The Post-Fact Society

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB-wmOYelnM"]Sam the Eagle "You Are All Weirdos!" - YouTube[/ame]

No. But I know how to put on a bandage; therefore, I'm qualified to perform open heart surgery.

This is what it feels like for me when ppl make outlandish claims based on simple observations relating to culture and language.

Just add "scientist" after your job title and hey - you're as much a scientist as real scientists! Voila!

Next, add "deep space" in front of your job title, and watch it become........aweeesome!

For instance, once American Brummie graduates, he'll finally become a Deep Space Janitorial Services Scientist with his awesome diploma.

You know what's funny...since 'ignoring me,' you have responded to two posts of mine that were not quoted by anyone else. What's more sad:

1) That even after ignoring me, you still have to feel better by insulting my intellect, OR

2) That you must sift through my posts anyway and wait for ones you feel capable of responding to.

Per the request of a bipartisan commission (VFish and TPH), we are moving discussion of Adam Smith here. Here is the background:

http://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1812125&page=85

Michael, this entire section refers to the abuses of government under the monarchy. The one word I want you to examine is domestic when it refers to this passage. Adam Smith would have no trouble tampering with the economies of other countries, a practice we now deem unfair under free-trade rules. Adam Smith would have liked tariffs, duties, excise taxes, and other ways to promote domestic industry at the expense of competing abroad industries. His vision of free trade is not the same as yours. Using him in this manner without his permission is wrong. Please, re-read the Wealth of Nations and get back to us. And do it from his shoes in the 18th Century, not yours from the 21st.

This is the Post-Fact Society's raison d'etre. I am just going to publish, in order, linked, this series of poll headlines, and then explain the central limit theorem so that there's no confusion over how accurate polls are.

Most Want to Cut Taxes, Not Spend More

Most Americans - Republicans Included - Don't Want Entitlements Cut

Americans Like Balanced Budget Amendment

And the punchline...

Americans Want Leaders to Follow Public's Views More Closely


Now for central limit theorem:

The central limit theorem states that if the sample is of a sufficient size, the sampling distribution will be normal (for the sake of these polls, normal means a reasonable distribution of these beliefs across the US voting/adult population). This means that these polls are, within the margin of error, recording a population that simultaneously believes we can cut taxes, keep spending the same, balance the budget, and only wish our leaders listened to us. These are not inaccurate. They are not measuring the wrong subset of the population. While the questions for Rasmussen may be leading, I can find a dozen more. This pretty much reflects the American thinking right now.

You are just plane wrong.

"To give the monopoly of the home-market to the produce of domestic industry, in any particular art or manufacture, is in some measure to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, and must, in almost all cases, be either a useless or a hurtful regulation. If the produce of domestic can be brought there as cheap as that of foreign industry, the regulation is evidently useless. If it cannot, it must generally be hurtful. "

Is as clear as can be.

This author goes so far as to use the term "law" when refering to smiths view on trade:

Smith's Law, Free Trade, and Free Immigration

http://www.friesian.com/smith.htm

You seem to be taking two small points out of context and blowing them out of proportion.

1) Smith was a nationalist and he wanted to see domestic production do well and
2) Smith Favored retaliatory tariffs.

neither of these points contradict his basic support of free trade.

In the case of 1) he felt attempts to "protect" domestic producers would backfire in the long run. by protecting producers that could not compete with foreign producers it would restict the flow of capital into the areas of production within the country that could compete and in turn harm domestic consumer and producers of the country in the long run.

in the case of 2) yes I would agree Smith is different from the "free traders" of today who don't agree that retalaitory tariffs work, but Smith's entire reason for supporting these tariffs was to try to force the other country to remove their tariffs. He thought they would be temporary in nature and that the short term pain would be outweighed by the long term gain of getting the other country to remove their tariff.

