>BDL's new piece on Nader is civil enough, but it got me to thinking
>about a point that has come up before -- the business of comparing
>consumer benefits to worker losses in trade debates. Henwood
>brought this up (once) and provoked in me the realization that the
>logic of this exercise militates against all that we customarily
>understand as left politics, in the broadest sense. If consumer
>benefits (narrowly defined) are the highest priority, then we have
>to oppose any constraints on production cost minimization, in terms
>of minimum wages, industrial action, trade unionism, environmental
>regulation, etc. This is a problem for would-be progressive free
>traders, at the very least. Now I'm wondering how well it can be
>put in analytical terms.
True. But...
Nah. It's time for pas d'enemie sur la gauche.The neoclassical
assumption that your welfare is primarily your welfare as a consumer
(plus a *private* disutility of work term) automatically rules out
any concern for the producer-side benefits of living in a vibrant
production-based community rather than being an anomic seller of
one's labor-power. Bob Reich had a nice piece around 1990 about how
most of the game is in how "legitimate" interests are defined.
Brad DeLong
