"The danger to 'the West comes not from a handful of terrorists crossing borders, but from the millions of university graduates crossing from academia into adulthood."

"Globalisation is here and cannot be stopped. With cheap and easy transportation around the globe (unless a country walls itself off--like North Korea--with similar meaning and consequences), the differences in race and culture of 100 years ago are going to melt away.

"Take the worldwide growth of English, and American English in particular. The French reportedly hate the growing use of English words. It cannot be stopped. Take the growth of interracial marriage, unheard of 60 years ago. It cannot be stopped. Neither can interfaith marriages and other 'mixed marriages.' ...

"You may bemoan the loss of national or regional identity, but it cannot be stopped.

"Generally, what goes into the mixing process are the best elements of each culture. Or so it seems to me, and it makes sense: why would people of culture B value the things about [a] culture A that are objectively inferior? ...

"So, to the extent that people feel turned off or threatened by people coming into their country who look different and act differently, that concern is going to fade into the background over the next 20 years.

"Differences over ideas, not foods or dress, are an entirely different matter. The difference between Islamic jihadists and [others] is a matter of literal life and death, not something optional. Even there, globalisation will have a big impact. The ultimate defeat of Islamism will be accomplished by young people in the Islamic countries seeing the rational values of the West. That's unless the West commits suicide---a distinct possibility.

"The oft-noted "moral weakness of the West" has become "God damn America!" [and god damn the West]. The cause is not immigrants; the cause is the (Kantian) ideas taught in our schools and universities.

"The danger to [the West] comes not from a handful of terrorists crossing the border[s], but from the millions of university graduates crossing from academia into [adulthood]. ... "

~ Harry Binswanger from his post 'Immigration—some mostly new thoughts'

"Globalisation encourages the capitalist engine of growth."

"Globalisation encourages the capitalist engine of growth. If people understood how generous that engine has been they would have less enthusiasm for protectionism or socialism or environmentalist or economic nationalism in any of their varied forms. Most educated people believe that the gains to income from capitalism’s triumph have been modest, that the poor have been left behind, that the Third World (should we start calling it the Second?) has been immiserised in aid of the First, that population growth must be controlled, that diminishing returns on the whole has been the main force in world economic history since 1800. All these notions are factually erroneous. But you’ll find all of them in the mind of the average professor of political philosophy."

~ Deirdre McCloskey from her review of Thomas Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree and John Gray’s False Dawn

Super-abundant economic progress

EVER SINCE THE INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION in the nineteenth century and ever-increasing global freedom in this one, human progress has been on a roll -- so says author and rational optimist Marian Tupy. He outlined his arguments and data a few nights ago at an enjoyable NZ Initiative presentation.

Tupy is the editor of HumanProgress.org, the world's most comprehensive database tracking improvements in human wellbeing, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, and co-author of the acclaimed book Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet.

He's one of the good guys.

Miserabilist Thomas Malthus famously expressed the idea that while resources would only expand at a linear rate, population will expand exponentially -- a disaster waiting to happen. But Malthus was writing about rabbits, or animals without the brain that humans have; and he was writing before the industrial revolution, when that brain was put to powerful practical use. Malthus was not just wrong, but spectacularly wrong, as Tupy's data abundantly proves.

Take that Malthus!

In just the last four decades alone, commodities across the board have become more abundant thanks to globalisation and increasing freedom. Even in sub-Saharan Africa, long a source of concern, the average calorie intake is now ticking up to 2,500!

Take that Paul Erlich!

THAT FAMOUS PANGLOSSIAN THOMAS BABINGTON Macaulay talked in the nineteenth century about the inevitability of progress: “In every age," said Macaulay, "everybody knows that up to his own time, progressive improvement has been taking place; ... On what principle is it that with nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?” It's still possible to remain optimistic even with the many steps backwards anti-freedom forces insist we take.

I was reminded of Peter Boettke's analogy of the horse race between Smith, Schumpeter, and Stupidity -- the progress of Smith's Division of Labour and Schumpeter's progress in technology (well explained by our presenter) has to continually stay ahead of the various degrees of Stupidity inflicted on us all. It's a tribute to human reason and the power of human freedom to wield it that we have to thank for continuing and ongoing progress.

OUR PRESENTER DID GET A LITTLE  pushback from a questioner who interrogated his concept of abundance. Is abundance always good, asked his questioner? A super-abundance of nuclear weapons, for example, or opioids, is hardly a good thing for human progress, he maintained.

It's a fair point, and it resonates with those who argue that to expect infinite growth on a finite planet you must be either insane or an economist. For both points, I think, economist George Reisman makes a profound point in response: the loss of the concept of economic progress.

Tupy still talks of human progress but of economic growth. Reisman (a student of Von Mises) would suggest he'd be better to combine the two to answer both objections: i.e. to talk of economic progress rather than economic growth.

Growth is a concept that applies to individual living organisms. An organism grows until it reaches maturity. then it declines, and sooner or later dies. The concept of growth is also morally neutral [the point made by our questioner], equally capable of describing a negative as a positive: tumours and cancers can grow. Thus the concept of growth both necessarily implies limits and can easily be applied negatively.

In contrast, the concept of progress applies across succeeding generations of human beings. The individual human beings reach maturity and die. But because they possess the faculty of reason, they can both discover new and additional knowledge and transmit it to the rising generation ... with each succeeding generation receiving a greater inheritance of knowledge than the one before it and making its own fresh contribution to knowledge. This continuously expanding body of knowledge, insofar as it takes the form of continuously increasing scientific and technological knowledge and correspondingly improved capital equipment, is the foundation of continuous economic progress.

Progress is a concept unique to man: it is founded on his possession of reason and thus his ability to accumulate and transmit a growing body of knowledge across the generations. Totally unlike growth, whose essential confines are the limits of a single organism, progress has no practical limit. Only if man could achieve omniscience would progress have to end. But the actual effect of the acquisition of knowledge is always to lay the foundation for the acquisition of still more knowledge. Through applying his reason, man enlarges all of his capacities, and the more he enlarges them, the more he enlarges his capacity to enlarge them.

He notes here that it Ludwig Von Mises who had first alerted him to this vital distinction.

The concept of progress differs radically from the concept of growth in that it also has built into it a positive evaluation: progress is movement in the direction of a higher, better, and more desirable state of affairs. This improving state of affairs is founded on the growing body of knowledge that the possession and application of human reason makes possible. Its foundation is the rising potential for human achievement that is based on growing knowledge.

While it is possible to utter denunciations of too rapid "growth" as being harmful, it would be a contradiction in terms even to utter the thought of too rapid progress, let alone denounce it. The meaning would be that things can get better too quickly -- that things getting better meant they were getting worse. [Capitalism, p.106]

FYI, Professor Reisman has kindly made his book Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (in which you can read all his arguments) freely available for reading, saving, and printing. Download the link here.

"Other countries are not ripping off the US on trade"

"The Trump Administration and I are here to make a very clear point—globalisation has failed the West and the United States of America. It’s a failed policy… and it has left America behind.
    "America is done exporting jobs and offshoring its future. We will no longer give in to globalisation.”

