On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 9:41 PM, Amit Varma wrote: > > Right. And calling belief in freedom an abyss is not silly? > > If there is one single cause for human progress, it is our propensity to > trade with each other for personal profit. (Indeed, that's exactly what we > do at Silk-list as well, trading our time and insights, such as they are, > for the far greater insight we get from others.) Yet somehow clamping down > on this propensity is considered 'progressive' and people who support the > freedom to trade, along with all others, are disparaged. I don't get it. >
I did my fair bit of reading on various colonial histories. back then it used to be called free trade too and was done with a gun and a bible. there were people back then too spouting mantras about free trade and how the opponents were impeding progress. political correctness has changed since then, its more sugar coated now (the gun and the bible still hold good in many instances... ). my point is, what you call free trade isnt free for everyone. its way cheaper to buy timber from the sudan than from japan on the free trade market because sudanese timber comes from a conflict zone. it might be progressive to buy sudanese timber, but its making them poorer.
