Grim
Then it is not limited to Australia but includes everyone in the world who is not a moron or a sociopath, so the author's argument in favour of protection, ostensibly to benefit the people of Australia, fails.

Your argument depends on the proposition that protectionism is somehow altruistic or selfless. So should all free trade be banned? Wouldn't that be more social? If not, why not? But if only some free trade should be banned, why don't the arguments for free trade that you agree with, apply to the free trade that you don't.

It's you who is the moronic sociopath. Protectionism always involves forcing the many to pay for privileges for the few, your failure to understand it notwithstanding.

Hey Pete, I am wondering about your comprehension mate....Free trade is a phrase used by us....most on your side as well...for a certain form of fundermentalist non intervention..But trade can be free of fair and most of us understand well your views re no government at all...mate we just dont agree...can you get that...Nev

Peter Hume
Your argument might make sense if Australia was the only country offering protection for it's industries. If you had bothered to read the article in question, or if you had managed to understand the article in question, you would note it is about the fact that Australia is in almost exactly the opposite situation.
Once again:
“To assume that completely free trade is feasible, and that protection is always undesirable, is to believe that all other governments and all manufacturers and agents in other countries are wedded to and willing to adhere to those concepts. They aren't, and never will be, so therefore the assumptions are asinine.”

“Your argument depends on the proposition that protectionism is somehow altruistic or selfless.”

No it doesn't. My argument depends on the very simple concept that any government's first priority is to provide some service to it's citizens. If governments don't provide a valuable service, why have them?
If our government persists in chasing free trade purely in the name of principle (no matter how laudable) when all other governments are protecting their industries, then it is putting us (and our offspring) at a disadvantage.
Mises was implacably opposed to so called 'Free Trade Agreements'. His peaceful principle logically demands that all trade everywhere is completely free, which is just about as achievable as Marx's requirement for all nations to be communists.

Grim
The arguments for free trade do not depend on an imaginary state in which everyone is practising free trade simultaneously.

Even in your worst-case scenario, if Australia were practicing free trade with another country that subsidized its industries, all it would mean is that they are taxing their citizens to provide free handouts to us. It would not provide any ground for an argument in favour of protectionism in Australia.

Therefore your argument, and the author’s, is invalid.


"... putting us (and our offspring) at a disadvantage.”

No it’s not. It doesn’t disadvantage us, as I have just explained. The idea that it does is the oldest fallacy in economics, namely, "if A gets richer therefore B must be getting poorer".
In fact free trade is mutually beneficial.

Otherwise you have the problem of saying
a) why free trade in general should not be banned, and
b) if not, of saying which is to be permitted, and why the same argument doesn’t apply to the rest of trade.

“His peaceful principle logically demands that all trade everywhere is completely free…”

No it doesn’t.

“which is just about as achievable as Marx's requirement for all nations to be communists.”

Communism is not possible in theory, and must cause mass starvation and totalitarianism wherever it’s attempted.

But even imperfect free trade is both achievable, and better than any protectionism.

Nev
We haven’t eliminated the possibility that it’s you who’s the fundamentalist if you can’t explain why you don’t favour banning free trade in general.

Since you agree that some – if not most – trade must be free, otherwise society would collapse, please explain the principle on which you distinguish which trade should be restricted.

Now explain without self-contradiction why the same principle doesn't apply to the free trade you concede.

And how do you distinguish the fair price from the market price in any given transaction?

The question is not whether you *disagree* with free trade - obviously mere ignorance can do that - it's whether you can *refute* the arguments that it's beneficial.

“Even in your worst-case scenario, if Australia were practicing free trade with another country that subsidized its industries, all it would mean is that they are taxing their citizens to provide free handouts to us. It would not provide any ground for an argument in favour of protectionism in Australia.”

Apparently Peter Hume has never heard of such practices as undercutting, price gouging or dumping. Once again we see the Misian foible of preferring theory to fact.
Scenario 1. American grain producers dump cheap grain on India. Half a million small farmers are forced off their land. Next year, American grain producers sell their grain to alcohol producers.
Half a million Indians starve to death.
Scenario 2. Japan, a heavily industrialised nation, loses a war. With cheap labour, it turns it's industries from weapons to manufactured goods. Australia finds 'it's cheaper to buy from Japan, than to make our own'. Australia's manufacturing sector is largely discarded.
Japan becomes rich.
60 years later, Australia is shipping raw materials to a country with higher labour costs than itself, and buying manufactured goods back.
What do they have, that we don't have?
60 years of manufacturing experience, and 60 years of established infrastructure.

“No it’s not. It doesn’t disadvantage us, as I have just explained. The idea that it does is the oldest fallacy in economics, namely, "if A gets richer therefore B must be getting poorer".
In fact free trade is mutually beneficial.”

Bull.
Out of all the people leaving a supermarket, -including the owner- how many feel richer?
To suggest that everyone ends up with equal worth is to suggest that the concept of 'profit' doesn't exist.
The essential problem with the free market is that it is reactive, not proactive. It is not teleological. The vast majority (if not all) of investors are concerned with what's going to happen tomorrow, not in 50 years time.

Grim
The fact that you think you know better than everyone else in the world put together doesn't mean you are talking anything other than bullsh1t.

"The essential problem with the free market is that it is reactive, not proactive."

So no-one else in the world considers the future. You're the only one, right? Admit that was an idiotic thing to say.

"It is not teleological."

If only they had you tell them what to do, then what a Paradise it would be, eh?

"Out of all the people leaving a supermarket, -including the owner- how many feel richer?"

How would you know one way or the other? You don't. All we know is that they considered the goods they bought more likely to satisfy their subjective wants than the money they parted with, otherwise they wouldn't have bought them. Who are you to say you know better?

"To suggest that everyone ends up with equal worth is to suggest that the concept of 'profit' doesn't exist."

No-one has suggested that "everyone ends up with equal worth", so your entire argument is invalid.

Define "equal worth".

You are just spouting the oldest economic fallacies in the world
a) that transactions take place because of equal worth. If that was the case, no transaction would ever take place, would it?, because what each party gained would be no better, from their own point of view, than what they gave.
b) that one person's gain is automatically another's loss; trade is a zero-sum game. If that were true, man would never have advanced beyond the material standard of our primitive ancestors.

" The vast majority (if not all) of investors are concerned with what's going to happen tomorrow, not in 50 years time."
1. How would you know?
2. What makes you think your view of their future is better, or worth any more to them, than theirs?
3. What makes you think you know how to manage a whole economy now and 50 years into the future, when you can't even understand what you're talking about?