The Austrian critique of force

Since so many free traders keep appealing to the supposed reliance of tariffs on force, or the “badges and guns” argument, as if it actually bolstered their case, I thought it would be a good idea to go to the source and examine in detail precisely what their case against force was. I was motivated to do so by Unger’s citation of George Washington’s famous analogy in which he warned about the dangers of government by comparing it to fire.

I believe the free traders, in their religious hysteria, are failing to grasp the obvious, which is that nations and governments exist, have always existed, and always will exist regardless of what utopian fantasies are concocted in order to imagine a world without them. Fire is dangerous, to be sure, but fire is also a very material element of the world and is necessary for a wide range of human activities. Washington did not make his point in order to encourage Americans to rid themselves of government entirely, but rather to remind them to be cautious in how they utilized it. Washington’s speech is not intrinsically anti-government, but rather speaks to the necessity and the utility of properly controlled government in the service of the nation.

So, let’s turn to Mises and see what he has to say about the matter in his Critique of the Doctrine of Force:

The champions of democracy in the eighteenth century argued that only monarchs and their ministers are morally depraved, injudicious, and evil. The people, however, are altogether good, pure, and noble, and have, besides, the intellectual gifts needed in order always to know and to do what is right. This is, of course, all nonsense, no less so than the flattery of the courtiers who ascribed all good and noble qualities to their princes. The people are the sum of all individual citizens; and if some individuals are not intelligent and noble, then neither are all together.

Since mankind entered the age of democracy with such high-flown expectations, it is not surprising that disillusionment should soon have set in. It was quickly discovered that the democracies committed at least as many errors as the monarchies and aristocracies had. The comparison that people drew between the men whom the democracies placed at the head of the government and those whom the emperors and kings, in the exercise of their absolute power, had elevated to that position, proved by no means favorable to the new wielders of power. The French are wont to speak of “killing with ridicule.” And indeed, the statesmen representative of democracy soon rendered it everywhere ridiculous. Those of the old regime had displayed a certain aristocratic dignity, at least in their outward demeanor. The new ones, who replaced them, made themselves contemptible by their behavior. Nothing has done more harm to democracy in Germany and Austria than the hollow arrogance and impudent vanity with which the Social-Democratic leaders who rose to power after the collapse of the empire conducted themselves.

Thus, wherever democracy triumphed, an antidemocratic doctrine soon arose in fundamental opposition to it. There is no sense, it was said, in allowing the majority to rule. The best ought to govern, even if they are in the minority. This seems so obvious that the supporters of antidemocratic movements of all kinds have steadily increased in number. The more contemptible the men whom democracy has placed at the top have proved themselves to be, the greater has grown the number of the enemies of democracy.

First, I think it is important to note that Mises is not talking about actual democracy, but rather the perverted form of it known as representative democracy. But regardless, he is entirely correct, as there are few better arguments against representative democracy than to point to the deficient character and ludicrous behavior of the current representatives of the American people. In this regard, little has changed since the days of the Weimar Republic, as the democracies of the West are still almost uniformly led by buffoons, charlatans, and the corrupt.

There are, however, serious fallacies in the antidemocratic doctrine. What, after all, does it mean to speak of “the best man” or “the best men”? The Republic of Poland placed a piano virtuoso at its head because it considered him the best Pole of the age. But the qualities that the leader of a state must have are very different from those of a musician. The opponents of democracy, when they use the expression “the best,” can mean nothing else than the man or the men best fitted to conduct the affairs of the government, even if they understand little or nothing of music. But this leads to the same political question: Who is the best fitted? Was it Disraeli or Gladstone? The Tory saw the best man in the former; the Whig, in the latter. Who should decide this if not the majority?

