As with the EU, Mercosur, NAFTA and other regional trading arrangements all vying for supremacy, and mercantilism entrenched at the heart of the dispute settlement system, the WTO is anything but committed to unfettered trade between individuals across national borders. Grant Nulle explains how and why.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Did anyone who voted for Bush think that he would far surpass Clinton in expanding the Leviathan state? Actually, writes Christopher Westley, the Republican Party has never been the party of fiscal restraint. It was defined by a neo-mercantile philosophy from its inception as the new Whig party in the 1850s up through the Progressive Era.
What free-marketeers don't always make explicit is that the government and media Chicken Littles are right in part: Corporations are indeed out to make a profit. Of this point we must first observe the first lesson of business economics, as taught by the classical school markets in the 18th century. The institutions of the market channel questionable motivations to a social end.
Thanks to the untiring efforts of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Americans have been faced with the greatest expansion of the government into medical care since the 1960s. When these moves are complete, the free market in American medicine will be practically gone. Interventionism will be in complete possession of the field of battle, and the task of the government will be to mop up the remaining opposition.
A growing recognition of the superiority of markets over planning has created an unviable hybrid: the planned market, one created not by property owners by the state and for the state.
The fundamental issue in banking and monetary policy, writes Guido Hülsmann, is whether government can improve the monetary institutions of the unhampered market. All government intervention in this field boils down to schemes that increase the quantity of money beyond what it otherwise would be. Such schemes confer no social benefit but rather only serve redistributive purposes.
How well I recall the debates about the WTO and Nafta, both of which the Mises Institute editorialized against on grounds that they constituted managed trade, not free trade. In the case of Nafta, it was outright regional protectionism. But for dissenting from both sides of the phony DC debate, we were called secret protectionists.
There are few things that reduce the price of a good like an increase in its supply. But the very people who decry the lack of "affordable" housing in New York and other places are often the ones who are most agitated about "overdevelopment." While the idea of "a lack of affordable housing" is itself suspicious, it is clear that one effect of many government programs is to make housing less affordable than it otherwise might be.
In a lumber market where shortages were already appearing, writes Timothy Terrell, the Defense Logistics Agency suddenly ordered more than 20 million square-feet of plywood sheeting for construction in Iraq. Markets for plywood and its substitutes reacted strongly. Prices of oriented strand board (OSB), commonly used in new homes, apartment buildings, and commercial structures, jumped to record highs.
The case for free trade has been made for hundreds of years, and yet the fight for the right to buy and sell outside the borders is never ending. The situation is complicated by a major confusion that exists among free trade advocates. Many believe that world trade, because it is a good thing, ought to be sanctioned, managed, and otherwise regulated by the government or a coalition of governments.
