Gentlemen, Some comments on free trade. The phrase shouldn't really be capitalized - it's not a political policy. It simply describes trading - as natural a characteristic of human behavior as anything.
Stopping them from trading is a political policy designed to give the privileged Fat Cats an advantage at everyone's expense. Free Trade is removing those privileges from the Fat Cats and allowing your free citizens to satisfy their desires. Unilateral free trade means you couldn't care less about what other countries do. You simply drop your import restrictions of all kinds on the normal trade goods that will enhance everyone's living standards. Almost invariably corporations of every kind are the Fat Cats who benefit from protection. It's amazing how the corporations in the corrupted politics of today are supposed to be free trade advocates. Certainly they like to buy in a free trade market - but much more important to them is to sell in a protected market. Free trade is good for everyone except those who have happily raised their prices behind the tariff wall. Correspondents have somehow separated free trade from the free market. The free market describes dropping all restrictions to trading - inside and outside the country. (Yes, of course, health and safety concerns are paramount - as they are now under protection.) However, Ed has reservations: ED : "What the "free market" does is violate the above defined, and essential to democracy, previously defined "free economy". It allows the integrity of a free and sovereign state to be abrogated, and potentially allows it to become the vassel of a corporately integrated free economy, comprised exclusively of that corporation, since the "free" refers to the corporation's shareholders and their wellbeing, not the wellbeing of the society within the sovereign state." I thought "free" meant "not under compulsion or restraint". Now you suggest the corporations run their affairs for the benefit of the shareholders. Well, so they should. That's their job. Problem is that a free market won't allow them to do what they want. They are controlled by the free market. If they want to raise prices, they can't unless they are offering better products or services. And even then, competition will force them to provide what people want. So, as you suggest, they go to crooked politicians and buy their way into easy prosperity. So the politicians, rather than the state, become vassals. Yet, you say vassals of "a corporately integrated free economy". Looks somewhat oxymoronic. If the corporation, supported by our so-called representatives, runs the economy for the benefit of the corporation - how can it be free? It's like describing someone as a free slave. Then, Ed, you should be ashamed of yourself. You performed a perfectly good non-sequitur with: ED : "Large numbers of people were moved from Africa to the New World as slaves. Forests were cleared and huge plantations established. Wars were fought over access to trade. The process continues." People were kidnapped, chained, transported, and sold. You think that had any connection with free trade, which is the voluntary exchange of goods and services freely carried out without "compulsion or restraint". But, you make the case with the last part of the paragraph. Wars are fought over protection (restricted access) , not over free trade (free access). War is the child of protection and uncooperative self-sufficiency - the Fortress America mentality. As the old free trade slogan said: "When goods don't cross the frontiers, armies will." I am thoroughly enjoying the thrusts and parries between Ed and Keith and they finally agreed - on the wrong thing: ED : "As to your main point, I too favour free trade. The problem I see is that it has rarely if ever existed. Historically, trade has been anything but free. KEITH : "I think it was almost certainly totally free between about 30,000BC when man was beginning to colonise the world (and needed to trade essential resources with the adjacent traibe) and about 5,000BC when the beginnings of state-like cities and empires were starting as agriculture developed. But from then onwards we had increasing state interference." HARRY: You both must have forgotten 1846 and the repeal of the Corn Laws in Britain. In the first part of the 19th century, people were falling in the street from hunger. This led to the formation of the Anti-Corn Law league to drop tariffs on corn from the US. The good guys won, cheap American corn flooded Britain, and it was possible to eat again. They didn't stop there. All import restrictions were removed in spite of heavy opposition from the Conservative Party - who favored "Tariff Reform". That phrase has surfaced again - but now it's called "Fair Trade". By the turn of the century, only tea and sugar - neither produced in England -bore a revenue tariff. The 60 years from the repeal of the Corn Laws to the "war to end wars" was called the Pax Britannica. During it, British ships sailed everywhere peacefully spreading British ideas, culture, language, and no doubt fish and chips. During this time anybody could sell anything to Britain without restriction. The war brought the McKenna Duties (designed to stop people importing luxuries through the U-Boat packs). Yet, Britain stayed relatively free trade through the twenties supported interestingly enough by the trade unions whose members preferred cheap food to dear food. Then came the depression and the US inflicted the Smoot-Hawley tariffs on its people, even as Britain entered the Ottawa Agreements that established Imperial Preference. Thus did free trade disappear from our economies. Harry ****************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 352-2242 *******************************
