Free Trade: Vox Day vs. Gary North

United States

The best debate going on at the moment:

“To address North’s conceptual problem, a man with a badge and a gun and a sales tax would not have made South Koreans better off. They have done very handsomely out of the new free trade deal. But he could have prevented Americans from finding themselves worse off, as the US is now selling $444 million less to South Korea while adding another $825 billion in new debt. Would Mr. North would consider himself to be similarly better off if his salary were to be cut by 12 percent while he tacked on another 15% to the amount already owed on his credit card? Taking Mr. North’s logic to the extreme, we would have to conclude that being unemployed with a maxed-out credit card is the ideal economic state.”

I’ve always thought the Confederacy was the best refutation of free trade.

When the War Between the States came, the Union was left with most of the food producing areas, the factories, the banks, the railroads, a far larger population, the merchant marine, and the Union Navy – every advantage it needed to destroy and subdue the Confederacy.

The triumph of free trade in Britain had made the British too dependent on cheap food from the Midwest to intervene in the war. The practice of free trade within the Union had made the South dependent on cheap Midwestern food and the Northeast to ship its cotton to Europe.

The South had spent decades following its “comparative advantage”: the result was that when the war broke out, the South was full of millions of slaves who enlisted in the Union Army, and an abundance of cotton which was worthless to us because of the Yankee blockade of our coastline.

“Died of free trade” ought to be written on the tombstone of the Confederacy: railroads deteriorated because their maintenance was dependent on rails, rolling stock, train engines and other parts manufactured in the North, the transportation system collapsed because the draft animals had been imported from the Midwest, there was a salt famine caused by our dependence on imported salt from Wales, etc.

“At the Battle of Bull Run, on July 16, 1861, the Confederates won despite serious supply deficiencies.  Their army might have been able to follow up this victory with an assault on Washington – which at that time was largely defenseless. Beauregard evidently wanted to do just that, but Johnston vetoed the move because the army was low on supplies. There was not one day’s rations of food for the entire army. One Confederate soldier described the situation this way: “two days after the battle we were literally starved out at Manassas, and were forced to advance to Fairfax Court House in order to get the supplies which the Union army had left in abundance.” One week after the battle, Johnston begged for supplies: “We are almost destitute and in danger of absolute suffering.” On July 29, Beauregard told Davis that “some regiments are nearly starving.” In another letter he claimed that “The want of food and transportation had made us lose all the fruits of our victory. We ought at this moment to be in or about Washington.” He then asked, “Cannot something be done towards furnishing us more expeditiously and regularly with food and transportation?”

Historian Richard Goff, who extensively studied the Confederate supply system, concluded: “the abandonment of the ‘on to Washington’ scheme is the first, and quite possibly the most important, instance of the manner in which supply deficiencies shaped strategy.” Had the Southern army destroyed the remnants of the defeated Union army and captured Washington in July 1861, the war might well have ended there with the Confederacy’s independence.”

The above excerpt comes from Andrew M. Smith’s Starving the South: How the North Won the Civil War.

The South didn’t have the strength to win its independence because free trade within the Union had led to regional specialization that left us without the means to physically defend ourselves from the Northern invasion.

We followed “the law of comparative advantage” to our national demise.

About Hunter Wallace 12392 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

50 Comments

  1. So what if we have a trade deficit with South Korea? We have trade surpluses with other countries. The fact that we can exchange worthless green paper with South Korea for real goods is great.

    You’re making a huge stretch in your argument about The South. The CSA died by blockade which is the antithesis of free trade. But before it died of blockade it had wounded itself with an ill conceived embargo meant to force France and Britain to intervene in the war early on. Thousands of textile jobs were lost in Europe and public opinion turned against the confederacy (rather than pro-union). The market manipulation by the CSA resulted in Europeans turning to India and Egypt for their cotton needs. By the time the Confederates realized their error and were able to slip ships through the Union blockade they couldn’t compete with Egyptian cotton.
    So

  2. And the regionalized slave plantation economy was the basis of Southern culture and economy. The CSA was one of the wealthiest nations in the world, it didn’t need to undergo heavy industrialization to compete against the North, it just needed trading partners and a free market for its raw materials.

  3. (1) As Vox points out, the way this works is that we exchange green paper for manufactured goods from China, Japan, and South Korea, and they use those reserves to buy U.S. Treasury debt, which makes U.S. taxpayers into tax slaves to foreigners.

    (2) The real world is the antithesis of free trade: in the real world, rival nation-states exist, and economics is inseparable from political power. Groups also exist, not merely atomized individuals.

    (3) Yancey’s diplomatic mission to Britain and France was a failure. The British and French had an abundant stockpile of cotton which Southerners had been happy to sell them in the years before secession. They were under no real significant pressure to immediately enter the war on the side of the Confederacy.

    (4) The plantation economy could have been balanced by domestic manufacturing and a shipping industry, which the Confederacy tried to create almost from scratch during the war, but that had been discouraged in the years before the war (like railroads and internal improvements) because it did not maximize the immediate financial self interest of the planters.

