Re: [Futurework] Early Free Trade
> So the Mexicans grow corn again and make huge profits. ...IF the farms, equipment, seeds and know-how are not gone already... > Wake up! Yes, please do. Chris SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". ___ Futurework mailing list Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Early Free Trade
So the Mexicans grow corn again and make huge profits.
That is those who haven't had their land stolen by other
Mexicans.
Wake up!
**
Harry Pollard
Henry George School of Los Angeles
Box 655
Tujunga CA 91042
(818) 352-4141
**
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Christoph Reuss
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 3:10 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Early Free Trade
Harry Pollard wrote:
> Presumably, if their own corn was better or cheaper, they
> wouldn't eat American corn and none would be shipped to Mexico.
How do you starve Mexico -- or force them to come over as cheap
slaves?
First, you ruin their agriculture by flooding Mexico with cheap
(highly
subsidized) U$ corn. Then, when they have become dependent on
it, you
raise the corn price thru the roof. ("Biodiesel" as a nice
pretext...
it sounds so philantropic...)
Isn't Free Trade wonderful?
Chris
~
~~~
SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains
the keyword
"igve".
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Re: [Futurework] Early Free Trade
Harry Pollard wrote:
> Presumably, if their own corn was better or cheaper, they
> wouldn't eat American corn and none would be shipped to Mexico.
How do you starve Mexico -- or force them to come over as cheap slaves?
First, you ruin their agriculture by flooding Mexico with cheap (highly
subsidized) U$ corn. Then, when they have become dependent on it, you
raise the corn price thru the roof. ("Biodiesel" as a nice pretext...
it sounds so philantropic...)
Isn't Free Trade wonderful?
Chris
SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword
"igve".
___
Futurework mailing list
Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca
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Re: [Futurework] Early Free Trade
Ed, I suppose the Mexicans are better off because their food is cheaper - if they now enjoy subsidized corn. Presumably, if their own corn was better or cheaper, they wouldn't eat American corn and none would be shipped to Mexico. As a Georgist and free trader I don't particularly care for national boundaries. I like the free movement of people and goods between nations. I remember feeling most unhappy when the idiots stopped the free movement of people throughout the Commonwealth - a step backwards, I thought. You might check on what is happening in southern Mexico with regard to land theft. Although a family might have farmed a plot for generations, failure to produce a title deed would allow their land to be confiscated. I suppose they would then head north where a million or so work in the factories. Your remark about a "sub-species" is pure Canadian. I was a resident alien when I entered the US from Canada. Didn't make me a subspecies - it was just the official terminology. If I were a Mexican, I would certainly head for the US border as would billions around the world if they had a chance. Here they will get free health services and free education, welfare help - both governmental and private - and work - above all, work. Not the best, perhaps, but certainly better than staying where they are. I think the risk-taking 'illegal immigrants' are among the best Mexico has to offer. They are an asset to the US. Many of them work very hard and send money home to their families. They can't go home, because then they will be stick on the wrong side of the fence. But many Americans look only at "12 million" illegals and get concerned that we are being 'over-run'. Illegals are in direct competition with black Americans. Hispanics apparently are more inclined to work hard than blacks. 'Enterprise' factories that are built on the edge of black areas to provide jobs appear, before long, to be filled with Hispanics. If de Tocqueville was right in his piece about welfare in England, welfare changes the poor into paupers. At that time - early 19th century - some 20% of the British Budget went to the Poor Law, which serviced every 6th Englishman. There were plenty of poor, said the Frenchman, but the 'entitlement' turned them into paupers. Unfortunately, as soon as a good black worker begins to make progress, he moves out of the 'black' areas. If I were he, I would do the same thing. When I used to visit black schools, the number of white teachers was interesting. They get extra pay to teach at black schools. Many blacks apparently head for the white suburbs as soon as they can, What I have noticed - and you also have probably seen - is that people are the same all over the world. If one can look past the peculiarities of customs, religion, and culture, you will find Mr. and Mrs. Smith making the best of their circumstances. However, you had better be careful. Some of the idiots over here want the Canadian border patrolled! Harry ** Harry Pollard Henry George School of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 (818) 352-4141 ** -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Monday, January 14, 2008 4:14 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Christoph Reuss Subject: Re: [Futurework] Early Free Trade I'm afraid I've come to the conclusion that, in human behaviour, there is not much to be distinguished between the past and the future. People look out for themselves even if they dress it up in fancy language like "free trade" and "spreading freedom and democracy". And in looking out for themselves, they put much of the world at risk, often at terrible risk. Many news articles have dealt with the burden imposed on Africa by European agricultural subsidies and on Mexico by American corn farming subsidies. Mexico, the mother of corn since ancient times, now imports huge quantities of subsidized corn from the US. Under NAFTA, it can't stop the flow. One of the few recources Mexican farmers have, other than starvation, is to try to get across the Rio Grande to make some money to keep their families alive. Of course, many Americans are outraged that they should try to do so. They call them "illegal aliens". If they are both illegal and alien, a kind of sub-species, you really don't have to treat them humanely do you? And you don't really have to look at the deeper problem of why they crossed the border in the first place. Ed ----- Original Message - From: "Christoph Reuss" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2008 5:39 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Early Free Trade > Maybe I should have added right away that the posting was about the future > rather than about the past.
