The economic irrelevance of naval power

When I posted a piece on the latest failure of the US Navy a while back, I predicted that I wouldn’t be changing any minds. That was one of my safer predictions, confirmed almost immediately by Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money. Farley declined to respond, saying “whatever his other virtues, Dr. Quiggin is not a serious voice on naval questions”. I wasn’t surprised by this. Farley is the epitome of the navalist view that serious expertise on the technology of naval warfare is a crucial requirement for commentary, whereas being right is irrelevant. Given this respect for credentialed expertise, however, I was a bit surprised to see Farley endorse a piece by Bret Devereaux making the claim that “the United States Navy is a load-bearing component of the global economy”. You might think that the relevant expertise here included at least some knowledge of both transport economics and the global economy. Devereaux, who is an “ancient and military historian”, has neither. Still, I’m…