The People-Centered Development Forum Seeking a just, inclusive, and sustainable world that works for all. Retraining, not protectionism, is the answer to their problem.
Economists generally focus on protectionism against international competition.
They have been inclined to overlook a rather different form of job protection that is likely to prove far more costly to society than protecting the jobs of textile or auto workers. Have you ever wondered why most everyone agrees that development must be sustainable, and yet there remains a profound disagreement as to what sustainable development means. An important part of the answer can be found in the staunch resistance of a powerful professional lobby to evidence that their craft is based on dangerously obsolete premises. Rather than accept appropriate retraining for jobs for which society has a desperate need, they persist in a campaign to convince the public that nothing consequential has changed and their craft remains as useful as ever. To be more specific, until environmental sustainability became a recognized need, economic growth generally ruled supreme as the organizing principle of public policy.