    (5) The North had no need to undergo heavy industrialization – British manufactures were superior to their Northern counterparts at the time, which is why the North supported the protective tariff, but manufacturing and internal improvements were seen as worth promoting for their own sake, as an investment in the future, whereas this wasn’t the case in the South.

    (6) Abolition is another example of the stupidity of free trade – it was ludicrous for the British to abolish slavery in their colonies, and it was even more ludicrous for the North to provoke the South to the point of secession over the possibility that a miniscule number of slaves might enter the territories, when the South accounted for 80 percent or more of America’s exports.

    Yet that happened anyway. Secession dismantled the Union which had been built on internal free trade. The South grew the cotton and other commodities that foreigners wanted. The Midwest grew the food that the South needed. The Northeast specialized in banking, manufacturing, and shipping.

    The South was the richest section of the Union, but it was relatively more dependent on the Midwest than the other way around, and when the war came, food and war materials proved to be more valuable than cotton.

  4. The analogy to the CSA doesn’t really apply because South Korea is a vassal or province of the American Empire. It is occupied by tens of thousands of US troops. Their exports to the US are basically tribute. Their industry has been maintained in order to maintain their tribute to the US; however, they have been eroding their domestic agriculture, their population is urbanizing, and are becoming increasingly dependent on US agribusiness for food. And their industrial base is ultimately dependent on oil imports which are controlled by the US.

    In a war or emergency situation, their military, manpower, industrial capacity, etc. would be commandeered by the US.

  5. Vox is obviously an abrasive personality, but the way his original post got under this money-man’s skin–to the point where North’s initial response was laughable waving of his academic credentials and mocking Vox’s SF writing–was very entertaining.

    Free traders believe that there should be a free trade in goods, capital and labor.

    Labor is performed by human beings.

    Since nationalists believe that human beings are not fungible, have innate national characterists, and are the core of what makes a nation that particular nation, free trade is incompatable completely with nationalism.

    People are not widgets.

    I find it hard to believe anyone takes libertarianism and/or free trade seriously, but apparently there are a lot of people out there who would rather live in a soulless, atomized, ugly uber-rationalized world so long as t-shirts are 2 bucks cheaper than they otherwise would be.

  6. One could also make the observation that free trade has kept an unknowable number of whites from dying in all the wars that didn’t start due to the economic interdependence. Without a machine to travel to an alternate universe where all history was exactly the same but without the spread of free trade you can’t disprove that hypothesis. Isn’t econ great?!

    Vox and North are looking at the wrong thing, IMO. The problem is the ability to buy debt with the trade surplus which is why the economic theory of free trade is invalid.

    The free-trade argument states that if actors focus on their comparative advantage, everyone benefits. True enough if measured properly. But without proper price discovery how do any of these actors know what their comparative advantage is? How can price be properly discovered if cost or profit is measured as pulled from the unknowable future? It can’t. The interchangeability of those dollars for FedGov debt is the problem, as hunter noted, but it’s also why the whole theory fails.

    Gold as currency (not a gold-backed fractional reserve system – a real no shit you circulate gold coins) is one answer if you can trust the mints, but those have historically always been run by governments who can’t resist cheating via debasement. An other is not to enter free-trade agreements with countries that manipulate their currency value (they all do). FedGov could also default on current debt and stop borrowing (LOL!) . Maybe make a free trade agreement but with automatic tariffs to level the actual trade balances (tarrifs rise until capital flow is equalized) but that would require every other trade partner does the same thing.

    Not really sure what the answer is. Both have good observations but I really think the issue is the fractional-reserve, debt-backed system that makes it all possible. Unfortunately, all other systems tried have problems too. At the end of the day, there’s trust in something backing all systems of trade.

  7. Very few people making the argument for or against free trade in my experience ever talk about the other side of the ledger sheet.
    You see, in practice, you need to tax SOMETHING. If you have free trade, you pretty much are forced into the box of taxing income or sales. Raising most of your money via tarrifs, as was the case before the income tax, is IMO considerably less onerous because it grants far far less auxilliary powers than does an income tax.
    When someone is arguing free trade, they’re really arguing free trade plus an income tax. They shouldn’t be allowed to sweep that under the rug before launching into ‘comparative advantage’ or ‘deadweight losses’.

  8. The biggest threat to the our economy is China ( though our trade deficit with So. Korea and all other countries is beyond belief).
    Go to : http://www.theeconomiccollapseblog.com
    Sorry. It is not good news.
    China was never much of a world player until american corporate heads shipped american industry there. Now the chinese are burying us.
    I don’t think– ever in world history– that a leadership has ever been so treasonous and traitorous as the leadership we’ve had in this country over the last 50-60 years.
    In regards to economic policies, as well as in every other aspect of governing a country.
    I am reeling from it. It amazes me.
    It will go down in the history books someday in the future as the biggest sell-out and usurpation of a nation ever.
    Not one country even had to fire a shot, it was all handed over to them voluntarily by our “leaders”.

