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By David Henderson
My wife and I went to see the movie Green Book and thoroughly enjoyed it. I highly recommend it. I won't bother recounting the story; that's easy to find on line. Instead I want to remark on a line in the movie. The white driver, Tony Lip, says to Dr. Don Shirley: I like what you did back there, Doc. You stood up for yourself. It’s like your friend the President says, “Ask not your country what you could do for...
I'm not giving anything away in saying that the winner of best picture in last night's Oscars, Green Book, was about a white driver driving a black musician around the southern United States and that there really was a Green Book, published annually, that told...
But the two are in fact one and the same. Consumers are expected to suffer the effects of tariffs "for the good of the country" (manufacturers of protected goods); consumers and employers are expected to pay higher prices/wages "for the good of the country" (domestic laborers competitive with immigrants). What you're country does for you is merely what someone else is being made to do "for their country." Two sides of the same coin. One's duty to an abstraction, like a nation-state, or 'society', or what have you, ultimately reduces to an obligatory transfer of resources from one set of individuals to another set of individuals.
Mark Z , February 17, 4:11 pm.