… is from page 35 of Benn Steil’s and Manuel Hinds’s great 2009 book, Money, Markets & Sovereignty:
Anti-globalization writers, in contrast to their pro-globalization counterparts, do not tether their arguments to the history of ideas. They do not defend a philosophy; they endorse no particular principles of just conduct or lawmaking. Rather, their arguments are largely based on defending visions of a sublime past, now being supplanted by what are alleged to be new and illegitimate forces.
DBx: Yep.
Misled by ignorance of the past, many of today’s protectionists demand that government exercise discretion to engineer tomorrow’s economy to be more like what these protectionists wrongly imagine was yesterday’s economy.
The only ‘principle’ at work to guide proponents of industrial policy is the principle that tells them that if they personally don’t fancy the details of today’s economy, they are entitled to have the state coerce their fellow citizens in order to (attempt to) change the details so that the resulting economy better satisfies the fancies of the industrial-policy proponents.
