sunlight” argument. Free goods damage an economy in much the same way free welfare checks damage an individual; in neither case do they make the economy or the individual wealthier in the long term. Quite to the contrary, they make them dependent.

Are tropical countries where everything grows easily and the fruit just drops from the trees generally more wealthy than others? No, because the effect on the populace is not wealth-generating, but enervating.

Over the next week, I’ll attempt to respond in detail to some of the questions that were addressed to me during the debate that Tom did not pass on to me because we did not have time to address them.

Book of the Week

Kokoro, by Natsume Soseki, is the Japanese equivalent of books like Huckleberry Finn, A Tale of Two Cities, and Giants in the Earth, books you’re expected to read in school because they are classics. From the Western perspective, this is grimly funny in light of the general theme of the novel; for anyone who is familiar with the Japanese classics of pen and film, it’s not giving too much away to say the protagonist is very nearly the only character in the novel who doesn’t die. Shades of Ran.

But that is part of what makes it fascinating, because Kokoro is not depressing despite being almost entirely without hope. This may have been because Soseki was writing at the end of the Meiji era, a period as disruptive to a people as has ever been known to any group of human beings outside of lost tribes discovered in Papua New Guinea or the Amazon. It is deeply self-reflective, almost to the point of narcissism, and it is interesting to see how modern it feels in some ways despite being very much a product of its time and place. It certainly merits its status as a minor parochial classic.

In any event, the book suggests an answer to one question I’ve had about Japanese literature since I was first reading it at university, which is why it is so remarkably lethal. I mean, the average Japanese literary novel contains more deaths than the average Western horror novel, and suicide is a more commonly utilized ending device than marriage. Given Soseki’s influence and respected position in Japanese literature, this phenomenon is considerably easier to understand, as is the passive fatalism that pervades the work of modern Japanese writers like Haruki Murakami.

Another free trade debate

This exchange with Louise Mensch on Twitter vastly amused me. In my book, it is right up there with the digression into sexbots in the James Miller debate:

Louise Mensch ‏@LouiseMensch
The idea you need free movement of people for a free market is a lie. We have free trade with USA without free movement

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
It’s not a lie. Read Mises: the same arguments apply. For full benefits of free trade, free labor mobility is required.

Louise Mensch ‏@LouiseMensch
no; we presently enjoy free trade with America no free movement between us either way

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
You can see exactly how NOT free UK trade with USA is here. Complete with tariff codes and rates.

Louise Mensch ‏@LouiseMensch
live animals?

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
3.8 percent on the sale of domestic rabbits, to be precise. Just one of thousands of examples. Demonstrably unfree trade.

Louise Mensch ‏@LouiseMensch
er… I honestly don’t think most people are going to count bees and rabbits Vox

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
It’s 5.7% on nuclear reactors. Would most people count them?

In fact, the USA and UK have neither free trade nor free labor mobility.

The distrustful youth

The Pew Center fails to note the significant conclusions in its own poll on trust in government:

Historically, there have been only modest generational differences in trust in government. Over time, the trajectory of these attitudes has been similar across generations.

As noted, young people are slightly more trusting in the federal government than older people. Currently, 25% of Millennials (ages 18-34) say they can trust the federal government just about always or most of the time. That compares with 19% of Gen Xers (35-50), 14% of Boomers (51-69) and 16% of Silents (70-87).

In 2009 and 2010, the differences across generations were somewhat larger: In August 2009, the three-point moving average of trust in the federal government among Millennials was 36%, compared with about 20% across older generations.

In the early 1990s, Gen Xers – whose oldest members were then in their early 20s – expressed somewhat greater trust in government than did Boomers and Silents, but these differences have diminished over time. Similarly, there were, at most, small differences in trust between Boomers and Silents in the 1970s and 1980s. Most important, the steep downward slide in trust in government that occurred in the 1970s was seen among both Boomers and Silents.

Look at the chart to the right. Notice the very steep slide that began in 1965 for the Silents and 1970 for the Baby Boomers. What is relevant is not how a very old Silent or an old Boomer’s opinion compares to a young Millennial’s trust in government, but rather how those opinions compare at similar ages.

The Silents’ trust in government peaked at 82 percent, the Boomers’ at 73 percent. The famously cynical GenXers trust peaked at 58 percent, and the supposedly naive Millennials peaked at 62 percent right in the patriotic aftermath of 9/11. The oldest Baby Boomers were 48 years old before they reached the level of cynicism about government that the Millennials have already reached.

This is particularly significant considering that the Millennials are much more racially mixed, so white Millennials are, developmentally speaking, far more suspicious of government than were white Baby Boomers.

It can happen here

It’s not only Europe. It’s also the USA. Donald Trump isn’t merely right, he’s only suggesting the first of several necessary steps to protect the West from the third great wave of Islamic expansion. It’s already happening everywhere from London to Minneapolis.

