The structure of debt fueled markets and economies begat our cultures of consumption, speculation and excess. It all isn’t just going to be put right, set back upon the rails with some bookeeping and money printing. An entire age is ending.

Without the movement to deregulate existing regulation, and without the opposition to new regulation of the “shadow banking industry,” you wouldn’t have had the environment for the bubble

But then would have recovered from the failure of Keynesianism in the late 1960s and the collapse of social democracy in the 1970s?

I am not saying we should forcefully ship a minimum percentage of goods made in the world on big ships or planes. I am saying it should be possible and it is good for many that it is, more and more, possible (except for Birma and North Korea maybe).

What is this “better view of things” that comes from the actual trade, mass-exchange of commodities between large societies?

Why is protectionism always morally bad?
Oh, forget “always bad”, that’s clearly not the case; why would it even be sometimes morally bad? For example: if I build my own furniture, or grow my own chickens – what moral tenet am I violating?

But hard labour will never completely exit developed countries (& it hasn’t or GM wouldn’t be a big thing over there). And international trade will remain necessary because I don’t see reasons why the fascination with prosciutto would be limited to Parma.

In a sense, international trade really should be glamorized for non-economic reasons. It gives a potential for everybody to live in the world rather than in a province of it. There’s no denying, I think, that we have a better view of things since we started to trade a couple of centuries ago.

Now I think this through: maybe the one basis on which international trade should NOT be at all glamourized would be for economic reasons. We should temper the good thing economically as it clearly, when unhampered, creates economic oscillations which lead to woes bigger than non-economic good that comes from it.

So, economically: protectionism can be good; morally, protectionism is always bad; in reality, it is a matter of weighing. Maybe that’s indeed why all this globalization discussion is so moronic – & I wouldn’t have appreciated that if I wouldn’t have mentioned fornication ;-)

So, you’re saying that developing countries are now temporarily exporting products of manual labor while importing know-how, until they somehow become developed and start producing enough of their own know-how, right? At which point, I imagine, the developed countries become underdeveloped (since they don’t produce any tangible stuff and have nothing to trade for it) and they will have do hard labor again. It oscillates for a while and eventually evens out with everybody doing some labor and some know-how.

And at that point international trade becomes largely unnecessary, at least between large enough countries; occasional German eating prosciutto di Parma and occasional Italian driving an Audi notwithstanding. Because there are dozens of Italian car models and dozens of German varieties of ham.

Correct? Is this how modern economic thought goes? Because I get the impression that they tend to glamorize international trade, as opposed to describing it as a necessary evil.

On the production side you’re right of course; there’s no reason why one group of people would be better at innovation and another at mass production. That’ s a temporary thing which helped developing countries to develop but which will slowly disappear once they’re developed.

As someone who snipes probably too often at John Q.’s posts, I’d just like to register my complete agreement with him here.

But that’s not what “free trade” people are usually talking about. What is the benefit of trading Chinese-made toys for American-produced soda pop? Is division of labor on this high level beneficial to anyone and if so, to what extent? I find it very doubtful; I can’t see any value in 1.3 billion people specializing in some area.

Better?