Indeed, that is what I was agreeing to.

As I said in the post – economists default to a position of “freedom is good”, that is part of the inherent “bias” in our discipline.

As a result, if I don’t understand something I move to this default position – which is the case in the social category.

When it comes to economic/trade issues I do have some small level of knowledge. This knowledge allows me to move past my initial default position and recognise some of the other issues. On weighing these up I end up a smidgen to the left in the economic category.

As a result, my position is completely consistent with the reasoning I’ve provided. If someone painted civil liberty issues in the same frame as economic issues I may end up less “blanket liberal”.

Note The reason that economists that are like me are willing to constrain freedom in trade is because of issue that we believe influence other peoples “liberty”. In other words, it is not that we are trying to say “liberty is bad” in any sense – we are just accepting that complete economic freedom does not imply that welfare, or peoples liberty will be maximised. Government has a role in promoting liberty – as well as a role constraining it.

Indeed I did 🙂

And as I’ve discussed in this post – this bias may be because I understand issues of trade more than I understand issues of civil liberties, a point I am more than willing to concede.

However, also it might stem from their being some fundamental difference in the issues – if I understood more about these issues I might be able to state why 🙂