“Protection or Free Trade”
Aug. 6th, 2021 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ndrosenI have reread Henry George’s Protection or Free Trade, and am again impressed by his clear reasoning, vivid and appropriate examples, and other literary skills. Although things have certainly changed in some respects, fundamental questions during the 1880s remain fundamental issues today.
One point on which I disagree with my hero is that he could be excessively optimistic. He deprecated the need for standing armies and a peacetime navy, for example. He thought that with the right policies to raise wages, workers would become more efficient, more productive, and also more virtuous; that, freed from the fear of falling into dire poverty, people would cease to be so grasping, their morals would improve, and government would be less prone to corruption. I have a grimmer view of the world and man’s nature, according to which we need to keep our powder dry, maintain some highly skilled troops and commanders, and not expect material prosperity to turn people into moral paragons. As Aristotle put it, “Men do not become tyrants in order to keep warm.”
Nonetheless, I essentially share the great Henry George’s view of economic justice, which I believe we should strive to achieve. With that accomplished, human sin and folly will still be with us, but let us nonetheless strive to do what we can.
One point on which I disagree with my hero is that he could be excessively optimistic. He deprecated the need for standing armies and a peacetime navy, for example. He thought that with the right policies to raise wages, workers would become more efficient, more productive, and also more virtuous; that, freed from the fear of falling into dire poverty, people would cease to be so grasping, their morals would improve, and government would be less prone to corruption. I have a grimmer view of the world and man’s nature, according to which we need to keep our powder dry, maintain some highly skilled troops and commanders, and not expect material prosperity to turn people into moral paragons. As Aristotle put it, “Men do not become tyrants in order to keep warm.”
Nonetheless, I essentially share the great Henry George’s view of economic justice, which I believe we should strive to achieve. With that accomplished, human sin and folly will still be with us, but let us nonetheless strive to do what we can.
