"Enthusiasts for free trade and free flow of people, whom Mr. Trump sometimes derides as globalists, cherished the idea of a planet growing richer and freer together. Some of us still do.
But, ironically, it’s the authoritarian states that are most hurt by the retreat. China is dependent on the world to absorb its superfluity of manufactured goods. Russia and Saudi Arabia are economic pygmies that need a fast-growing global economy to buy their oil. A retrenching world would be less prosperous and harmonious but in such a world you would also rather be the United States than anybody else."
This impeccable analysis in the Wall Street Journal today pithily re-states what we have presented to our readers in theoretical politico-economic terms for the last few years. Let us recapitulate in point form the salient elements of this, our analysis:
1. Difference between "cosmopolitan economics" and "strategic economics". Imagine yourself in a train compartment. You possess an orange and your other passenger is admiring his loaded hand-gun. You suggest to this fellow that if he is hungry he can purchase your orange, in exchange for his gun. The lucky fellow agrees that this is a "fair free trade". This is the "free trade" cosmopolitan theory of economic exchange: what the Chinese Dictatorship calls a "win-win".
But the second you take hold of the loaded gun and your fellow passenger takes possession of his cherished orange, you point the loaded gun at him and ask him to hand over the orange and his wallet as well - on pain of getting a bullet through his brain! This is what is called the "strategic" theory of economics. Not "zero-sum"! This is pure. cold-blooded "win-lose": your death is my life (mors tua, vita mea - in Latin). This is the theory that the Chinese Dictatorship, Russia's Putin dictatorship and others actively practise!
2. Because of this, "wealth" in economics must never be seen as a "universal" or "cosmopolitan" value. The truth is that your "wealth" is my "poverty", and vice versa. Wealth never has been and never will be a "universal" value based on utility or welfare or any other substantive value! Wake up, people, I beg you!
Because of this, as a corollary and consequence to these points, in reality a huge recession may well be what we need to destroy the various Han Chinese and Russian and North Korean Dictators of this world!
Let me go back to the WSJ quotation above to seal my point:
"A retrenching world would be less prosperous and harmonious but in such a world you would also rather be the United States than anybody else."
What the Free World needs NOW is a recession to kill off these Dictatroships once and for all!
No comments:
Post a Comment