However, I am quite skeptical of the Schumpeterian notion of “creative destruction”; and I think the notion of rationalizing market is a nice theory, but nonexistent in practice. As for Smith, his views are more nuanced than modern libertarianism, on the notion of the nation-state and moral obligation to it–so I won’t lump him in.

“No doubt your article will elicit comments from libertarian [sic] bleating about the nonexistent “market” ….”

Wait a minute, I’m pretty libertarian and my comments weren’t bleating about that at all. Indeed, quite the opposite I think. Nor even do I quite understand why you apparently think that libertarians would be defending managing trade “for the benefit of transnational corporations,” or indeed for the benefit any individual corporation at all.

I can however understand how some, under the banner of alleged libertarianism, might say that the U.S. ought to do nothing in response to unfair trade practiced against it by other countries if that’s what you are talking about. But I suspect that the great majority of same are in fact merely pursuing some distinctly non-libertarian agenda as the idea is no different from that of saying that libertarians must also utterly renounce the idea of self-defense so as to not interfere with the rights of others to kill you.

I.e., libertarians, being true believers in the maximization of liberty, of course admit not only to the advocacy of liberty where it doesn’t exist, but the defense of it where it does. Anything else isn’t libertarian, it’s suicidal.

Cheers,

No doubt your article will elicit comments from libertarian bleating about the nonexistent “market” (there are, as Thomas Fleming appropriately noted) only markets, not a single, overarching and all-powerful “market.” Those markets have differing interests and dynamics at play in them.

And note that the President, SoS Clinton, et al., never discuss specifics of trade practices by other nations.

But of *course* individual businesses are not out there because they too necessarily believe in capitalism or whatever. They are out there to make bucks. So when they essentially proclaim a belief in privatizing their gain but socializing their losses, no-one ought be surprised. They’re half-Marxists, in essence, just as there are others who want to socialize gain but privatize loss.

Of course the correct posture towards both is then obvious, but modern conservatives for some reason who say they embrace capitalism never seem to like that Adam Smithian/hidden-hand/Jos. Schumpeter part of it that notes that it’s competition and therefore the inevitable “creative” destruction of some businesses that is at the heart of the matter and ought to be celebrated.

Seems to me then that this means that true Socialists are at least on a higher, more honest plane than the half-Marxians on either side: At least the former say they are willing to socialize both gain and loss while the others are just looking for ways to get their bread buttered at someone else’s expense.

Cheers,