A bit of an interesting comparison. Which do you think is more free/conductive to liberty; a state with little/no barriers to international trade but heavy regulations and interventions into the economy (the current economic system), or a state with strong protectionist barriers but very few regulations and interventions (the economy system of the 19th century)?
Also, don’t answer with “Free trade laissez faire”, we already know that is the ideal. I am looking to see which people think is the lesser evil.
The latter. It’s a lot easier to liberalize a protectionist regime than an internally interventionist one, especially given free trade is a logical consequence of laissez faire philosophy.
Say you have a chicken that lays eggs. The local police give you a choice. Either you don’t sell your eggs to the neighbors [=protectionist barriers], or they take away the chicken altogether [= heavy regs and interventions].
This is a good topic IMO.
Assuming otherwise laissez faire (dumping allowed, no patents and no import quotas), then Protective tariffs alone aren’t anywhere near as bad as centrally managed trade, especially if they reduces the amount of income tax required to be paid.
NAFTA has increased international trade, but at the cost of regulations and being centrally managed.
Even worse is the WTO. They’re require member states to have Antidumping legislation, and they require member states to issue patents. They’ve restricted trade as far as I’m considered.
Just because there’s a lot of goods being moved internationally, it doesn’t mean the system is free and open to all. They’re being moved by the established corporate interests.
But the latter system you describe is superior. It’s not as difficult to get around, and it will result in a far less powerful state.