In a paradoxical sense yes... Obviously in this case it was pointless zealotry, but one of the main purposes of import taxes is to artificially limit imports to favour internal markets, in this sense free stuff is actually worse than expensive stuff.
I mean that this is the reason why import taxes exists, had it been with some generic item th UK manifactured mostly internally at the time it would have been sort of reasonable.
I am not a fan of calling people "enemies" I prefer to look at their incentives and context so that when can learn how to change them so that we will have less "enemies" in the future
In this case the airplanes had also an historical significance so it is hard to justify forcing their destruction.
> I mean that this is the reason why import taxes exists
If your point was about the generic usefulness of import taxes, then I have misunderstood you, no objections there.
> I am not a fan of calling people "enemies" I prefer to look at their incentives and context
I suspect you are in your rationalist phase right now, given the Scott Alexander link in your bio. I used to be one too. This is a good starting point, but it is just that - a starting point.
> can learn how to change them so that we will have less "enemies" in the future
What you probably have in mind is to have a civilized discussion among reasonable people and thus determine the best overall outcome for the best of all of society. Changing the system so that the resulting forces will produce different outcomes.
I'm not really qualified to elaborate on the topic of changing power structures (in essence: of the problem of governance), so I'll just stop here. But its a different problem than you imagine, and you will recoil from the things that are required to succeed.
Interested if you could elaborate further here or have some pointers to good references. I feel like I'm at a turning point in my life where I'm starting to see things a little differently. Sometimes bewildered by how little knowledge or control there really is.
