Why have free traders rejected Globalisation – or sleep with those who do?
How can free traders and those who support globalisation even bear to associate themselves with the leave campaign.
Was it Lord Lawson who once said that freedom included the freedom to live and work in other countries without undue restrictions.?
I found the Brexit campaign’s recent poster more weird than usual.
Or, as I suspect, I have for too long misunderstood what this noble idea of freedom actually meant. What it really means is a right for white anglophones to go to other countries and live (and maybe work) there.
Are people really saying that this right does not apply to people with too many “z”s in their name, who are not white, and who are not anglicans. Only people like me with blue eyes, fair hair, and an English accent are really meant to benefit from the amazing opportunities of globalisation and the free movement to live and work in places other than where I was born. I guess I am meant to tell my friends who have too many z’s in their name, or maybe brown eyes, that sorry these freedoms were not meant for them.
Why Globalisation Will Save Your Life
I like globalisation. I don’t care who invents a cure for my cancer, who cares for me in hospital at 3 am as I vomit up, and treats and cures me. I’d be dead if I put limits on the nationality, race or belief of those who saved my life. I am only alive because of the wonders of globalisation. A german man gave me the gift of life by donating his stem cells. I am now the ultimate generic European by DNA and very luck and proud to be.
I really don’t care who is providing me with a product or service. It means nothing to me where my car comes from. I can understand the English spoken in a call centre thousands of miles away far better than I can understand many people in England.
I doubt that any of these amazing medicines or treatments would be possible in a world that required medicines to be invented and made in that country , or just as silly, only local Doctors and health staff to provide the treatment. If such a world were to come to pass, many people would die, slain at the alter of a sickening alliance between nationalists, protectionists, and anti-globalisation advocates. Our grave yards would be full of people like me conveniently slaughtered to satisfy their perverted ideals.
Why Are Free Traders Sleeping with Them
I am sad that those who claim to be the intellectual followers of Mises and Hayek (who escaped from Europe as fascists hunted them down ) have not yet more clearly and publicly denounced this unholy alliance of nationalists, protectionists and enemies of Globalisation that are Brexit.
There are noble voices of sanity and decency from the classical liberals like the AEI’s Dalibor Rohac who has written a measured case for Europe from a free market perspective. He is a rare light in the free market community that seems too keen to extinguish the pro-European and anti-statist tradition of Hayek and Mises and jump into bed with the Brexit and their anti-freedom agenda.
Globalisation is a force of good. It will, as all positive changes, cause disruption. Europe has been a force of speeding up economic change, and softening the pain of transition for some. And, whilst it has many failings, as all government and companies have, it continues to fight against pointless barriers to trade which governments and companies are constantly seeking to establish and re-establish. For that the 26 pence a day price tag is well worth it.