I suggest Peter Hume read the item in Domain today written by Lee Sustar who explains why US why mainstream economists are referring to Karl Marx in discussions of the world economy–and why they won’t talk about the whole Marx.

Economist Nouiel Roubini, whose predictions of the financial crash of 2008 earned him the nickname “Dr. Doom,” has referred his patients to a specialist in capitalist crisis: Dr. Karl Marx.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Roubini said:
"Karl Marx had it right. At some point, capitalism can destroy itself. You cannot keep on shifting income from labor to capital without having an excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand. That’s what has happened. We thought that markets worked. They’re not working".

It might also help if Peter read Clive Hamilton's "Growth Fetish" and some of the blogs of Professor Bill Mitchell.

Thnx Foyle, I am recomend to take a read about the Peters mate in Austrian and you will no longer want to read his poppycock...If protection is any intervention then we need some...its simply what is the righr mix to obtain the most equitable outcome...Nev

Foyle
Unfortunately that is no refutation of the arguments in favour of free trade, and please don't make me laugh about Karl Marx having it right.

It is enough to explode Roubini's theory to point out that governments controlled the price and supply both of money and money substitutes at all relevant times before, during and after the Great Depression, and the GFC. And it they were crises in the *financial* markets, get it?

And Marx never argued that capitalism would destroy itself because governments printed money like it's going out of style. He predicted that it would happen because the working class would get poorer and poorer. In fact the opposite happened: the living standards of the working class under modern capitalism have risen to the highest levels in the history of the world. So much for Marx's theory.

Yet as riddled with errors and fallacies as Marx's theory was, not even he was so confused as to call state control of the means of production "capitalism".

Let's cut to the chase. Are you honestly telling me that everyone would be better off if the people of each country did not trade with other the people of other countries? If so, why? And if not, why not?

Nev
Can you actually say what the arguments in favour of free trade are? If not, there's no point discussing it, on the ground that you don't know what the issue is.

Peter, nobody would want to stop trade with others, but simly engage in fair trade, not some version of 'no controls' espoused by your mate in Austria...nev

Nev
Okay so you go from opposing free trade, to saying it's not all bad.

You now entertain an argument in favour of free trade (though you still haven't said what it is), and another argument against it. The problem becomes, why don't the principles in your argument in favour, apply to the areas where you argue against; or if the argument against it is correct, why aren't you against all free trade?

Look at it this way. Suppose all the world were ready to agree with you, to practise free trade where it is fair, and not where it is not. Now. There are six billion people, all busily engaged in exchanging goods and services with each other in gazillions of different permutations of transactions and goods. What principle can you give them that enables them to identify the difference between the market price, and your alleged fair price, in any given transaction?

Your inability to provide any standard than your own arbitrary opinion is enough to explode your entire argument. The reason is, because in reality the agreed price, and the fair price, are the same thing.

By the way, what is your argument in favour of the free trade that you agree with in principle? (And please don't say "because it's fair", which could only make for circular argument.)

“Any contribution to a discussion on protection should focus on what kind of country we wish for Australian citizens two or more generations from now.”

“John, who’s “we”?”

As should be abundantly clear to any normal Human Being, “we” are those people capable of considering the well being of persons other than ourselves; ie, our offspring or the offspring of others, as suggested in the sentence “...citizens two or more generations from now.”
Anyone who can't grasp that simple notion is either quite literally a moron, or quite literally a sociopath.
Either way, there is no conceivable value in debating with such a person as they would self evidently be incapable of understanding arguments that don't directly benefit themselves.