To John Horvat and his blogpost on a Christian approach to the tariff issue. In his article, Horvat sees the tariff issue as being argued over by two groups: those who promote free trade with the fewest possible restraints vs those who want to control trade according to how it impacts culture. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
Though Horvat makes a useful distinction between the economics of those who favor as much free trade as possible vs those who want to check economics at the door of culture, he misses a basic point about economics. That being that those who favor more and more unrestricted free trade are not approaching the subject as economists; instead, their only interest here is in commerce. For commerce is defined as (see http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/commerce.html ):
Exchange of goods or services for money or in kind, usually on a scale large enough to require transportation from place to place or across city, state, or national boundaries.On the other hand, economics is defined as (see https://www.britannica.com/topic/economics ):
[the] social science that seeks to analyze and describe the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth.
What is missing from the free trade perspective is the paying of attention to production. For production involves workers and then the society and the culture that depends on those workers. Production also involves the environmental impact of production as well. What the advocates of free trade focus on are the immediate returns from the exchange of goods. This feeds the embracing of the ethic that calls for maximizing profits. And the maximizing profits ethic focuses first on the welfare of the owners. A secondary focus is paid to the consumers but only to the extent that it serves the owners. For the maximizing profits ethic is a cannibalizing ethic that devours all other ethical standards and values. For all other standards and values must be sacrificed when one makes one's goal the creation of as much profit as possible.
The emphasis on maximizing profits makes Horvat's suggestion of Natural Protectionism DOA. For Natural Protectionism is nothing more than Adam Smith's teaching on the Invisible Hand, if memory serves. So once owners, and then consumers after them, embrace the maximizing profits ethics, concern for local preferences is easily sacrificed just as all other standards and values are to serve the maximizing of profits.
Aside from what has just been noted above, Horvat's description of those who want to at least somewhat control economics because of its impact on culture is a portrayal of those who want democracy to control economics, which includes commerce.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Dan Hugger and his blogpost on self-deceit, utopian ideologies, and Communism. This appeared in the Acton blog.
Not knowing how the the term Communism is being used above, I will offer the following points.
First, Communism/Socialism is not a monolith. And note that not all Socialists have utopian expectations. How can that be? It is possible because not all who follow Marx fully agree with him or interpret him the same way.
Second, those who claim that their pet political-economic system is the best of all time and cannot improved on or be beat by another system have already implied that they hold to a utopia of their own. Unlike Marx's utopia, their utopia is a relative one as its results are compared with the results of other systems. Thus, those who believe that free markets are the all time best way of doing commerce, note I wrote 'commerce,' not 'economics,' and that they cannot be improved on have already implied that we have entered a utopia of sorts. And then what was said above about utopian ideologies applies to systems that are promoted as producing relative utopias.
Third, conservatives who portray the Communism/Socialism practiced in the Soviet Union, Red China, Cuba, etc. as the only form of Communism/Socialism that exists are either being disingenuous or have deliberately limited their reading about Communism/Socialism to sources that are wholly antagonistic to Marx and Marxism. That means that they are being either deliberately deceitful or they are speaking out of ignorance. Those who have never read Marx and the writings of his various followers are free to say what they want to about Marxism, they are just unqualified to do so.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 24
To Joe Carter with his blogpost that cites Samuel Gregg’s attempt to make a patriotic case for free trade. This appeared in the Acton blog.
Whether a patriotic case can be made for free trade depends on what we identify as being American and thus what we call patriotic. According to the cited article by Samuel Gregg (see http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/03/21211/ ), embracing free trade is good for commerce, allows America to be more innovating, and forces America to be more flexible and adaptable. All of that goes into what Gregg, and Carter, think of as making America great and it is that search for America's greatness that Gregg calls patriotic.
But there are problems with what free trade apologists advocate. For one thing, and Gregg's article provides an example for this, free trade apologists fail to give America's past protectionist policies their due. Yes, there were trade-offs with those policies, but those policies allowed America to develop its own industries survive foreign competition. For free trade allows foreign nations with more developed industries to compete in a developing nation with domestic industries and those domestic industries often have less chance to survive (see https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/ha-joon-chang-protectionism-the-truth-is-on-a-10-bill-5334137.html ), Thus free trade can partially enforce an economic caste system as more developed nations are found 'kicking away the ladder' of protectionism from developing nations (see http://www.paecon.net/PAEtexts/Chang1.htm ).
In addition, as Gregg sees free trade calling on workers to be more 'adaptable and plan for the future more carefully, workers are more likely to see the work place as being more volatile as the continual switching from job to job becomes the norm. This puts many American workers in a bind for not only must they make enough to pay for immediate expenses, they are also expected to prepare for sizable fuure expenses such as college education for their children and their own retirement. In the meantime, those who benefit most from the free trade that is meant to provide lower costs for the consumer are benefiting the most from the deal. This might serve as a partial explanation for why America has seen a steady increase in wealth disparity over the past few decades. All of that shows that free trade apologists are more concerned with a tunnel view of commerce as opposed to the wide-angle picture that is provided by the discipline of economics. For economics is not only concerned with commerce, but it is concerned with production as well.
Also, those who define America by its performance in commerce might have grounds for wrapping the flag around free trade. But those who place a high value on democracy cannot. For free trade continually severs business's accountability to the government. And when that government is a working democracy, then we find that free trade makes businesses less responsive to democracy.
Finally, those who condemn "Communism" for the unintended consequences of its quest for utopia while promoting free trade for all nations in all circumstances are themselves promoting their own utopia. In reality, both free trade and protectionism are human models of thought with neither one being neither a monolith nor perfect. Free trade and protectionism stand on opposing poles on the same continuum. And varying degrees of each one works at different times for different nations. Those who believe otherwise are the ones who show themselves to be least flexible and adaptable.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 27
To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that uses the myth of a frog that refuses to leave a pot of slowly boiling water with the scientific consensus on climate change. This appeared in the Heidelblog.
What I learned from this article is that frogs who reside in slowly boiling water can still demonstrate more intelligence than some humans. I also learned that theologians struggle with logic. Take the comparison of the past accepted truth that earth was the center of the universe and that science is settled on climate change used in order to give an example of how a once accepted truth was exposed as being false. Besides the fact that the latter is stated too ambiguously to make a legitimate comparison, the data on which each accepted truth is based is significantly different in terms of sources and amount of data. Such differences makes the comparison invalid for the point being made.
However, the association of religiously conservative Christianity with a rejection of the warnings about climate change does harm the reputation of the Gospel to both political non-conservatives and even some political conservatives. And considering that businesses stand to lose profits when acting on the available scientific consensus on climate change, we should remember the times in Church history when the dominant branch of the Church sided with wealth and power during pre-revolutionary times of nations like France, Russia, and Spain. That is because when their respective revolutions came, not only was the reputation of the Gospel harmed, Christians suffered unnecessary persecution for the alliance.
