DAS Blog

Neo-conservative imperialism? Monetarism? The kind of free trade advocated by Tom Friedman? It all sounds so familiar ... at least the merchantilists believed in emperical data ... the same thing cannot be said for their current re-incarnations who substitute the moustache of understanding and similar divining devices (why do Jews use these? aren't we prohibited by Torah from using them?) for actual data and analysis.

BTW -- I suspect the merchantilists understood full well (if only implicitly) the idea of "comparative advantage". What merchantilists and their "free market" "opponants" seem to purposefully fail to understand is that often the best comparative advantage to have is to have no advantage at all (lest a nation get stuck as a resource or labor colony) and that the whole theory ignores economic growth anyway.