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Free market hypocrisy
This change of heart on the benefits of outsourcing is, to me, just another example of both the hypocrisy of many supposed free markets advocates. Everyone seems to favour free markets, but as Adam Smith himself pointed out, no one wants free markets to apply to themselves. Everyone wants free markets their own way.
Lets start by trying to apply free market principles to immigration. The logical conclusion would be to encourage economic migrants (trying to get higher paying work, in accordance with free market principles) and discourage refugees (whose economic potential is uncertain). That sounds like the exact opposite of what British politician promise.
It is hard to find even “libertarians” (those who think free markets can fix almost everything) who want free market principles in this area — in fact I spent some time reading leading libertarian bloggers recently and found racist overtones it a lot of what many had to say. I would be surprised to find any supportfor applying free markets to this area there.
I could go on on that topic, but I will leave that for another day. Its worthing thinking about the impact on the west that these free market advocates had expected. What they thought would happen was that low wage manufacturing jobs would be exported, while the west would continue to dominate brain work and “clever jobs”.
This would not only have left the west still economically dominant, but, with the western stardards of wages no longer applied to the low wage jobs, the brain work would become even more comparatively well paid (compared to cheaper goods, that is). How convenient for economicsts and their clever friends!
Now things have not gone the way they wanted, and economists face the same fate as factory workers, it is sudenly not worth the social cost. If the free market advocates have their jobs threatened, then they should “get on their bikes” and find new work. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
The “free” in free markets reminds of the evil ape’s defintion of freedom in CS Lewis’s The Last Battle: “True freedom means doing what I tell you.”
Finally it is too late to reverse globalistion easilly. Inda, China and similar countries are now developing rapidly. It is hard to see how the west could benefit by pushing them out of its trading system into their own. Closing doors on rising powers and ignoring their existence was exactly how China tried to deal with the West when it was the the world’s leading economy and the west the upstart. That did not exactly work well. Isolationists always fall behind.
Richard Beddard at Interactive Investor Blog suggets me as an example of beating the problem by emigrating to a developing country. The problem is that it is not what I want to do. A temporary move turned into a permenant one through chance, and I aim to be back in Britain as soon as possible.
Moving countries is difficult. I was born in Sri Lanka and my father and sister live here, and it was still not easy for me. For many people moving countries is not a fair or practical alternative. It is often taken as a last resort.
Incidentally, I owe Richard thanks for pointing out the Economist’s View post by Mark Thoma, and of course the latter for pointing out the orginal article. I do read Economist’s View, but I had missed this article. Judging by the comment he left on my post on Economics Blogs, Richard started reading Economist’s View after I recommended it!
Comments(4)
I probably did (start reading Economist’s view) after reading your blog Graeme – one of the great things about blogging. Thanks for the (unique) perspective. If there is a backlash against globalisation in the West that would certainly be something to fear, as far as my investments go. It might make my job safer from bloggers like you though! But on the whole, I agree – it is too late to roll back globalisation so we’ll have to adapt and painful it might be.
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