Re: [Futurework] Early Free Trade
Ed Weick wrote: > I'd suggest we're all a little predatory and psychopathic, though some more > than others. The big predators are a LOT MORE than others. You keep muddling the issue with slogans like "we're all ...". > The process of "reigning them in" has been tried many times. > The French Revolution, for example, based in part of Thomas Paine's "Rights > of Man" led to a lot of headchopping and the Napoleonic Wars. The Russian > Revolution, based on Marxist concepts of non-exploitation and equality, led > to the repressive brutality of Stalinist USSR. Reigning in the Jews in Nazi > Germany led to the Holocaust. What Mao tried to do in China has led to an > aggressive and repressive state capitalism (which still audaciously calls > itself "communism"!). In the US, everyone can vote if they want to so we > supposedly have democracy, but we also have the military-industrial complex > and other interests lurking the in shadows and calling the shots. You have listed examples of big predators messing up society (with Orwellian pretexts of going after predators)! But you pretend that these were examples of "reigning in big predators". Hint: Big predators won't be reigned in by killing the wrong people. Nor is it necessary to kill anyone. All it takes is a correct analysis and for the victims to act on it, in solidarity against the predators. With the internet, the conditions for this are better than ever. Another reason why your historical "examples" are not helpful. Chris SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". ___ Futurework mailing list Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Early Free Trade
I'd suggest we're all a little predatory and psychopathic, though some more than others. The process of "reigning them in" has been tried many times. The French Revolution, for example, based in part of Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man" led to a lot of headchopping and the Napoleonic Wars. The Russian Revolution, based on Marxist concepts of non-exploitation and equality, led to the repressive brutality of Stalinist USSR. Reigning in the Jews in Nazi Germany led to the Holocaust. What Mao tried to do in China has led to an aggressive and repressive state capitalism (which still audaciously calls itself "communism"!). In the US, everyone can vote if they want to so we supposedly have democracy, but we also have the military-industrial complex and other interests lurking the in shadows and calling the shots. A few decades ago, I spent a couple of years in the Calgary oil patch, and was appalled by some of the outrageously alpha-male behaviour I witnessed. A friend of mine told me not to worry about it. That's how guys behave in the oil patch. Just a bunch of sharks floating around! Ed - Original Message - From: "Christoph Reuss" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 7:49 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Early Free Trade > Ed Weick wrote: >> I don't know if we have ever learned from history. Institutions and >> social >> arrangements change, but the need to dominate them and make them work to >> our >> advantage seems to be a constant in human affairs. > > Again, it all depends on who is "we". > Psychopaths (predators) have no ability and no interest to learn. > It's up to the others (their collective victims) to learn and finally > rein them in! > > Chris > > > > > SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the > keyword > "igve". > > > ___ > Futurework mailing list > Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca > http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > ___ Futurework mailing list Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Early Free Trade
Ed Weick wrote: > I don't know if we have ever learned from history. Institutions and social > arrangements change, but the need to dominate them and make them work to our > advantage seems to be a constant in human affairs. Again, it all depends on who is "we". Psychopaths (predators) have no ability and no interest to learn. It's up to the others (their collective victims) to learn and finally rein them in! Chris SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". ___ Futurework mailing list Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Early Free Trade
Christoph Reuss wrote: > If there's one point in studying history, it is to learn from it, in order > to avoid the old mistakes in the future. This is what human progress is > (supposed to be) about. But there are some forces who want to inhibit > this process because they benefit from repeating the same mistakes > (which for them are "not a bug, but a feature"). I don't know if we have ever learned from history. Institutions and social arrangements change, but the need to dominate them and make them work to our advantage seems to be a constant in human affairs. Ed - Original Message - From: "Christoph Reuss" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, January 14, 2008 8:52 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Early Free Trade > Ed Weick wrote: >> I'm afraid I've come to the conclusion that, in human behaviour, there is >> not much to be distinguished between the past and the future. > > If there's one point in studying history, it is to learn