  9. Free trade has always been our downfall. It and the mentality behind it are the finance crony capitalism championed by first by Yankees, then by Jews. A more inhuman and inhumane system has never been devised. But that doesn’t matter if you are of the “right stock”/tribe.

    You nailed it KevinV. Yankee laissez-faire capitalism presided over the economic rape of the South following the war. The Yankee immigrants who were lured into wage slave jobs in the Northern factories with the vague promise of eventual Western homesteads fared just as bad.

    Those who did not make it West became fodder for the communist trade unionists. After all what is communism but the filpside to the capitalist coin? Both spirit dead materialist anti-human ideologies, even when dressed up as “progressivism” or whatever other utopian fantasy you can imagine.

    Populist agrarian society was itself killed by so called free trade. The small farmers who survived the great depression were driven out of business the last half-century by corporate agribusiness, which brought with it the large-scale “cheap” illegal immigrant labor paradigm, further eroding society. Corporate capitalism drove the small shopkeepers out of business, too.

    What we have left today are the bones of the carcass after 150 years of Yankee capitalism and its free trade economic system.

    There are alternatives. Perhaps soon we may get to try some.

    For all you “true believers” in free trade, answer me one question.
    Why did “the Money” kill Huey Long?

    Deo Vindice

  10. “The Money” most definitely killed Huey Long. Long was very patriotic. The Money also poisoned Charles Lindbergh’s father– a senator at the time the federal reserve act was signed (1913)— He was very much opposed to it.
    “Northerntruthseeker” website put up an article the the other day about assassinations of American presidents : “Assassination Monopoly”
    I’m not sure what to think about the Linclon assassination ( why exactly he was assassinated) but the article,over-all, is very informative.

  11. TabulaLa Raza
    Execrable claptrap? Maybe you should find out more about the “America First” movement in the 1930’s, see what Lindbergh, Coughlin, Long, and others like them were saying. Or examine the works of the “Nashville Fugitives” and the Southern agrarian movement in the 1930’s.

    After Yankee capitalism collapsed in the Great Depression, the centralized welfare/warfare state became its replacement. Three flavors of this new state: Bolshevik/Communist, National Socialist/Fascist, Yankee Capitalist-Socialist/ FDR “New Deal”-LBJ “Great Society.” All three solutions rely upon a centralized state with total police power, centralized economic planning, targeting “outgroups”/dissenters as a means to enforce “social justice.”

    Emancipation was devised to “free labor” so the moneyed interests in the North could profit.

    Emancipation led to the aggrandizement of federal power. Reconstruction used the newly emancipated negroes to create a dependent class that could be used as wedge against the white people of the South.

    1860’s Federal government enshrines the commercial Yankee free trade capitalist laissez faire system using Freedman’s Bureau and Union League to establish a political hegemony with blacks as a major constituency. Targeted kulak class: white Southerners.

    Initiated in the 1930’s under FDR and interrupted by the World War and its wake, the transition from capitalism to socialism was completed in the 1960’s by LBJ.

    1960’s Federal government finally enshires the socialistic/communistic Yankee welfare/warfare corporatist state managed system using Civil Rights and the Immigration Act of 1965 to establish a political hegemony with blacks and browns as a major constituency. Targeted kulak class: white Southerners and all other middle class whites (by extension).

    Freedom failed. And so did Yankee capitalism.

    Deo Vindice

  12. This is not my strong suit, as I haven’t read as much in this arena as I ought to have done, but I believe the Belloc/Chesterton ‘kinder, gentler Anglo-Saxon catholicism’ known as ‘Distributivism’ has much to suggest itself in/for a racially homogenous, kinist state, such as the New Secessionist United States should be.

    That is, if land is arable, and populations are held to some sort of ‘guild system’ as they were in the Middle Ages, the corporately elected officials would partition out the various industries, craftsmen, and agriculture necessary for, say a 20-square mile stretch of the land. For, when peak oil comes, we WILL be reduced to having to ‘make do’ with industry and crafts that are our kith and kin, and neighbor’s skills, rather than pretend that some soulless agribusiness is going to ‘save us.’

    Of course, that means that the “less bright and best” of the White Anglo class of Folkish America may not get the ‘privilege’ of college (reserved for teachers and ministers, and possibly statesmen- just possibly), but that route (College for everyone) has been shown to be a dead-end, for the vast majority of Humans, anyway.

    Even people like Gary North, and the Preppers are saying, ‘Send your smart boys to schools now, where they can learn a TRADE- something like automotive repair (at $100 an hour, that’s almost as good as a lawyer- an occupation that will dwindle and [hopefully] die a well-deserved death, come the Revolution), cabinet- making, smithing, hydraulics, and other occupations- heck, even being a farrier might become a valid/viable occupation, after peak oil. For we WILL be reduced to the way of life our great-grandparents knew, within fifty years, if things go as they are. Which would actually be far better for the entire world, as the ‘Xenos’ would not be so willing to march 1500 miles to attack, say, Minnesota, from the Mexican border, if they have to walk the whole way!

