How unserious are the free enterprise types?

Posted Mon, Oct 17, 2005 at 10:32 am

Do the "free" trade, "free" enterprise types - those libertarians and conservaties who advocate generally open borders - have any kind of an argument? Have they thought things through? Are they, in a word, serious?

If the guest editorial "Nativism and the immigration issue" is any guide, the answer to all questions is "No". It's from Phil Kerpen, who's only identified as a "policy analyst". A couple links later, we find out he's with the Free Enterprise Fund. Their chairman is Mallory Factor, and those on their Policy Council are Jack Kemp, Lawrence Kudlow, and Arthur Laffer. From the screed:

The results of the recent special election in California's 48th Congressional District are a sober wakeup call to economic conservatives who believe in the free movement of goods, capital and labor.

I don't need to tell my readers that there's a difference between goods and people. The former just sit there on shelves in warehouses. On the other hand, people do things, they need things, they start revolutions, they commit crimes, they form communities, and on and on. If we import bad products we can just dispose of them. If we import bad people, things get much, much more complex.

And, of course, it's good to note that the "free" market types are scared of the voters finally waking up.

Self-appointed, vigilante immigration restrictionist Jim Gilchrist received a sizable 14.4 percent of the vote for Congress on a single-issue, immigrant bashing platform. Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, who endorsed Gilchrist, is trying, with some success, to raise immigrant-bashing to a top-tier issue in the 2008 elections.

I count six smears in just two sentences. Bravo! Of course, the SDUT might want to consider whether what little reputation it has is enhanced by printing food-throwing articles.

Anti-immigration sentiment is one symptom of a larger neo-Mercantilist disease that is also threatening the globalization of trade and capital flows. Unless true free-market conservatives tame these emotional arguments with the force of logic, much of the economic progress of the past century could be reversed.

You can see the "force" of logic in that and the preceding paragraph, although this latest para has just two smears so he's improving! The "force of logic" is on the side of Gilchrist and Tancredo; their arguments make sense and are supported by the vast majority of Americans. The only way the "free" market forces can win is through smears, lies, and propaganda.

Comments

John S Bolton (not verified)

Tue, 10/18/2005 - 23:23

Not only forgot, but set it up so that we're all supposed to be for all kinds of free trade, including free importation of consumers for the alternative welfare juggernaut. There's actually a wondrous trickery in the way he lays out his moral questions. The style is like that of leftists who reduce political issues to moral preferences; which allows politics as the ethics of aggression to be conveniently dropped. This way the question of whether an increase in aggression on the net taxpayer, is defensible, gets eliminated from consideration. Its like a leftist saying that morality requires us to build more welfare projects. Actually the question would be political; do we want more aggression in order to get more welfare projects. Next a strange twist takes place; the distinction between citizen and foreigner is called morally arbitrary, as if moral statements were subject to argumentation and refutation in the same manner as political ones. If so, then why would we want to give, through an increase in aggression on the net taxpayer, a medical insurance policy worth thousands a year, to foreigners here? Citizens differ morally and politically, in a quite essential way, from foreigners who commit hostile acts, by receiving traitorously diverted public funds. The government doesn't belong to itself, but to the current citizenry. The citizen is receiving from what he owns part of; the foreigner who receives net public subsidy here is accessory to treason. These are huge moral differences.

eh (not verified)

Mon, 10/17/2005 - 23:04

"labor"

That would be human beings, and when you consider the "free movement" of people, there is more involved than just their economic utility to the small fraction of the population that exploits them.

I'm sure he just forgot to mention this aspect.

John S Bolton (not verified)

Mon, 10/17/2005 - 23:03

There's another fallacy from these selfstyled purveyors of economic 'logic'. The implication is that unless you support free trade in people, you can't also be for free trade. Free trade doesn't, and can't mean free trade in absolutely everything. If it did, it would include free trade in stolen goods, but that would turn us towards unfreedom. The fallacy is equivocation, that slavetrader of unreason is equivocating free trade as it's ordinarily understood, with a different idea of free trade, which even contradicts it altogether.

John S Bolton (not verified)

Mon, 10/17/2005 - 22:45

Free trade in labor is very nonsensical; laborers are not traded, unless they're chattel slaves. What great logic: free trade equals slave trade. Why don't they say free migration of consumption or consumers? Neomercantilism is another piece of unreason in this context. Mercantilism tried to maximize the quantity of gold in a country. Immigration restrictionism attempts to maximize per capita income or wealth in a country, and can do it. Free migration of consumers and menials towards the richer welfare societies would just even out the income and unemployment levels of the world, and do no end of evil by increasing the aggression on the net taxpayer.