And so we reach the decisive point of all antidemocratic doctrines, whether advanced by the descendants of the old aristocracy and the supporters of hereditary monarchy, or by the syndicalists, Bolsheviks, and socialists, viz., the doctrine of force. The opponents of democracy champion the right of a minority to seize control of the state by force and to rule over the majority. The moral justification of this procedure consists, it is thought, precisely in the power actually to seize the reins of government. One recognizes the best, those who alone are competent to govern and command, by virtue of their demonstrated ability to impose their rule on the majority against its will. Here the teaching of l’Action Fran?aise coincides with that of the syndicalists, and the doctrine of Ludendorff and Hitler, with that of Lenin and Trotzky.

Here is where Mises begins to go astray. Who should decide “the best” except the majority? Based on the observable results of the last 100 years of representative democracy, almost any method would work better. Politicians have not improved any since the days of Weimar, indeed, on a number of measures they have declined dramatically. In a time when politicians hire others to write the speeches they then read awkwardly from teleprompters, it is clear that we are much closer to the days of President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho than Cicero, or even Paul von Hindenburg. And furthermore, what is the moral basis for majority rule in the first place? Is it not simply the weight of numbers? Is it not simply the majority’s “demonstrated ability to impose their rule” on the outnumbered remainder of the population? What Mises fails to realize is that the doctrine of force he decries on the part of the minority relies upon precisely the same basis as his preferred doctrine of the majority, especially since we are not actually discussing the rule of the actual majority, merely the rule of a different minority which purports to claim the approval of “the majority”, whether that is actually the case or not.

I further note that the majority upon which the right of the representative minority to rule is claimed is in reality almost never an actual majority, but usually amounts to a mere plurality. So, Mises is actually doing nothing more than attempting to justify the rule by force of one small minority supported by a larger minority versus the rule by force of a different small minority.

Many arguments can be urged for and against these doctrines, depending on one’s religious and philosophical convictions, about which any agreement is scarcely to be expected. This is not the place to present and discuss the arguments pro and con, for they are not conclusive. The only consideration that can be decisive is one that bases itself on the fundamental argument in favor of democracy.

This is a naked assertion with absolutely no support in fact or logic. Mises doesn’t even attempt to show that it is conclusive, he simply pronounces that it is so, and the inaccurate way in which he is using the terms “democracy” and “majority” should suffice to give us cause, at the very least, to reject his assertion that the only decisive consideration is the “democratic” argument.

If every group that believes itself capable of imposing its rule on the rest is to be entitled to undertake the attempt, we must be prepared for an uninterrupted series of civil wars, But such a state of affairs is incompatible with the state of the division of labor that we have reached today. Modern society, based as it is on the division of labor, can be preserved only under conditions of lasting peace. It we had to prepare for the possibility of continual civil wars and internal struggles, we should have to retrogress to such a primitive stage of the division of labor that each province at least, if not each village, would become virtually autarkic, i.e., capable of feeding and maintaining itself for a time as a self-sufficient economic entity without importing anything from the outside. This would mean such an enormous decline in the productivity of labor that the earth could feed only a fraction of the population that it supports today. The antidemocratic ideal leads to the kind of economic order known to the Middle Ages and antiquity. Every city, every village, indeed, every individual dwelling was fortified and equipped for defense, and every province was as independent of the rest of the world as possible in its provision of commodities.

This is a red herring. The constant struggle for power is as easily settled by hereditary monarchy or aristocracy as representative democracy. Furthermore, Mises here points the way to the foundation of an argument against free trade and open borders, as nothing throughout history has ever created more war than the movement of peoples. If Mises genuinely considers peace and the division of labor to be paramount, then a heterogeneous population must be avoided at all costs, as such a population will be inherently divided and prone to the very civil wars that Mises wishes to avoid.

The democrat too is of the opinion that the best man ought to rule. But he believes that the fitness of a man or of a group of men to govern is better demonstrated if they succeed in convincing their fellow citizens of their qualifications for that position, so that they are voluntarily entrusted with the conduct of public affairs, than if they resort to force to compel others to acknowledge their claims. Whoever does not succeed in attaining to a position of leadership by virtue of the power of his arguments and the confidence that his person inspires has no reason to complain about the fact that his fellow citizens prefer others to him.

