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July 24, 2006
Stationary Bandits, Plunder, and Trade Negotiations
Don Boudreaux
Along with Doug Irwin, I believe that the most promising way available to further reduce restrictions on international trade is through multi-lateral trade negotiations -- most notably, of course, those negotiations that take place under the auspices of the World Trade Organization. I wish that it weren't so; I wish that each government would on its own refuse to inflict trade restrictions on its subjects. But that's not what governments do. At root, governments are stationary bandits, skilled chiefly at creating and extracting rents from innocent people.
This fact is why, despite my recognition of the practical usefulness of multi-lateral trade negotiations among representatives of most of the world's stationary bandits, I suffer surreal disgust when I read reports such as this one in today's Wall Street Journal. This report is on how the Doha Round just broke down over farm subsidies and trade barriers.
These are negotiations among bandits whose bread and butter is the creation of rents -- of artificial profits to be enjoyed by members of special-interest groups who can be trusted to use part of their booty to help keep each stationary bandit securely in power so that he or she can continue robbing innocent others.
So we have the spectacle of these bandits, these thugs, negotiating with each other over how much each one will reduce the plundering it inflicts on "its" citizens in return for promises from the other plunders to reduce the plundering they inflict on "their" citizens.
And because "our" plunderers damn sure won't stop plundering me and my fellow Americans simply because it's the right thing to do, I am, at one level, obliged to applaud when our plunderers come to the table with plunderers from elsewhere and negotiate over how they will all mutually reduce the extent of their plundering.
Finally, when these negotiations break down, we must endure explanations from one horde of plunderers that a particular form of plundering (for example, its subsidies to farmers) is in the best interest of its plundered citizens -- along with explanations from "our" plunderers that our best interests are served only if "our" plunderers continue plundering us for at least as long as plunderers elsewhere plunder others.
It's loathsome.
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Comments
I strongly agree with your sentiments above, but governments occasionally do liberalize on their own, and according to the World Bank autonomous liberalization accounted for 66% of tariff liberalization from 1983-2003, see http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2005/06/23/autonomous-liberalization/
While I wish well for multilateral negotiations I loathe the logic of such for exactly the reasons you state.
Despite the logic of stationary bandits it seems unilateral free trade is in fact more important than pacts and is infinitely more savory.
Posted by: Mike Linksvayer | Jul 24, 2006 2:46:13 PM
I read a phrase in a review not too long ago that stuck with me: "even the most cynical public choice economist. . ."
I thought it was redundant.
I've developed a tendency to immediately turn my ears off when I hear the phrase "public interest."
Posted by: Swimmy | Jul 24, 2006 4:17:53 PM
/agree
And thank you Mike, for some relatively optmistic news.
Posted by: Brian Moore | Jul 24, 2006 4:21:15 PM
Perhaps if we didn't allow lawyers to make the laws, there would be a little less plundering.
Posted by: Hucbald | Jul 24, 2006 6:50:30 PM
Bravo! Bravo!
Massed clapping, cries of "Encore Maestro"!
It is simply so darn difficult to get over the idea to people that it is imports that make us rich so why on earth are we taxing them?
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