NAFTA, Whatever its Flaws, Was a Good Thing

A letter criticizing NAFTA and opposing other free trade agreements appeared in the New Jersey Star-Ledger recently. Rob Kneller cited a study that concludes that "an estimated 682,900 U.S. jobs have been 'lost or displaced' because of the agreement and the resulting trade deficit."

I left these comments:

Regarding the "estimated 682,900 U.S. jobs [that] have been 'lost or displaced'" because of NAFTA—assuming it's true—so what? Jobs are always "lost or displaced" as the economy evolves. Mature U.S. firms shed 1 million jobs annually, on balance, yet new firms create 3 million new jobs for a net average gain of 2 million American jobs.

As Frederic Bastiat  noted, a good economist always considers secondary consequences ("what is NOT seen"), not just immediate consequences that are more easily seen. What about the domestic jobs created through increased U.S. exports or expanding domestic sales in industries that grow because of the extra spending power U.S. consumers enjoy due to lower prices of foreign-made goods? No study can trace all of the positive secondary consequences of free trade. [But] in the 14 years after NAFTA, the U.S. job force grew by 27 million.

That's the practical side. More important is the moral side. What right does anyone have to stand in the way of Americans buying or selling goods and services from or to individuals in other countries? Kneller wrings his hands over "secret" trade agreements, yet he has no problem interfering with the rights of other Americans. Trade is a win-win—a mutually beneficial transaction. What's wrong with two producers from different countries getting better together? Individuals trading the product of their labor with each other for mutual betterment fosters prosperity. If the trade is between individuals in different countries, it benefits the economies in both countries. The arrogant and derogatory smear of  "sweatshop countries" is a cheap shot at people in poor countries taking a job to better themselves. Anyone concerned with overall U.S. economic strength and job creation should want economic growth in other countries, which only comes from individual's pursuing a better life for themselves and their families through production and trade.

The "free" in free trade means the absence of physical force or coercion. Laws restricting trade between citizens of different countries are based on force, and are immoral unless they serve to prop up tyrannies (as with the old Soviet bloc or, today, with North Korea). There may be things wrong with NAFTA or other trade liberalizing treaties, but the extent to which free trade among citizens is liberalized is not one of them.

Anyone truly concerned about American jobs should focus on U.S. government policies that stifle job creation, like occupational licensure, environmental regulations, minimum wage laws, local zoning restrictions, and forced unionization. Stop trying to block your fellow Americans from exercising their inalienable right to trade with others, be they from Canada, Mexico, or another state within U.S. borders.

Related Reading:

Bangladesh Building Collapse Not a Result of Free Trade

Independent Voters are Independent for a Reason

What does it mean to be a Democrat of Republican (or a member of any political party)? It means you get to play a part, via primary elections, in choosing your party's candidates to run against opposing party candidates in general elections.

What does it meant to be "unaffiliated"? It means you do not belong to any political party, commonly known as an Independent. Not being a member of any political party, you don't get a vote on which candidates political parties run in general elections.

Considering that every registered voter can choose his party affiliation, this would seem uncontroversial and fair. 

But, apparently, there are some Independents who don't know what "independent" means. Jaime (“Jim”) Martinez, a member Independent­Voting.org, and Rebecca Feldman, president, Morristown Town Council published a letter in the New Jersey Star-Ledger highlighting and supporting a federal lawsuit that "demands that every voter have an equal vote at every stage of the state-funded election process." They write:

    Primary elections are a critical juncture in the democratic process. But in New Jersey, independents — who are 47 percent of registered voters — are forced to join a party in order to vote. This is the independent’s plight: We are first-class taxpayers when it comes to funding elections, but second-class voters.     A change is clearly needed, so the voices of millions of independent voters who do not now have full voting rights can be heard.

I left these comments:

This letter brings to mind the old saying about eating one's cake and having it, too.

I'm a former Republican who registered as an Independent in 2006 because neither [major] party any longer substantially represented my principles and viewpoints. When I did so, I willingly gave up the ability to vote in primaries. I did not give up "full voting rights." What business does an Independent have to help choose candidates of parties he chose not to belong to?

