Aristophanes,
This isn’t “juvenile libertarian BS.” Ironically, what’s more juvenile is dismissing your opponent’s argument as juvenile. I hate to sound like a douche, but I consider myself a much better economist than you (and Schiff).
No, I didn’t. I said that the ‘libertarian usual’ is not sufficient to stifle the acceptance of the other parameters discussed. (Borders, Nationalism)
You did, because you didn’t even address the actual argument being made!
Zero Sum? It is absolutley NOT arbitrary if their growth comes at our loss. Is that not possible with credit expansion taking over the channels of distribution in that arbitrary geographic location where a particular language, currency, and judicial system operate?
It it was arbitrary, then people would have no problem moving between the locations if they choose to follow their trade around to its most profitable location. But, unfortunately, culture, language, tradition, etc. all prevent most people from moving in between polarized societies en masse. So borders are not arbitrary. They are statist, but they have a life of their own beyond their simple enforcement.
In Spain, Cataluña contains people who speak Catalán and have a culture that’s very different to Castillian Spain. The same is true for el País Vasco and Galicia. But, nobody would claim that it’s bad to trade with them, or that given the political situation all these regions are aggregated under the same national border of Spain.
And, nowhere in the above rant did you actually make a case for trade with China to be a zero sum exercise, or that “their growth comes at our loss” (which is actually completely false, since their growth is stimulated by subsidizing our imports).
Or, if we pretend that nationalism is a thing that prevails over the ‘assumption of arbitrary borders’ (as reality posits), then we can say that it is bad when production jobs leave one non-arbitrary geographic location to go to another non-arbitrary geographic location.
I’m sorry, this isn’t an economic argument (or a good argument, at all). Manufacturing aren’t the only type of jobs an economy can create; in the United States, for instance, service sector jobs have become more prominent. This has been made possible by the growing division of labor. Labor is, ultimately, the most scarce good; the practical scarcity of other goods is due to the scarcity of labor (if labor weren’t scarce then we’d produce any other good up to the physical limit). The export of manufaturing jobs, together with the introduction of better labor-saving technology (which is actually what’s been hapenning in the United States – note that manufacturing has continued to increase, but employment has stagnated), has allowed a structural transition to different types of jobs. This isn’t “bad” or wealth-destroying, but productive.
i.e., national borders
You have yet to make a coherent case why national borders, in this case, matter.
Also, when you have said that the division of labor expands you neatly gloss over the contraction of the division of labor that happens in the U.S. (you know that totally arbitrary geographic location that totally arbitrarily has a much higher standard of living than some of the other totally arbitrary geographic locations and their centuries of culture and history and even present day traditions).
What contradiction? What does this even mean?
You also might want to consider the contraction of the division of labor in Europe when the U.S. started to draw immigrants. Your logic says that it meant no difference to Europe that masses of people wanted out…it is absurd. It meant no difference to Egypt that their Jewish labor force wanted to expand beyond the national borders…
People moved to the United States because there was a benefit in doing so. What does this have to do with China and exporting manufacturing jobs to China?
Instead of stringing random bullshit together and attacking me for my “juvenile libertarian” arguments, why don’t you provide a solid argument of your own? My guess is that you don’t really have one, because it’s obvious you have no idea what you’re talking about. 
So, I guess in the end we’ll just have to agree to disagree.