The Alleged Gap Between Free Trade & Economic Embargoes

A common libertarian attack on conservative foreign policy in North America consists of opposition to our government’s authority to impose economic sanctions on foreign states. Any restrictions on the potential trade partners of free citizens, advocates of this position contend, contradicts our freedom to trade value for value with other individuals while being guided by our own rational self-interest. Although I find the term to be dangerously imprecise, I will proceed by calling this perspective “libertarian isolationism” in the absence of – or in my ignorance of – a more appropriate label.

The core of libertarian isolationism is the relativistic insistence that countries against which we are not currently fighting a (“legitimate”) war are beyond the scope of our rational judgment or of our government’s mandate to interfere with. Besides implicitly equivocating between moral social structures and tyrannical ones, this perspective is tantamount to denying the existence of threats, and therefore enemies, abroad.

Those international actors whose policies are defined by the use of physical force against individuals – any individuals – of the Canadian state must be considered our enemies. This principle applies equally to threats of physical force (e.g. a state that is allied with an enemy, a state whose policy is war with our ally, or a state whose malevolent intentions regarding our country and its citizens can otherwise be established by valid evidence) as it does to actual instances of the initiation of coercion.

The principal fallacy of the isolationist view is that it drops the context of the purpose of government: the protection of individual rights from criminal infringements thereupon by both internal and external sources. A truly consistent policy of free trade forbids permitting violators or would-be violators of the basic condition required for free trade – individual liberty – to grow stronger and better equipped through trade with domestic entities.

We consider it proper to oppose the establishment of trade relationships between domestic business entities and the mafia. Why ought we to exempt foreign gangs who pose any threat whatsoever to our safety from that same standard?

Trading with enemy states represents a blatant violation of the individual rights of our people. It is of paramount importance that we do not allow isolationists to invoke freedom to criticize embargoes when the protection of liberty is the very reason that economic sanctions are justified.

Draft Peter Schiff For Senate

Web-savvy Libertarians in California have launched a nationwide movement to draft a New Haven-born celebrity pundit to take on Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd. Their first big test comes Saturday.

The pundit is Peter Schiff. He has been a fixture bashing the federal bank bailout and stimulus efforts on national TV news (FOXNews, CNBC, CNN) panels because of his early predictions of the Wall Street meltdown. He published a prescient book in 2007 called Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse. “The man who saw it all before everybody saw it,” as Fox anchor Liz Claman introduced him.

Schiff, who now runs a Darien stock brokerage firm, served as an economic adviser to Libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul, whose candidacy was elevated by a then-unprecedented grassroots Internet effort. [...]

The campaign has an online “headquarters” and assorted rallying cries, including: “Stop the Bailouts.” “Stop the stimulus!” It has Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter presences, too — even though Schiff insisted in an interview that he has had nothing to do with the effort and would almost definitely not heed a call to actually run. That’s right. Almost definitely.

“Want Peter to run? Pledge! Show him we’ve got his back,” proclaims the home page for an affiliated site coordinating a “Moneybomb” for this Saturday. A “moneybomb” means supporters are hoping to raise an eye-popping pile of pledges in one day to show serious support for a Schiff candidacy — the way a one-day moneybomb propelled Ron Paul’s candidacy a year ago with a record haul.

In some ways the effort mirrors the early drive to find a candidate to challenge Connecticut U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman in 2006, only this time from the right, not the left. In 2006, activists from across the country who supported challenger Ned Lamont poured money and cultivated volunteers through left-leaning national websites like Daily Kos and MoveOn.org. The campaign was national from the start, born at the netroots.*

I'm currently in the process of reading Schiff's 2007 book "Crash-Proof: How To Profit From The Coming Economic Collapse" which was mentioned in the above blurb. So far it has been excellent. I recommend picking it up to anybody who has money in the stock market and has taken a hit or simply wants to hear Alan Greenspan get taken apart. Although Schiff's book does focus on the American economy, its implications for Canada are clear and his discussion of the global economy is helpful as well.

Here's the main video that has been enlisted towards the end of earning money for Schiff's "moneybomb".

"The World Runs On Individuals Pursuing Their Separate Interests"

Compliments of The Surly Beaver, we have an outstanding and succinct defence of capitalism as the only appropriate economic distributive system known to man.



Choice moments:

"The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus."

"If you want to know where the masses are worst off, it is exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from capitalism."

"The record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprising citizen."

"Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?