Translation: representative democracy is a supremely efficient way to ensure that society is always led by liars, con men, and sociopaths. The representative democrat is of the opinion that the best salesman ought to rule. Does anyone seriously doubt we’d be better off sticking with pianists?

To be sure, it should not and need not be denied that there is one situation in which the temptation to deviate from the democratic principles of liberalism becomes very great indeed. If judicious men see their nation, or all the nations of the world, on the road to destruction, and if they find it impossible to induce their fellow citizens to heed their counsel, they may be inclined to think it only fair and just to resort to any means whatever, in so far as it is feasible and will lead to the desired goal, in order to save everyone from disaster. Then the idea of a dictatorship of the elite, of a government by the minority maintained in power by force and ruling in the interests of all, may arise and find supporters. But force is, never a means of overcoming these difficulties. The tyranny of a minority can never endure unless it succeeds in convincing the majority of the necessity or, at any rate, of the utility, of its rule. But then the minority no longer needs force to maintain itself in power.

History provides an abundance of striking examples to show that, in the long run, even the most ruthless policy of repression does not suffice to maintain a government in power. To cite but one, the most recent and the best known: when the Bolsheviks seized control in Russia, they were a small minority, and their program found scant support among the great masses of their countrymen. For the peasantry, who constitute the bulk of the Russian people, would have nothing to do with the Bolshevik policy of farm collectivization. What they wanted was the division of the land among the “landed poverty,” as the Bolsheviks call this part of the population. And it was this program of the peasantry, not that of the Marxist leaders, which was actually put into effect. In order to remain in power, Lenin and Trotzky not only accepted this agrarian reform, but even made it a part of their own program, which they undertook to defend against all attacks, domestic and foreign. Only thus were the Bolsheviks able to win the confidence of the great mass of the Russian people. Since they adopted this policy of land distribution, the Bolsheviks rule no longer against the will of the great mass of the people, but with their consent and support. There were only two possible alternatives open to them: either their program or their control of the government had to be sacrificed. They chose the first and remained in power. The third possibility, to carry out their program by force against the will of the great mass of the people, did not exist at all. Like every determined and well-led minority, the Bolsheviks were able to seize control by force and retain it for a short time. In the long run, however, they would have been no better able to keep it than any other minority. The various attempts of the Whites to dislodge the Bolsheviks all failed because the mass of the Russian people were against them. But even if they had succeeded, the victors too would have had to respect the desires of the overwhelming majority of the population. It would have been impossible for them to alter in any way after the event the already accomplished fact of the land distribution and to restore to the landowners what had been stolen from them.

Mises makes another mistake when he attempts to convince the reader that force is “never a means” of overcoming temporary difficulties due to its asserted inability to prevail in the long run. This is obviously false, both logically and historically, as the Roman office of dictatura was limited to a period of six months, thus allowing extralegal force to be utilized to deal with short-term situations without creating the long-term problem that Mises cites. More importantly, Mises fails to notice that he disembowels his own argument intended in favor of representative democracy by noting that the Bolsheviks were able to stay in power, despite their initial reliance upon the use of force, due to the imputed consent and support of the Russian people despite the complete absence of any form of democracy, representative or otherwise. In doing so, he inadvertently justifies the very use of force that he intended to criticize, as by his metric, the right of a small minority to rule over the people is justified by its continued rule regardless of how it happened to take power.

Only a group that can count on the consent of the governed can establish a lasting regime. Whoever wants to see the world governed according to his own ideas must strive for dominion over men’s minds. It is impossible, in the long run, to subject men against their will to a regime that they reject. Whoever tries to do so by force will ultimately come to grief, and the struggles provoked by his attempt will do more harm than the worst government based on the consent of the governed could ever do. Men cannot be made happy against their will.

