Hi Keith Your attempt to justify the modern WTO and neoliberal globalization with kindergarten tales about stone-age cavemen's "trade" is outright laughable, and the "updates" on medieval trade hardly make it better. You omit the modern issues that the "free trade" debate is really about. For example:
(1) Unlike in your stone-age example, modern trade is not just in goods which lack in one region and are exchanged with goods that lack in another region. Today's trade, to a large degree, is in products which could be produced ANYwhere, but are shipped around the planet just because it's a bit cheaper to produce them in certain places (low wages, low environmental regulations). Typical examples are potatoes, drinks, clothes and cars. The EU Commission has threatened to sue the German ministry of environment if they don't remove their environmental advice (to buy *local* drinks/ tablewaters to reduce CO2 emissions from unnecessary transports) from their website -- argueing that this advice is a trade barrier/distortion! Here in the Alps, it's so annoying to see lines of vast EU trucks (one every 8 seconds!) pollute our air, damage our roads and cause accident deaths, when most of them are carrying loads like potatoes, drinks, cars or furniture whose transports are really unnecessary, and are just done to save some production costs. A propos saving: The recent fire inferno in the Gotthard tunnel (the main transit road between Germany and Italy through central Switzerland) was caused by a drunk unlicensed Turkish trucker who crashed an uninsured Belgian truck head-on into an oncoming Italian truck loaded with tires(!). The costs of that accident -- 11 deaths and hundreds of millions in material and detour damages -- will have to be paid by the public, whereas the saved few bucks for the cheap trucker and uninsured truck have been pocketed by some shareholders. (2) Deregulation/privatization of public services leads to their decay, as Keith should know better than I in the case of Railtrack. With ugly consequences for public comfort and also for jobs. (3) Consumer&enviro protection regulations are being reduced/abolished since they are considered "trade barriers". For example, Switzerland has to lift its ban on 56 allergenic/toxic food additives for this reason. Another example is that we can't ban the import of high-radiation cellphone models, because that ban would be a trade barrier. You'll have a hard time to explain how the removal of consumer protection rules should be for the good of consumers. And no Harry, it's not even to remove "privileges of fatcats" -- on the contrary, the goal is to *increase* profits for shareholders, at the cost of public health. You see Keith, your stone-age cavemen didn't have to worry about 40-ton trucks, unpunctual railways, low-wage and insecure jobs, allergenic food additives, nor about the corporate lawsuits that Arthur mentioned. We do. Chris
