As with Orwell, Dickens and the Bible, people find in Michael Porter's work what they want to find. Rummage long enough in the 855 pages of his book, The Competitive Advantage of Nations, a four-year survey of successful industries in 10 countries, and you will find arguments to support any one of a number of economic standpoints.

The Toronto Star's David Crane calls it ''possibly the most important book on economic policy that will be published in the 1990s.'' This is odd, since one of Porter's main themes is the superiority of competition and open markets as a spur to innovation over carefully targeted subsidies, ''strategic alliances,'' protection, and almost everything else in Crane's canon. Yet Crane still deduces that ''what all this . . . [adds!  up to is an industrial strategy.''

Nor has the enthusiasm of this arch-foe of free trade deterred the Business Council on National Issues and the federal government from lately splashing $1 million on Porter and his team of consultants to produce a similar study of Canada. But the council can hardly welcome another of his key findings, that extensive and intrusive regulation can also prod business to higher performance.

Can it be that none of these people has actually read the book? Certainly the going is heavy: ''twice as long as Das Kapital and only half as funny,'' to quote the character in the Tom Stoppard play. But mixed in with profundities like ''no one managerial system is universally appropriate,'' and ''outstanding talent is a scarce resource in any nation'' is one real insight: that national economies still count for a great deal in an age of global markets, as the breeding ground for internationally competitive firms.

Not only do demanding local consumers, numerous local rivals, clusters of related and supporting industries, and constantly upgrading factors of production - the four points in Porter's famous ''diamond'' - provide the home base in which firms learn to compete abroad, but the nation-state remains the largest political unit within which free competition can be guaranteed (though not always - see Canadian Economic Community).

The weakest point of Porter's argument, however, is the recurring suggestion that for economic growth, disadvantages, natural or imposed, are really advantages. ''Much of Japan's success,'' he writes, ''can be traced to the country's economic disadvantages.'' Lacking abundant natural resources, Japanese firms were forced to develop skills and techologies needed to compete in advanced manufacturing.

Countries like Canada that are swimming in oil are apparently in big trouble. ''When there is an ample supply of cheap raw materials or abundant labor, companies can simply rest on these advantages . . . This makes it difficult to move beyond the advantage based on resources or to replace it.'' Well, yes. And countries that are warm fail to develop efficient heating systems. But that doesn't mean they'd prefer to be cold.

What's missing in all this is that we're richer than Japan, and the main reason we're richer is all those accursed resources. Japan is strong in manufacturing, not because adversity breeds pluck, but precisely because it is weak in resources: Nations that import resources will have a lower exchange rate than otherwise, which makes their manufactures more competitive.

Similarly, while it is interesting to learn that Sweden's auto safety standards gave Volvo the edge among baby-on-board yuppie consumers, or that Denmark's strict environmental laws led to international success in water-purification equipment and windmills, there is exactly zero policy lesson to be drawn from this. Yes, in these examples, regulations anticipated shifts in consumer demand. But they might just as easily have not.

Industrial strategy by regulation is no better than industrial strategy by subsidy: it still rests on the presumed ability of governments to pick winners. Porter thinks stringent environmental regulations would help the U.S. in pollution control and toxic waste cleanup, which, as he told one interviewer, ''are going to be huge industries in the future.'' Are they? Recent evidence, such as the defeat of California's ''Big Green'' initiative at the polls, suggests the public's environmental ardor is cooling.

There is still a good case for tough environmental laws - on environmental grounds. Regulations should be judged as regulations, not as export promotion gimmicks. And whatever benefits they bring, they also have costs. It may be true that blind people develop a more acute sense of hearing, but it does not follow that a good way to improve your hearing is to poke your eyes out.