Lou Dobbs Is a Coward

by Adam Young

Nearly everyday, Lou Dobbs, the host of CNN’s financial-oriented agitprop news program "Lou Dobbs Tonight," rails at the perfidy of the so-called outsourcing of American jobs to elsewhere around the world. Typically, China and India are the targets of the Dobbsian harangue against free trade in favor of something he calls fair trade. While he might dissect the cartelism of so-called free trade agreements like NAFTA and the regional treaties being proposed for Latin America , Dobbs, however, as an icon of CNN, is not an advocate of real free trade.  

I’ve had the unfortunate privilege of watching this show on several occasions because of some topic that would be discussed at some point, and have witnessed the Dobbsian interview style of pouting, shouting, interrupting and insulting his guests. Not once can I remember Dobbs offering an alternative to outsourcing beyond punishing American corporations that purchase labor and inputs globally with punitive taxation.  

What is typical of all critics of free trade and enemies of liberty is their inability to orientate their daily behavior to coordinate with their professed anti-freedom view of human relations. Lou Dobbs, I am 100% sure without ever having met the man, simply chooses to ignore his criticisms of others in his daily life as a consumer of goods and services. After all, doesn’t Lou Dobbs outsource his needs and desires to others? Does Lou Dobbs make his own suits and other clothing? Grow his own food and collect his own water? Did Dobbs design, manufacture, and construct all the pieces that go into building his home and cars? When he travels, does he fly his own plane? Did he build his own plane?  

Obviously, Dobbs enjoys the benefits of our modern quality of life and living standards, and isn’t some anti-exchange Luddite in his daily life. If he were, how could he even carry on his monotonous and sterile political show on CNN?  

I suspect however, that Dobbs jumped on the outsourcing bandwagon in an effort to grab ratings and headlines as CNN in desperation tried to counter the brownshirt nonsense spewed by the likes of the War and State Channel, Fox News. CNN, in the likes of Lou Dobbs and his stable of corporate bashers like Kitty Pilgrim and the others, would present themselves as the friend of the "little guy," exposing the outrageous salaries and job exporting policies of fat-cat CEOs, their million dollar birthday parties, and private jets while the working class are squeezed and trampled in the pursuit of obscene and illegitimate corporate profits. Lou Dobbs has the Marxist canards down pat. And as always, the entrepreneurs, the successful, the wealthy, and those organizations that work to maintain and raise our standard of living in the face of obstacles placed in their way by ignorant opportunists like Dobbs, present an easy target for the intellectually and morally lazy.  

Of course, the real truth is that Lou Dobbs is a coward. It’s easy to target these companies for his hit pieces and accusations against them of virtual “crimes” against America and her people. It’s easy too for Dobbs to invite people who defend outsourcing onto his show and then denigrate them and insult them as virtual enemies of the people. And Dobbs can do this because he knows he can’t tell his viewers the truth. The truth that it is their fault, it is “ America ’s” fault, that so many jobs have been “exported” overseas. But if Dobbs told them that, he would have to kiss his self-anointed role as Pope of the Holy American Worker good-bye.  

After all, what is “outsourcing”? Is it any different from what you or I do everyday when we choose between which suppliers will provide us with the goods and services we need to achieve our aims and desires? Ours may be new software that will simply make things easier in our private lives, whereas with a large company, they look at the range of possible inputs that allow them to supply a good or service that the public demands and earn a profit to ensure the continued existence of the firm.  

And firms compete against others in their industries and thus they each must consider the cost structures of their competitors. If one firm is able to find significant labor savings that it is then able to pass onto the consumer through lower prices, that firm will be rewarded with a rising market share, more income and higher profits. If their competitors do not emulate their cost savings, one of two things will happen: as market share and profits fall, the shareholders will oust the existing executives who choose to pursue a “patriotic” anti-outsourcing policy, or if they aren’t ousted, the company will eventually be bankrupted and be liquidated.  

In a commercial society, which I’m confident Lou Dobbs understands but has cynically decided to pretend otherwise, it is the consumer who controls whether a firm survives or not. Ultimately it is the fault of the American consumer that labor that used to be performed in America is now performed in China and India and elsewhere. If only Americans would, out of misplaced patriotism or brain-dead loyalty to their union and political thugs, err . . . leaders, voluntarily agree to sabotage their living standards and quality of life in order to maintain inefficient and costly practices in America . Instead, they choose to participate in the dynamic wealth creating and life enhancing process of free exchange among all areas and peoples on Earth and free up resources that are better allocated to other areas of production.  

Who’s at fault for the tide of outsourcing? Why, the self-interested desire of individual Americans to save money, increase their ability to stretch a dollar farther and farther, and enjoy the bountiful goods produced by peaceful human interaction across arbitrary political borders.  

And to that statists like Dobbs and politicians can only whine and call for Americans to subordinate their lives to the goals and desires of the criminal classes of politicians and special interests that unfortunately, Lou Dobbs has decided to throw in his lot with.