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Protectionism is certain to engulf the global economy
Nothing can stop economic nationalism from turning the credit crunch into a catastrophic Depression
It is generally accepted that the Depression of the 1930s was not caused solely by crashes in asset prices and output. Their killer concomitant was beggar-thy-neighbour economic nationalism.
As this spectre rears its head once more, it is therefore not surprising that our leaders are urging us to shun siren calls for the protection of jobs, trade and industries from foreign competition.
On their side they have the theory of comparative advantage, which holds that our impending impoverishment will accelerate if the flow of labour, capital and resources is obstructed. Yet their message is doomed to be ignored. For although economic openness benefits us all collectively, it is pointless to pretend that it benefits us equally as individuals.
Those who succeed in shutting out foreigners' goods, services and workers will generally gain more from doing so than they will lose through the overall harm they will cause. This is blindingly obvious. So, why are government ministers, EU commissioners and other such worthies unable to see it?
They appear to have fallen prey to what logicians call the fallacy of division. This occurs when somebody assumes that something which is true of an entity must necessarily be true of its parts. Perhaps the most obvious of logical blunders, it has nonetheless been claiming victims ever since the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras held that whatever elements made up water would be wet.
To prevent protectionism, we should need some means of ensuring that the general weal could trump the interests of individuals. Ants seem to enjoy such a facility. People, on the other hand, do not. On the contrary, we have organised ourselves into national tribes that cannot help but build barricades against their own salvation, even though, unlike ants, we know what we are doing.
Stand by for the final, self-inflicted phase of the current catastrophe. ·
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I totally agree with peter Simmons, I couldn't have said it better. Globalisation doesn't offer security as it pits people in the first world against the huddled masses of the third world. Britian, the US and Australia in particular have gutted their manufacturing industries and opened their borders to nations that do not reciprocate. If globalisation was good, we would all benefit but this is not the case. China is the most unfair trading partner anyone could trade with; high import tariffs, quotas on foreign goods, bad transparency, destruction of intellectual property rights, need local partner in most industries so locals can rip off technology and lax laws that govern the whole process. China has a massive trade surplus with the rest of the world, this is unsustainable. China has been so selfish and greedy and the leaders of the 'free world' have sat by and corrected nothing. Protectionism protects industries and made Britian the manufacturing hub of the world and as soon as trade barriers were lifted Britian's industries started to move offshore. To be fair it is not just China but all asian nations that rely on overseas conumption while not developing their own internal engine. As we have seen with this downturn asian countries have been the worse affected. Free trade, milti-culturalism and immigration are killing the West. Our finances are stretched and political correctness is killing creativity. I totally support protectionism as we can not compete against nations with much lower wages and conditions. I don't mind paying more to provide employment and correct our awful imbalance in trade.
An absurd attack on an utterly false threat. This country is so dependent on foreigners for it's survival that any remote idea that our continued dealings with them could be in any way jeopardised by a few feeble strikes is moronic.
Any token moves to try to regain some tiny bit of independence should be welcomed in the face of EU dominance of our politics, transnational corporate control of our economy, American control of our defences.
Protectionism was a foundation of our growth, as it was with USA and other Western nations.
China's rise had been highly protectionist, restricting foreign trade, investment, imports, keeping it's currency devalued and becoming an economic success as a result.
Now, a certain comeuppance, payback, is upon us. To some degree, who knows how much, we in the west must suffer a loss in wealth by repaying at least part of the massive debt our economies now owe to China and other big creditors.
Protectionism may have been possible in the 1930s; it is not open to us now, as we are subordinate to outside powers greater than us, directing and controlling us.
A convoluted article which obscures much of the point the writer is trying to make under spurious phrases and Greek philosophers.
I think he is claiming that we should leave the recession to globalisation to sort out, should accept foreign workers being shipped in to do work we have plenty of trained workers capable of, and embrace the global capitalist mirage of unlimited growth just as long as we can all keep our nerve.
Apart from this being so clearly disregarding of individual's lives, it is utterly wasteful and environmentally destructive, and is the cause of the present environmental problems that threaten to engulf all of us. It makes better sense to have food and goods produced locally rather than flown or shipped half way round the planet. And if we are not to be content with being the recipients of global capitalism's largesse if it so chooses, we must concentrate on being self sufficient, and expose the idiocy of also moving workers around from country to country dependant on where work currently exists to be exploited. Globalisation is a very bad idea, it destroys communities as well as the ecosystem, exploits everyone and everything and profits none except the super rich.