The idea that Independents are "first-class taxpayers when it comes to funding elections, but second-class voters" is absurd on its face. We are not "second-class voters." We are voters who exercised a particular choice with full knowledge of the consequences. (Taxpayer funding of candidates is a problem, and should be abolished. But that is another issue.)

If this ridiculous and juvenile lawsuit succeeds, and non-party members are allowed to pollute the primary process, then any ideological distinction between the parties would likely be diluted and washed away. If that happens, there will be no truly independent political parties, and no real ideological choice in many contests. We might as well have one-party rule.

It's true that the rights of Independents are violated by being forced to fund "public matching funds" to political candidates. But everyone's rights are violated by government funding laws. Taxpayer funding of elections is what should be challenged.

The Great Achievement of Christopher Columbus

Excerpts from an op-ed in the Bucks County Courier Times, October 11, 2007.

Columbus Day Celebrates Western Civilization

By Thomas Bowden

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered the New World.

We need not evade or excuse Columbus’s flaws--his religious zealotry, his enslavement and oppression of natives--to recognize that he made history by finding new territory for a civilization that would soon show mankind how to overcome the age-old scourges of slavery, war, and forced religious conversion.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose philosophers and mathematicians, men such as Aristotle, Archimedes, and Euclid, displaced otherworldly mysticism by discovering the laws of logic and mathematical relationships, demonstrating to mankind that reality is a single realm accessible to human understanding.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose scientists, men such as Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, banished primitive superstitions by discovering natural laws through the scientific method, demonstrating to mankind that the universe is both knowable and predictable.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose political geniuses, men such as John Locke and the Founding Fathers, defined the principles by which bloody tribal warfare, religious strife, and, ultimately, slavery could be eradicated by constitutional republics devoted to protecting life, liberty, property, and the selfish pursuit of individual happiness.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose entrepreneurs, men such as Rockefeller, Ford, and Gates, transformed an inhospitable wilderness populated by frightened savages into a wealthy nation of self-confident producers served by highways, power plants, computers, and thousands of other life-enhancing products.

On Columbus Day, in sum, we celebrate Western civilization as history’s greatest cultural achievement. What better reason could there be for a holiday?

In another op-ed on Fox News.com, Let's Take Back Columbus Day, Bowden said this:

We’ve been taught that Columbus opened the way for rapacious European settlers to unleash a stream of horrors on a virgin continent: slavery, racism, warfare, epidemic, and the cruel oppression of Indians.
This modern view of Columbus represents an unjust attack upon both our country and the civilization that made it possible. Western civilization did not originate slavery, racism, warfare, or disease--but with America as its exemplar, that civilization created the antidotes. How? By means of a set of core ideas that set Western civilization apart from all others: reason and individualism.

Excerpts from an op-ed in Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, October 10, 2008

Columbus was a hero

By Dimitri Vassilaros

Christopher Columbus could not have discovered a better spokesman than Thomas A. Bowden.

The accomplishments of Columbus should speak for themselves. But thanks to political correctness, the moronic multicultural mob keeps talking them down. Mr. Bowden has been speaking passionately and forcefully about Columbus for years.

"My ancestors were savages," says Bowden matter-of-factly. Everyone can say the same, depending on how far back one is willing to look at lineage. "It's nothing racial or ethnic; it's historical fact."

"Columbus critics have a disguised criticism of Western civilization because Europeans replaced Stone Age Indians. They believe that this continent would have been better off without Europeans, that industrial civilization is an evil that is to be lamented and regretted.

"That is the real criticism of Columbus. I reject it completely."

Indians typically were widely scattered Stone Age tribes, he says. "They had little agriculture and lived in poverty, fear, ignorance and superstition. They had no concept of government, ownership or private property rights.

"Slavery was perfectly common.

Well, didn't Indians at least live in harmony with nature?

"No," says Bowden. "Man should not live in harmony with nature in the sense of simply keeping it pristine. We live by impacting the environment. The environment has no intrinsic value. Our civilization is more in harmony with nature by making it serve our ends."

