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Mercantilism

69 points by dismalaf

by ViktorRay

7 subcomments

I know some economists during the second half of the 20th century had the exact opposite view of the Mercantilist philosophy.
For example Mercantilism says a country should maximize exports and minimize imports as much as possible.
Meanwhile Milton Friedman, one of the most prominent economists of the 20th century, said that a country that had large amounts of imports with minimal exports was a very successful country. The idea being that such a country was essentially buying things from other countries at minimal cost.
Edit: The following link quotes something he said regarding this:
https://fee.org/articles/milton-friedman-the-way-we-talk-abo...

by Jedd

2 subcomments

I remember reading in a PJ O'Rourke book about Comparative Advantage - I've found the section, as the 'non-trivial and non-obvious' sleight stuck with me, even decades later:

  > Todd G. Buchholz, in his book New Ideas from Dead Economists, says, “An insolent natural scientist once asked a famous economist to name one economic rule that isn’t either obvious or unimportant.” The reply was “Ricardo’s Law of Comparative Advantage.” 
  > 
  > The English economist David Ricardo (1772–1823) postulated this: If you can do X better than you can do Z, and there’s a second person who can do Z better than he can do X, but can also do both X and Z better than you can, then an economy should not encourage that second person to do both things. You and he (and society as a whole) will profit more if you each do what you do best.

There follows some droll examples around the implications of this law, comparing John Grisham and Courtney Love's contributions to society, which doubtless helped consolidate the lesson.

Point being - this foundational law would seem to trump any interest in mistakenly attempting to optimise for inputs vs outputs to your nation.

EDIT: From his book 'Eat The Rich: A Treatise on Economics' (1998)

by no_wizard

1 subcomments

This seems to be the economic model conservative “populists” seem to hitching themselves to with the thrusting of these tariffs onto the American public

by mizzao

0 subcomment

Works better when you're trying to hoard gold.
Not so well when you have a fiat currency that's also the world's reserve currency...

by saghm

0 subcomment

> With the efforts of supranational organizations such as the World Trade Organization to reduce tariffs globally, non-tariff barriers to trade have assumed a greater importance in neomercantilism.
That might need to get updated within a few years...