On Paul Sheehan
Niall Clugston writes: Re. “How Fairfax and Paul Sheehan bought the lies told by “Louise”” (Monday). Let’s not forget that Paul Sheehan was the man who brought us the “Magic Water” hoax of 2002.
On trade policy
Geoff Edwards writes: Re. “Slapping tariffs on cheap imported goods the dumbest kind of protectionism” (Monday). Bernard Keane, your admiration of free trade seems largely framed from the perspective of consumers. In general, yes, consumers benefit from free trade with a country that has lower costs. But an economy consists of both consumers and producers. Free trade can devastate producers. And it is production, not consumption, that generates a nation’s prosperity. A nation that is careless of the fate of its own producers, especially its farmers, is headed for deep economic trouble.
On foreign ownership
John Kotsopoulos writes: Re. “Tassie dairy sale gets the tick as China milks free-trade deal” (February 24). It gets better than that Keith Binns. Recently I saw an interview on a Foxtel Channel (CNBC I think it was) involving a leading Republican back room operator which touched on US/China relations. He was asked, in view of recent tensions in the South China Sea, was the US still obligated by treaty to defend Taiwan if it was attacked by China.
“Yes” he said, but, with a wry smile added “we would have to borrow the money from China.”
On the other hand, the massive industrialisation which feeds the insatiable appetite the west, and the US in particular, has for cheap consumer goods means China cannot just pull on a fight on a whim. Any disruption to economic activity risks unleashing the mother of all revolutions among hundreds of millions of factory workers recruited from poor rural areas to work in the sweat shop factories that underpin Chinese manufacturing. Already we have seen a pushback from exploited workers demanding better pay and working conditions.
Economic imperialism can be a double-edged sword, it seems.
Adam Smith exposed the mercantilism advocated by Geoff Edwards way back in 1776: “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production and the welfare of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.”
There are many examples of producers being looked after to the extent that they crash the economy. If they don’t have a consumer, they shouldn’t be producing. It must be consumers that drive production, not the other way round.
And yes, the agrarian socialists out there in farmer land are at the front. The most notable example in my life was in the late 70’s when I was living New Zealand. Muldoon offered supplementary minimum prices to farmers for their lamb, which guaranteed a price irrespective of world demand. The result was a huge mountain of unwanted lamb and when SMPs ended, it caused a crash in farm values driving young farmers off the land.
RogerD – the qwuote of Smith that I most often quote “when men of similar business meet, even socially, the inevitable result is a conspiracy or cartel against the customer”.
This is generally what the neocon nutter like OneHand refer to as the Invisible Hand of the market.
Always in your pocket.
What’s the definition of a “neoconservative” as compared to the term, “conservative” AR?
You don’t need to expand on the term, “nutter”. I know what that means.