Well, what about all the land supposedly stolen from the Indians by European settlers?

Indians did not own the vast reaches of land that they traveled on, Bowden says. Ownership of land is deserved, he says. By that, he means a settler can acquire property rights by making the land more valuable by, say, digging it up for farming. Or to build his homestead or business.

Columbus essentially was an explorer and discoverer bringing Western civilization's cures, science and technology, he says. The philosophical legal process was another gift the Europeans gave to the Indians, he says. "Indians got all that for free."

Columbus' critics should fall down on their knees and thank the Founding Fathers for creating a nation based on the moral principle of the individual's right to life, liberty and, Bowden stresses, the selfish pursuit of happiness.

"It's the only nation that came about in such a way. Anyone who has humanity's interest at heart should love America," he says.

Excerpts from Man's Best Came With Columbus—Michael S. Berliner

Did Columbus “discover” America? Yes, in every important respect. This does not mean that no human eye had been cast on America before Columbus arrived. It does mean that Columbus brought America to the attention of the civilized world, i.e., the developing scientific civilizations of Western Europe. The result, ultimately, was the United States of America. It was Columbus’s discovery for Western Europe that led to the influx of ideas and people on which this nation was founded and on which it still rests. The opening of America brought the ideas and achievements of Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and the thousands of thinkers, writers, and inventors who followed. What they replaced was a way of life dominated by fatalism, passivity, superstition, and magic.

Happy Columbus Day

Related Viewing:

Columbus Day Without Guilt—Thomas A. Bowden

Memo to John D. Atlas: How About Let's Not Suppress Anybody's Vote, or Voice

Another election is fast approaching, so the issue of “voter suppression” has predictably surfaced again. John D. Atlas, a NJ Voices contributor and self-described “writer and activist lawyer,” weighed in on the issue. Under cover of concern about low voter turnout, Atlas smuggles in a pro-statist agenda. He notes that those least likely to vote “tend to be working poor, minority and young people.” But . . .

When they do vote, they tend to vote for candidates who favor redistributionist policies, such as higher taxes on the rich, raising the minimum wage, government-supported job training, and universal health-care. And they typically don’t vote Republican.

Why do so few of this group vote? Atlas “speculates” that:

Most non-voting Americans, especially the working-poor, are alienated from mainstream politics and don’t vote because they see politicians as unresponsive to their needs or perspectives. Moreover, minority voters have long faced obstacles-literacy tests, poll taxes, intimidation, threats, and violence.

Atlas doesn’t bother to “speculate” on why past obstacles to voting—which, aside from literacy tests, a reasonable requirement, ceased decades ago—should inhibit people from voting today.

Atlas asserts that this trend “is bad for our democracy, bad for equality, and something should be done about it.” This is a strange statement, given that our “democracy” has spawned an almost total conversion from a predominantly free, capitalistic society to today’s gargantuan regulatory welfare state over the past century, including a “great leap forward” for the welfare state in the past 15 years under both party’s rule. If anything, these facts tend to support the conclusion that the statist/socialist trend was driven more by the intellectuals and wealthier voters than by poor people looking for a handout.

Atlas doesn’t explain this contradiction, but wants to do “something about” what appears, from a Leftist’s perspective, not to be broken.

Do what? After hinting darkly about some “powerful financial interests” that somehow causes young adults to believe “it makes no difference who you vote for,” blaming Republicans’ “protracted struggle over voting rights,” and calling for some technical election reforms, Atlas gets to the meaty stuff: “Campaign finance reform that eliminates corporate special interest money would help.”

It sure would help, but whom?

I left these comments:

I’m under no illusions that my lone vote will “count,” in the sense of swaying an election one way or another. It doesn’t. But I vote regularly. Notwithstanding the excuses for not voting listed here, people who choose not to vote are either uninterested, unmotivated, or just plain lazy. Whatever past practices of actual voter suppression once existed, the universal right to vote is now firmly protected. Anyone who wants to vote can vote.