~ Trump's Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick at the World Economic Forum

“'Globalisation has failed' claims Trump’s Secretary of Commerce at Davos.

    "Give me a break. Global free trade hasn’t failed. It helps America PROSPER."

~ John Stossell

"Everything Lutnick said in that statement is wrong, but the biggest flaw is that the US has somehow been 'left behind.' The US continues to enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world, and it has been rising in the Age of Globalisation too (whenever you define it)."

~ Jeremy Horpedahl

"The US since 1990: 

• Real GDP per capita: +68% 
• Real median wages (PCE): +34% 
• Infant mortality: -42%  
• Life expectancy: +4 years 
• Nonfarm employment: +46% (50M jobs) 
• Median household wealth: +128% 
• Industrial capacity: +76%"

~ Scott Lincicome

'The Moral Case for Globalisation'

"THE TERM TYPICALLY USED to denote advocates of globalisation is 'globalists,' which has emerged primarily as a term of abuse, especially on the far right. 'There is no more left and right [says one]. The real cleavage is between the patriots and the globalists.' ...

"[T]his essay’s definition of globalisation is the relatively free movement of people, things, money, and ideas across natural or political borders. .... A consequence of increasing globalisation is an increasingly integrated and complex global system of production and exchange. ...

"There is a vast amount of evidence that documents the impact of reducing barriers to trade, travel, and other forms of exchange across borders. Much of it is presented in other essays in this series, such as Johan Norberg’s 'Globalisation: A Race to the Bottom—or to the Top?' Contrary to some critics of globalisation, the results have been spectacularly positive for the world’s poor, as wages have increased, jobs have become safer, and the use of children for labor has plummeted. Increasing wealth, in turn, is strongly connected to improving health, and the global spread of improvements in medicines and technologies has improved health outcomes even in regions that have not participated as much in the exchange of goods. ...

"People agree to exchange because they expect to be better off by exchanging than by not exchanging. Making it possible to exchange with more people is beneficial to those whose range of potential exchange partners has increased. Adam Smith titled the third chapter of his 'An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations' “That the Division of Labour is Limited by the Extent of the Market,” a thesis that he illustrated by demonstrating the greater prosperity and progress in the ancient world for those nations with proximity to the sea and to navigable rivers. Due to the lower friction of transportation over water compared to land, that proximity facilitated exchange with much larger areas and with many, many more people. To the extent that policies of governments erect barriers to exchange, it is analogous to making transportation deliberately more difficult, which would generally be understood to be harmful to the vast majority of people. ...

"Globalisation is not limited to the exchange of goods and services across borders; it also encompasses the exchange of ideas, as well as scientific, economic, artistic, and other forms of cooperation. ...

"Ever since Plato’s assault on the open society, critics of globalisation have tended to view cultural innovation and exchange as a pure loss rather than as the emergence of new forms of human life that increase the available store of possible human understandings and experiences. ...

"PEACE AND HARMONY ARE consequences of trade.

Cultural exchange is foundational to living cultures. Pasta, for which Italian cuisine is famous, has origins in Asia, whether it was brought to Italy by Marco Polo, as folklore tells, or earlier, and the tomatoes that form the base of many Italian sauces are cultivated from plants brought from Meso-America by Spaniards. Food has been globalised for millennia, but somehow that has not stopped it from developing an amazing diversity of identifiable cuisines, styles, and dishes with many distinctive characteristics. The same can be said of architecture, traditions, mores, religions, and every other element of human culture. ...

"The key to such peace is not merely the movement of goods and services across borders but voluntary exchange. ... Freedom to trade refers to the voluntary transfers of goods and services and not to state trafficking in tanks and missiles, the sale of products of forced labour (such as the products of Uyghur labourers imprisoned by the Chinese Communist Party), or the sale of nationalised products (such as the oil and gas resources that were confiscated by Putin). Exchange and transfers organised by conquest are mutually impoverishing, as Adam Smith demonstrated of the British Empire ...

"SINCE PLATO'S TIME, OPPONENTS of globalisation have sought to protect established orders from the voluntary choices of those who live in them. Increasing the opportunities for exchange, cooperation, communication, and travel is enriching for the majority, although it may threaten the hold on power of the rulers. Some prefer war over peace, because 'making bigger profits in peace' is worse than war. Reasonable people should think before embracing such attacks on globalisation ...

"Rigorous thinking and empirical research refute, one by one, attacks on globalisation in the name of morality. The world is better when barriers to free and voluntary cooperation are reduced. The world is better because of globalisation."

~ Tom Palmer from his article 'The Moral Case for Globalisation'

"Tariffs Aren’t Liberating": Your Tuesday Tariffs Ramble [UPDATED]

UPDATE: Some more great links here curated by Don Boudreaux, to help you put this calamity on context.

Since it's the topic of the day a historic turning point in human affairs, the least I can do is offer readers a ramble around the topic of tariffs and the destruction of tariff wars — basically, around the many writers reciting the multiplicity of ways in which the Trump Administration has fucked us.

"“Liberation Day”: That is what US President Donald Trump has called Wednesday, April 2, the day he announced huge swaths of taxes on imports worldwide. Despite the label, it was far from a day of liberation. By making imports to the US more expensive, the government is actively increasing the cost of living for American consumers.
    "The Trump administration has fallen for one of the most common misconceptions about trade—that it only benefits a country when it is the exporter. This could not be further from the truth. One of the greatest benefits of free trade lies with the importing country, where consumers gain access to a huge range of goods, crucially, at lower prices.
    "Whether it’s clothes, food, medical supplies, or mobile phones, access to the global market reduces the cost of living and increases consumer choice, often alleviating poverty in the process.
    "It comes down to a very simple principle. No one person could produce everything he or she consumes. No family or household could do so either. No city, town, or province could produce absolutely everything they consume. Equally, no country can produce everything it consumes, nor should it. Attempts to achieve autarky are acts of economic self-harm. Freedom to exchange across borders is win-win: it allows consumers to access a plethora of goods and services, improving welfare overall."

Tariffs Aren’t Liberating - Reem Ibrahim, FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION

"Tariffs are irrational both morally and practically.
    "Morally, tariffs are rights violations - they restrain or prohibit individuals from trading freely and voluntarily in their own self-interest with whomever - no matter where they reside geographically. ...
    "Practically, tariffs punish the individuals in the country which implements them. Trump even acknowledges the pain. But he mystically thinks this pain will be good and lead us to prosperity.
    "Tariffs raise prices, cause shortages, and decrease productivity. They destroy wealth, businesses, income, and jobs. This is well known in theory and practice. See the Smoot-Hawley Act and its role in making the Great Depression even worse.
    "Trump’s foreign policy is morally and practically irrational.
    "What is the moral and practical foreign policy solution?
    "Free trade."

          ~ Andy Clarkson

"The essence of capitalism's foreign policy is free trade—i.e., the abolition of trade barriers, of protective tariffs, of special privileges—the opening of the world's trade routes to free international exchange and competition among the private citizens of all countries dealing directly with one another."