    Not only that, but heirloom seeds, and heirloom livestock – http://albc-usa.org/
    would both ensure genetic ‘diversity’ as well as becoming ‘islands in the storm’ of nation-wide breakdown, and help put the antichrist Monsanto and merchants of animal death flesh out of business. Fresh, grass-fed beef beats ‘skunk’ meat (Wal-Mart Frankenburger) any day…..

    Some thoughts, y’all.

  13. Coughlin worked for “The Money”. His job was to rile up disaffested Catholic Americans and encourage them to violence, giving uncle sam (FDR) an excuse to crack down and to show Americans in general the ” dangers” of being nuetral. The newspapers made a big stink about Coughlin and his followers ( not very many) to make Americans think that they were wrong to want to remain nuetral in yet again another world war.
    Coughlin was a lying bastard working for “The Money”.
    He was not about true and real opposition like Huey Long was. He was an agent working for FDR and “The Money”. He was “controlled opposition”.

  14. You’re right, Fr. John, Distributism would be a good economic model to follow.

    Recommend you read Belloc’s “The Servile State” for a full critique of the corrupt finance capitalist system and its origins, as well as Chesterton’s “An Outline of Sanity” which provides an outline of the Distributivist alternative.

    Belloc contributed a piece for the Nashville Fugitives follow up economic book “Who Owns America?” also. Their first landmark work “I’ll Take My Stand” was more geared to the cultural aspects of Southern Agrarianism.

    Deo Vindice

  15. Coughlin’s only crime was to name the Jew and you know it.

    That was Lindbergh’s crime, too.

    It’s no accident either that Huey Long was killed by Dr. Carl Weiss, a rather suspiciously Jewish looking “Roman Catholic”, either.

    Why were we allied with the Bolsheviks in WW2?
    Why was MLK a Communist?
    Is David Axelrod Trotsky’s great, great grandson?
    Was Goldman Sachs the largest contributor to Obama’s campaign in 2008?

    What was Coughlin lying about?

  16. Let’s go a little bit further down the rabbit hole.
    Why did Vatican 2 occur simultaneously with the Civil Rights Law?
    Who played a key role in founding the ACLU and NAACP? Not to mention the SPLC?

    How many Supreme Court Justices are white Protestant Southerners?
    How many are Jewish? How many are Catholic? Of the Catholics, how many had to swear their devotion to stare decisis regarding abortion before taking their 30 pieces of silver/place on the court? Who insisted on this?

    They all sound about as Catholic as the assassin Carl Weiss.

  17. All I hope is that after the collapse of BRA and the struggles that will follow, we have the good sense to set up an economic system in Dixie that will benefit all white people, instead of benefitting usurious Jews and layabout negroes.

    Deo Vindice

  18. I don’t know it ( concerning coughlin). I don’t know it because what I do know is that coughlin was controlled opposition. I also know savitri devi and benjamin freedman, however.
    I’ll stick with them.
    I’m not getting into this any further– I have have already written alot posts here about the true nature of the nazi leaders, the true nature of the catholic church ( the vatican as a nexus of power– and the historical ties between the catholic church and the rothscilds banks.
    End of discussion.

  19. The biggest advocates for free trade are:

    Big Company men who spend money furiously on lobbyists to get lawmakers to create regulations to prevent other companies from competing.

    Lawyers, all of whom live under the protection of a fucking guild.

    Economists who can jump back and forth between government and academic jobs at will. In both cases, the word “competition” is the last thing that comes to mind when you think of these jobs.

    It is such bullshit.

  20. Free trade / free market is incompatible with any collectivist ideology. Agreed.

    ” they use those reserves to buy U.S. Treasury debt, which makes U.S. taxpayers into tax slaves to foreigners.”

    True, but we taxpayers are already slaves of our own government. So it is a question of quality of life not ‘liberation’ through tariffs.

    And where does the madness stop? Should every state or county or town be fully self-sufficient? A “People’s Commune” of ramshackle holistic economies with a homespun charm and ideological opposed to rational foundation? Hunter seems to be arguing that even within the USA there should be bickering micro-economies. Even with the relatively autonomous Greek city states there was still regional specialization. It is a natural consequence of environmental factors / local resources (human and material) rather than sinister machinations of a Capitalistic Cabal.

    Also how people that support slavery of the Negro race, myself being one of them can then turn around and attack Hispanic illegals is an interesting occurrence. I oppose their presence only on grounds of potential enfranchisement into our society through amnesty or anchors. They respond to profit motives and Niggers respond only to the whip. Why shouldn’t Whites support the Mestizo presence; wealthier Whites stand to gain domestics and labor force while white trash aren’t seen as the lowest rung on the ladder. I support the existence of an unambitious undercaste and Negroes aren’t much use without slavery.

