Protectionism --- Free Trade Poll

OK, wow, I don't even get what's going on here anymore. WTF...

It seems like we're arguing all of Adam Smith and not free trade, how'd that happen?

Stony -- Friedman is very free market, but not 100% unfettered capitalism. I do remember reading him railing against monopolies, so I did read some trust-busting into him. Not a lot, but something.

Writing -- Don't know where you were going with Kantorovich, but he won the Nobel for a mathematical formula for resource optimization, nothing that was Marxist in any way, FWIW.

Whoever-- Really don't have any idea where the child labor stuff is coming from re: free trade. I can see it re: unfettered capitalism, but for free trade, what's the argument? I'm completely missing it.

 

It's "capitalism"

"Capitolism" is a sports term for ensuring parity aka protecting owners from their idiocy.

 

Again, it seems like you're absolutely content to wait another millennium or so for "organic" economic evolution (a.k.a The Invisible Hand) to solve poverty rather than to intervene by means of any combination of social, regulatory, tax or trade policies. In a world that ALREADY has sufficient wealth to end poverty but unfortunately is concentrated in the hands of a greedy few. Save the animals, screw the people.

You say, "I'd love to wave a wand and alleviate all economic suffering. I'm also smart enough to know that it isn't possible." So you advocate we do nothing? Is that true. That can't be your position, right?

Should we just not watch? Should we just not hear? Should we not read about people dying for fear we will fill some weak human emotional need to intervene? You know, do something about. I don't get it, Ragu. What should we do in our lifetimes while we wait for the Invisible Hand to bring economic utopia?