The Roots of War - Ayn Rand, ARI CAMPUS

"Fundamental to the argument for high tariffs has been the argument that trade deficits reflect America being "exploited" or "taken advantage of." In this article of mine on, "Why Trade Deficits Don't Matter -- Unless Caused by Government," I explain the misguided economic reasoning behind this claim, and why the far better policy is free trade."
Trade Deficits Don’t Matter – Unless Caused by Government - Richard Ebeling, FUTURE OF FREEEDOM FOUNDATION

"Donald Trump is fond of saying that trade wars are easy to win. Among the litany of patently false Trumpisms, this may well prove one of the most disastrous. ...
    "Protective tariffs risk triggering a cycle of escalation that ends well for no one."

No One Wins a Trade War - William Bernstein, THE ATLANTIC

"America can’t be outcompeted because America does not produce or trade anything.
     "Nations do not compete with nations. Individual firms compete with individual firms abroad. Ford competes with Toyota. America does not compete with Japan. Nations are trading partners, not competitors."

Why America can't be outcompeted - Harry Binswanger, HARRY'S SUBSTACK

"“We are seeing a combination of true-believing mercantilism, shocking ignorance about how the global economy works, and shocking incompetence in the planning and execution of economic policy,” says Michael Strain."
Trump's aggressive push to roll back globalisation -FINANCIAL TIMES (paywall0

"Like the post-1945 British Labour governments, he wants to shelter domestic manufacturing and the working class behind tariffs while reducing overseas commitments. But the net result will be both economically damaging and geopolitically weakening. Americans will come to miss globalism and policing the world. They will belatedly realise that there is no portal through which the United States can return to the 1950s, much less the 1900s. And the principal beneficiary of Project Minecraft will not be Russia, but China. Call it Project Manchuria. ... 

"The president stands as much chance of reindustrialising the U.S. as you do of getting your frozen laptop to work by smashing the motherboard with a Minecraft hammer."

Trump’s Tariffs and the End of American Empire - Niall Ferguson, THE FREE PRESS

"So think of it as a world wide Brexit like the U.S. leaving the global economy.
    "A trade lawyer at a global law firm here in London told me their clients see Trump’s tariffs as “worse than Brexit” as they’re dealing with rapidly changing trade rules on a massive scale. It’s not just the tariffs that Trump has imposed, but the retaliation it will provoke."

‘How Ugly Is This Going to Be?’ - Graham Lanktree, POLITICO

"You will go to work in a hot, noisy, dirty factory for low wages. And you will like it. 

The quality of life your grandfather had is more than good enough for you!"

"It sounds so sensible: why not use protection and industrial policy to preserve manufacturing capacity “just in case” of, say, a war or a pandemic? And, to be sure, this is a better argument for some limited government intervention on trade and investment flows than wanting to tax imported bananas or revive manufacturing.
    "But even then it’s not the slam dunk some people imagine. Below is my chapter on this issue from Economics In One Virus, published in 2021. It’s just as true and relevant today."

Flaws in the "Just In Case," Self-Sufficiency Case for Protectionism - Ryan Bourne, WAR ON PRICES

"The populist story of the death of U.S. manufacturing is nonsense. Mr. Vance and his cohort maintain that increased free trade with countries such as China in 2000 or Mexico in 1994 killed American jobs. It’s true that the number of manufacturing jobs is lower than it was in 1970. But that’s because we can make so much more with fewer people. Blame technology, not trade.
    "Real hourly output per manufacturing employee has been on an upward trend since 1959. Real U.S. manufacturing value-added—the sector’s contribution to gross domestic product—reached its highest recorded level in 2022. Manufacturing output was close to its all-time high in 2022, and the U.S. remained the global leader in manufacturing value-added per worker.
    "Steel is one example. In 1980, one steelworker could produce 0.083 tons of steel in one hour. By 2018, one steelworker could produce 1.67 tons in an hour. This is a good thing. Wage and income data in the U.S. show the rising tide is lifting all boats—especially the smallest.
    "Americans don’t want their children to have to work punishing jobs in a steel mill, and it’s evident they don’t have to. Manufacturing jobs, as a share of total employment, have been on a downward trend since 1943—falling from 39% to under 25% by the end of 1970 and hitting 20% in 1980. This decline started long before Ronald Reagan ran for office, before China received Most Favored Nation status for outsourcing manufacturing, before Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement and before the World Trade Organization was created. The trends even started five years before the U.S. joined the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade."
Free Trade Didn’t Kill the Middle Class - Norbert J. Michel, WALL STREET JOURNAL

“The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war.”
          ~ Ludwig von Mises

"“When it comes to steel, it’s fantastic for our industry,” said Jack Maskil [president of the United Steelworkers Local 2227 in Pittsburgh’s Mon Valley], “but what about everything else?” ...

    "On the one hand, they are thrilled that their industry will be a key beneficiary of the 25 percent tariff imposed on steel imports to the U.S. ...
    "But while the steelworkers are also hoping that tariffs will bring about a revival of manufacturing jobs, they also worry about their effect on the economy, and on their own purchasing power."

What Do American Steelworkers Think About Trump’s Tariffs? - Ethan Dodd, THE FREE PRESS

"President Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs risk domino effect across the globe as Chinese goods look for new markets."

The Rest of the World Is Bracing for a Flood of Cheap Chinese Goods - WALL STREET JOURNAL

"The proponents of protectionism say, “Free trade is fine in theory but it must be reciprocal. We cannot open our markets to foreign products if foreigners close their markets to us.” China, they argue, to use their favorite whipping boy, “keeps her vast internal market for the private domain of Chinese industry but then pushes her products into the U.S. market and complains when we try to prevent this unfair tactic.”
    "The argument sounds reasonable. It is, in fact, utter nonsense. Exports are the cost of trade, imports the return from trade, not the other way around."

In 1970, Milton Friedman Advocating Moving Unilaterally Toward Free Trade Rather Than Retaliating. We Still Haven’t Learned That Simple Lesson -Mark Perry, AEI

"This idea that Donald Trump is just playing hardball to negotiate tariff rates down on US exports is absolutely ridiculous. The % of tariffs applied to US-produced goods has declined consistently since WW2 and was nearly nothing...
    "UNTIL! Donald's first term, and now his second.
    "And yet I keep seeing so many MAGA supporters saying: 'We're already seeing countries backing down from their tariffs!'
    "You're literally winning a battle and losing the war at the same time ..."

~  Landon Walsh

"Then there’s Trump’s fascination with tariffs. The damage Trump has caused Ukraine and Nato pales by comparison to what his tariffs will do to America’s economy and the entire international economic system. If Trump had acted on April 1 instead of 2, he could quickly have said it was all an April Fool’s Day joke, thereby saving the global economy trillions of dollars of damage when markets started heading south. Unfortunately however, Trump is totally serious, a fact evident long before “Liberation Day.”
    "Here too, “experts” and anxious businesspeople steadfastly ignored Trump labelling “tariff” the dictionary’s most beautiful word. Tariffs, they said, will be targeted, carefully calibrated, and he’ll do deals quickly. It’s all a bargaining tactic, Treasury Secretary Bessent said in October, 2024: “escalate to de-escalate”. Even as global stock markets drop like rocks, experts are still rationalising what his “strategy” is.
    "Wrong again. Trump is more likely to win the Nobel Prize for literature than for peace."