  21. I believe the Belloc/Chesterton ‘kinder, gentler Anglo-Saxon catholicism’ known as ‘Distributivism’ has much to suggest itself in/for a racially homogenous, kinist state, such as the New Secessionist United States should be.

    This is the correct view. I agree completely.

  22. We can have a trade policy that is designed to 1.) preserve our national independence, 2.) enhance our national power, 3.) create jobs and a broad distribution of wealth, and 4.) fund the national government by putting the burden of taxation on foreigners.

    … or, we can have “free trade,” and repeat the mistakes that resulted in the most devastating war in our history and the loss of our independece. In any csse, the day the dollar collapses or the just in time system that makes Walmart possible breaks down, a consensus will emerge on this issue.

    Free traders are like people who tell Floridians “assume there will be no hurricanes” or Californians “assume there will be no earthquakes” or Texans “assume there will be no wildfires.”

    Free trade is based on the most naive 18th century Enlightenment utopian liberal assumptions: assume that mankind are autonomous, rationally calculating individuals pursuing their own personal self interest.

    Nevermind the fact that humans are violent tribalistic primates whose reason is merely the handmaiden of their emotions and instincts. Nevermind the fact that rival nation-states exist in a constant struggle for domination.

    Assume that interdependence created by free trade will prevent war: it prevented the War Between the States, right? WW1?

  23. “Even people like Gary North, and the Preppers are saying, ‘Send your smart boys to schools now, where they can learn a TRADE- something like automotive repair, cabinet- making, smithing, hydraulics, and other occupations- ”

    Sorry, but this is a mistake a great many people make. The reality is that the country is literally awash in tradesmen. The claim that there are shortages is just more of the same, i.e., wanting more people to sign up for trade schools to supply a few jobs for tradesmen who can’t find work in the field, and to offer a few apprenticeships so that young people can work for a fractional wage for a few years before gaining journeyman status and joining the other tens of thousands that can’t find steady work because there is a far greater supply of labor than there is a supply of work.

    There is a lot of this. For example a lot of young, and not so old people, are under the impression there is a shortage of welders. They think that they should go to a trade school and then they will be able to get “good jobs” welding, especially pipeline jobs and work in the iron construction trades. The reality is that in every region of the country there are literally thousands of experienced men who are experts and have not worked steady or at all in that craft for years. Moreover, these men have a level of actual expertise that takes years of on-the-job training that no kind of trade schooling can replicate. The newby has yet another crippling handicap: he has no contacts in the business whatsoever, and is not likely to get any in the current situation.

    The very same situation exists concerning machinists, carpenters, ironworkers, etc. etc.

  24. “Assume that interdependence created by free trade will prevent war: it prevented the War Between the States, right? WW1?”

    The atom bomb is what has prevented war. Interdependence creates the need for force projection to protect the vital lines of trade, precisely because humans are those violent primates, hence the global empire.

    Free trade doesn’t exist as its own separate idea in a vacuum, it can come with a great deal of baggage. In order to compete and to win in a free trade world, our government kinda has to do what it is doing now/planning to do.

  25. There have been plenty of wars since 1945, the year the bombs were dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki.
    Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Afghanistan, Iraq 1, Iraq 2.
    Lots of low-level warfare ( South Africa and Rhodesia, for example) all over the world since the end of WW2 as well. Too many to list. It would be a very long post.
    It’s all online. All the info about all the wars since WW2.

  26. “There is a lot of this. For example a lot of young, and not so old people, are under the impression there is a shortage of welders. They think that they should go to a trade school and then they will be able to get “good jobs” welding, especially pipeline jobs and work in the iron construction trades. The reality is that in every region of the country there are literally thousands of experienced men who are experts and have not worked steady or at all in that craft for years. Moreover, these men have a level of actual expertise that takes years of on-the-job training that no kind of trade schooling can replicate. The newby has yet another crippling handicap: he has no contacts in the business whatsoever, and is not likely to get any in the current situation.

    The very same situation exists concerning machinists, carpenters, ironworkers, etc. etc.”

    Brutus- OK, I will agree with this scenario. But one thing is missing. ARE THEY OF THE FOLK? ARE THEY OF THE CREED? I don’t, and wouldn’t hire someone who is not: a) of my Ethnos, b)my language, and c) my religion. We need to view everything from the localist standpoint, and say, ‘OUR KIDS’ need to get jobs where WE will support them, and NONE FROM OUTSIDE OUR AREA. That Geographic guildism/distributivism I mentioned would allocate trades based on these parameters, and keep out the ‘Xenos’ – even if they were White, but not ‘of us’ as St. John says. It would (now that we know the statistics for ‘how many people can a wainwright service/how much population is needed to keep him in business, sort of thing….) be overseen by a mix of Clergy and ‘Senators,’ (using the older terms as the Romans of antiquity saw them- the ‘noble intellects’ and not just tenured teat-suckers, such as we have now….) in a post-secessionist state, where (as Hunter has noted on this very blog) a model much like the Church of England had in the 18th and 19th century, without the remnants of the medieval ‘privilege’ of the nobility, but a true ‘noblesse oblige’ – where those who ARE the Aristocrats (as Jefferson et al. viewed it) WOULD have an OBLIGATION to serve their fellow men (all of one race, all joined in a homogenous society), to ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ sort of thing.