This article is really all about suppressing the votes of people who favor less government intrusion into our lives—intrusions like mandatory sick pay and redistribution of earnings to those who didn’t earn it.

The tip-off is the call to ban corporate campaign spending, but not union spending. Atlas calls for silencing the free speech rights of those “financial interests” most likely to advocate for less regulation and lower taxes, thus silencing and suppressing millions upon millions of Americans who agree with the pro-liberty message. Unions are big “financial interests,” too. NJ.com’s Matt Friedman recently reported that, between 1999 and 2013, unions accounted for 55% of special interest spending in NJ; some $171 million. Why not ban union spending? Because unions are more likely to advocate for statist, redistributionist policies, and thus speak for millions upon millions of people who agree with that message.

This transparent article is all about advancing an ever-more-statist government and silencing statists’ victims—a Leftist agenda. How about this: Don’t silence anybody—whether individuals or associations of individuals—and let elections be shaped on the public battleground of ideas. That’s what the First Amendment is for.

Related Reading:

Democracy for All: The "Drown Out the Voice of Average Americans" Amendment

"McCutcheon" Advances Free Speech and Republican Government

Reducing Luck to its Proper Rank

Don Watkins recently posted an interview with author Brian Tracy at Voices for Reason. I particularly liked this statement from Tracy:

I have spoken and written on this subject extensively. There is no such thing as luck; there are only probabilities. The good news is that you can influence the probabilities on your behalf.

The harder you work, the luckier you get. The more you learn about your craft, the better you become, and the better results you get. The better you manage your time, the more productive you are and the better your results will be. Every one of these constructive actions increases the probabilities that you will be the right person, doing the right work, in the right place. As a result, doors will open for you and you will move ahead far faster than the average person who is passive, and who simply waits and hopes for things to get better.

Tracy, whom I had never heard of before reading Watkins’s interview, is an interesting person. You can read the interview here.

Related Reading:

Responsibility & Luck: A Defense of Praise and Blame—Diana Hsieh

Law Mandating "Equal Pay for Equal Work" is Logically, Economically, and Morally Wrong

In a June Town Hall Meeting, President Obama fielded this question concerning “equal pay for equal work”:

Hi, my name is Erin.  I just left a corporation in Minnesota, a Fortune 500 corporation, where I had my four-year degree, my male counterpart did not, and he was making $3 more an hour than I was.  My question for you is what are we going to do about it so as I grow up and other women grow up we are not experiencing the wage gap anymore?  

“Equal pay for equal work”: In the abstract, who would be against that?

The first problem is with the term “equal work”—it doesn’t exist. People doing the same job have widely varying degrees of productiveness. Some are more efficient. Some work faster, but make more mistakes that have to be corrected later. Some are slower and more deliberate, and thus make fewer mistakes. Ambition levels vary, as do leadership qualities and ability to adapt to changing conditions. Some are better “team players”. Experience varies greatly. Women on average may simply be less aggressive about going after raises. The list of variables is large. Equal work is a myth, just as equality in anything but the legal/political sense is a myth.

I spent my career in a New Jersey plumbers union. The pay scale is set by contract, and is equal for all members at all job levels; each year of apprenticeship (5), journeyman, foreman, general foreman, etc, has a set pay scale. Yet the quality of the worker varies greatly within each category. I’ve worked with individuals making the same pay scale but doing half the work as I, and others who are simply better. Having a degree of some sort—an apprenticeship graduation degree or four-year college degree—is no guarantee of productiveness.

Obama gave a long, rambling answer. As expected, he came out for government-mandated equal pay, making it easier for women to sue for back pay based on “discrimination,” banning companies from forbidding employees from sharing salary information, etc.—government mandate after government mandate.

Out will be judging people on individual merits; raises for better performance; unequal pay for unequal work, including for superior performing women. In will be paranoia; obsession over the next guy’s—or gal’s—pay level; or worse, the resentful slouch looking to hold back his productive betters. In will be the reign of mediocrity; out will be the reign of merit-based judgement. And in will be the all-pervasive fear of predatory lawsuits. Welcome to the drone company.