I worked for Donald Trump. This is the key to understanding him: It’s not about America, and there’s no connection to the real world - John Bolton, TELEGRAPH (UK)

"Reminder: This policy was spearheaded and implemented by a man who thinks nobody says the word “groceries” these days because “it’s an old-fashioned word” and he somehow brought it back into the limelight.
    "Donald Trump is a motherfucking moron. Those who knew this and voted for him anyway because he gave them explicit license to be assholes deserve every last bit of pain his policies will cause them."

          ~ Stephen T. Stone

"In times of upheaval, those closest to power often find ways to turn disruption into wealth. Trump’s erratic tariff wars, billed as economic nationalism, upended markets, collapsed sectors, and triggered retaliatory shocks. But while farmers went bankrupt and consumers paid more, the market opened space for those with foresight—or insider access—to buy low and consolidate.
    "Geographer David Harvey calls this accumulation by dispossession: crisis used not to correct the system, but to extract from it. Devalue public assets. Destabilise protections. Create just enough chaos to buy cheap what others are forced to abandon. It’s not just policy failure—it’s extraction dressed as populism.
    "The con isn’t just psychological. It’s material. It’s not just about being lied to—it’s about being looted.
    "And that’s what makes this moment different—and more dangerous. The scam isn’t happening outside the system. It’s running through it."

The Confidence Game: How Trump’s Con Threatens More Than the Truth - James Greenberg, JAMES'S SUBSTACK

"The latest rumor, when I started drafting this column, was that President Trump will suspend the tariffs for a 90-day period, with the exception of those on China. Markets started going back up again.
    "But “the very latest information” doesn’t stay current for long these days. The new report—but don’t count on it—is that the 90-day pause is not real after all. That revision came out before this draft was finished. And markets again whipsawed.
    "The Trump administration has created a new monster—one of unpredictability and erratic behavior. We simply cannot predict with any degree of accuracy what will happen next. By the time you are reading this article, there will probably be some newer report about the tariffs or threat of tariffs, and then another report after that.
    "Even if the White House winds up instituting a pause on the proposed tariffs—or ultimately adopts much better economic policies—this seesawing may plunge the American and perhaps also the global economy into recession."

A Contagion of Uncertainty - Tyler Cowen, THE FREE PRESS

[WATCH] Singapore must be clear-eyed about dangers ahead: Singapore's Prime Minister Wong on implications of US tariffs:

"Donald Trump has demonstrated his profound misunderstanding of the basic economic principles of international trade for several years now, and perhaps reached a pinnacle when he told the New York Daily News in an interview last August that “we’re getting hosed by the Chinese — and that we’ve done it with our eyes wide shut.” ...
    "[Trump adviser] Peter Navarro, in his Wall Street Journal opinion piece earlier this week (see related post here) demonstrated his fundamental misunderstanding of international trade when he opened his op-ed with the following question: “Do trade deficits matter?” Just to ask the question is to admit one’s ignorance of trade theory, which has been pretty settled on this topic since Adam Smith taught us in 1776 that “Nothing…can be more absurd than this whole doctrine of the balance of trade. ..."

Trade Deficits Don’t Matter; Understanding Deficits Do: Protectionists' idea of a trade balance is completely backward -Mark Perry, FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION

Tariffs are a suicide bomb":

Trump's team said they based their "reciprocal tariff" calculation for each country based on the tariffs and impediments put on American imports by those countries. But no. It's even more irrational: "[Trump's chart] features an estimate of 'Tariffs Charged to the USA' by other countries that nobody could figure out, until a financial journalist realised it was just how much we export to that country, minus how much we import, divided by how much we import."

"Under a system of perfectly free commerce, each country naturally devotes its capital and labour to such employments as are most beneficial to each. This pursuit of individual advantage is admirably connected with the universal good of the whole. By stimulating industry, by regarding ingenuity, and by using most efficaciously the peculiar powers bestowed by nature, it distributes labour most effectively and most economically: while, by increasing the general mass of productions, it diffuses general benefit, and binds together by one common tie of interest and intercourse, the universal society of nations throughout the civilised world."
        ~ David Ricardo (1817)

"Why is today’s Trump so different from the Trump of his first term? .. ". Turns out, the answer is very simple" Back then he had people, and a Congress who would say "No." But now the yes men are in power.

What happened to Trump? Why has be become so pro-Russian? - Roman Sheremata, UKRAINE TODAY

Trump's tariffs policy came from his economic advisor Peter Navarro, who invented a fake expert in his books to justify it. "Peter Navarro liked to quote a guy named Ron Vara in his books. Those books are largely what led to Navarro becoming a top adviser to President Trump and helping to shape U.S. policy on China. Here’s the thing about Ron Vara, though: He doesn’t exist. ...

"Ron Vara is an anagram of Navarro."

Trump's China Muse Has an Imaginary Friend - Tom Bartlett, CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

 

Second-term Trump is who Trump always was. This is Trump without many adults in the room stopping him getting his way. This is Trump surronded by Yes Men in a cult. This is Trump. A freedom-hating, dictator-loving, trade-despising child who wants the power of a tryant. Someone who has no regard for facts and who will utter any lie he wishes - no matter how ridicolous it is. And his believers are expected to believe it. Under fear of discommunication from the cult.
This is what you asked for when you voted for Trump. This is what you got. I hope you are happy....

          ~ Dwayne Davies

"An often forgotten truth is that it is not just military warfare that can cause injury to innocent bystanders, the same inescapably happens in economic warfare initiated by governments, as well. But in the latter case the human “collateral damage” is a targetted victim. ...
    "Tariffs and counter-tariffs are tools of economic warfare that are said to be targeting the “aggressor” country. But the very nature of how tariffs and counter-tariffs work, results in the main targets being innocent bystanders in the countries concerned.
    "Once we disaggregate “nations” into their, respective, individual buyers and sellers, producers and consumers, we see that the most damage falls on the economic “non-combatants,” of whatever the original “dispute” may be about ..."

Trump’s Economic Warfare Targets Innocent Bystanders - Richard Ebeling, FUTURE OF FREEDOM FOUNDATION

"TikTok is a major bargaining chip in a grave geopolitical struggle. Given the data users have always sent to Beijing, it’s been a bargaining chip ever since it arrived on America’s digital shores. For Trump, though, it’s not exactly his chip to bargain with: Congress already determined the American course of action. The mystery is why nobody seems to mind Trump delaying its execution — or at least, why nobody is complaining publicly....

    "Trump’s motives here are not difficult to parse, and the bill in question is legitimately problematic. He’s popular on TikTok, and close to one of the company’s major investors. ...
    "As fallout continued from his tariff bombshell — including the legitimacy of his emergency authority to implement the new rates — barely anyone batted an eye at TikTok getting another dubious bailout."

