The ever-vigilant Scott Lincicome reminds us that the damaging effects of protectionism are not limited to instructional allegories. Protectionism hurts real people, and destroys real jobs, and the chicken littles who continue to use the falling sky as an excuse are simply ignoring the facts.

Government “protectionism” is about effective as mafia “protection”.  The surest way to maximum economic gain for all — to “raise all ships” –  is to allow free people to trade freely, without a government finger on the scale of every transaction.

The whole point of automation is not to take away jobs, or solely to optimize at a new capital-to-labor ratio on the isocost curve. The point of automation is to make everyone’s lives better. A washing machine is not merely a machine that washes clothes. It’s a machine that gives you time with your child, or makes it possible to study for a new academic degree, or allows you to take a vacation every year. Every moment saved by machines is a moment spent doing something more desirable.

That’s why I’ve never understood the repeated lamentation that all the good manufacturing jobs are drying up. Good manufacturing jobs? If the job can be replaced by a machine, it’s not a good job, almost by definition, because that’s time you can use to do something more fulfilling.  And if you don’t have the motivation to do something more engaging than work at a machine in an assembly plant, then you better find it. Human advancement isn’t going to lag behind just for you.

From Slashdot, we have this article on the tactics the Chinese government used to import, then copy, the high-speed rail technology of companies like Siemens. They are utterly unashamed; the mission from day one was to steal foreign designs and produce them domestically, then begin to compete with foreign companies.

And a pretty smart guy who analyzes Chinese economic data thinks that their internal markets are about to collapse.

The short version: If you try and sell in China, they’ll steal your designs, and then won’t buy anything

But Ford’s decision to refuse the bailout money and aggressively re-trench sent the message, “we’re serious about improving our business and our products to win back your confidence”.

Ford won this game.

If the government had been producing food for the last 150 years, it would be argued by almost everyone that the market could not provide food. The poor wouldn’t be able to buy any food (because the price of private alternatives then available would be so high); the profit motive would tend to corrupt food production, and on and on. Where would people even be able to buy food if the government was no longer running silos? No one would be able to produce, it would be argued, the one variety of bread, the one available meat, and the 3 fruits.