Vox Popoli

It never ceases to amaze me how these idiots read a single paragraph I have written on a subject and then assume that it comprises the totality of my thoughts on the matter. Yesterday’s emailer, Donny, decides to come back for more

I see that you have published my email to you and John.  Well, that’s fine.  I wish I had clarified that my public service at a community college was in addition to my regular job (commodities trader) and those eleven years ended twenty years ago.  You and some of your commenters had fun with that.

To the matter at hand, John’s speech at Mencken asked:  “I’d like to see a good logical proof of the proposition that free trade requires free movement of peoples.”

Your November 9th post (which I discovered from a link in John’s December 1st posting) responded in two paragraphs.  In the first you write “free trade requires the free movement of peoples.”  No, it doesn’t, except in a pedantic “by definition” sense.  As commenter Austin Ballast said, “You still have blinders on VD. Free trade in goods does not require free trade in people, assuming people are not the goods.”

Without regard to minutia such as one commenter’s (SAK) concern for a foreign nation making the chips in our missiles, the big picture on trade is that it is beneficial to both parties trading.  That big picture remains even if we tighten against visa over-stayers, chain-migration and Rio Grande swimmers.

In your second paragraph you speak of “maximum efficiencies theoretically provided” and “maximum growth potential” but less than maximum is still mutually beneficial in the big picture sense.  I made these points in my email to John which I copied to you as a matter of courtesy, since the two of you are so deferential to each other.

In response to my email, you ask, “what two points is the clueless professor failing to take into account here?” as if simply asking makes your points.  Again, Austin Ballast, “VD, you treat this idea more as an axiom than something you have really proven. That is a basic flaw. It may seem obvious to you, but that does not make it true.”

Then you ask, “where is the evidence that free trade in goods without free trade in labor is even materially possible” which is facile.  I agree that visa over-stayers, chain-migration and Rio Grande swimmers are a challenge, but why does that prevent the trade of a container of computers for Africa in exchange for a sum of gold?

Your bullying manner may appeal to the members of your audience with a sadistic bent but I am not distracted from the fact that you have been twice unresponsive to the challenge John posed:  “I’d like to see a good logical proof of the proposition that free trade requires free movement of peoples.”

It’s not so much that I am sadistic as these stubborn ignoramuses tend to be masochistic. Donny isn’t distracted from the fact that I’m repeatedly unresponsive to demands to provide a good logical proof of the proposition that water is wet. Just as being wet is an attribute of water, the free movement of labor is an intrinsic attribute of free trade. What Donny complains is a “pedantic ‘by definition’ sense” is literally what free trade is. Every argument, every economic law, that supports the free trade in x also supports free trade in y. All of them. No exceptions.

Austin Ballast’s comment is particularly stupid. He is projecting the blinders he mentions, because his statement is simply irrelevant. He might as well have said “free trade in cars does not require free trade in computers.” But it does, for the obvious reason that if you are engaged in trading cars without restriction but restricting trade in computers, you are not engaged in free trade. You are simply doing what nearly all states have done for all of human history in restricting the trade in some goods while permitting it in others.

What Donny and some other advocates of “free trade in goods, but not capital, services, or labor” want is to be able to draw the line in a different place than other trade protectionists, but dishonestly avail themselves of the rhetoric of free trade and the ability to appeal emotionally to the language of freedom and liberty.

But as he has asked for an actual proof, I will provide him with a logically unassailable one, one with which he will quibble, but in vain. After all, what can be easier than to prove that water is wet?

1. The sole justification for distinguishing in economic theory between domestic and foreign trade is to be found in the fact that in the case of the former there is free mobility of capital and labor, whereas this is not true with regards to the commerce between nations.
2. The basis for restricting the free trade in goods between nations is an invisible judicial line that separates one nation from the other.
3. The same logic and ethics apply to people who want to trade on both sides of the invisible judicial line known as a national border, which renders this basis for restricting the free trade in goods between nations both false and illegitimate.
4. Because the basis for restricting the free trade in goods between nations is false and illegitimate, it cannot logically or ethically restrict that free trade in goods.
5. This invisible judicial line that cannot logically or ethically restrict the free trade in goods between nations does not magically materialize when labor and capital cross it.
6. Therefore, there is no legitimate justification for distinguishing between domestic and foreign trade in economic theory.
7. Therefore, any logical, ethical, or theoretical argument for the free trade in goods encompasses the free trade in capital and labor as well.

Those who are sufficiently well-educated in economics will recognize the sources of at least three of those points as well as their impeccably free trade credentials. Unlike Donny and Austin, I do not attack strawmen of my own imagination, but rather, the actual arguments made by the strongest proponents.

What both of them failed to grasp is that simply mentioning the fact that there are beneficial aspects to free trade, limited or not, does not mean that free trade is net beneficial, even if it is limited only to goods or a given set of goods. I do not deny that free trade benefits certain parties, the point is that it also harms other parties whose costs are never factored into the equation. The point that I was making  when I referred to the maximum efficiencies provided is that the argument for economic efficiency to which free traders so often appeal – free trade is good for the economy – necessarily and intrinsically includes the free movement of labor and capital. If one is going to appeal to the good of the economy as a whole without considering the costs to various elements of the economy, then it is every bit as reasonable to argue for the free movement of labor combined with restricting the movement of goods as it is to argue the reverse.

Indeed, if we are to use GDP as our primary metric as so many free trade advocates do, one can make a considerably stronger case for free trade in labor combined with a restricted trade in goods than one can for the reverse.