from it, in order > to avoid the old mistakes in the future. This is what human progress is > (supposed to be) about. But there are some forces who want to inhibit > this process because they benefit from repeating the same mistakes > (which for them are "not a bug, but a feature"). > >> People look >> out for themselves even if they dress it up in fancy language like "free >> trade" and "spreading freedom and democracy". And in looking out for >> themselves, they put much of the world at risk, often at terrible risk. > > A common mistake is to mix up predators and their victims in the general > term "people" or "we". > >> Many news articles have dealt with the burden imposed on Africa by >> European >> agricultural subsidies and on Mexico by American corn farming subsidies. >> Mexico, the mother of corn since ancient times, now imports huge >> quantities >> of subsidized corn from the US. Under NAFTA, it can't stop the flow. >> One >> of the few recources Mexican farmers have, other than starvation, is to >> try >> to get across the Rio Grande to make some money to keep their families >> alive. > > Because "Under NAFTA, it can't stop the flow", international trade has to > be limited to the non-redundant items (i.e. no trade of corn between two > abundantly corn-producing countries). Exchanging cheap labor is not a > solution to that problem -- it just serves the neocons, thereby rewarding > them for the first mistake! > > Chris > > > > > SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the > keyword > "igve". > > > ___ > Futurework mailing list > Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca > http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > ___ Futurework mailing list Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Early Free Trade
Ed Weick wrote: > I'm afraid I've come to the conclusion that, in human behaviour, there is > not much to be distinguished between the past and the future. If there's one point in studying history, it is to learn from it, in order to avoid the old mistakes in the future. This is what human progress is (supposed to be) about. But there are some forces who want to inhibit this process because they benefit from repeating the same mistakes (which for them are "not a bug, but a feature"). > People look > out for themselves even if they dress it up in fancy language like "free > trade" and "spreading freedom and democracy". And in looking out for > themselves, they put much of the world at risk, often at terrible risk. A common mistake is to mix up predators and their victims in the general term "people" or "we". > Many news articles have dealt with the burden imposed on Africa by European > agricultural subsidies and on Mexico by American corn farming subsidies. > Mexico, the mother of corn since ancient times, now imports huge quantities > of subsidized corn from the US. Under NAFTA, it can't stop the flow. One > of the few recources Mexican farmers have, other than starvation, is to try > to get across the Rio Grande to make some money to keep their families > alive. Because "Under NAFTA, it can't stop the flow", international trade has to be limited to the non-redundant items (i.e. no trade of corn between two abundantly corn-producing countries). Exchanging cheap labor is not a solution to that problem -- it just serves the neocons, thereby rewarding them for the first mistake! Chris SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". ___ Futurework mailing list Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Early Free Trade
I'm afraid I've come to the conclusion that, in human behaviour, there is not much to be distinguished between the past and the future. People look out for themselves even if they dress it up in fancy language like "free trade" and "spreading freedom and democracy". And in looking out for themselves, they put much of the world at risk, often at terrible risk. Many news articles have dealt with the burden imposed on Africa by European agricultural subsidies and on Mexico by American corn farming subsidies. Mexico, the mother of corn since ancient times, now imports huge quantities of subsidized corn from the US. Under NAFTA, it can't stop the flow. One of the few recources Mexican farmers have, other than starvation, is to try to get across the Rio Grande to make some money to keep their families alive. Of course, many Americans are outraged that they should try to do so. They call them "illegal aliens". If they are both illegal and alien, a kind of sub-species, you really don't have to treat them humanely do you? And you don't really have to look at the deeper problem of why they crossed the border in the first place. Ed - Original Message - From: "Christoph Reuss" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2008 5:39 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Early Free Trade > Maybe I should have added right away that the posting was about the future > rather than about the past. Namely, the WTO schemes of 3rd-world trade > to starve the poor. > > Chris > > > > > SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the > keyword > "igve". > > > ___ > Futurework mailing list > Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca > http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > ___ Futurework mailing list Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Early Free Trade
