I’m sitting on the floor with my microwaved meatloaf and mashed potatoes about to watch some… I’m sitting on the floor with my microwaved meatloaf and mashed potatoes about to watch some “West Wing.” But before I can get the DVD playing, my housemate Dan starts a protectionist rant. It’s a reasonably typical tirade. Trade is bad for American workers. We need to protect our industries. Paying laborers well and treating them decently makes it impossible for us to compete internationally, so we should make those other nations treat their workers the same as we do. In my cat-infested living room, I find myself involuntarily springing to the defense of capitalism.

Progress must not be stopped. Trade barriers don’t create more wealth. They pinion it. Capturing money and trying to keep it inside a fence of laws doesn’t make people richer. Protecting manufacturing industries that can’t compete internationally isn’t supporting anyone.

The jobs are already gone. Tariffs and subsidies try to give form to ghosts, and the effort can create convincing illusions. Workers get paychecks. Their families eat and buy all sorts of things. That money flows through the economy, so how isn’t it real?

The money received by those enjoying the benefits of protectionist policies costs too much. It’s just a way the government can redistribute income. The real difference between it and welfare is that the recipients feel like they’re earning the money.

Free trade maximizes comparative advantage and it leads to an overall increase in wealth for the parties involved. Trade barriers are just dams. What we need is more water not a way to make a dwindling river appear deeper. However many dams are built, the river’s still going to dry. People may as well move on now rather than wasting precious resources trying to do something futile.

What about those directly involved? It’s great to talk about progress in the abstract, but how do you look at a man with three kids who has just lost his job and start talking to him about rivers and dams? How comforting is he really going to find it that the bulk of the American economy is in the service sector? Is he supposed to be proud that he’s been sacrificed for the good of others?

Individual causalities are not the only crime that can be leveled against capitalism. For years I’ve longed for a cure to the obscenity of supply and demand. I’ve dreamed of a world where the value of someone’s contribution is determined by more than its popularity. Painting and poetry ought to be worth as much as accounting, and teachers should earn more than lawyers.

I’ve long known and resented all of that, but I couldn’t see the whole picture. A few economics and international relations classes later, my understanding’s grown. Capitalism does a great job of creating wealth. It also does a horrible job of distributing it.

The second fact does not invalidate the first. We need both, and perhaps the answer isn’t in finding one overarching philosophy to handle the problem but buttressing capitalism with a system to redistribute the wealth as necessary. I know. It sounds like socialism, and perhaps it is. I’ve always viewed socialism as legislated morality, but helping the man that’s become obsolete as a result of economic growth is more than a moral imperative.

There are different types of poverty. It’s hard to view institutionalized poverty like that found in ghettos as anything but a moral issue, but growth-related job loss is the cost of progress. And it should be treated like any other kind of business expense. The burden of financing job transitioning and unemployment should be placed on those benefiting from the very free trade policies that cost these people their jobs. Since we all benefit from lower priced goods and a steady economic growth, the responsibility is on us all.

Burn the puppets with Zak Sharif at [email protected].