Making a Market in Morality

One of the glories of being a modern—dare I coin it? —metropreneur, is that between trying to figure out how to net my next ten grand, I have a few minutes to ponder the whole free-trade issue, right along with Safire (I’m an optimist and welcome to my happy world) and Herbert (US jobs? Buy now, bye later, so slam the door, bub).

As we appear now on the brink of “to tariff or not to tariff,” a modest proposal: Let’s make a “survivor” game of it. “Call it Freedom Trade,” like “Free Trade,” but with a twist.

This game would favor those who did well by doing good. In broad strokes, if you foster freedom, you get our best trade deals.

Here’s how to play:

- Make up a point system for the Constitution and its amendments. Easy enough. Say ten points for “Freedom of Speech” and 1 point for “The Defense of Marriage Act,” or whatever it gets called. Not zero. Everyone gets, via voting, a right to weigh in on our trade policy. Estimated time to work out in Congress? A year should do it, yes?
- Grade tariff rates by item or service (yes apply them to phone call centers in India, too) according to this code. Thus, if you use slave labor to make those shoes, deduct ten points. Prison labor, minus five, ageism in the workplace, minus one. You get the picture.
- Countrywide behavior also gets scored. Women can’t drive? Minus 5. Women bought and sold? Minus 10. There are various rankings for countries by any number of councils and organization. Use them in some fashion to shape measurements of our constitutional rights and freedoms.
- Use the revenue from the tariff on something, like steel, to offer a rebate to buyers of the same thing made in America, thus making our domestic goods and services more specifically competitive in a clear, transparent and motivating manner. If you have a more “constitutional” society, then you get dinged less. This makes foreign and U.S. goods more evenly priced.

More important than turning trade into a clear game with clear rules, like Poker, though, is the point of the game. The point of the “trade game” in the real world is not just about getting Americans the best quality of living at the cheapest price, is it? Those cheap sneakers, that cheap oil also costs the price of our military actions. Apologies to Clausewitz, but trade, like war, is an extension of diplomacy. Carrot and stick. Figured that way, I just spent about 800 bucks last year on that pair of sneakers that cost me $35.

The issue is not the real price of my sneakers; it is not even economic at all. It’s about putting the money to work to further the revolution. Before we all start tie dying, though, I mean the real revolution. The one that created this country, winning Americans' hearts and minds in the first place. The one that has and continues to spread the far better life of “constitutional freedom” to more places—and some day, still, to all.

Some day, freedom and justice for all. That’s where the trade game comes in.

Today “All” is expanding rapidly as our economic and social worlds become a single global enterprise, albeit with some very different neighborhoods. One sneaker at a time, we connect ourselves with those we buy from and sell to. To win their hearts and minds isn’t it time we put our own Constitution, and what it says about the social contract and fair play, into our code of conduct in multinational business dealings?

It’s a reasonably complicated game to get right in the details, I admit. But simple, and vital, enough to start playing now.

Maybe it’s more complex than diplomacy, but it’s a hell of a lot simpler than war. ¶ 11:35 AM