Why Trump keeps saving TikTok - Emily Jashinsky, UNHERD

"Since my last essay on the crisis of democracy, the assaults on democratic checks and balances have escalated. Without agreement from Congress, Trump’s DOGE shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development with stunning speed. Although a federal court blocked further implementation, ruling that the action “likely violated the Constitution,” by then the agency had already been gutted and largely dismantled along with many other agenices. Then, in an alarming politicisation of the military high command, Trump fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chief of Naval Operations, the Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, and the judge advocates general (the highest-ranking legal authorities) for the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
    "Pressing his claim to imperial power, Trump has moved to assert absolute control over all federal regulatory bodies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Federal Communications Commission. This not only hobbles their capacity to act independently in the public interest but opens the door to massive corruption. As DOGE seizes control of more and more of the government’s most sensitive and highly centralised stores of data, the conflicts of interest proliferate for its chief 'overseer,' Elon Musk, who over the years has received 'at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits.' And Just Security has documented an 'alarming' pattern of 'politicisation and weaponisation of the Department of Justice since Trump has retaken office.
    "The United States now faces the grave and imminent danger of its democracy decaying into a 'competitive authoritarianism'.”

How to Undo Trump’s Growing Dictatorship and the Damage it Is Inflicting - Larry Diamond, THE UNPOPULIST

"We have to realise that Trump is not joking about any of this. He’s not joking about invading Greenland, and he’s not joking about running for a third term. He’s as serious about all of this as he was about the tariffs. The evidence indicates that he will do it all, whatever he can get away with. ...
"While we prepare a mass movement—and Donald Trump crashing the economy with the world’s stupidest tariffs will help us a great deal—we need to fight everything. What that will specifically mean is that we have to fight a lot of losing battles. ...
"There are five reasons to fight early and often, no matter the odds of winning any one fight.
    1. It lays down a marker. ....
    2. It mobilises others to fight. ....
    3. It delays and exhausts the strongman. ...
    4. Sometimes you win. ...
    5. You find out what works and who fights. ...."

How to Fight Back - Robert Tracinski, TRACINSKI LETTER

The More Resources We Consume, the More We Have

It seems counterintuitive, but it's true: The freer we are, the more resources we have. And as Marian Tupy points out in this guest post, globalisation supercharges the process of knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination, thereby leading to even greater resource abundance. Humans, he points out, especially those living in the countries on the frontier of innovation, create knowledge that allows us to grow our resources well in excess of the resources that we consume. Turns out that the more we consume, the more we have ...

The More Resources We Consume, the More We Have

by Marian Tupy

It is conventional wisdom that adding billions of people to the global economy must result in increased use and therefore greater scarcity of resources, but that is wrong.

Resources have become significantly cheaper since 1980 relative to wages, thereby becoming much more abundant.

Humans, especially those living in countries on the frontier of innovation, create new knowledge that allows us to grow our resources well beyond our consumption.

Globalisation allows this new knowledge to flow from the countries on the frontier of innovation to the “catch‐​up” nations, leading to improved economic and environmental outcomes worldwide.

Introduction

Common sense dictates that adding billions of people to the global economy—and the subsequent rise in production and consumption—must result in increased use and, therefore, greater scarcity of resources. Many of the academic and nonacademic opinions agree on that point, but they are all mistaken. Relative to wages, resources have grown significantly cheaper since 1980, thereby becoming much more abundant. We thus face a seeming contradiction: the more resources we use, the more we end up with. Resolving that requires us to understand the key role played by the creation of knowledge.

Knowledge possesses a peculiar characteristic: the more knowledge we consume, the more knowledge we have. Furthermore, generation of new knowledge is the exclusive domain of the human mind. So, the more people who inhabit the planet and partake in global exchange, the more knowledge is created. This new knowledge, in turn, expands our resource base. Globalisation—or the process of interaction and integration between people and companies worldwide—supercharges the process of knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination, thereby leading to greater resource abundance.

Empirical Evidence for Falling Resource Prices

The Simon Abundance Index, which I coauthored with Gale L. Pooley, is an annual measure of the relationship between population growth and the abundance of 50 basic commodities, including food, energy, materials, minerals, and metals. The base year of the index is 1980, and the base value of the index is 100 percent. In 2020, the index reached 708.4 percent. In other words, the index rose by 608.4 percentage points over the preceding four decades, implying a compound annual growth rate in resource abundance of around 5 percent and a doubling of global resource abundance every 14 years or so.

The Simon Abundance Index is measured in time prices, or the number of hours that the average worker must work to earn enough money to buy something. To calculate a commodity’s time price, the nominal price of a commodity is divided by the global average nominal wage per hour worked. Between 1980 and 2020, the average nominal price of the 50 commodities rose by 51.9 percent and the global average nominal hourly wage rose by 412.4 percent. So the average time price of the 50 commodities fell by 75.2 percent.

The personal resource abundance multiplier is calculated by dividing the average time price of the 50 commodities in 1980 by the average time price of the 50 commodities in 2020. The multiplier tells us how much more of a resource a person can buy for the same hours of work between two points in time. Pooley and I found that the same hours of work bought one unit in the basket of 50 commodities in 1980 and 4.03 units in the same basket in 2020.

The average worker’s personal resource abundance rose by 303 percent. The compound annual growth rate in personal resource abundance amounted to 3.55 percent, implying that personal resource abundance doubled every 20 years.

Between 1980 and 2020, the average time price of the 50 commodities fell by 75.2 percent and the world’s population increased by 75.8 percent. So, for every 1 percent increase in the world’s population, the average time price of the 50 commodities decreased by almost 1 percent (i.e., −75.2 percent ÷ 75.8 percent = −0.992 percent).

Note that the personal resource abundance analysis looks at resource abundance from the perspective of an individual human being. The question we aim to answer is: How much more abundant have resources become for the average worker?

Population resource abundance analysis, in contrast, allows us to quantify the relationship between global resource abundance and global population growth. You can think of the difference between the two levels of analysis by using a pizza analogy. Personal resource abundance measures the size of a slice of pizza per person. Population resource abundance measures the size of the entire pizza pie.

The population resource abundance multiplier is calculated by multiplying the change in personal resource abundance with the change in global population (i.e., 4.03 × 1.758). The multiplier of 7.08 corresponds to the 708.4 percent increase in the Simon Abundance Index. It indicates an increase in the global resource abundance of 608.4 percent at a compound annual growth rate of around 5 percent. As such, Pooley and I estimate that global resource abundance doubled every 14 years or so.

Finally, let us look at the resource abundance elasticity of population. In economics, elasticity measures one variable’s sensitivity to a change in another variable. If variable x changes by 10 percent, while variable y, because of the change in x, changes by 5 percent, then the elasticity coefficient of x relative to y is 2.0 (i.e., 10 ÷ 5). A coefficient of 2.0 can be interpreted as a 2 percent change in x corresponding to a 1 percent change in y.

Pooley and I found that every 1 percent increase in population corresponded to an increase in personal resource abundance (i.e., the size of the slice of pizza) of 4 percent (i.e., 303 ÷ 75.8). We also found that every 1 percent increase in population corresponded to an increase in population resource abundance (i.e., the size of the pizza pie) of 8.03 percent (608.5 ÷ 75.8).

