INCITE
Incite -- (v) 1: give an incentive; 2: provoke or stir up; "incite a riot"; 3: urge on; cause to act
Sunday, March 07, 2004

 
And now, a rant from our sponsors...
Written by: Beck

You know what I hate? (fine, fine, so a complete answer to that question would take up enough webspace to crash blogspot.com, just settle down and read on). I hate the fact that idiotic liberal pundits seem to think that any argument about economics can be refuted based on a combination of fantasy and scorn. Actually, it's worse than that, they treat arguments based in sound economic theory as inherently deceitful, and as such, completely refuse to engage any thought which proclaims, "You're wrong, and this is why." If you tell them that free trade is good and the export of jobs oversees is not only desirable, but necessary for the growth of an economy, they just shout something inane like "Voodoo economics!" and think they've somehow proven their point.

What is so god damned sacred about steel workers? Sure, it sucks any time someone loses their job, but why in hell is it that people want to keep jobs around that add very little value when people oversees will do it for less? How is it not self evident that the higher up your nations' citizens are in the value-added chain of production, the better it is for your nation as a whole? I mean, if they were to redistribute all the jobs in the world, each country picking jobs from a list in turn like kids on a playground picking teammates for a kickball game (you remember kickball, right?), do you really think the Chinese would be champing at the bit to select "Textile Worker," and, "Jack-in-the-Box Antenna Ball Assembler?" Yet these @#$%!^& protectionists would have us doing precisely that. Hell, even Bush joined in the fun when he slapped a bunch of protectionist tariffs on steel. Steel is a raw material, folks. It is better to assemble products made out of steel than to be making the steel. It's even better than that to be building final goods which incorporate parts made of all sorts of products. Let me make sure I'm absolutely clear on this point--it's better to make the car than to assemble the engine, better to assemble the engine than to make the engine block, and better to make then engine block than to smelt the iron that goes into it. And it's better still if you can just buy the car from someone else and go about providing financial services to the guy who built the damn thing. To cite a Jodie Allen editorial from the Washington Post (free registration required),
Mankiw [the Bush administration's top economist] ruffled feathers recently by saying that outsourcing white-collar jobs was no big deal; after all, America has been shipping jobs overseas for decades. True the "churn" produces permanent losses for some individuals. But the lost jobs have always been replaced by more productive and hence better-paying ones. Sooner or later that will happen again. "This is a fact of life that Americans have to get used to," said Brookings economist Barry Bosworth at a recent American Enterprise Institute colloquium.
Once upon a time, the phrase, "cottage industry," actually referred to something made in cottages by families' wives & daughters who wouldn't otherwise contribute to their family's bottom line. Some entrepreneurial guy would buy up all the wool in the area, then part it out to these women who would spend all day carding and spinning wool for a tiny amount of money. Then one day, someone built a machine which could automate the whole process. The women rioted. Today, it's easy to look back and say, gee, it sure is nice that my wife and daughters can work providing financial services to the guy who operates the wool carding and spinning machine instead of wearing their hands to tatters shearing sheep all day long. But god help us if someone wants to pay a third-world worker fifty cents an hour to weld steel. Meanwhile, John Kerry's protectionist policies advocate this very sort of anti-progress.

The standard objection to this sort of thinking is, "The steel workers in Pittsburgh don't know how to do anything BUT weld steel." Well, if they once learned how to weld steel, they can learn something else too. Progress doesn't occur without a measure of dislocation and disruption. The women working in cottages found other ways to be productive for their families (assuming they didn't live in Islamic societies who don't allow women to do anything other than wear solid black head-to-toe clothing, no matter the fact that black ain't exactly the color you want to wear if you live in the middle of a freaking desert). Those steel workers will find something better too. Either that, or they'll suffer horribly and wind up miserable and homeless (i.e. living off the state). Regardless, do you think the average steel worker, assuming he can be honest with himself, really wants his children, grand children, and great grand children to be welding steel? John Kerry does. Hell, where else is he going to find cheap labor to help maintain his mansions?

I conclude with an excerpt from a NYT op-ed piece (free registration required), quoting from an American educated Indian woman living in Bangalore:

"I just read about a guy in America who lost his job to India and he made a T-shirt that said, `I lost my job to India and all I got was this [lousy] T-shirt.' And he made all kinds of money." Only in America, she said, shaking her head, would someone figure out how to profit from his own unemployment. And that, she insisted, was the reason America need not fear outsourcing to India: America is so much more innovative a place than any other country.