Did you vote for that? Did you intellectually support it? I certainly didn’t. But every immigration proponent, racial equalitarian, religious egalitarian, and Proposition Nation advocate bears at least some degree of responsibility for it.

The counterintuitive

The pro-EU people trying to use the Labour MP’s murder to push Remain are finding out that their strategy is backfiring:

British support for remaining in the European Union has weakened in the wake of the murder of the pro-EU politician Jo Cox, according to an online research company Friday.

Qriously, a London-based technology start-up that gathers data and intelligence about consumers through mobile phone apps, found that backing among likely voters for Britain’s EU membership has dropped to 32% from 40% before her death.

The poll was based on 1,992 British adults surveyed on June 13-16, and then 1,002 on June 17 — the day after Cox was shot and killed in northern England. The start-up claims to have held the first such survey on the topic since the lawmaker’s slaying.

In fact, the rational position is to vote Leave in light of Jo Cox’s murder, as it is obvious that if England votes Remain, its society will continue to become a more violent, more murderous one where politics is pursued by other means.

The same thing happened in Norway, where the popularity of the anti-immigration parties was strengthened, not weakened, after Anders Breivik’s attacks on the junior members of the pro-immigration party.

Mailvox: Free speech isn’t free

Neither is Brainstorm, but if you’re a Brainstorm member, you do get the occasional free book. One gentleman just finished Roosh’s latest, which he asked me to send out gratis to every Brainstorm member.

Thank you for e-mailing this book.  It has more profound advice on crowd psychology and cultural adversaries than I have ever seen other than SJWs Always Lie.

Along with your website and Mike Cernovich’s, I’m seeing just how important your work and their work is.

Brainstorm may be the world’s most expensive book club, but the members appear to appreciate it anyhow. Anyhow, I would echo his advice. Free Speech Isn’t Free is more than a good book, it is a useful one.

Convinced by unreality

Megan McArdle visits Britain and learns that there is more to a nation than its economy:

Somehow, over the last half-century, Western elites managed to convince themselves that nationalism was not real. Perhaps it had been real in the past, like cholera and telegraph machines, but now that we were smarter and more modern, it would be forgotten in the due course of time as better ideas supplanted it.

That now seems hopelessly naive. People do care more about people who are like them — who speak their language, eat their food, share their customs and values. And when elites try to ignore those sentiments — or banish them by declaring that they are simply racist — this doesn’t make the sentiments go away. It makes the non-elites suspect the elites of disloyalty. For though elites may find something vaguely horrifying about saying that you care more about people who are like you than you do about people who are culturally or geographically further away, the rest of the population is outraged by the never-stated corollary: that the elites running things feel no greater moral obligation to their fellow countrymen than they do to some random stranger in another country. And perhaps we can argue that this is the morally correct way to feel — but if it is truly the case, you can see why ordinary folks would be suspicious about allowing the elites to continue to exercise great power over their lives.

It’s therefore not entirely surprising that people are reacting strongly against the EU, the epitome of an elite institution: a technocratic bureaucracy designed to remove many questions from the democratic control of voters in the constituent countries. Elites can earnestly explain that a British exit will be very costly to Britain (true), that many of the promises made on Brexit’s behalf are patently ridiculous (also true), that leaving will create all sorts of security problems and also cost the masses many things they like, such as breezing through passport control en route to their cheap continental holidays. Elites can even be right about all of those things. They still shouldn’t be too shocked when ordinary people respond just as Republican primary voters did to their own establishment last spring: “But you see, I don’t trust you anymore.”

First of all, they’re not right. Second, they are evil, self-serving people who shouldn’t be trusted about anything. Third, if they’re for it, the wise thing to do is oppose it at all costs even if you don’t have a clue about it.

Brainstorm: Free Trade debate

At 7:30 PM Eastern time on Friday, June 17th, I will be debating Free Trade with Austrian economist Robert Murphy. Another notable figure of the Austrian School, Thomas Woods, will moderate the debate concerning the following resolution:

RESOLVED: Free trade is always economically beneficial in the long term,
and the more free trade is practiced by a country, the higher the
standard of living of its inhabitants will be.

The event is open and you may register for it here. The debate format will be as follows:

10-minute Bob opening statement
10-minute Vox opening statement
3-minute Bob rebuttal
3-minute Vox rebuttal
3 minutes for one Q&A between Bob and Tom
3 minutes for one Q&A between Vox and Tom
5 minutes: Bob asks Vox a question; Vox answers
5 minutes: Vox asks Bob a question; Bob answers
20 minutes: audience questions
3-minute Bob closing statement
3-minute Vox closing statement
1-minute wrap-up by Tom

Please don’t bother telling me what you think I should or should not do. You are not debating the subject. I am. The purpose of this post is not to gather new ideas or information. Moreover, it is not fair to the other participant to have multiple parties ganging up on him. Any suggestions or advice concerning free trade will be deleted.