You keep saying that I need to Read Smith, but indeed I have, and indeed I have also provided some long passages from him to support my point of view. I see no evidence that you have read anymore than a few quotes that you have gotten off a website and have no idea how those quotes fit into Smiths larger body of work.

Wow you really believe that Smith's main beef was with the monarchy?

I have nothing to add.

Whatever. Anybody who has read Smith, understands the points I have made.

My guess is you have read some stuff from "progressives" complaining about how some Republicans misuse Smith (which indeed they do) and have somehow warped that into a belief that Smith was not a free market free trade pioneer. (which he was)

He was a pioneer. He was a radical for his time. But he's not the economic messiah that the conservative movement has hijacked him out to be. His goal was to see Britain the world's pre-eminent nation, and to undercut other nations' ability to wage war against his. You read him as though Smith were alive today, not alive 230 years ago. Just like the Founding Fathers. I suggest that before you make glittering generalities about what I'm saying you go back and read what I'm saying.

Like I said, it seems like in this whole discussion you have been trying to argue so hard against some perceived "hijacking" that for some reason you think I am a part of, that you seen to be twisting this whole discussion into something it is not.

OK, as I have said multiple times he was indeed a nationalist. Although I don't think it really accurate, I will accept for a second your asserionthat his goal was to see "Britain the world's pre-eminent nation". The problem is he would have conceded that that was the goal of the mercantalists also. His arguments were not based on "I love my country more than you" they were based on "we both love our country, but you are mistaken about what is best for it."

Although had disdain for some countries (ie the Dutch), he had great respect for others (ie the French). His general point of view was that free trade would enrich all nations and that that was nothing to fear because Britain was capable of continuing to be the leader if it took advantage of it's own competitive advantages, which he believed were great.

There you go again. If you read Smith in his entirety, there is no way you can come away with that type of conclusion. You are obviously taking a couple of quotes out of context.

It is about as accurate as me saying Smith wanted thought trade unions were bad, based on his famous quote:

"“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

No I do not.

The issue of "if Smith were alive today" came up and you made a bold statement that he would hate multinational corporations, based on the body of Smith's work that is a very questionable assumption.

We have both agreed that Smith was a nationalist, but I (and just about every other person who have read Smith) also believe he was a free trader. Smith's ultimate hero is the consumer. He hated just about anything that he felt hurt consumers in the long run(even if those consumers were foreigners).

So the question becomes would Smith have believed multinational corporations were good or bad for the consumer in the long run? That is a good question and therer is no simple answer.

I don't think you even understand the arguments being made by the prgressives about the "hijacking" of Smith. The progressives feel the conservatives harp too much on Smiths nationalism, not too little as you seem to be implying.

In fact progressives today would probably criticize a conservative who misused Smith's "goal" of seeing "Britain the world's pre-eminent nation" in order to support multinationals. Progressives today believe that conservatives are trying to "mislead" you into believing that if Smith was a modern day american, he would support conservatives and be a modern day "imperialist" who would see multinationals as a way of the U.S. attemting to "control" the developing world in order to maintain it's empire.

The progressive argument is that Smith was not an extreme "nationalist" like the "conservatives" of today and would have opposed the eploitation of the third world unlike modern day "free traders".

Of course the true conservative argument is that Smith would not have believed it is exploitation, he would believed that multinationals in the long run will actually lift the third world out of poverty and benifit the consumers domestically and american producers will gravitate to other areas where we have a competitive advantage which will only strengthen our producers in the long run.

The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

I have read what you have been saying, and just about everything you have written about Smith has been incorrect, or has distorted his writings in order to support some argument that conservatives have "hijacked" Smith that I don't think you truly understand.

For starters, I believe you and I are talking past one another on some things. But there are some things you need to consider:

1) Comparative advantage came through Ricardo some 40 years after Smith. Smith defined absolute advantage. Those are two very different things. If you'd like to include all Classical Economists in the same category, then we need to take lots of things into account.

