[muir_redwoods]

Your response, among its many flaws, posits a possibility of a static system. That is an impossibility and the world changes daily. It was once common for 90% or more of our population to live on food they themselves had grown. To suggest, in the 18th century, that one day less than 2% of the population would be farmers would have suggested mass starvation to a person of that day. Few of us farm today and fewer still, starve. The world has changed and the world will continue to change and an inability to adjust and adapt to that change is not a virtue.

What you call Randian is rationalism and realism. No legislation can long protect an unrealistic wage for an anacronistic job in a marketplace that has choices. That is a fact. Any plan that ignores that fact is a wish, not a plan.

[ARCADIA]

No legislation can long protect an unrealistic wage for an anacronistic job in a marketplace that has choices.

True, but we are not talking about protecting a job, but an entire industrial base. If cars can no longer be competitively produced here, then we have better find something that can be produced here; something, that would be grand enough to employ the displaced workforce, and valuable enough to exchange for cars and other goods. This is what innovation and competitive positioning use to be about; we may not be able to compete with the least cost provider, but we should certainly be able to create and distinguish a premium first world product from 3rd world junk.