Contact The Author:

John Beck

Feedback Welcomed








Greatest Hits

The Complete United Nations Posts
Immoderate Moderates
Marketing Myopia
In defense of the Republic
UKIP in America
Playing Connect the Dots
A Point So Often Missed: The Presence of an Administered Rate
Reagan Remembrance
Dr. Wolfowitz, or How I Supported the Right War Waged in the Wrong Way for the Wrong Reasons
Divine Right of Kings and UN Mandates
A Fantastic Idea, If I Do Say So Myself
Why We Were Right to Liberate Iraq
The Crisis of Conservatism


Blogs Worth Bookmarking

Steal The Blinds
Poor Dudley's Almanac
Mansizedtarget
Protein Wisdom
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
New Sisyphus
Iowahawk
Jim Treacher
Ace of Spades
Captain's Quarters
Rambling's Journal
Neolibertarian Blog
LLP Group Blog
The Llama Butchers
The Castle Argghhh
The Politburo Diktat
The Dissident Frogman
In Search of Utopia
Aaron's cc:
TacJammer
Wizbang
Q&O
IMAO
INDC
You Know You Wanna
Classical Values
Clowning Glory
Vice Squad
Samizdata
Hit & Run
Link Mecca
The Corner
Power Line
Instapundit
Michelle Malkin
Mises Institute
marchand chronicles
Enlighten - New Jersey


More Top Reads

Ego
SlagleRock's Slaughterhouse
a_sdf
This Blog is Full of Crap
Redstate
Who Tends the Fires
The Bleat
Outside the Beltway
gapingvoid
Small Dead Animals
Kim du Toit
Tman in Tennessee
mypetjawa
mASS BACKWARDS
Hog On Ice
Pardon My English
Mr. Minority
Speed Of Thought
Bloodletting
La Shawn Barber
Vodkapundit
Right Wing News
USS Clueless
LeatherPenguin
Belmont Club
Shades of Gray
Seldom Sober
Roger L. Simon
Tacoma Blaze
A Small Victory
Murdoc Online
Iraq Elections Diatribe
Winds of Change
Wuzzadem
Enlighten - New Jersey
Random Fate
Riding Sun
My VRWC
The Daily File
Matt "The Man" Margolis
Bastard Sword
Roller Coaster of Hate


News Links

Blogger News Network
National Review Online
Tech Central Station
The Drudge Report
Reason Online
Mises Institute
The Weekly Standard
Front Page Magazine
Town Hall
VDARE


Affiliations, Accolades, & Acknowledgements

NEOLIBERTARIAN NETWORK
The Neolibertarian Network


LIFE, LIBERTY, PROPERTY



ALLIANCE OF FREE BLOGS
Image Hosted by ImageShack.us
"More tallent than a million monkeys with typewriters."
--Glenn Reynolds


BEST CONSERVATIVE BLOG NOMINEE
Image Hosted by ImageShack.us


EMPIRE OF THE BLOGS
Image Hosted by ImageShack.us


BLOGS FOR BUSH
Image Hosted by ImageShack.us





Life, Liberty, Property Community





Reciprocal Blogrolling

Yippee-Ki-Yay!
Accidental Verbosity
Conservative Eyes
The Moderate Voice
Perpetual Three-Dot Column
Chapomatic
Sudan Watch
Mystery Achievement
Le Sabot Post-Moderne
Comment Me No Comments
New Spew


Links That Amuse the Writers

Huffington's Toast
The IFOC News
Dave Barry's Blog
Drum Machine
Something Awful
Fight!
Cox & Forkum
Fark
Exploding Dog


Archives

March 2004
April 2004
May 2004
June 2004
July 2004
August 2004
September 2004
October 2004
November 2004
December 2004
January 2005
February 2005
March 2005
April 2005
May 2005
June 2005
July 2005
August 2005
September 2005
October 2005
November 2005
December 2005
January 2006
February 2006
March 2006
April 2006
May 2006
June 2006
August 2006
March 2007
May 2007
June 2007
August 2007
September 2007
October 2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008
May 2008
September 2008
November 2008
December 2008
March 2009
April 2009
June 2009
July 2009
August 2009
September 2009
October 2009
November 2009



The Elephant Graveyard

We Are Full of Shit
The Sicilian
The Diplomad
Undercaffeinated
Insults Unpunished
Fear & Loathing in Iraq
Right Wingin-It
DGCI
Serenity's Journal
Son of Nixon
Rachel Lucas


Credits

Site Design by Maystar
Ask not for whom the blog tolls...
This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?
Weblog Commenting and Trackback by HaloScan.com

Listed on Blogwise
Blogarama - The Blog Directory


Popdex

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us


Email Questions and Comments

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
eXTReMe Tracker