Do you not find dispiriting the persistent manner in which some of your regular commenters taunt people whose views on trade are less libertarian than yours?

Thank you for the article. Cards on the table: I view Ricardian theory about the way Pat Buchanan views it; I am no trade liberal. You would regard me as one of those that stands on the other side of the great trade debate. However, not having read Russell Roberts' book but having followed the link you have provided, I do have a question.

The page you have linked says,

Ricardo takes the reader and Ed Johnson into the future to see an America of free trade and an America of complete self-sufficiency.

Is this an accurate description of the relevant part of the book?

The reason I ask is that I believe the choice suggested—between unimpeded international flows of goods and capital on the one hand and autarky on the other—to be a false choice. I don't know any economic nationalists that want autarky. We want traditional U.S. tariffs in partial substitution for income taxes and are willing to pay a theoretical, second-order GDP penalty to get them. We want not autarky but rather a significantly enhanced degree of national self-sufficiency, of the kind the U.S. actually enjoyed from 1816 through 1939, an extended period of extraordinary economic growth. In Mike Huckabee's alliteration, we wish to retain the ability to feed ourselves, fuel ourselves and fight for ourselves with weapons we make ourselves. This does not mean that we are fundamentally against importing bananas and Chilean grapes—or, for that matter, importing anything the U.S. consumer is willing to pay a moderate tariff to obtain, especially when the tariff does not disappear but rather goes into the U.S. treasury, which the U.S. consumer must one way or another fill. But we do prefer to make things here when we can, and we believe that the citizen, a producer as well as a consumer, ought to have as broad an array of choices before him in production as he does in consumption.

You know the rest of the argument, I think, so I'll let it rest there, but I did want to ask if the one sentence quoted was a fair representation of the relevant part of the new book you so like.

Regards,

Howard Harrison

This is strictly anecdotal and not proof of anything, but as to the diminishing diversity of global products: I sat in a meeting room this morning waiting to tape some settlement statements for the BP explosion cases, attorneys from California, Texas, Louisiana, and victims from all over central and south America, as I waited I peeled and munched my Leechee nuts and not one single person among all those even had a clue as to what I was eating.

Diminishing diversity of global products? I suspect you went out on a limb there. My Leechee nuts are just the tip of that iceberg of things most don't have a clue about.

You're absolutely right that such action by the neighbors is a barrier in its own right, and carries with it the problems you mention. However, the case where the cost of 20 idlers is greater than the cost of supporting 20 unneeded, inefficient strawberry growers is the only case in which the neighborhood is better off putting the idlers to work unproductively growing strawberries. My point with that comment was simply that the same effects could be achieved even in that limited case without the barrier being imposed, which may be a distinction with no difference.

I think the "real answer" is that the idlers go find a neighborhood with a shortage of capacity, but I didn't read that possibility into the hypothetical. Similarly, I assume that your stipulation of idle capacity means that no matter how free and innovative, the neighbors simply can't find a productive use for these people, which I don't think will typically be the case. Those two constraints gave rise to the comment you object to now.

In paying more for the strawberries under these conditions, the neighbors are basically buying more than strawberries. They're also buying protection from petty crime and reducing whatever other costs are associated with the idlers. They're still each determining, though, how much all of that extra benefit is worth, rather than having a worth determined for them and the price imposed (and sale forced) on them from above. Because of that, I still think the neighborhood is better off in this case than with the imposed barrier in place, even if only slightly.

You had me up until your suggestion that the people could be put to work growing strawberries. It seems to me that a subsidy for domestic business is equivalent to a tariff on foreign business.

Incidentally, there is a collective action/free-riding problem with the "there's nothing keeping the neighbors from creating make-work for them" approach. If everybody else in my neighborhood is paying the town drunk to grow strawberries, then I don't have to. So, you usually see this solution from government (which can force people to pay). And, with that, you have another trade barrier.