Towards the end of the debate (using an Ad hominem attack) Lord Kearton got his numbers completely wrong - millions of barrels per day.... actually he should have said tens of thousands per day. As they say "you should not let the facts get in the way of a good story".

Yes, perfect. It's doomsday thinking. But a beautiful insight to notice is that people instinctively don't trust hysterical people, they intuit they are not convinced by their own arguments.

I love watching Friedman just bat away everything with such conviction.

Protectionism is all too alive today from the Trumpsters to the democrsts. Both parties are anti free market. Very worrying.

I agree with the fundamental principle: a good economy is simply consumers able to operate in how they like. If I take the 4 men’s viewpoint, I would say that has the potential of decimating the entire domestic economy because the native consumers only buys imports. I think that’s how they would react.

​​​​@@hanh3000Yes. And there's also the consideration about comparative advantage, what if a country simply has zero comparative advantages in literally evwrything, or just about everything? And there are still things like food as a matter of national security, or steel as national security. And there's also the question of niches to put it in biological terms, some niches are often better than others, for example, but if they're already occupied, the 'comparative advantage' is with the present players, and other species have a hard time entering, ie a sort of status quo advantage, well, not exactly, but I hope you understand. And let's make an utterly idiotic scenario for the sake of argument. There is a new technology, it's practically magical in that it's horrifyingly efficient, yet difficult to operate and has a high upfront cost. A government which does not protect its own pathetic industries risk very well wrecking it, as the comparative advantage will, almost certainly, always lie with the nation with such 'magic'- and any sufficiently advanced technology is magic. And some industries also are plain more productive than others at maximum capacities. Agriculture, while never as efficient as today also makes a relatively low part of our economies, plants are cheap. Airplanes are not. In the long term, taking a hit to subsidise planemaking to get the industry going will probably earn more money than continuing onto the agricultural path. And the interesting part about Friedman's point with Freddie Laker is that one could use it to make an argument for government owned and managed companies to bring out the best of the private sector, have them eternally competing against the odds.