“Part of the sea change may involve the rewriting of Hazlitt’s chapter on international trade.”
I agree. It is Hazlitt’s weakest area, and is out of touch with the realities of today’s globalized trade.
American industry was inherently protected by the oceans during Hazlitt’s heyday, before and shortly after WWII. Total imports and exports were just a few percentage points of our total GDP. Now with the huge capacity of container ships and an Interstate highway system to distribute the goods, including industrial scale refrigeration and long haul jet aircraft for perishable goods; it is now physically possible/economical to off-shore essential production.
Capitalism, driven by self interest and competition, is still the best system - but free and fair competition must be assured for it to work. People will always seek to fix the market.
Adam Smith pointed it out centuries ago:
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
All the more so, when politicians and businessmen around the world explicitly meet to discuss how to grow their country’s economies. They are endlessly clever in devising subtle advantages and barriers against their competitors.
“https://voxday.blogspot.com/2012/07/mailvox-hazlitt-international-trade.html";
This link that you provided does raise many substantial problems (23) with Hazlitt’s trade analysis.
Someone should get it to Mark Levin, for his consideration.
The bottom line is that Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson was a primer geared toward a popular audience, whose intent was to promote a certain platform of policies. It was intended to persuade the layman - not as a serious objective analysis.
In many cases in his chapter on trade, Hazlitt uses oversimplifications, or just simple assertions, that are just not objectively supportable, even if they might be rhetorically persuasive. The chapter on trade is the worst by far.
He was a journalist writing for the general public, to push a political agenda.