The Wealth of Nations Self-Interested Agents

Brad DeLong buys into a Hayekian view of economic morality, but several of his readers call his foul in the comments. One witty comment might spread wider:

The learned autism of economists is really remarkable sometimes.

Rhetoric aside, this comment gets to the core:

As for the moral point: well, we live in a world of nation states, which are all about treating citizens differently from non-citizens. The question of the morality of a nation-based trade policy is really a sub-question of the issue of the morality of the nation state.