Given that representative democracies collapse on a regular basis, and in fact tend to have shorter lifespans than many hereditary monarchies, it should be clear from this failed critique that not only is the use of force justified so long as the force-reliant minority can maintain its rule, but that despite its pretensions, representative democracy is actually a very poor means of respecting the consent of the governed.

Now, I hope readers will not conclude that simply because I have shown von Mises’s critique of force is both inept and self-defeating, I am necessarily attempting to declare that the use of force is always justified. I am not. I am not even declaring that there is no valid Austrian critique of force. Nor should anyone conclude that I do not respect and admire one of the great thinkers of mankind simply because I am willing to point out the errors in his arguments. But this critique of a critique should suffice to show that this Austrian critique of force is invalid and that appealing to Mises with “badges and guns” rhetoric is indicative of a failure to seriously think through the topic in an intelligent manner.

Euro 2012 Quarterfinals C and D

Spain 1 France 0

This was a real snooze-fest of a game. France never seriously threatened the Spanish defense or the Spanish control of the midfield, while the “no striker” concept really doesn’t work well for Spain since it eliminates the only player on the field who is actually willing to shoot on goal without waiting for every planet in the solar system to come into the ideal alignment, Fernando Torres. If your only scoring is dependent upon a midfielder completely failing to track back with his man, then there is probably something wrong with your tactics. Spain will have to take it up a level to get past Italy, let alone Germany.

Italy 1 England 0 (4-2)

England played well. Italy was simply better, although I do not understand the choice to start Balotelli over Di Natale, let alone leaving the two-time leading scorer in Serie A on the bench for the entire game, unless he’s being saved for Germany. Italy had no shortage of decent chances, but the combination of a very tough English defense, some poor first touches from Balotelli, and the usual midfielder fever kept them from scoring.

I was impressed by the English, as John Terry was easily the best defender in the tournament. He certainly prevented more goals than anyone else. But Rooney should not have been starting. He simply wasn’t in shape to go 120 minutes, and the idea of having him attempt to mark Pirlo was disastrous. Due to the poor coaching decisions, Italy should have won 3-0, but even on a poor offensive night they weren’t afraid of going to penalties… and now the English have lost 6 of their last 7 shootouts.

WND column

The Religion of Free Trade

Let us suppose I told you of a certain doctrine in which millions of people believe without ever having read the book in which it is contained, which is predicated upon a situation that has never existed, and promises positive consequences that not only have never been delivered, but we are told cannot even be measured and cannot be realized without achieving something that has never been done before in the history of man. Furthermore, the doctrine was developed by a successful gambler and politician with absolutely no credentials or qualifications on the subject, which he had never even encountered before the age of 27, in tandem with a related theory that is so obviously insane that barely anyone has ever even heard of it.

So long as we are careful to set aside any reliance upon the genetic fallacy, does this sound like a doctrine that is not only infallible, but one that it would be crazy to even consider questioning? And yet, the fervor with which the advocates of the free-trade doctrine defend David Ricardo’s outdated, disproven theory of comparative advantage and decry those who question it is so ferocious as to indicate the nature of a belief that can only be described as religious.

Flowers of the Arab Spring

Ain’t democracy grand! It’s an interesting result, given that it means American Jews can no longer justify US subsidies to Israel on the basis of it being the only democracy in the Middle East.

Islamist Mohamed Morsy of the Muslim Brotherhood was declared Egypt’s first democratic president on Sunday by the state election committee, which said he had defeated former general Ahmed Shafik with 51.7 percent of last weekend’s run-off vote.

Of course, some of those democratic enthusiasms might prove to be just be a little problematic. “Egypt’s New President: Our Capital ‘Shall Be Jerusalem, Allah Willing'”

Breaking the silence

I found this report of vibrancy breaking out in Portland to be an interesting lapse. Either the media in Oregon failed to get the message or the mainstream media is beginning to give up in its futile attempts to conceal the race of blacks who are attacking whites on an increasingly regular basis throughout America:

Portland Police are investigating two “large-scale” fights that happened in Laurelhurst Park in Southeast Portland earlier this week. According to Sgt. Pete Simpson, both fights involved groups of black teenagers randomly attacking people in the park.