Knowledge Creation and Resource Expansion

There are several ways in which humans can make resources more abundant. To start, consider the increase of supply. When the price of a commodity increases, people have a monetary incentive to start searching for new sources of that commodity. For example, when the price of petroleum increases, people will look for more oil deposits. Thus, after a century of petroleum use, we have more known reserves of oil than ever before. Moreover, much of the Earth’s crust, not to mention the ocean floor, remains unexplored. The potential for finding much more petroleum when the price of oil is high enough to induce us to dig deeper and explore more exotic locations is very high. The supply of petroleum can also be increased through technological change. Many of the oil fields that were previously deemed exhausted still contain a great deal of oil trapped in underground shale rock. Replacing conventional oil drilling with hydraulic fracturing allows us to get at that oil in an economical way.

Increased efficiency is also important. Efficiency can increase in relative and absolute ways. For example, when the Coca‐​Cola can first appeared on the market in the late 1950s, it contained three ounces of aluminum. Today, it contains half an ounce. Of course, it is possible to decrease the amount of aluminum in each soda can while producing so many cans that the absolute amount of aluminum used increases. Remarkably, Andrew McAfee from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that the total amount of resources used by the US economy peaked in the first decade of the new millennium and then started to decline. To be precise, 66 out of 72 resources tracked by the US Geological Survey were “post‐​peak” when McAfee wrote his book More from Less in 2019. In the meantime, the US economy continued to expand. Similar trends could be observed in the United Kingdom and some other advanced economies.

Dematerialisation helps to explain why economic growth and resource use reduction can go hand in hand. Most readers will be familiar with thick blue copper cables that ran from the walls of most hotel rooms in the United States until recently. That cable enabled hotel guests to access the internet—a task that can now be accomplished via Wi‐​Fi. No cables are necessary, and all that saved copper can be used somewhere else. The iPhone is another example of dematerialisation, for it replaces (or substantially decreases the need for) calculators, satellite navigation, watches, torches, radios, compasses, cameras, postal mail, telephones, voice recorders, stereos, alarm clocks, and many other things. In addition to the materials not used in the process of making an iPhone, we must also add the energy not used in the mining of the resources that are no longer needed and in the running of all the separate devices that the iPhone replaces.

New knowledge can also help us create ever more value from the same resource. Around 5,000 years ago, someone in Mesopotamia noticed that when sand is heated to 3,090 degrees Fahrenheit, it melts and turns to glass. Our distant ancestors’ first use of glass was for decorative purposes, such as glass beads. Sometime later, they started to use sand to make glass jars, cups, and, later still, windows. Today, we use glass in fiberoptic cables and microchips. With every step of the way, the value we derived from a grain of sand increased, and no one knows what marvelous innovations will rely on sand in the future. The US economist Thomas Sowell is thus surely correct to observe that 

“the cavemen had the same natural resources at their disposal as we have today, and the difference between their standard of living and ours is a difference between the knowledge they could bring to bear on those resources and the knowledge used today.”

Consider also our ability to turn a previously useless or even harmful resource to our benefit. In the early 20th century, when oil was the primary target of drilling operations, natural gas was often seen as a byproduct with little or no economic value. As such, gas was frequently vented into the atmosphere or flared (burned off), which was wasteful and environmentally harmful. Moreover, natural gas leaks were a significant hazard, particularly in oil fields, where accidental ignitions could lead to explosions. Today in advanced economies, we have the technology to capture, transport, sell, and use gas in great volumes, thereby increasing our resource base and reducing our carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere.

Substitution is a crucial economic concept that’s much underappreciated by the public. Generally, we don’t care how we obtain a good or a service, so long as we get it at an acceptable cost. Thus, humans felled forests to get the wood they needed to heat their homes and slaughtered whales to get the lamp oil for illumination. Today, many of us heat and light our homes using electricity derived from a variety of sources, including mostly carbon‐​dioxide‐​free nuclear fission, with the added benefit that both forests and whales have rebounded. Those concerned about resources that are currently in high demand (such as lithium, which is needed to make batteries for electric vehicles) should take substitution into account. No one knows what resources will be needed to make batteries in 50—let alone 100—years’ time. But new technology‐​driven surprises are almost guaranteed.

We can also recycle and reuse our resources. The aforementioned copper internet cables, for example, were almost certainly recycled and turned into something else—perhaps copper pipes used in residential plumbing. The 14,000 tons of US government silver, which was used in electromagnets needed by the Manhattan Project to make atomic bombs, was similarly recovered after the end of World War II and added to the stock of precious metals that propped up the value of the US dollar. The point is that atoms of copper, silver, zinc, and much else are only temporarily assigned to perform a certain task. If necessary, they can be extracted and reassigned to make or do something else.

While humans have explored only a tiny fraction of our planet, it is theoretically possible that at some point in the distant future we could encounter an acute shortage of a resource, such as the very rare rhodium, which is currently used in catalytic converters. Let us further assume that the limits on the natural supply of that metal cannot be overcome via increased efficiency, dematerialisation, substitution, recycling, or anything else.

In such a case, our descendants could turn to transmutation. Transmutation, which was once a province of alchemy, became real in 1919 when scientists turned nitrogen into oxygen. According to an article I coauthored with University of Oxford physicist David Deutsch, 

“Today, transmutation is everywhere. The smoke detectors in our homes, for example, contain americium—a manmade radioactive metal produced by plutonium’s absorption of neutrons in nuclear reactors. Specialists transmuted lead into gold many years ago—though the process is currently uneconomical, for it requires far too much energy to replace mining.”

The key to transmutation, then, is plentiful, reliable, supercheap energy, which could be provided by, for example, future fusion reactors. Lest we forget, it was via fusion (nucleosynthesis, to be precise) that many of the elements we use on Earth were created in the first place. Incredibly high temperatures and pressures inside different stars transformed lighter elements into heavier ones, and the heavier elements dispersed throughout the universe after supernovae. Some of those elements eventually helped to form our planet and can be mined in Earth’s crust.

By the time humanity needs to resort to such sophisticated measures to increase our resource base, we may well be a spacefaring civilisation, mining the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter by ourselves or with the help of AI robots. The belt is rich in resources, including water. Water, which covers 71 percent of our planet, is key, for it contains hydrogen, which also happens to be the most common element in the universe. The Big Bang only created the lightest elements, primarily hydrogen. All other elements are derived from those. A combination of hydrogen and fusion, therefore, could allow us to create everything else we need de novo—indefinitely.

Globalisation, the Spread of Knowledge, and Resource Creation

In the 2021 edition of the Simon Abundance Index, Pooley and I found that the time price of wheat fell by 76.1 percent between 1980 and 2020. That means that for the same number of hours of work that would have bought our worker a pound of wheat in 1980, he or she could have bought 4.18 pounds of wheat in 2020. Resource abundance of the worker rose by 318 percent, growing at a compounded annual rate of 3.64 percent, thereby doubling every 19.4 years. (The COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian war on Ukraine affected these numbers negatively, yet Pooley and I found that the trend still holds in the 2024 edition of the index.)

