RE KRUGMAN NYT THE COMPETITION MYTH OR RATHER THE ECONOMICS MYTH

This 'myth' butts right up against the 'economics' myth, so Krugman has to somehow, against an avalanche of evidence now, try to show that economics is not a myth, while competitiveness is.


Economists will say things like it doesn't really matter to a country whether it makes machine tools or twinkies. 


(Perhaps bad example, in that twinkies probably are tweaked to the last degree by technology. Picture cheap hand made spaghetti republic twinkies.)


The sad truth is: economics is the myth. 


Here is a classic statement from a classic source:


"Ch 24 IV The General Theory
But if nations can learn to provide themselves with full employment by their domestic policy...there need be no important economic forces calculated to set the interest of one country against that of its neighbours. There would still be room for the international division of labour and for international lending in appropriate conditions. But there would no longer be a pressing motive why one country need force its wares on another or repulse the offerings of its neighbour...with the express object of upsetting the equilibrium of payments so as to develop a balance of trade in its own favour. International trade would cease to be what it is, namely, a desperate expedient to maintain employment at home by forcing sales on foreign markets and restricting purchases, which, if successful, will merely shift the problem of unemployment to the neighbor which is worsted in the struggle, but a willing and unimpeded exchange of goods and services in conditions of mutual advantage."


At least Keynes was more or less an economic nationalist. 


BACK THEN, THERE WAS ROOM FOR A VERY LIMITED NOTION OF AN INTERNATIONAL DIVISION OF LABOR, AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE, AS WHOLESOME LIMITED IDEAS. 


NOT ANY MORE.  ECONOMISTS HAVE GONE IN A GLOBALIST DIRECTION, FOLLOWING ADAM SMITH, WITH A VENGEANCE. 


Few Western economists have had the insight, or gumption, or both, to follow Keynes' view of a primarily nationalistic economics. 


Except for people like Hamilton, List, etc., this has been left to Asian developmental thinkers to exploit.


Terms search also other related posts, Keynes, free trade, laissez faire, economics, etc., etc.


PK is really the wrong kind of person, an economist, to try to explain the pros or cons of something like competitiveness. 


Kind of like asking a chemist to expostulate on military strategy.


One has to read things like Chalmers Johnson, or the early Prestowitz, to get a flavor of what the implications of competitiveness might have meant.


I also liked Ravi Batra, The Myth of Free Trade.


However, Ravi Batra also favored, quite anomalously, aggressive technology transfer, to places like India presumably. Can anyone see why?


But at this point, re competitiveness, it is already 'game over'.