The English language is chock-full of misnomers. Perhaps if we identified certain ideas by more appropriate designations, then we may not harbor such incorrect connotations about them.

Take the word "capitalism," for example. This starkly inhuman label describes a set of political and economic policies aimed at utilizing free markets to appropriate scarce resources. Though it is not without its faults and limitations, we have mostly learned to appreciate it. But nary has a day passed without some pundit or political activist mockingly referring to a broken economic system, saying capitalism is what lies at the heart of all evil, or something to that extent.

Perhaps if we were to start calling capitalism for what it really is, it could not be manipulated into the playing the role of pariah, as it often is. I vote to rename it "economic individualism," because that is essentially what capitalism seeks to promote. "Economic individualism is at the heart of all that is wrong in this world" doesn't have quite the same malice as before.

This same line of reasoning extends to another political
ideal that our country and much of the world has embraced. The idea of "fair trade" rings triumphant for countless workers in industries that have become commoditized due to the spread of political liberalization over the last 20 years and the fantastic growth in technology that has truly made the world a much smaller place. That confluence of events, which we have aptly dubbed "globalization," has been received with fear and misunderstanding in certain parts of our country, especially within the segment that has recently become displaced from traditional jobs, due in no small part to the emergence of nations such as China, India, Brazil and Russia, among others, on the world economic stage.

A number of political leaders have advocated fair trade, claiming it a panacea for what ails the recently unemployed and suffering laborers of this country. They seek to erect trade barriers in the form of tariffs and quotas in order to protect the hard-working masses from the onslaught of the unfairly advantaged hordes from overseas. Additionally, they seek to prevent the supposedly illicit "dumping" of cheap commodities onto our markets by these same overseas producers.

Yet a simple economic analysis shows that trade barriers in any form do not restore domestic output that has been previously "lost" to foreign competition. Rather, it forces domestic consumers to pay higher prices for the affected goods, leading them to substitute less costly things in place of these pricier wares. In brief, the lost output and lowered employment resulting from foreign competition does not return because of trade barriers.

If anything, we have a responsibility as citizens to provide for those displaced workers. We are obligated to help them and their families through these struggles with unemployment insurance and, more importantly, a clear opportunity to re-join the workforce in some other valuable pursuit. We all lose as a society when honest and hard-working individuals remain unemployed for lengthy periods of time.

But the idea that we have to strike back at the supposedly
less than virtuous foreign nations that created the displacement of jobs in the first place is simply bogus. If we should take special action to "help" the workers that lose their employment from foreign competition, what should we do about those who lose their jobs due to domestic competitors? Should individual states be allowed to erect trade barriers with other states in order to protect their workers from unfair competition? Indeed, there is a good reason why the founding fathers explicitly forbade that policy in the Constitution. In fact, it is nothing short of insulting to the workers who have been displaced by American competitors when we create trade restrictions with other countries in the name of "fair trade" but cannot do so for these humble individuals. In the end, someone who has lost his job couldn't care less about why they are now unemployed. They just want to get back to work and earn an honest living like the rest of us do.

So perhaps we should rename fair trade to something more appropriate. It ought to be something that captures what it is in more realistic terms. If we all called fair trade policies something with a connotation more in line with its effects, which is consumer-subsidized xenophobia, then we might be less inclined to support it.

Aleksey Dubrovensky is a senior in the School of Engineering.