Ghouls and vampires weren’t the only things refusing to die at the end of October. Oren Cass disinterred centuries-old economic fallacies in “Why Trump Is Right About Tariffs” (The Wall Street Journal, October 27).

It has been over a century and a half since the American Free-Trade League imported the words of Frederic Bastiat across the Atlantic “to convince the people of the United States of the folly and wrongfulness of the Protective system” in an edition of the book they titled Sophisms of the Protectionists (better and more simply known as Economic Sophisms). And pundits have had six decades to learn from Murray Rothbard’s observation that a clear look at the notion “that exports should be encouraged by the government and imports discouraged” reveals it to be “a tissue of fallacy; for what is the point of exports if not to purchase imports?”

Yet Cass blithely asserts that “domestic production has value to a nation, so a tariff that gives it preferential treatment can be sensible and even, to use the economist’s favored term, efficient.”

If they indeed provided consumers with better goods, “preferential treatment” would be exactly what American suppliers didn’t need to stay competitive.  As James Bovard has explained, “Australia is among the world’s most efficient sugar, beef, and dairy producers” — all of which were omitted from the scope of George W. Bush’s United States-Australia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act (AUFTA), while “in return, the United States agreed to exempt the Australian pharmaceutical industry and film industry from vigorous American competition.”

AUFTA was inspired by Bill Clinton’s North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which in turn drew on earlier trade policy; as Rothbard noted in 1993’s “The NAFTA Myth,” they “have converted an unfortunate [George W.’s father George H.W.] Bush treaty into a horror of international statism.”  Proto-Trumpist restrictions on free trade under the guise of Free Trade acronyms also gives the lie to Cass’s claim that “the school of thought that dismisses the case for tariffs is also a school that dismisses the possibility of the world in which we live.”

If we did live in a world of free trade, the “complex supply chains” that Cass wants to keep within  American shores to support “building and repairing billion-dollar warships” would be replaced, not by the “sailcloth and gunpowder” Cass suggests were enough to satisfy Adam Smith’s exception to free trade for essential military goods in the eighteenth century, but by a twenty-first century update of Bastiat’s proposed replacement of armadas “vomiting fire, death, and desolation over our cities” by the “merchant vessel, which comes to offer in free and peaceable exchange, produce for produce.”

New Yorker Joel Schlosberg is a senior news analyst at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.

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1. “Zombie Isms of the Protectionists” by Joel Schlosberg, Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman [Wasilla, Alaska], November 9, 2023

Like most people, I’m a sucker for click bait, and one of my favorite variations of the genre is the feel-good big-tip story. For example, rapper Post Malone leaving a $3,000 tip above and beyond the $500-plus “gratuity” charge on a large restaurant bill. Nice guy by virtually all accounts, and the server was grateful for the unexpected pocketbook boost.

Not everyone tips so well, of course. Some people don’t tip at all, and not all restaurants tack on the “gratuity” charge. Anyone who works in a “tipped” service role can relate stories of demanding customers who stiffed them on tips.

I try to tip generously, with bigger tips for outstanding service However, the movement to eliminate tipping and replace it with a minimum wage (usually coupled with a proposal to increase the minimum wage) is a bad thing all around.

In trying to make the case for such changes, The New Republic‘s Elena Soderblom inadvertently exposes the scam involved by lying, then admitting she’s lying in the very next paragraph, in the apparent hope that no one will notice.

The lie: “Many are unaware of the subminimum wage that allows a tipped employee to be paid as little as $2.13 per hour.”

The admission of the lie: “[E]mployers are not required to pay minimum wages as long as customers make up the difference.”

By law, employers are required to ensure that employees receive AT LEAST the legally mandated minimum wage (I oppose minimum wage laws, by the way, but they do exist).

The idea of replacing tipping with a minimum wage doesn’t provide a “floor” to the employee’s earnings — that “floor” is already there. Rather, it creates an artificial “ceiling” to those earnings.

If the minimum wage is $15 an hour, the un-tipped employee makes $15 an hour and not a penny more unless the boss decides to offer a raise. With tipping, someone who provides good service to grateful customers may average $20 or $30 or more per hour … but still gets that $15 per hour, bare minimum, regardless.

The only real explanation for the effort to get rid of tipping is that proponents want to corral service employees — at their own expense — into political pushes for higher minimum wages, and perhaps unionization efforts.

Some service workers resist these efforts, for good reason. The District of Columbia’s bartenders and wait staff  opposed a 2022 tipping law that drove up bar and restaurant menu prices by requiring the full $16.10 minimum wage. With tipping, they were accustomed to making $36-40 per hour.

If you live in an area with such counter-productive rules, don’t blame your waiter or bartender for the higher prices. Blame the politicians who imposed those higher prices. And if you can, please tip generously anyway.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“Civilians are not collateral damage,” the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean tweeted (or whatever it’s called now on X, formerly Twitter) on October 27. “Patients are not collateral damage. Health staff & health facilities are not collateral damage. Children, women & men sheltering in health facilities are not collateral damage. International Humanitarian Law must be respected.”

WHO is obviously referring to events in Gaza. Unfortunately, the statement goes both too far and not far enough.

The “too far” part:

On a quick read of “international law” — specifically Protocol I and the 1997 Additional Protocol of the 1949 Geneva Conventions — the claim that people in hospitals can’t be “collateral damage” seems unsupported. Article 19 does order that such facilities “shall not be attacked,” but if the attack is on a nearby “legitimate” military target, then per Article 51(5)(b) the attackers merely need avoid  “anticipated civilian damage or injury” that’s “clearly excessive” in relation to “anticipated military advantage.”

The “not far enough” part:

There is no moral, nor should there be any legal,  Get Out of Jail Free Card for those who injure or kill non-combatants.

War is an intentional activity and “collateral damage” is therefore by definition not “accidental.”

When YOU squeeze the trigger on a rifle, pull the lanyard on a howitzer, or press a button that drops a bomb or launches a missile, YOU are morally responsible — and should be held legally responsible — for the results of your actions.

It’s on YOU to know where that munition is going and who’s on or near that spot.

If the results of your action include the deaths of, or injuries to, non-combatants, that’s also on you.

Your action may be intentional, reckless, or negligent, but whatever else it may be it is NOT accidental.

The obvious objection to imposing something analogous to a  “felony murder rule” on actions taken during war is that few would willingly participate in such activities if they expected to be held to account for their crimes. That’s a feature, not a bug. War is a bad thing. Making it harder to recruit people to conduct it is a good thing.

Regimes (both actual and would-be) try to claim special exemptions from basic morality for themselves and their agents when it comes to the lives and livelihoods caught in the middle of their fights. But shiny badges and fancy uniforms don’t change the moral equation. Nor should they.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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