Who's the Extremist?

Imagine a continuum depicting preferences for some kind of charitable act

(A) One end: I don't want to support it, I don't want you to support it either

(C) t'other: I want to support it, and I want to force you to support it also

It strikes me that both positions are extreme, and violate pretty fundamental rights - either the right to give money to charity, or the right to decide which (if any) charity you choose to support.

(B) somewhere inbetween: I don't want to support it, but I don't have a problem with you supporting it

Lets say the charitable act in question is a subsidy for Californian tomato farmers). Why is the position of free trade (B) extreme?

Comments

[green LA girl]

Hey Anthony -- I have no prob. with anyone not giving to charity -- but I'm not sure what that has to do with the free trade viewpoint. Can you clarify a lil bit?

[AJE]

Thanks for taking a look.

Basically i'm claiming that protectionism is a type of charity, in as much as a government subsidy is the provision of relief to those we consider to be needy.

[dearieme]

Do you suppose that the evils of protectionism are the least understood of the easy lessons of Economics?

[green LA girl]

Ah -- I see. But hey -- Seeing as you've described yourself as a realist :) let's look at the realistic scene here. The prob with ag subsidies lies with the fact that a massive chunk of the subsidies go to big ag corps -- for cotton, etc. -- which I'm guessing neither of us want. But this has lil to do with tomatos.

Meaning -- I'm not advocating a subsidy for tomato farmers, necessarily! But I'm against the exploitation of labor (i.e., basically paying tomato pickers shit) that's going on in Florida, which then drives down the prices of tomatos all over the US.

In terms of the tomatos, what I'm saying is that in California -- which, btw -- has excellent tomato-growing weather -- Californians should be able to buy California-grown tomatos for the cheapest price -- cuz really, it's the cheapest way for the crop to get to the consumer, considering everything from farm costs to taxes to transportation costs, etc.

But -- Tomatos from Florida are really cheap, due to worker exploitation (I already sent you info about that) -- Meaning the prices for FL tomatos are artificially lowered. All I'm sayin' is, let's not artificially lower out-of-state tomato prices -- at the expense of the less-than-wealthy tomato pickers in FL! Instead, let's pay everyone fair wages so we can have a sense of the "true" cost of the tomatos we buy --

[Hardwin Jones]

This is quite easy. If the subsidies for Californian tomato growers didn't affect anyone else, then fine - but they adversely affect tomato growers in Mali (for e.g.), by bringing down the price of tomatoes on the world market.

Ok, so why should we (if we're in the US - I'm not, I'm in the UK but the same applies) care about that? That's their problem, right? Nothing to do with us, except if we happpen to decide that our charitable concern for the situation of Maliens overrides our charitable concern for Californians.

Wrong - we (the West, the US, the North) created the system of global trade which leads to the price of tomatoes in Mali being affected by US subsidies - by among other things forcing Mali to open its trade borders to our (and others') exported tomatoes.

Having done this, surely we have an ethical responsibility to "play fair" - to implement two-sided free trade - over and above any kind of charitable concern. We can't force other countries to stop subsidising their producers, while we continue to do so for our own.

Rather we can (and we still do, currently), but this means we need to accept that a large part of the responsibility for famines we see in Africa lies with us - not because of a notional link of cross-border charity, but because of the direct effects of our trade policy.

For further reading I recommend Peter Singer's book on the ethics of globalisation, One World.