These jobs are a pittance in number compared to the number of American manufacturing jobs that were lost. Plus all of these jobs you mentioned would still exist if we were exporting goods instead of importing them, which means that there were no jobs gained back by sending American jobs to China.

China has the problem of jobs versus high domestic prices. America has the problem of people out of work, earning nothing at all – how do you pay for cheap $100 Chinese TVs if you are earning zero? Let me guess… monopoly money? Five finger discount? Help me out here.

Plus the trade deficit with China is devaluing the dollar and increasing the national debt as well. I leave it up to you to see where that road leads.

Personally, even as a straight male, I’m not crazy about seeing the outline of a girl’s genitals in a bikini. Hey ladies, unless you’re under thirty and a supermodel, don’t wear bikinis. Nobody really wants to see your “thang”.

Calling this authoritarian is an absurd misuse of the English language.

Or maybe (in fact most probably) it was a meaningless rhetorical flourish that, once pride was challenged, John doubled down on.

So, a thought experiment, what would the Slate retraction look like? Just the Hayek quote? If something other then the Kayek miss-attribution what, precisely is the standard for retraction? How would that standard apply against the many other Slate columnists? How would that standard apply against John?

It’s not like I’m questioning much of Johns original essay, I just thing the call for retraction is absurd.

That said, the call for retraction sums up as:

a) if Slate, and by implication almost any other journal, publishes something controversial

b) then someone publishes even a mediocre response.

c) then the journal is obligated, that is compelled by moral principal to suppress the article after the fact.

Yes, I do find that fundamentally authoritarian. In my (admittedly JS Millian worldview, the correct response to “incorrect speech” is more speech.

You seem to be quite comfortable hiding behind a call to private authority. No, not the authority of the owners of Slate, who clearly are comfortable with what Metcalf wrote, but some ill-defined notion of scholarly purity.

Ironically, this same principal has been used against modern libertarian thought. I guess it’s not too surprising that you wish to wield that same sword. Power can be quite compelling

Oddly enough, I don’t think Nozick would endorse your article.

You may notice that none of your other cites call for a retraction. They call into question Slate’s brand of “journalism” (and it seems to have escaped other that Slate is most decidedly not journalism)

“From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in equal position would be to treat them differently.” (Constitution of Liberty Chap. 6)

That said, Hayek also applauded how greater wealth in US society was leading to smaller disparities in the quality of life between rich and poor.

I don’t think material “fairness” or equality should be our goal or will be an outcome in a perfectly free market. However, a free society means equality before the law and, over time, higher standards of living and more opportunity for everyone.

With regards to the factual errors, recall that I said my list was not exhaustive. You can find more here:

http://reason.com/blog/2011/06/21/some-factual-errors-in-the-lat

I suppose you can maintain that some of this is a matter of interpretation, but Metcalf’s interpretation is so unmoored from reality that I don’t think it’s a stretch to just say it’s wrong. Julian Sanchez explains more here:

http://www.juliansanchez.com/2011/06/21/nozick-libertarianism-and-thought-experiments/

In short, it’s like someone explained the Parable of the Prodigal son to Metcalf, and he responded by shouting “But that ignores the estate tax!”

It’s truly odd to hear a libertarian call for Slate to retract, something that’s essentially an authoritarian request.

Slate is clearly a forum for a range of authors with divergent views. The same forum publishes Christopher Hitchens and Elliot Spitzer, Jack Shaefer and Timothy Noah. Clearly the Slate is not about a party line. What basis then could underly the call for a retraction? I’d venture its pretty clearly a statist call for a centrally defined “truth”.

Everything else you site is a matter of interpretation and opinion. And, for the most part you do a fine job of stating **your** opinion and interpretation. That said, at the very end you completely undermine that up till then decent exposition of your view by the absurd, over the top call for Slate to retract.

Good lord man, can you site a **single** retraction of an opinion piece in **any** opinion journal? Retractions are essentially unheard of in any opinion journal (as Slate most assuredly is). There has to be something approaching the criminal to warrant that sort of response.

Really??? Slate, an middle brow contrarian essay site, dedicated to presenting a variety of “thought pieces” should take the pretty much unprecendented step of retracting an article, not due to factual errors, but due to your judgement that is is “misleading”???

Really???

That bit of rhetorical flourish calls into question your judgment, which in turn casts doubt on everything else your essay claims.