    Of course, this all means we MUST secede, to accomplish such a system. I doubt one would find much difference in this Distributivistmodel, and the early Nat Soc model in Germany, before Lebensraum became Empiric Conquest, but I am deficient in that arena of history as well….. But then, Distributivism under Dorothy Day became tied to that ‘universal salvation mantra’ of Rome, and was scuttled/morphed into socialism with a decidedly Bolshevik “Internationale” feel, as well.

    Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, I believe someone once said….

  27. Someone accused free traders of viewing people as widgets. Laughable, people are only viewed as interchangeable cogs by the collectivist that asks them to ‘serve’ and ‘sacrifice’ for ‘the greater good’.

    “Free trade is based on the most naive 18th century Enlightenment utopian liberal assumptions: assume that mankind are autonomous, rationally calculating individuals pursuing their own personal self interest.

    Nevermind the fact that humans are violent tribalistic primates whose reason is merely the handmaiden of their emotions and instincts. Nevermind the fact that rival nation-states exist in a constant struggle for domination.”
    Thus we have concluded free trade is the ideal but people just aren’t deserving of it. We’re fucking primates. The collectivist scoffs at human ideals and aspirations; he invites men to crusade for nationalism, a crusade one must commence by spitting in one’s own face.

  28. “For the greater good” was and remains the original scam. For the “common good” is the idea behind a just social and economic order. Nations first exist as peoples, not hypothetical universalist abstractions.

    Deo Vindice

  29. “Brutus- OK, I will agree with this scenario. But one thing is missing. ARE THEY OF THE FOLK? ARE THEY OF THE CREED? ”

    Unless if I specify to the contrary, I am always speaking of only whites.

    So yes, I was talking about only white men and women. Whites make up the overwhelming majority of the trades in question, anyway. They are also making up the overwhelming majority of people utilizing trade schools, according to all that I have seen, and all research I have read and heard about. There should be little surprise there.

    It is a sad state of affairs, but I assure you that what I discussed in my above post is all too true. You can easily verify it by talking with any tradesman. Probably the most concise and blunt, but honest and genuinely helpful, statement I have seen in years came recently from a long time pipeliner to a young man fresh out of high school who had as his chosen profession becoming a professional pipeline welder. I will quote the comment as best I remember it:

    “Forget what you are planning. I am sorry, I am not trying to be an asshole or crush your dream. I am only telling you how it is now and is going to stay for a very long time. This local is overrun with pipe welders right now, we have too many. We have over 2500 men on the bench right now. The same situation exists all over the country.

    For one thing, you don’t have a high enough skill level yet because you haven’t done the real thing. You can only get that from working the trade, and you are not going to be working. You might get one or two short term jobs here and there, but it will not be enough to make a living on. The other thing, you don’t have any contacts, and you are not going to be able to get them. And contacts are the life blood of a man in any of these construction businesses.

    What you are actually doing is setting yourself up for a life of poverty and despair. I am sorry that you may not get to do what you wanted, but what I just told you is the truth. There are a lot of other jobs in the world. You better go and try something else.”

    No, the man was NOT just trying to steer the young man away from certain jobs so others would get them, he was flat out telling the kid the truth and trying to help him. I have been doing the very same thing for the last couple of years and telling several young people who had heard all the old stories and hype about these kind of occupations.

    There is absolutely no shortage of skilled and even highly skilled labor like machinists, welders, mechanics, carpenters, pipefitters, boilermakers, heavy equipment operators, you name it. Since at least the 1980s vocational and trade schools have been pumping out people, many of them with pretty good skill level capability. During the mid 1990s on, apprenticeships for the trade unions took on unprecedented numbers of new apprentices. Things boomed for several years and they came in droves, they came for the money. Now all the work is gone, or only a very small amount is going on and we have literal armies of skilled laborers unable to find enough work to make a living.

    I personally know dozens of men with over 20 years of service in the building trades and who I have never known to be out of work for over a week or two before getting another job, but now these men are seriously talking about having to leave their profession after so many years and looking for other work. I am talking about competent men with A-1 work ethics and the record to back them up, in other words, the best of the pick. Never mind the slackers.

