Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

I happen to think that inequality [within developed countries] matters for its own sake, but even if you don’t agree with that value judgement...

I don't. O'Rourke may have a point, but there can be no doubt that he has entirely neglected the interests of third world workers when making his value judgment.

I don't think my claims can be contested. They are mentioned, but not in the context of anything O'Rourke values.

I think I understand what happened. O'Rourke's dislike of the Davos participants he sees totally overwhelmed his ability to consider the third world workers he didn't see. In practice, his ethics is minimax not maximin.

There are other possibilities.... I think there might be an extreme equivocation. I suspect that he once thought that trade, foreign direct investment, multinationals and neoimperialism was bad for the third world. It seems he has become convinced that standard models of international trade are useful approximations to reality. I don't think he has updated his sense that the interests of Davos participants and third world workers can't be alligned even roughly, approximately, and closely enough for the purposes of his post.

I am not picking on O'Rourke because I have anything against him personally. It is very clear that a very large number of people wholeheartedly agree with his post. Importantly one is named Bernard Sanders. Some of them complain when their support for US trade protection causes someone to ask why they don't care about the effects on the Chinese. Oh that someone (very enthusiastically criticized by the people who agree with O'Rourke) is James Bradford DeLong.