Simpson said the first incident happened on June 13 around 10:30 p.m. That’s when officers responded to reports of 150 drunken teenagers in the park.

Officers arrived and found several groups of teens leaving. As they continued through the park a young woman flagged them down and pointed out a 14-year-old boy who had been beaten up, Simpson said. He was lying on a picnic table. The boy had been hit in the face and paramedics were called to treat his injuries.

According to Simpson, the victim told officers he was with a friend in the park when he was punched from behind. He said his attackers were 5-10 black teenagers who were randomly attacking white teens in the park. He said they also attacked a homeless man. The victim said the attackers stole his cell phone, iPod, headphones and hat.

The second attack happened the next night, also around 10:30 p.m. In that case, officers got a report of a fight involving more than 20 people in the park.

They didn’t find the fight when they arrived but did find three men who said they were attacked by a group of 20-30 black teenagers, Simpson said.

Events such as these tend to suggest that segregation will eventually be reestablished in whatever remnant of the United States remains in the possession of European-Americans once the political breakup occurs sometime after 2030. It was possible for whites to flee Detroit, Los Angeles, and Rhodesia. But now that the inevitable consequences of vibrancy are being felt in former white redoubts such as Portland, Shakopee, Stockholm, and Oslo, there simply isn’t anywhere else to go. It hasn’t even been fifty years since the Civil Rights Act unleashed vibrancy on America; in another fifty years, American whites will be choosing between a violent return to the policies they previously rejected and dying out.

The great tragedy is that it never had to be this way. But periods of peace and prosperity inevitably give way to periods of war and hardship, and unfortunately, they are usually proportional to the scale of what has gone before. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is something anyone should eagerly anticipate, as it’s not going to be fun for anyone. I suspect it is going to be considerably worse than the forty-year period from 1910 to 1950, especially for Americans who were largely insulated from the global war. This time, they’ll be at ground zero.

The Portland police’s advice to parents to tell their children to avoid public parks at night even if they are open, dutifully repeated by the female reporter and seconded by the female news anchor, is rather amusing in light of the collective fainting fit that met John Derbyshire’s recommendation for parents to tell their children to avoid large gatherings of blacks. Thus we see, as has been described by Steve Sailer and others, that SWPL attitudes about race are no different than those of open white supremacists, they are simply concealed by one thin level of transparent pretense.

Political anti-virus

I have previously described my ideas as “virulent” and it would appear that Symantec agrees, as a pair of commenters have noticed problems accessing this blog thanks to their anti-virus software:

Norton 360 AV is blocking this page as a “Fraudulent Web Page”. I had to click through the block page to get here.

Symantec earlier was blocking your site, as well as several alt-right sites, as being “fraudulent.” It wasn’t just you, it was a bunch of birds of a feather, so I suspect something fishy has been going on.

I wonder if this site-blocking may in part explain the sudden and unprecedented 12 percent drop in traffic to VP that took place starting in May 2012, which was the first month since the blog started in 2003 that the traffic didn’t increase year-on-year and seemed particularly strange in light of it being an election year. I had initially assumed the decline was the result of the switch from CoComment to Blogger comments, but it seemed like an extreme reaction, given that there was no similar drop when I made previous commenting system changes, and perhaps more importantly, there was no corresponding decline in Feedburner readers. In fact, last week marked a new Feedburner high.

Has anyone else noticed any similar problems with Symantec products and accessing ideologically transgressive web sites? I’ll shoot an email to Instapundit and perhaps he can let other bloggers know they might want to have a look at their statistics and see if they are being similarly affected. If they, too, are seeing a decline starting around the middle of May, this may be indicative of shenanigans on Symantec’s part.