    **********
    Automechanics were mentioned above. In addition ot be no shortage of those, I will point out a fact that not everyone is aware of. Those big boxes that say Snap-on, MAC, Matco, etc. that you see in all garages? Those are the personal property of the lowly mechanic on duty. Almost all service garages require you to have your own tools (the same is true of the building trades, concerning hand tools. The same is true in most professions that require tools, in fact.). Today, a workable set will set you back about 50 grand. The operative word there is “workable,” as in absolutely required if you want to be able to do the job. And there is a reason you only see Snap-on, MAC, etc. in those garages, and not cheaper tools (there are no “cheap” tools, anyway, as anyone these days who works with tools can testify).

  30. For the record, I will say that every once in awhile you can find some desperate person needing money and he will sell you a good set of Snap-on’s, MAC, etc. for about 12 or 15 grand. And you will usually have to drive halfway across the country to pick them up.

    You get the point, though.

  31. HW, I normally agree with your historical analysis but on the South and free trade I disagree with you. The South was dependent upon free trade. All Southern patriots and traditionalists from Jefferson to Calhoun to Rhett and Davis, from moderates to Fire-eaters, supported free trade. The Southern economy was dependent upon it. Tariffs expropriated money from Southerners – money that was largely spent upon internal improvements in the North.

    Regional specialisation is only an extension of the division of labour. It’s a positive thing. By the 1840s some light industry was beginning to appear in the South, but due to the natural advantages of the South’s geography and climate, agriculture was a highly profitable pursuit. People will generally pursue that which makes them the most money. This is natural – unless you use the force of government to require that they do otherwise. That is generally unproductive and always intrusive.

    I would support free trade policies in a free South today. However, I’d like to see real free trade policies – not the sort of managed trade policies the US comes up with which give all sorts of special advantages to this or that government-connected industry or company. A real free trade agreement would look nothing like NAFTA.

  32. There is a simple way to clarify the confusion over “free trade”:

    Would you have been in favor of “free trade” with the Nazis? The Soviet Union? Imagine if Nixon had run for president talking about how efficient it would be to ship jobs behind the Iron Curtain? (note that Jimmy Carter was hired by the Rockefeller mafia to do just that with China, mission accomplished but he never said anything about it during the election; in fact he struck an anti-communist pose to take advantage of Ford’s famous Poland gaffe). The utter absurdity of supporting those who would cut your throat–though a doctrine of the Wall St. Journal–is exposed to most people of normal sanity.

    Those knowledgeable in history are aware that there were American “capitalists” who gleefully pursued “free trade” with both the Nazis and the Bolsheviks. The Bush and Harriman families to name a couple, also Dulles. This has been kept off any “news” channel with remarkable efficiency, as the author of “Family of Secrets” about the Bushes was kept off the mouth-frothing MSNBC lest it alarm the corporate traitors in top management. Consult “The Secret War Against the Jews” by John Loftus, the writings of Antony Sutton (some of which are online for free) to see for yourself. These facts have been aired on CSpan’s BookTV for years, as well as the fact that Joe McCarthy turned out to be right about how extensive Soviet espionage really was. All this is of course edited out of the “history” books by the Ministry of Truth.

    You know, the John Birch Society had all this right back in the 60s. Which is why they were smeared with such viciousness by the operatives of the corporate Quislings.

  33. Mark T, free trade does not necessarily mean ‘shipping jobs overseas.’ When the US (led by the South) had a mostly free trade policy in the early 1800s there were plenty of jobs here. The South prospered under that system and become one of the wealthiest societies on earth.

    What is the alternative to free trade? Think about that. The alternative is to impose a high tax (a tariff) on your people if they buy a product produced in a another country. This allows domestic companies (generally big industrial businesses with strong connections to the government) to raise their prices to a level just below what the imports would cost with the additional tax. It’s basically welfare for government-connected big businesses. Taxing your people and artificially enriching a few big businesses is not the path to prosperity or strength.

  34. So does “there were American ‘capitalists’ who gleefully pursued ‘free trade’ with…the Nazis…” imply that REAL capitalists and REAL free trade would never have truck with the anti-semitic Nazis? Capitalist theologiana Rosenbaum would agree with that!

  35. “There have been plenty of wars since 1945, the year the bombs were dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki.” – Small proxy wars with relatively few casualties. WW2 was the last knock down drag out fight, and the average war deaths reflects that.

  36. Korea and Vietnam were proxy wars, that is true. I don’t think the word “small” is an accurate description for these wars, however.
    The last war in Iraq was also a proxy war. Again, the word “small” doesn’t accurately describe the situation. A whole country was destroyed. That is not a small matter.
    Plus, the destruction of Iraq has thrown the whole Middle East into turmoil. The latest war in Iraq served as a catalyst for the next upcoming war in Syria.
    As american forces and russian forces are headed to Syria, I don’t think this could be considered a small matter.
    Of course, these wars are nothing like WW2, a giant internecine war whereby about 60 million whites were left dead after the smoke cleared. About 60 million dead whites all killed down by fellow whites.
    So I guess in that sense these wars are small. Small or large, nothing good accrues to the white race after the wars are over. Life in America only get worse after every war, not better.