Maybe I should have added right away that the posting was about the future rather than about the past. Namely, the WTO schemes of 3rd-world trade to starve the poor. Chris SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". ___ Futurework mailing list Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Early Free Trade
Whatever they did, Europe's masters of their colonial empires knew they were doing the right thing and that God was with them. The following is from Patricia de Fuentes, ed. and trans., "The Conquistadors. FirstPerson Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico". ". Cortés . After occupying Tenochtitlán . he and his troops had to fight their way out of the city to sanctuary .. Years later . a former follower of Cortés who had become a Dominican friar, recalled the terrible retreat .. "When the Christians were exhausted from war, God saw fit to send the Indians smallpox, and there was a great pestilence in the city. . . ." The history of colonialism is very cruel stuff. A few years ago I accessed data that showed that the population of Guatamala fell from some 2 million in 1520 to about 200,000 by 1620. Black Africans were brought to the Americas as slaves because the Amerindians that had been enslaved died off in large numbers because of "virgin soil diseases" which Africans were not susceptable to. It would seem that the British were no better in their own backyard than they were in India. The following is from notes I made on a trip to Ireland a few years ago: August 9th, 2000, Tralee We spent the night of the seventh at Clonacilty in a not bad, not too good hotel infested by millions of children of all ages, along with their grumpy, rather overwhelmed parents. The day before we had gone to Skibbereen in the southwest corner of Ireland. We had parked the car and walked a very long way to the old Abbeystrewery graveyard where, under a well tended lawn, some 9,000 victims of the great famine are buried. The burial place must have been a huge pit perhaps seventy feet long by some fifty feet wide, and God knows how deep. Probably, the last burials were pretty close to the surface. Skibbereen, according to the local tourist literature, was the epicenter of the great famine. From what I've read, there was a workhouse not far from the graveyard. It would have been where many of the victims gathered in the hope of getting some relief or something to eat. It seemed that famine relief was tied to work. You don't work, you get no relief. To get relief without working was, in the British view, against "the natural order of things". The British believed that payment of any kind had to be linked to work. God Himself had ordained it. If you were lucky, the workhouse provided you with "public work" - probably fixing up roads, or clearing away unwanted vegetation or digging ditches. All of these things may have been useful, though probably unnecessary, and were likely very hard work to people suffering the effects of famine. The men, women and children who were doing them were paid a subsistence wage, and were probably continually being reminded that they were a burden on society. However, paying them was not the problem of the British government. The burden was placed on the local (British) landlords, with each landlord being expected to contribute in some proportion to the number of tenants he had. To reduce their own burden, the landlords evicted many of their tenants, who were then no longer entitled to help from the workhouse. To reduce their burden even further, many of the landlords simply refused to pay their share. It wasn't their problem that the Irish had far too many babies, and had become hooked on potatoes. And it certainly wasn't their fault that the potato crop had failed. Besides, the whole thing could be viewed as the "natural order" restoring itself. Ed - Original Message - From: "Christoph Reuss" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2008 3:28 PM Subject: [Futurework] Early Free Trade > http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1674478,00.html > > > THE VICTORIAN HOLOCAUST > > GEORGE MONBIOT, GUARDIAN - In his book, Late Victorian Holocausts, > published in 2001, Mike Davis tells the story of famines that killed > between 12 and 29 million Indians. These people were, he demonstrates, > murdered by British state policy. When an El Nino drought destituted the > farmers of the Deccan plateau in 1876 there was a net surplus of rice > and wheat in India. But the viceroy, Lord Lytton, insisted that nothing > should prevent its export to England. In 1877 and 1878, at the height of > the famine, grain merchants exported a record 6.4m hundredweight of > wheat. As the peasants began to starve, officials were ordered "to > discourage relief works in every possible way". The Anti-Charitable > Contributions Act of 1877 prohibited "at the pain of imprisonment > private relief donations that potentially interfered with the market > fixing of grain prices". The only relief permitted in most districts was > hard labor, from which anyone in an advanced state of starvation was > turned away. In the labor camps, the workers were given less food than > inmates of Buchenwald. In 1877, monthly mortality
