RE EXPORTING OUR WAY TO STABILITY THE LAZY FARE WAY FREE RIDERS BEGGAR THY NEIGHBOR THE REAL ROAD TO SERFDOM

The President's essay. A noble exposition. A continuing exhortation, in its way, of the 'real' lazy fare "Road To Serfdom" which we have been following for a long time now.

Unfortunately, exporting and importing, and foreign direct investment,have been the engines of slowly gathering impoverishment, not prosperity, for developed nations, for the past 50 years. Terms like 'excess capacity', including labor capacity, spring to mind.

Because our 'system' turned on it major corporations only moments after having abandoned its average citizens, those corporations, now MNCS with largely foreign constituencies, have long since abandoned the domestic economy they were originally incorporated, state by state, to serve.

It used to be common among economists, and politicians aped them, to trumpet notions like 'free rider', to decry so called 'beggar thy neighbor' policies of protectionist developmental states like Japan and China; when they were perceived to be merely small lazy fare parasites on the 'free' world economy.

Only a few years later, they are recognized to be not only not merely parasites, but the second or third largest economies, by these techniques. Of what, of what is left, can they meaningfully be said to be 'free riding'?

US Presidents' foreign policies, including the current one, are largely responsible for what has gotten advanced nations into the power morass they have now been in for a while.

Producing is great, rather than consuming, but stability has to be based primarily on domestic industrial and commercial policies, not on 'economics', and not primarily on trade; nor will long term prosperity come from that direction, particularly for developed and declining advanced economies which embrace lazy fare.

Further, and this really shows where the ball has been dropped, military power, and security, still have to be based largely on a strong and socially coherent domestic social and political base, not primarily on diplomatic/strategic/trade negotiations, on deals bargaining access to markets, or on a compartmentalized, and mercenarized, military paradigm.

Trading commercial for OSTENSIBLE, AND FRANKLY, ILLUSORY, military or diplomatic advantage has been a fool's paradise for 5 decades now. One's partners turn into, at best, one's commercial adversaries, in short order.