  37. “It’s basically welfare for government-connected big businesses. Taxing your people and artificially enriching a few big businesses is not the path to prosperity or strength.” – After nearly half a century of persuing a policy of free trade and open borders the wealthiest few could not be richer, it is simply false to suggest that they aren’t doing what is fundamentally in their interest: The biggest businesses are the ones lobbying to do away with nationhood, not the small to mid range companies who are getting destroyed by it. The only way to soak those big businesses and keep them from exercising undo influence is obviously to make life better for the small business, a task we’ve abjectly failed at.

  38. Palmetto Patriot,

    The South had spent decades following its “comparative advantage.” Regional specialization left us with an abundance of negroes and cotton. It left the Midwest with an abundance of food and the Northeast with an abundance of factories, railroads, banks and ships.

    Then the War Between the States came. The free traders had predicted there wouldn’t be a war because it would be too economically disruptive. In the event of a war, the British and French were supposed to intervene because they were too dependent on Southern cotton and it was in their self interest to divide the Union.

    Well, it turned out there was a devastating war, and the South lost the war. It lost the war because the North had a far larger population, a navy which it used to blockade our coast, a financial system to finance the war, factories to produce armaments, farms to grow food to feed its soldiers, railroads to deliver them to the battlefields, plus confiscated slaves to further pad strength to its armies.

    The Confederacy collapsed because it inherited an economy that had been molded by decades of internal free trade. There were no ships to defend our rivers and our coast from enemy attack. There wasn’t a sufficient food supply to feed our armies. There wasn’t a sufficient transportation network because we had relied upon rolling stock and draft animals from the Midwest. There wasn’t a sufficient population to defend our borders and replace the dead and wounded.

  39. The British West Indies is an even more extreme example of the free market taken to its logical conclusion.

    In the British West Indies, the number of blacks dwarfed the number of Whites. It was extremely profitable to grow sugar. The sugar islands like St. Kitts and Nevis were dependent upon food imported from the North American colonies.

    Unlike the Confederacy, the White population in the British West Indies didn’t rebel over the threat posed by abolition. They were never in any position to rebel against the British Empire because the market had put them in such an overwhelming position of weakness that resistance would have been futile.

  40. The lesson that I draw from the War Between the States and abolition in the British West Indies is that we must never again allow liberal economic theories to strip us of the physical means to defend ourselves from a hostile foreign invasion.

    Trade policy must be subordinated to national security concerns. Even Adam Smith acknowledged this.

  41. Mark T – sad and true. I always post about Die Juden – but I know that Shabbos Goy Race Traitors were always in on the game, of rapine, as well (Shhh……this post is for your eyes only. ; } )

    If Whites do survive – and that’s a big “if” – the Race Traitors will be naturally winnowed out. By various methods.

  42. The white race won’t survive if it continues it’s internecine wars.
    WW2 is the exact reason we as a race are in such a big mess.
    Shabbos goy race traitors love to foment wars — as per the orders they get from “The Big Money” — while the shabbos goy traitors cash in their checks from “The Big Money” and go to the country club to play golf– we’re left to bury our dead.
    “I have read a fiery gospel,writ in burnished rows of steel”

  43. Vietnam– a “small” war, yet it had huge effects on the country. Good article about Vietnam at “thiscan’tbehappening” (.net) : “The Vietnam War and the Struggle for Truth”.
    Excellent insight into the war ( nothing leftist or hippie about the criticism,otherwise I wouldn’t recommend it). See how destructive even a “small” war can be to the country.
    The Korean war was another “small” war, yet we still have troops there– about 60 years later. This is not a small matter, as Vietnam was not really a small matter.
    When a nation loses a soldier in battle, we don’t only lose the soldier,we also lose the children he would have sired if he had survived. It is an eternal loss of blood for the nation– for the race.
    That’s why I recommend to all young men ( and these days women) to think long and hard before joining the military.
    We have an enemy government who gets us involved in wars that have nothing to do with protecting the country. The wars are wars of empire and do not benefit the average,common white American. The wars only benefit the ruling class elite– both jewish and christian (however nominal).
    White men are dying in these wars. We lose the white men who are killed in the wars, and we also lose their progeny.
    This is not a SMALL matter. It is a very LARGE matter. Please give it consideration.
    If the South, or any other area of the country is to secede, white Americans are going to need all the hands they can get. To lose white men– and to lose the chilldren never born because the white men are cut down in wars that are based on lies and do not benefit white Americans in the least is the height of folly– even worse than folly.
    I mention women joining the military. I am opposed to that. Still, all young people thinking about joining the military– please give this serious consideration.
    All readers, please give this serious consideration before encouraging young white Americans into joining the military.
    The Eternal Loss Of Blood For A Nation – A RACE- Is Not A Small Matter– It Is A Huge Matter.

  44. That’s Why There’re Eternal Candles Lit In Military Cemeteries:
    The Candles Represent The Children Never Born Because The Soldiers Were Cut Down On The Battlefield

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