I thought that was a excellent and clear response, Eva. The consideration
of markets as the only legitimate or 'normal' form of economic regulation
ignores factors that cannot be so easily generalized across all commodities
in a capitalist system. For instance, it ignores the welfare question
Harry Pollard wrote,
It would be too much, perhaps to ask you to read Henry George's "Progress
and Poverty" where he asked 120 years ago 'why, in spite of enormous
progress in production, is it so hard to make a living?" Then he proceeded
with magnificent reasoning to come to conclusions - and
Free trade is simply unrestricted exchange of goods between people. In
other words it is the continuance of cooperation between people that has
existed since the beginning and which has taken us from tribal insularity
to a broad vision of the whole world.
At some time this cooperation
David wrote:
KEITH: Well said. The "modern" debate about free trade, globalisation and
so forth
is merely today's equivalent of the debate about usury that went on for a
thousand years in the Middle Ages (and before that in Greek and Chinese
times). Every time free trade resumes and prosperity
At 05:41 PM 2/4/98 -0500, Ed Weick wrote:
I'm not quite sure of what to make of this, but it strikes me as being a
supreme example of assigning a single cause to a multi-faceted problem.
Many populations have benefitted from increased trade. Others have not -
for example, Sub-Saharan Africa.
David Burnam:
The problem with free trade is not prosperity, although some few are
becoming enormously prosperous, but in fact impoverishment of the majority,
and of the planet itself. The GNP is a poor measure of prosperity, for while
billionaires are being created in unprecedented numbers, the