Just to be clear, I don’t do any phishing or gather any data on anyone visiting here beyond what Blogger and Sitemeter record.

Euro 2012 Quarterfinals A and B

Portugal 1 Czech Republic 0

Although everyone has been talking about Cristiano Ronaldo’s performance, it’s hard to exaggerate how good it was. Ronaldo could have easily had four goals with just a bit more luck, as it was he hit the post twice and narrowly missed on two other opportunities before he finally scored in the second half. With Nani largely ineffective, Ronaldo shouldered most of the burden despite being man-marked throughout the game; it didn’t matter how far back he tracked, Selassie went with him. But it was clear that Ronaldo ran him down over the course of the game, as the last goal, a header on a cross, was the result of Ronaldo simply outpacing an exhausted Selassie and arranging to be in the right place at exactly the right time. It was one of the more formidable individual performances I’ve ever seen and I don’t like Cristiano Ronaldo one little bit. Had he managed to score on the impromptu bicycle kick that went just wide right, it would probably be considered one of the great European Championship performances of all time.

Germany 4 Greece 2

Brave, dogged play from Greece. But not enough. Not nearly enough. The young German midfield may not be as talented as Spain’s, but they do have one advantage over the Spanish, which is to say, they aren’t afraid to shoot the ball from anywhere. The Teutonic brute force is capable of overpowering even the most stubborn defense, but as Greece showed, they are vulnerable to counterattacks. That’s why Italy could give them a lot of trouble, though from England, I would expect rather less.

Free trade: the outstanding questions

Since some of you appeared to mistake my very limited offerings on the topic of free trade and Gary North’s defense of it for a complete and comprehensive analysis of the theoretical, moral, practical, and political aspects of the free trade doctrine as well as a coherent Austrian case for US protectionism, I thought it might be useful if the various questions raised by the various free trade supporters were gathered in one place rather than strewn throughout the comments on various posts so that I can be certain to address all of the substantive ones when I do present that coherent, comprehensive, and perhaps even conclusive case.

So, if there is a question from the comments you feel has not yet been answered, (and I am not claiming to have answered them all), or if you have a new question that is related to the subject, please ask it here. I’m not going to be responding to them in the comments, but rather, in the post when I eventually present the anti-free trade case. And please note that I asked for questions, not vacuous, grand-standing assertions claiming “you need to prove X”, as the comment history here suggests the chances are high that there is no need to do anything of the sort.

Mailvox: free trade and automation

JC has a question concerning the different consequences of free trade versus automation:

Interesting discussion on free trade on your blog. Im still going thru the comments on the last one. I have to admit this discussion is all new to me and I have a lot of homework to do to keep up. But I have a question which I shall preface thus:

If for example an American manufacturer moves to another country with lower labor costs, etc., and sells products to American consumers at a lower price than they would have had they stayed in America and hired American workers, the lower priced consumer goods would not really help them since they wouldnt have jobs to take advantage of the lower prices.

I’m thinking this is just the same as a manufacturer deciding to automate production and laying off workers because it’s cheaper to use machines, which is what is happening in America where manufacturing output continues to grow because of American ingenuity in technology but unemployment remains high. It would be like the manufacturer moving the factory overseas because it would be cheaper to produce there. My question is: How is free trade bad, while automation is good in the example I gave above? (I’m assuming you think technological advances in manufacturing is good of course.)

Im looking forward to spending more time over at Vox Popoli. I know you put it up mainly for yourself, but Im sure you are aware that a lot of people are getting a real education reading the posts there and participating in the discussions.

There are several ways that job losses through automation is preferable to job losses through free trade, but JC is right to point out that there are still some material problems presented by it. This is something that has concerned me for some time, and I’ve been contemplating a post about it ever since Chateau Heartiste brought up the issue a few weeks ago.

