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How is it dubious exactly? I just wrapped up Hamilton's biography and lengthy parts of it are devoted to Alexander Hamilton practising the "Infant industry argu

How is it dubious exactly? I just wrapped up Hamilton's biography and lengthy parts of it are devoted to Alexander Hamilton practising the "Infant industry argument" on America itself. > On March 24, 1791, the U.S. government granted patents for Parkinson's flax mill, even though he had admitted that they were "improvements upon the mill or machinery ... in Great Britain". Clearly, the U.S. government condoned something that, in modern phraseology, could be termed industrial espionage. > "The extreme embarrasments of the United States during the late war, from an incapacity of supplying themselves, are still matter of keen recollection" > His opponents cited abundant land and deficient capital and labor as reasons that America should remain a rural democracy.

ocb 10y ago
So? That's just an appeal to (200 year old) authority.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  Well, given that economics doesn't amend itself to double-blind experimental verification, what sort of evidence would you even expect to find? Keep in mind that economists tend to focus on problems that their own societies face -- if protectionism was only really useful to small, underdeveloped economies, you wouldn't really expect mainstream US or European economists to get a lot of funding to look into it, would you? Note that this is an idea that has been tried under many guises with different names and details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Import_substitution_industrialization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Import_substitution_industrial... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prebisch%E2%80%93Singer_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prebisch%E2%80%93Singer_hypoth... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism Maybe the real answer is that whether these efforts are beneficial for their countries depends on the context, and that sweeping generalizations aren't helpful?

ocb 10y ago

So? That's just an appeal to (200 year old) authority.

smallnamespace 10y ago
Well, given that economics doesn't amend itself to double-blind experimental verification, what sort of evidence would you even expect to find? Keep in mind that economists tend to focus on problems that their own societies face -- if protectionism was only really useful to small, underdeveloped economies, you wouldn't really expect mainstream US or European economists to get a lot of funding to look into it, would you? Note that this is an idea that has been tried under many guises with different names and details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Import_substitution_industrialization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Import_substitution_industrial... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prebisch%E2%80%93Singer_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prebisch%E2%80%93Singer_hypoth... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism Maybe the real answer is that whether these efforts are beneficial for their countries depends on the context, and that sweeping generalizations aren't helpful?