Derb highlights a line of demarcation:

Since I have no clue what the Alt Right perspective is, I went for inspiration to someone who believes he does know. This is the blogger Vox Day, who last year published a 16-point Alt Right Manifesto. In my address to the Mencken Club I read off Vox Day’s points and passed comment on each one.

As a format for a talk, this has somewhat of cheating about it; but spirits were so high, nobody minded, and my talk went over well with the audience.

Not so much with Vox Day, who picked nits with my comments on his website a few days later. That’s okay, and all in good argumentative combat. I respect Vox Day as an ally in the Cultural Counterrevolution, as well as a writer of wit and courage. We disagree about many things, but our disagreements are cordial.

Our deepest disagreement is anyway just temperamental. In the language of We Are Doomed, Chapter 7: he’s a religionist, I’m a biologian. He thinks the universe cares about the human race, and even about individual persons; I see no evidence of either thing. He thinks we are a unique creation, kissed with magic; I think we’re smart chimps.

There’s no use arguing about this. The difference is, as I said, temperamental, most likely genetic. It shouldn’t stop us liking and respecting each other, and acknowledging that both personality types have a part to play in the Cultural Counterrevolution.

I could not agree more with the general sentiment. I like and respect Derb, who remains one of my favorite Dissident Right writers as well as the author of the only math book I have ever really enjoyed reading. I am no more troubled by the fact that we disagree on this, that, and the other thing than I am by the fact that my sexual preferences happen to differ considerably from my friend Milo’s.

That being said, contra Derb, I do think it can be useful to argue about these things, even when our opposing positions are intractable. I do see real value in intellectual opponents who can disagree vehemently and yet still get along on a personal level. My economic arguments have been honed by opponents like Nate and Dr. James Miller, as well as the guy who challenged me to review Henry Hazlitt’s arguments.

Not so much, however, by this next fellow. As is so often the case when someone thinks he has caught me out in a mistake, he has only demonstrated his inability to understand what I have written or the conclusions that naturally follow. For some reason, this gentlemen elected to CC me in his email to John Derbyshire, in which he claimed that I had inadvertently made the opposite of the case I was making without anyone even noticing. Except himself, of course.

One would think that would have been his first clue…Note that this is written by a community college professor, demonstrating once more that the self-professed intellectual elite is actually composed of midwits who overestimate their own capabilities and don’t understand their own subjects very well:

John,

Having embarrassed myself in our emails and at our single meeting (AmRen15) I had been resolved to communicate with you less, but you suffer fools gladly so I venture again with this.

I am not an “economic ignoramus” having taught micro- and macro- for eleven years (community college, adjunct faculty – more public service than income source) but I have long had the exact same question as the one you posed:  Why does free trade require free movement of peoples? I note from the Vox Day response that it does not, though he would be surprised by that reading.

He wrote two paragraphs.  In the first he wrote “by definition” and so creates a tautology:  Free trade requires that trade be free.  More specifically, an engineer who travels to install a piece of equipment and the returns home is not a migrant.  There is nothing about the importation of automobiles (or any other merchandise) that requires the importation of people.  Call it the difference between free trade and absolutely free trade.

To wit:  If Americans drink Mexican beer, it is because we import the beer.  The beer has cost components that are relevant to the manufacturer in Mexico but irrelevant to the gringo imbiber, such as direct materials, direct labor and overhead.  (I am a CPA too.)  The Budweiser employee in Saint Louis may see his hours cut back due to the good efforts of the Dos Equis employee south of the border, but no economist without an agenda would call that “importing labor.”

In the case of “absolutely free trade” where factors of production can cross borders as freely as merchandise, theoretical economics predicts “factor price equalization” and we would expect brewer employees both north and south of the border to be paid the same wage in equilibrium.  In his second paragraph, he writes of “maximum efficiencies” and “maximum growth potential” – very theoretical stuff.

But he gives the game away where he writes “any failure to restrict this travel will necessarily create inefficiencies” (though he of course meant “any travel restriction will necessarily create inefficiencies”) which concedes a key point:  Free trade in merchandise without free trade in all factors of production (e.g. labor) is still beneficial to both parties, even if not maximally.

Imagine a world where ethnocontinents are stable but comparative advantages differ.  Africa could send gold to North America in exchange for computers and both would benefit.  If there are no North American gold miners, we can live with that small inefficiency reflected in a slightly higher price of gold.  We could have all the gold be want simply by importing it.  And if the Africans use Dell computers to enslave and murder each other, that has no weight in calculating gains from trade.

Trump is wrong on trade; it is not a zero-sum game.  As I had preached for eleven years, “trade fosters peace” because both parties develop an interest in a friendly on-going relationship.  However, trade (excepting “absolutely free trade” comprehending factor mobility) does not demand emigration/immigration.  Indeed, a person relocating internationally is not an act of “trade.”  Build the wall, yes, but run railroads through it.

There is no game to be given away. I conceded absolutely nothing. Let’s look closely at this “key point”.

But he gives the game away where he writes “any failure to restrict this travel will necessarily create inefficiencies” (though he of course meant “any travel restriction will necessarily create inefficiencies”) which concedes a key point:  Free trade in merchandise without free trade in all factors of production (e.g. labor) is still beneficial to both parties, even if not maximally. 

Now, what two points is the clueless professor failing to take into account here? And beyond that, speaking of “very theoretical stuff”, where is the evidence that free trade in goods without free trade in labor is even materially possible in a world where inexpensive global travel is available to the average laborer? I observe that the free traders have it entirely backwards now, as their theory does not even begin to account for the fact that labor can now move more easily, more inexpensively, and more freely than goods can.