>Of course, as Ev Ehrlich once said, carry that argument to its conclusion,
>and we would have 80 million people employed today in hunting and
>gathering, all of them receiving government subsidies as they look for nuts
>and berries...
>
>Why isn't it a better policy for the long run--even for the medium run--to
>tax and spend to accelerate the long-run structural evolution of the
>economy (along with a healthy social-democratic program of redistribution)
>than trying to freeze the sectoral distribution of employment and
>production in the pattern it held in 1950? The pattern of income
>redistribution implicit in the Multifiber Agreement is... not progressive.
The MFA is a stupid thing, as is freezing the state of the world in 1950. But last time I checked there was no "healthy social-democratic program of redistribution" operating in the U.S., and in places where it does exist it's under heavy attack. Our resident cybertopian, the resilient atom Enzo, didn't seem too concerned about what happens to people who get bounced around by "progress."
Doug