2) The definition of free trade under Smith is different than the definition of free trade today. When Smith was writing, colonies were perfectly acceptable - he just preferred that colonists be able to trade with others and prohibit the one-way traffic of mercantilism.

3) Nationalism and multi-national corporations are inherently mutually-exclusive. Which country runs the MNC? To whom are they beholden? Which nation-state gets the tax revenue? How does the MNC choose between trading partners in the event of a war?

Chew these over.

No. The progressive complaint about the misuse of Smith generally runs to the conservative assumption that Smith opposed all regulation because the invisible hand could take care of it. Smith (unlike say, the later generation of "political economists") was not an economic libertarian.

OK, that is the complaint on domestic issues, but that is not mutually exclusive with their complaints about the misrepresentation of his positions on free trade.

I did not say comapartive advantage, I said competative advantage. Either way it is all the same strain of thought anyway, and I don't see what the point of discussing the minutia serves.

OK, so how is that relevant to the discussion?

Only because you have some warped view of what nationalism means that is completely contrary to Smith's point of view.

huh, countries don't "run" domestic or MNC's.

Their shareholders.

Those are questions that Smith would have to "cew over" but I don't think they would be dealbreakers as far as weather or not he would support MNC's..

I want you to think about this "hypothetical*" and then tell me how you believe Adam Smith or David Ricardo would have written:

In response to an aggressive faction Taiwan's pro-Independence party taking power, China invades Taiwan. The United States declares 'limited' war on China. North Korea takes advantage of the chaos to invade South Korea. South Korea and Japan join the US side. Given that China will, if successful, take control of the Spratly Islands if the war does not resort to nuclear weaponry, Vietnam and the Philippines also enter the war on behalf of the US. To counter Vietnam's influence, Laos and Thailand enter the war on behalf of China.

Wal-Mart and Nike are but two multinational corporations who have ties to both sides of the belligerent powers. To which side do they affirm their allegiance? Do they continue free trade with both sides? If (and when) the US initiates a blockade of Chinese ports, will these companies lobby Washington to lift the blockade? If China launches weapons at American cities on the west coast, do they lobby the CCP to halt? If the US/Chinese government seizes control of Wal-Mart's factories/distribution centers, will they retaliate by joining the other side?

I do believe that anyone born in an era of great-power rivalry would have seen the complications of multi-national corporations and been against them for the goal of promoting their own country's absolute advantages.


* For those of you who consider this hypothetical to be a wild idea, read popular mechanics' article. The DoD and State won't publish their war-games plans for China today, but it's a good bet that if push comes to shove in Taiwan, neither side will behave rationally. Trust me, this is a nightmare scenario for both powers that will only get worse as relations between China and Taiwan deteriorate and China's economic growth continues.

Ok, I will address the scenario below, but I think the more critical question is, would Smith think the existence of MNC's would serve as a factor that would have helped cause this war, or serve as a factor to help limit the war. I think he would answer MNC's help reduce the possibility of war and since it is in their own interests, they will help press to resolve it as quickly as possible.

Neither. They try to avoid taking sides.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

No.

I think Smith would have thought the complications were a good thing as they would have give rival powers less reasons to go to war.

And I think the influence that the MNC's will have on the governments will serve as a mitigating factor against that irrationality. I think the more trade between the U.S. and China the less likely this nightmare scenario comes to be.

I scarcely believe that Wal-Mart would approach the US government and ask them to lift a wartime blockade of a fellow belligerent. Would Ford have objected to the US government militarizing its factories? There was a time when countries used to fight trading partners all the time - an MNC's members would likely break up the company into its belligerent power's pieces and go from there. In fact, that time was when Smith was writing - it has only been recently when countries go to war with people with whom they do not trade.

They can't complain when someone misuses their point of view to suit their own propaganda needs.

Except that, unlike medicine, political philosophy has not substantively evolved in hundreds of years an those texts have much relevance today.