First, when jobs are lost to automation rather than free trade, the capital and the profits remain in the domestic market. Second, it’s much easier to prevent free trade than technological progress because in the one case the national interest is in line with the domestic producer, in the other it opposes the producers interest. Third, (and this is a consequence of the first thing), the transition of labor from an automated industry to a new one remains viable when the capital and profits remain within the domestic market, otherwise, labor has no choice but to move where the capital investment is taking place.

This is why dishonest advocates of free trade falsely attempt to claim that the free movement of labor is not part of the free trade doctrine. They know that no one will support free trade once the understand that it intrinsically necessitates the large-scale export of their friends, relatives, and neighbors to other markets, and quite possibly their own expatriation. In the case of automation, on the other hand, there is a reasonable expectation that the capital will be reinvested in the domestic market, thereby creating new jobs in that market. That doesn’t mean the process won’t be painful, or as increasingly concerns me, because there is no real productive need for the excess labor, it will be mopped up using a combination of makework private sector jobs, public sector sinecures, and welfare payments.

Of course, in the case of automation, such a solution is possible because the profits have increased and remain within the country. In the case of free trade, not only have the jobs disappeared, but so have the capital and the profits that would pay for either jobs in a new industry as well as the social safety net.

Losing it on free trade

Gary North now demonstrates that he’s not only logically inept, but even appears to be willing to lie about his opponents in defense of his free trade dogma. I found this to be more than a little remarkable since I had previously considered him to be short-sighted and misguided on the topic, as well as rather lazy since he couldn’t be bothered to read the material on which he was commenting, but I never imagined that he would also be intellectually dishonest:

I have found over the years that when I debate with people who promote tariffs, meaning sales taxes on imported goods that are enforced by people with badges and guns, they always adopt arguments that apply only to America’s side of the border. They refuse to adopt those very same arguments for people on the other side of the border.

I challenge defenders of tariffs to state their arguments in terms of both of the people who want to trade, not just the American. The ethics and economics of restricted trade surely apply to the person who wants to trade on the other side of the invisible line known as a national border. If the arguments for restricted trade apply to the American economy, then surely they apply to the other nation’s economy. Logic and ethics do not change just because we cross an invisible judicial line. I take this position because I want the pro-tariff person to face the implications of his position.

It never ceases to amaze me that I am almost never able to persuade a person who defends tariffs to follow the logic of his argument. Without exception, the person insists that the invisible line dividing two jurisdictions called nations is economically significant, and therefore sales taxes on imported goods on the American side of the border are legitimate, wise, and beneficial to the vast majority of Americans. Yet, when I ask him to make exactly the same case with respect to the people on the other side of the border, which means either Canadians or Mexicans, the person has enormous difficulty in making his case. What seems utterly clear to him with respect to Americans on their side of the border seems ridiculous when he tries to state the case from the point of view of the Mexican or the Canadian on the other side of the border.

Why is this? Why is it that an argument that sounds utterly logical and utterly ethical from the point of view of an American who defends American tariffs on imported goods should not feel equally logical and equally ethical from the point of view of the Mexican or Canadian on the other side of the border?

There is a reason for this. His argument is ludicrous. When he applies it to people across the border, the argument becomes far more obviously ludicrous. So, he prefers not to consider what happens on the other side of the border.

I’ll type this very slow so that Mr. North can understand it because the argument isn’t ludicrous at all. National interests diverge. Nations compete. At times their interests run in parallel, at other times they are in direct opposition. It is in the American national interest that Americans prosper. It may or may not be in the American national interest that Mexico, China, or Russia prosper. Logic and ethics do not change depending upon the judicial line, but the objective pursued does. Just as it is not intrinsically unethical for an American to act in accordance with the American national interest, it is not automatically unethical for the Mexican to act in accordance with the interest of the Mexican people, even when both actions happen to oppose each other.

This really isn’t difficult to understand. The Minnesota Vikings and the Green Bay Packers play by the same rules of the game, and yet the Vikings’ objective is to get the football in the Green Bay end zone and the Packers’ objective is to keep it out. No one claims it is unethical for the Vikings to attempt to score or for the Packers to attempt to keep them from scoring. If we apply North’s hapless reasoning to NFL football instead of international trade, we’d have to conclude that both teams are acting illogically and unethically by simply playing the game.

