Free trade reimagined: the world division of labor and the method of economics

Themes and Scope of this Book

Chapter 1. Troubles: The Enigmas of Free Trade

Familiar Problems, Disturbing Solutions

The History of Free Trade and Protection: Subversive Lessons

The Authority of Free Trade Doctrine: Reasons Amounting to Objections

Chapter 2. Troubles: The Incompleteness of Comparative Advantage

The Doctrine of Comparative Advantage

Incompleteness: Indeterminacy Resulting from Failure to Justify Unique Assignments of Comparative Advantage

Incompleteness: Confusion Resulting from Uncertainty about the Limits of Our Power Collectively to Shape Comparative Advantage

Incompleteness: Embarrassment Resulting from the Assumption that the World Is Divided into Sovereign States

Beyond Incompleteness: The Sham Similarity between Postmarginalist Economics and Physics

Condemned to Eternal Infancy: Implications of the Method Inaugurated by Marginalism

A Note Relating Ideas in this Book to the Dominant Tradition of Thinking about Comparative Advantage

Chapter 3. Ideas

In Search of a Point of View

Specialization and Discovery: When Competition Inhibits Self-Transformation

Politics over Economics: When Restraints on Trade Imply No Surrender to Special Interests or Costly Dogmas

Order and Revision: When Free Trade Strengthens the Capacity for Self-Transformation

Alternative Free Trade, Alternative Globalizations: The Market Liberated from the Doctrine of the Market

The Division of Labor Reimagined and Remade: From the Pin Factory to the Factory of Innovation

A Central Conception: Mind against Context

Chapter 4. Theses

Nature of These Theses

The Thesis of Relative Advantage

The Thesis of Politics over Economics

The Thesis of Self-Revision

Chapter 5. Proposals

From an Analysis to a Program

The World Trade Regime and Its Reconstruction

Free Trade Reformed: The Reconciliation of Alternatives

Free Trade Reformed: Experimenting with the Form of the Market Economy

Free Trade Reformed: Free Movement of Things and Money Chastened, Free Movement of People and Ideas Enhanced

Free Trade Reformed: From Wage Slavery to Free Labor

The Troubles of Free Trade and the Possibilities of Economics

Name Index

Subject Index