… is from page 122 of my late, great teacher Leland Yeager’s, and David Tuerck’s, excellent and still-relevant 1966 book, Trade Policy and the Price System:
The [national] defense argument often routinely goes along for good measure with other pleas for protection. Almost everyone pretends to think that his industry is exceptional, and Congressmen hesitate to slap down arguments wrapped in the flag.
DBx: Of course, Congresswomen are as hesitant as are Congressmen to display the courage necessary to dismiss any of the torrent of faux claims that this industry and that product are ‘essential’ for national defense. (The typical successful politician is a thorough and abject coward. Calling such a person a “leader” is no more accurate than calling a whore “chaste.”)
Rent-seeking domestic producers shamelessly offer any excuse that can be sold to the public as a seemingly good reason for the public to make itself poorer so that those rent-seeking producers will be made artificially richer. And no excuse is more convenient – and, typically, more baseless – than “national security.”