This is not to deny that some women are victims of unfair discrimination. There’s no doubt that this can be true. (Although Obama’s pay disparity claim—that women make only 77% of men—is a wild exaggeration. As the Left-leaning, normally pro-Obama New Jersey Star-Ledger noted in an editorial, the Obama-backed “Paycheck Fairness Act was a cynical ploy, because it relies on these bogus statistics. The disparity is more on the order of 91-95%, not far off of the statistical “margin of error.”)

But to the extent that pay injustice exists, that is no justification for dealing with the issue by force; i.e., by law. The issue of pay is strictly a contractual matter between employer and employee. The government should be protecting employer-employee rights to voluntarily contract, not dictating contractual terms based on statistics (which rank just above “damned lies” as a tool of deception), or anything else. Human beings are not drones. Any actual pay injustice that does exist in the workplace is a matter to be dealt with through education, rational persuasion, social activism, and economic competition, not governmental—i.e., armed—force. Free speech and reason, together, is a powerful force.

And Obama implied as much. He remarked that men should be equally concerned about gender pay inequities:

So this is something that I care a lot about not just because of my past, but also because of my future.  I’ve got two daughters.  The idea that they would not be paid the same or not have the same opportunities as somebody’s sons is infuriating.  And even if you’re not a dad, those of you who have partners, spouses -- men -- this is not a women’s issue.  Because if they’re not getting paid, that means they’re not bringing home as much money, which means your family budget is tighter.  (Applause.)  So this is a family issue and not a gender issue.

Yes, men should—and do—care about this issue. The president went on:

And there are some wonderful companies who are doing this.  And as I said before, it turns out that when companies adopt family-friendly policies their productivity goes up, they have lower turnover -- which makes sense.  Look, if you have a family emergency, and you go to your boss and you say, can I have a week off, I've got to take care of a sick child or a dad -- or can I leave early this afternoon because my kid is in a school play and I really think this is important, and they say, of course, nothing is more important than family -- how hard are you going to work for that person when you get back on the job?  You're going to feel invested in them.  You're going to say to yourself, man, these folks care about me, which means I care about you.  And if I have to take some extra time on a weekend, or I've got to do some work late at night when I'm not under an emergency situation, I'm going to do that.

So this makes good business sense.  But the problem is, is that we haven't done enough to encourage these new models.  And this is part of the reason why we did this Family Summit -- we wanted to lift this stuff up, show companies that are doing the right thing, encourage others to adopt the same practices, and maybe get some legislation that incentivizes better policies.

Family summits? Fine. “Lift this stuff up” (activism)? Wonderful. Freedom to persuade and agitate is powerful. And it gets results, over time. But legislation? Obama concluded: “In the meantime, though, if you're doing the same job you should make the same pay -- period; full stop. That should be a basic rule.  That shouldn’t be subject to confusion.”

What there shouldn’t be any confusion about is that government imposing “good business sense” by legislative force is immoral, impractical, and inimical to liberty and the proper purpose of government; which is to protect, rather than violate, individual rights. Obama conflates the benign and potent power of reason and freedom with the coercive and corrosive power of the gun. It is against someone who demands of politicians, “what are we [the government] going to do about it?” that we should scream, “FULL STOP.”

Related Reading:

What does it Mean to Say: "We'll Have to Agree to Disagree?"

"Regulating" Business - the Good and the Bad

How to Overcome Bigotry in a Free Society

Craig Biddle on Auberon Herbert

Auberon Herbert: Advocate of Reason, Individual Rights, and Limited Government by Craig Biddle

Here is the opening paragraph:

Auberon Herbert (1838–1906) was a 19th-century British political philosopher and a member of Parliament, who recognized that each individual has inalienable rights to direct his own mind and body, and to keep and use the product of his own effort. In defense of these rights, Herbert advocated a strictly limited, voluntarily funded, rights-protecting government. This social system, which Herbert called “voluntaryism,” is what is known today as laissez-faire capitalism.

It’s always welcome to discover new voices for liberty! Well worth reading Biddle's post at The Objective Standard blog.