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by tivert 603 days ago
> Otherwise completely eliminating our auto industry would be an enormous national security risk.

But I have been told zealous adherence to free market dogma will guarantee national security, without explicitly considering it!

[Also, I'm being sarcastic. I thought people would pick up on the double-standard in my original comment, but I guess free marketers can be that kooky sometimes. Everyone should realize by now China is playing a different game vis-a-vis trade than the free marketers want to play.]
1 comments
IncreasePosts 603 days ago
Do any free market absolutists actually say these things, or are you just attacking a strawman?

I assumed they would say something like tariffs=bad, unless it's to overcome market manipulation by some state actor.

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Neonlicht 603 days ago
The uncomfortable truth is that industry IS state politics.

The Volkswagen CEO has the German chancellor on speed dial. If your government's politicians have an emergency session on the future of a particular company there is no "free market".

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tivert 603 days ago
> Do any free market absolutists actually say these things, or are you just attacking a strawman?

Oh, they totally do. See https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/26/mcdonalds-peace-nagorno... (paywall bypass: https://archive.is/lNwNQ) for an example:

> Friedman’s claim was simple: The benefits of economic integration reduce the policy choices open to governments, making war—which disrupts that integration—so unattractive as to be practically unthinkable. If that sounds like the theory of the capitalist peace as understood by Montesquieu, Adam Smith, and Richard Cobden, well, it pretty much was.

If you're going all-in on the free market and globalization, you need an answer to the national security objections, and that (unconvincing) answer is the risk to profit that conflict represents makes conflict unthinkable.

The thing that free market absolutists frequently forget that market values are not the only values, even among market participants. That's especially forgotten by forum participants who read a book proceed to swing around Econ 101 like it's a club.

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