Over the same period (1980–2020), the world’s population rose from 4.44 billion to 7.82 billion, or by 76 percent. Put differently, for every 1 percent increase in global population, the time price of wheat fell by 1 percent. In addition to population growth, the latest round of globalisation, which is generally taken to have started in 1980, added billions of new workers to the global economic exchange. These factors contributed to a massive increase in resource consumption and output not only in the countries on the frontier of innovation, such as the United States and those in Western Europe, but also in the “catch‐​up” countries, such as Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Vietnam, and the nations of the former Eastern bloc. Personal incomes and consumption rose.

Yet wheat, a staple eaten all over the world, became much more abundant. Here the salutary effects of globalisation are easily discernible because several Western companies have been at the forefront of the agricultural revolution that provided technologies, seeds, and farming practices that enhanced wheat productivity in the catch‐​up countries. Consider some real‐​life examples:

• Syngenta’s disease‐​resistant wheat varieties. Syngenta, a global agribusiness company headquartered in Switzerland, has developed wheat varieties that are resistant to common diseases and pests. For instance, in parts of Africa and Asia, Syngenta’s disease‐​resistant wheat varieties have helped farmers combat issues such as wheat rust, a major threat to wheat crops. These varieties have not only increased yields per acre of land but also ensured more stable wheat production.
• John Deere’s advanced agricultural machinery. American company John Deere is known for its advanced agricultural machinery. The adoption of this machinery in countries such as India and Ethiopia has revolutionised wheat farming. Mechanised tractors, planters, and harvesters have increased the efficiency of planting and harvesting wheat, leading to higher yields and reduced labor costs.
• BASF’s agronomic solutions. German chemical company BASF provides various agronomic solutions, including fertilisers and pesticides, which are crucial in wheat cultivation. For example, in countries such as Mexico and Pakistan, the use of BASF’s fertilisers and pesticides has resulted in better wheat crop health and increased yields by controlling pests and enhancing soil fertility.
• Bayer’s crop science innovations. Bayer, following its acquisition of Monsanto, has become a key player in agricultural technologies. The company’s development of integrated crop solutions, including advanced seed treatments and chemical products, has improved wheat yields. For example, in Brazil and parts of Africa, Bayer’s products have helped farmers grow wheat more efficiently, even under challenging climatic conditions.
• DuPont’s hybrid wheat seeds. DuPont (now part of Corteva Agriscience after a merger with the Dow Chemical Company) has developed hybrid wheat seeds that are tailored to specific climatic and soil conditions. These seeds have been particularly effective in Eastern Europe and parts of Asia, where they have helped boost wheat yields through improved disease resistance and stress tolerance.
• CIMMYT’s collaboration with Western companies. The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), though not a commercial entity, collaborates with Western companies to develop high‐​yielding wheat varieties. CIMMYT’s work in countries such as Kenya and India, often in partnership with Western agricultural companies, has led to the introduction of wheat varieties that are well‐​suited to local conditions, resulting in significant yield improvements.

The results of the spread of information and technologies from the countries on the frontier of innovation to the catch‐​up countries are readily discernible. In 1980, wheat productivity measured in 100 grams per hectare was lower, sometimes substantially, in the catch‐​up countries relative to the United States and Western Europe. By 2020, some had overtaken the United States, while all of them, including the United States, remained less productive relative to Western Europe. Still, all the selected catch‐​up countries experienced greater productivity gains than the United States and Western Europe between 1980 and 2020.

Environmental Benefit

The period of globalisation saw absolute poverty (the threshold of which is considered to be earning wages of $2.15 or less per day) measured in 2017 dollars adjusted for purchasing power parity decline from 43.8 percent in 1981 to 8.9 percent in 2019. Concomitantly, the calorie supply per person rose from 2,497 in 1981 to 2,928 in 2018, or by 17 percent. In Africa, the world’s poorest continent, the calorie supply per person rose from 2,238 to 2,604, or by 16 percent, over the same period. That’s higher than the Portuguese calorie supply in the early 1960s. This trend is likely going to improve in the future, raising the obvious question: What will happen to the animal and plant habitats as humans strive to produce more food and other resources? The answer is once again counterintuitive.

Writing about US corn production in 2015, Jesse H. Ausubel, an environmental scientist at the Rockefeller University, said, 

“The average yield of American farmers is nowhere near a ceiling. In 2013, David Hula, a farmer in Virginia, grew a US and probably world record: 454 bushels of corn per acre—three times the average yield in Iowa.… In 2014, Hula’s harvest rose 5 percent higher to 476 bushels, while Randy Dowdy, who farms near Valdosta, Georgia, busted the 500‐​bushel wall with a yield of 503 bushels per acre and won the National Corn Growers Contest. ... If we keep lifting average yields toward the demonstrated levels of David Hula and Randy Dowdy … then an area the size of India or of the United States east of the Mississippi could be released globally from agriculture over the next 50 years or so.”

A similar story can also be told of wheat, rice, barley, potatoes, casava, beans, and other crops. There is no obvious limit on our ability to produce ever more staples per hectare, thus returning ever larger chunks of the planet back to nature, except for the generation of knowledge and its dissemination to (and acceptance in) the least developed corners of the world. Whether lab‐​grown meat can alleviate the environmental footprint of cattle, chicken, and pig farming is still an open question. At present, the knowledge to make lab‐​grown meat economical does not exist. But knowledge is not stagnant. It grows, and those who are betting against lab‐​grown meats may yet lose their shirts. Finally, the exploitation of raw materials has grown much cleaner in recent decades, a trend that’s likely to continue as nations develop and, per the environmental Kuznets curve, place greater emphasis on environmental quality.

Conclusion

Humans, especially those living in the countries on the frontier of innovation, create knowledge that allows us to grow our resources well in excess of the resources that we consume. Consequently, resources have grown much cheaper relative to wages and, therefore, more abundant. In terms of overall human well‐​being, however, it is globalisation that allows the new knowledge to flow from the countries on the frontier of innovation to the catch‐​up nations. Finally, the planet and its biosphere benefit as catch‐​up nations adopt best practices and begin to approximate the care for the environment that’s characteristic of innovative societies.

* * * * 

Marian L. Tupy is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, coauthor of the Simon Abundance Index, and editor of the website HumanProgress.org.

First published at the Cato at Liberty blog, part of their series Defending Globalisation.

 

The allure of economic nationalism, alas, isn’t only real, it’s also powerful. Even once-libertarians aren't immune. Yet as Don Boudreaux points out in this guest post, far from being imposed on us it's so popular that governments actively have to suppress it. Because globalisation, as he says, is a "fundamental human activity" that benefits us all ...

Defending Globalisation

Guest post by Don Boudreaux

THIS PAST SEPTEMBER, THE CATO Institute launched a major new initiative called “Defending Globalisation.” The brainchild of Cato’s prolific international-trade scholar Scott Lincicome, Defending Globalisation is a multimedia project designed to explain the benefits of what is described on the project’s website as “all aspects of the fundamentally human activity that we call ‘globalisation.’”

Many people, no doubt, will object to globalisation being described as a “fundamentally human activity,” a term that conjures images of a natural process that has long been familiar to humans. But the term is accurate. Globalisation is what happens naturally when individuals in modern society are left free from government restraint to trade – free to offer to sell, and free to offer to buy, with no one compelled to accept any such offers and, importantly, with no politicians or policemen obstructing the offerers and offerees.

