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I think it's still perfectly fine. Absent some significant external reasoning, the continued existence of trade is at least a prima facie reason to think that there is probably value there. For precisely one of the reasons you give; if businesses keep paying lots of people who aren't providing them value, they go out of business.1 As such, they're probably going to try to fire you if you're consistently negative value. As you say, it is obviously not proof that 100% of all employment relationships are positive sum, but if the vast majority of them aren't, then almost everything is thrown out the window (...all of the businesses go bankrupt, etc.). One can acknowledge that some percentage probably aren't perfect, but then we have to get into details of whether/how we can identify them from the outside, whether/how we have any tools to change that, or if it's best to just acknowledge that the employers are in a better position to judge the value of their employment relations. They have the best incentive to make sure that the lion's share of their employment decisions are positive value, and we should observe that they are, indeed, positive value. Normal curves are normal, but the mean is positive, and probably significantly so.
None of this refined conversation means that we can just look at the total wages paid by employers in the country and say that this amount is "lost".
Again, one must impose some sort of external reasoning to overcome the prima facie case. You point out one of the very very few examples where this external reasoning is the strongest - gambling - for we can simply compute the mathematics and have almost no need to get into the much thornier problems that such external reasoning normally requires.
No refined conversation here would allow us to look at the entire amount that consumers spend at Walmart and conclude that the entire sum is "lost".
Fully granted. Now, overcome the prima facie case that most are good (especially given some conditions on freeness and such) by calling upon some sort of specific external reasoning for the instant case. Not just that there is some tail on the normal distribution, where someone bought some useless gadget from Temu or whatever. Justify that the entire trade (in goods) deficit is "lost".
1 - Note that the fact that businesses go out of business is "probably not the example you want to use for that argument". The vast majority of the time, businesses go out of business for a whole host of other reasons that are significantly more poignant than just making some bad deal with some employee(s).
The prima facie concept itself is what is in doubt / contested. The construct that shapes the [valuation] of trades is what is being challenged.
The question isn't whether there is value in the trade. The question is whether the value-distribution resulting from the structure is desirably structured. Or in other framings, it is a direct questioning of whether the [value] the system delivers is actually valuable compared to other considerations of [value]. The judgements of preferences decades/generations ago are not inherently persuasive.
To bring an extreme historical metaphor- there were a lot of 'good' trades between Britain and India during the British empire. 'Most trades are good' could honestly be made on most trades that were made. However, the macroeconomic structure of the system meant that the [value] that was generated was not mutually beneficial. India economically devolved as these 'good trades' continued. The British Isles certainly benefited from being the seat of empire, but the benefits to the Indians were incidental, not deliberate. This [value] got worse, not better, the more trade occurred, despite the [value] being greater and greater to the British.
So when you say-
The answer is... sure. Similarly, no amount of trade volume can be looked at and say 'this represents [value] gained.'
The only way to make a moral judgement on the nature of the trade is to make a moral judgement on the structure of the trade. Big numbers good if you think the big number implies a good thing. But by a different premise, bad trade structures get worse, not better, with scale.
Now, on a less-extreme historical metaphor, but one more relevant to the United States- the value of the neoliberal model in play starting in the 90s and since.
A lot of neoliberal economists have argued over the decades that this was a Good Deal. Free market liberalization and international trade allowed cheaper imports and increases to the value-added economy. That the [value] to the United States outweighed the [costs]. GDP per capita would go up. And lo and behold, it did.
The issue is that [the United States] is not an individual actor. It is a collective of hundreds of millions of individuals. And the [value] most appreciated gained went to people and actors who did not suffer the [costs]. The system did not produce results in which everyone felt they were gaining [value]. The Rust Belt, once a significant contributor of [value] to the nation, did not become an even larger contributor of [value], except in so much that sacrificing their interests benefited others. The [value] that went into American shipyards was better able to grow in other ways.
Which is fine in and of itself. Winners and losers and all that.
Except that the neoliberals were also wrong on various [cost] estimates. Not only were they wrong about the nature of the [cost] that would be born by people other than themselves. They were also wrong about what future collective values would [value]. The neoliberals did not place much [value] on sovereign supply chains. They placed high [value] on [cheaper supply chains], with things like the just-in-time model reducing [costs] like warehousing and stockpiles and such.
They did not recognize things like, say, global pandemics or cyber-sabotage that could paralyze distribution systems and leave to supply bottlenecks at ports. They did not think profit-minded countries would make deliberate plays at developing global monopolistic power on supply chain inputs, even selling at a loss, and then using economically-irrational cutoffs as a geopolitical weapon. They did not factor in policies intended to result in regulatory capture of global markets beyond sovereign borders. They did not recognize that a military, or paramilitary, could be crippled by attacking the supply chain and replacing cellphones and radios with bombs enmass. They did not think that countries might want an industrial base capable of massive wartime production capacity on short notice.
Or if they did recognize it, they didn't value it very much. But modern governments do. And governments- not just Trump but globally- have begun to hire people who have somewhat different [value] judgements.
So when you say things like-
I'm inclined to agree. I'm also inclined to consider [advocates of neoliberal models] to be equivalent to the [employees] in this metaphor, and that the new waves of [employers] place increasing relevance on characteristics other than process economic efficiency when determining [value]. We'd probably both agree that [employees] who are not delivering the desired [value] to their [employers] quote-unquote 'should' be fired to improve [value].
I'm also fairly sure you'd disagree with their judgements on value. But that in and of itself is the point- the judgement of how to [value] things is a first principle judgement. The [employee's] appeal to a prima facie is not actually relevant if it is not actually the prima facie standard.
Most of this is "refined discussion", which I am generally not opposed to.
But this is really where we are. And I think we can mostly jump to:
I would simply request a description of a single paradigm in which one can simply sum up the entire amount that consumers spend at Walmart and conclude that the entire sum is "lost". A single paradigm in which one can simply sum up the entire amount of wages paid by employers in the country and say that this amount is "lost". I don't know whether I would recognize or acknowledge it as worthy of respect until I hear at least one. I don't think you've presented one. I think you're in the land of refined discussions of details and percentages and such, where things can be shaded slightly through some other valuations and other external reasoning. Nothing close to, "Yeah, that entire amount is just lost."
(Just so you don't have to guess, I am sympathetic to external reasoning about supply chains for defense/pandemics/etc. That is a far cry from simply saying that just the bulk dollar figure is "lost".)
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