I urge traditional believers in laissez-faire to remember that the market economy is a dynamic order. It is misleading to look at "jobs lost" due to some factor or other and ignore the jobs created by the same underlying processes. For example, I am quite sure that over 100 million US jobs have been destroyed by machinery during the 20th century, in the sense that one could count up every single job that was eradicated by the introduction of a particular labor-saving device. Naturally this doesn't mean that currently the vast majority of Americans are unable to find work, and that those who do must sell their labor hours for pennies. Yet arguments comparable to this lie behind much of the anti-globalization hysteria.
Before we let Dr. Murphy go, you should read this:
"...[I]t's not merely misleading, but 100% counterproductive, to oppose New World Order, backroom multinational corporation/NGO/Third World slave labor camp deals by saying one has "second thoughts on free trade." Yes, the true friend of free markets and liberty opposes thousand-page regulatory documents like NAFTA and GATT. If a multinational corporation cuts a deal with a petty tyrant and gets villagers to make sneakers at gunpoint, that's not "free trade" by any stretch."
...
Until the critics can come up with at least one actual recommendation that is (a) a deviation from laissez-faire and (b) will make Americans richer, I see no reason to reject the presumption of liberty. As is so often the case, not only is freedom just, it is also pragmatic.
No comments:
Post a Comment