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Mercantilism, zero-sum games, and objective reality
About 240 years ago, Adam Smith wrote what became considered the founding document of capitalism, The Wealth of Nations. His main point, throughout the book, was to debunk a widespread economic theory called "mercantilism", which held that the most successful nation is the one that amasses the most gold and silver within its borders, and that the way to achieve greatness was to discourage your people from buying anything from abroad. Smith suggested, on the contrary, that the most successful nation is the one whose people are the happiest (including, of course, their material standard of living). To this end, if you face a choice among buying something expensive and locally-produced, buying the same thing as a cheaper Import, and not buying it at all, the common people and therefore the nation are better off with the import. Not only does it save you money that you can spend on something else, but buying it makes the residents of a foreign country wealthier and therefore more able to buy what you produce. Furthermore, he said, almost anything government does to restrict imports will end up benefiting a small group of domestic merchants at the expense of ordinary people.
Now, I wouldn't expect Donald Trump to have actually read The Wealth of Nations -- it has long words, and subordinate clauses, and complicated ideas, and it's more than two pages long -- but as a lifelong capitalist he might reasonably be expected not to fall for a theory that thinking capitalists and governments gave up 200 years ago.
However, he has spent his life measuring his success and that of everyone around him by how much money they had (or appeared to have), so I guess it comes naturally to him to measure the success of a nation by how much money it has. And since anything measured in money is zero-sum, he sees the world as zero-sum: it is beyond his comprehension that a trade might enrich both participants, or that an act of immigration might benefit both the immigrant and hir adopted country, or that a law might be sincerely supported by both Republicans and Democrats. The only way for you to win is for me to lose, and I have no intention of losing, so I won't let you win.
There are at least two problems with this. First, nations are not corporations, but more like families: as Smith suggested, they do not exist to maximize profits or market capitalization or bullion reserves, but rather to maximize the well-being of their members. A strategy that works well to increase profits may be a dismal failure when measured by quality of life, and vice versa.
Second, once you've assumed that everything is zero-sum and discounted the possibility of win-win and lose-lose solutions, there's no objective basis for saying one solution is better than another. One solution is better-for-me, another better-for-you, but no solution is better-period. Which makes it tempting to abandon the very notion of objective reality: the value of everything depends on where you sit, on whether you're on the winning or the losing side of it. Even whether a factual statement is true or false depends on whom it would benefit. If Big Brother says I'm holding up seven fingers, then I am holding up seven fingers; if Big Brother doesn't tell you how many fingers I'm holding up, you have no other way of knowing the right answer. The judgment of right and wrong has been out-sourced to your tribal affiliation; you don't need to worry your pretty little head about it.
Now, I wouldn't expect Donald Trump to have actually read The Wealth of Nations -- it has long words, and subordinate clauses, and complicated ideas, and it's more than two pages long -- but as a lifelong capitalist he might reasonably be expected not to fall for a theory that thinking capitalists and governments gave up 200 years ago.
However, he has spent his life measuring his success and that of everyone around him by how much money they had (or appeared to have), so I guess it comes naturally to him to measure the success of a nation by how much money it has. And since anything measured in money is zero-sum, he sees the world as zero-sum: it is beyond his comprehension that a trade might enrich both participants, or that an act of immigration might benefit both the immigrant and hir adopted country, or that a law might be sincerely supported by both Republicans and Democrats. The only way for you to win is for me to lose, and I have no intention of losing, so I won't let you win.
There are at least two problems with this. First, nations are not corporations, but more like families: as Smith suggested, they do not exist to maximize profits or market capitalization or bullion reserves, but rather to maximize the well-being of their members. A strategy that works well to increase profits may be a dismal failure when measured by quality of life, and vice versa.
Second, once you've assumed that everything is zero-sum and discounted the possibility of win-win and lose-lose solutions, there's no objective basis for saying one solution is better than another. One solution is better-for-me, another better-for-you, but no solution is better-period. Which makes it tempting to abandon the very notion of objective reality: the value of everything depends on where you sit, on whether you're on the winning or the losing side of it. Even whether a factual statement is true or false depends on whom it would benefit. If Big Brother says I'm holding up seven fingers, then I am holding up seven fingers; if Big Brother doesn't tell you how many fingers I'm holding up, you have no other way of knowing the right answer. The judgment of right and wrong has been out-sourced to your tribal affiliation; you don't need to worry your pretty little head about it.