North appears to be confusing the anti-free trade argument with the fair trade argument, which accepts free trade doctrine but argues it should only be applied on a reciprocal basis. I should be very curious to see Mr. North identify these “protectionist for me, but not for three” folks. I’ve certainly never read Ian Fletcher write anything about this unbalanced and hypocritical doctrine nor does it describe my own anti-free trade position.

Furthermore, I note that North isn’t discussing economics anymore, but the ethics and morality of free trade. But if we’re going to discuss the ethics and morality of free trade instead the economics, then it is necessary to consider whether it is moral for an American to place his own interests above every other American’s, and if it is ethical for a Mexican to place higher priority on the prosperity of the people of Peru above the prosperity of the people of Mexico. Is it right for Mr. North to starve his children in order to feed the children of Chile? Does he have no more responsibility to his relatives or to his neighbors than to the people of Argentina or Andorra?

And would it truly have been in the interests of either the American or the Russian people, or interests of the many nations under the Soviet heel, for the USA to prop up the Soviet economy through free trade? And if Mr. North is going to claim that there are no legitimate national interests or barriers to trade, does he understand that necessitates free international trade in plutonium, the smallpox virus, and armed drones, as well as granting green cards to as many members of the Red Army that China wishes to transport to the United States?

The foolish utopianism of North and his kind is usefully revealed in terms such as “the invisible line known as a national border”. The significant line isn’t geography, but rather people, and when the lines are not drawn in accordance with the population, trouble begins. Germany unified despite being divided into two different states because the Germans are one nation. Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia broke up because multiple nations were trapped together in one state. The European Union was founded on the principles North espouses and it is foundering because it refused to take those “invisible lines” into account. Nations are more than mere jurisdictions.

The observable fact is that if you scratch a free trader, you reveal the globalist underneath. And since there is no greater risk to human freedom than that posed by a central global state, they are working to bring about precisely that which they fear most. And in their myopic disregard for nations, societies, and civilization, they reveal themselves to be barbarians as well.

North’s perspective isn’t so much wrong as it is simple and short-sighted. After a decade of the disastrous Bush wars, most sensible people now understand that it is not in America’s interest nor is it America’s responsibility to police the world or bring democracy to the world. North’s objective is even more problematic, as he wants America to enrich the world at the expense of the American people.

One reason the free trade doctrine is so inherently untrustworthy is that its supporters reliably fail to understand that they are presenting various aspects of multiple different arguments as if they were one coherent case, which they quite clearly are not. Moreover, North is simply lying – yes, I am accusing him outright of lying – when he writes: “The difference between the defender of tariffs and the defender of market liberty is this: the defender of tariffs does not believe, nor does he go public, with a systematic defense of the legitimacy of tariffs on the other side of the border. What he wants is a no-tariff situation on the other side of the border, and a tariff law on this side of the border. He wants Americans to be able to sell whatever they want at the best possible price to people on the other side of the border. But he does not want to have people on the other side of the border to be legally allowed to sell at the best possible price for people on this side of the border.”

I am calling Mr. North out on this blatant lie and shameless misrepresentation of those advocating barriers to international trade. It is completely and blatantly false. I do believe, and I am quite willing to go public with a systematic defense of the legitimacy of tariffs on both sides of every international border. Every nation has the right to defend its own interests as its people see fit. The same logic in defense of American interests applies to the defense of Mexican, Canadian, and Chinese interests. Other nations have the same right, and indeed, the same responsibility, to utilize tariffs to protect their native industries and domestic markets. Now, due to the smaller size of many nations, logic may dictate that their tariff laws be different than the USA’s; there is no sense in protecting jobs that don’t exist in nonexistent industries, after all. But that doesn’t change the fact that North’s accusation is completely false.