Trading comes naturally to humans. The trading instinct is the root cause of great commercial cities, ancient and modern. In the past, when transportation and communications were very costly and time-consuming, the natural geographic range over which intensive trading regularly occurred was small. But as the costs of transportation and communications fell, and as each of these activities became faster (with the latter becoming instantaneous literally over the whole earth), the natural geographic range over which intensive trading regularly occurs grew. Today, that natural range for many goods and services spans the entire populated area of the globe.

The indisputable truth that today the natural range of trading activity is large – certainly larger than the area of any individual country – comes in an ironic form: tariffs and other government-erected obstructions on trade. Only because people are eager to trade with people in different countries do governments feel the need to suppress this trade.

Stated straightforwardly, this truth is undeniable. Nevertheless, it is denied by the many pundits and politicians who assert that elites impose globalisation on ordinary people. The implication is that globalisation is both detrimental to the masses as well as unnatural. Of course, if these pundits and politicians really believed that globalisation is unnatural (and, therefore, must be imposed) they’d be content simply to leave ordinary people free to trade, confident that no, or only minimal, cross-border commerce would occur. The very existence of government-erected restraints on international commerce proves that those persons who are responsible for erecting these restraints understand that what must be imposed is not globalisation – that would arise naturally – but economic nationalism.

The allure of economic nationalism, alas, isn’t only real, it’s also powerful. People in different countries and different eras have willingly embraced it. Just why so many people are so easily deluded into believing that they are made better off when their access to goods, services, and investment opportunities is restricted by elites has long been a mystery. This mystery is partly solved by public-choice economics: Voters are rationally ignorant, and disproportionate political influence is enjoyed by special-interest producer groups. 

Another reason is that we humans are likely evolved to see reality as a struggle between “us” and “them,” and therefore the interest groups who stand to gain from protectionism find success in portraying actions that benefit foreigners as actions that harm us and our fellow citizens while simultaneously enriching those who mean us harm. Relevant here is the fact that trade restrictions are invariably described by their peddlers as both “protection” of fellow citizens and “standing up to” or “fighting back against” foreigners.

Free trade and globalisation, although great benefactors of humankind, are not naturally popular. It might even be closer to the truth to say that free trade and globalisation are naturally unpopular. Thus they are forever in need of sound defense – which is precisely what is supplied by the Defending Globalisation project.

I ENCOURAGE YOU TO READ every essay in this project, many of which remain to be published. I’ve read each that has been published, and attest to their excellence. Here’s a small sample of what you’ll learn.

From Johan Norberg’s contribution, titled “Globalisation: A Race to the Bottom – or to the Top?”

In his book 'Globalisation and Labor Conditions,' Robert Flanagan summarises the evidence: “Countries that adopt open trade policies have higher wages, greater workplace safety, more civil liberties (including workplace freedom of association), and less child labor.” Flanagan and Niny Khor also document this relationship in “Trade and the Quality of Employment: Asian and Non‐​Asian Economies,” in the OECD report Policy Priorities for International Trade and Jobs.

This would be extremely surprising if companies always scoured the globe searching for the lowest‐​cost country. But they don’t. If they did, 100 percent of foreign direct investment would go to the least developed countries, but in fact, no more than 2 percent of all foreign direct investment is heading in their direction. Most investment goes to relatively developed countries, and GDP per capita is the strongest influence on labour conditions. On average, richer countries have higher wages, safer jobs, shorter working hours, and stronger labour rights, such as freedom of association and less forced labor.

The race‐​to‐​the‐​bottom hypothesis got it wrong because it neglected half the cost‐​benefit analysis. If labour compensation (in the broad sense, including working conditions) were just a gift generously bestowed on workers, it would make economic sense to reduce it as much as possible, but in a competitive labor market, it is compensation for the job that someone is doing, and therefore there is a tight link between pay and productivity. Some workers might be twice as well paid as others, but that does not make them uncompetitive if they are also twice as productive.

From Daniel Drezner’s “The Dangers of Misunderstanding Economic Interdependence”:

While contemporary fears about excessive interdependence are real, that does not mean that these fears have been realised. Indeed, a quick perusal of the alleged downsides of interdependence reveal that much of what has been feared has not come to fruition.

For example, consider the allegations about how China gamed the liberal international order to serve its own revisionist ends. It is undeniably true that as China has grown economically stronger, it has also grown more repressive and more revisionist. Neither of these facts, however, falsify the liberal theory of international politics. 

The liberal argument posits that interdependence constrains rising powers from pursuing more bellicose policies than they otherwise would have. It says next to nothing about interdependence triggering democratisation. It is possible that China can repress domestically while still acting in a constrained manner on the global stage. Most of China’s alleged revisionist actions have been exaggerated. For example, neither the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) bank nor the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank have challenged the Bretton Woods Institutions. Claims that the Belt and Road Initiative is an example of debt‐​trap diplomacy have also been wildly exaggerated; indeed, if anything, China’s recent lending practices suggest that it will not weaponise debts from the Global South. While China has built new institutions outside the purview of the United States, none of them contradict the principles of the liberal international order.

And from Daniel Griswold’s “The Misplaced Nostalgia for a Less Globalised Past”:

Even these adjusted income data understate the gains enjoyed by American workers in our more globalised era. In 'Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet,' Cato scholars Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley compare time prices (how many hours people must work on average to acquire various goods and services) across decades and find that American workers have experienced dramatic gains since the 1970s. 

In particular, they calculate that the number of hours an average U.S. blue‐​collar worker would have to work to afford a basket of 35 consumer goods fell by 72.3 percent between 1979 and 2019. For example, in 1979, a coffeemaker cost $14.79 while the average blue‐​collar worker earned $8.34 per hour, meaning he would have to work 1.77 hours to buy the coffeemaker. By 2019, a comparable coffeemaker sold for $19.99 while the average blue‐​collar worker earned $32.36 an hour, translating to a time price of 0.62 an hour — a 65 percent decline. 

Using the same methodology, the authors found similar improvements for other household goods: the time price of a dishwasher had fallen by 61.5 percent; for a washing machine, by 64.6 percent; for a dryer, 61.8 percent; for a child’s crib, 90 percent; for a women’s blazer, 69 percent; and for women’s pants, 44.6 percent.

Today's workers are better off than in decades past not only because familiar goods have become more affordable, but also because new types of products have come on the market and spread rapidly.

Again, the above selections are only a slim sample of the impressive abundance of wisdom, insight, and information that await you at “Defending Globalisation.” Embrace it.

* * * * 

Donald J. Boudreaux is a senior fellow with American Institute for Economic Research and with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; a Mercatus Center Board Member; and a professor of economics and former economics-department chair at George Mason University. He is the author of the books The Essential Hayek, Globalisation, Hypocrites and Half-Wits, and his articles appear in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, US News & World Report as well as numerous scholarly journals. He writes a blog called Cafe Hayek and a regular column on economics for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Boudreaux earned a PhD in economics from Auburn University and a law degree from the University of Virginia.

His psot first appeared at the American Institute for Economic research blog.