Yes, Virginia, There Is a Legitimate Case Against Free Trade

Thank God for people like June Akinyi Arunga, featured in four documentaries exploring trade, migration, property and wealth in Africa, as well as participating in numerous television and radio programs on a variety of related public policy issues. She serves on the advisory committee of University of the People[3] is an advisory board member of Moving Picture Institute, Global Envision, and is a fellow at the International Policy Network (London, UK) and Istituto Bruno Leoni (Milan, Italy). The common thread running through these efforts is her linking of the need for a robust protection of property rights in Africa to ensure justice and African empowerment.

Death to socialists.

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Free Trade is great for developing countries because it gives them access to enormous pools of capital and markets that can buy the goods made with that capital. Free Trade is not so great in balancing labor market inequalities because labor, unlike capital, is tied to the cultural geography.

Hence, with free trade should come an increased tax burden on the main beneficiaries (e.g. the wealthy) and this should be distributed to the losing parties (e.g. the working class) to offset their losses. The gains from free trade for the wealthy are bigger than the losses for the working class, but the difference is being hoarded which defies the spirit of free trade on the international level.

Social stability is a crucial ingredient to a successful economy, and our working implementation of Free Trade is doing a poor job at maintaining that stability.

 

Excellent post. Further, the point needs to be made very clear that you cannot have a capitalist economy without a strong, active, and effective government. You need it not only for regulation to ensure fair and ethical trade, but you also need the government to manage the social safety nets and the education required to manage the shifting markets. Don’t be fooled by people like rtsy and basso. They are NOT real capitalists. They are con men and thieves, nothing more.

I’ll get to the 10 points in glynch’s post in a bit.

 

Trade is ever changing. Countries rich in natural resources should use their resources, and should be allowed to use their resources, to provide jobs for their people and to generate wealth. The governments should make sure to take in a lot of money in royalties, and they should reinvest that money in infrastructure and education, and thereby position themselves to transition out of a strictly resource based economy.

On the flip side, yes, a country should not over consume in the long term, but now is the time for the US government to be borrowing and investing. Money is cheap. Labour is cheap. Materials are cheap. Based on no more than basic capitalist principles, now is the time for the government to be borrowing and investing in infrastructure and education/re-education to move the country forward.

And this is where the government needs to be active in providing the social safety nets and managing the shifting markets. Also note that in recent decades the power of capital has diminished greatly while the power of education and ideas has increased, and this is where wise, capitalist, governments should be investing, education and ideas.

Real costs like environmental damage need to be identified, quantified, and the guilty parties need to be held responsible. Retraining is a reality that we all need to accept. The world is a constantly changing place. That’s not going to change. What we can do is find good ways to manage that change.

It would have been nice to have an example of what specifically he’s talking about, but in general I’ll repeat what I said above. The world is a constantly changing place. That’s not going to change. What we can do, however, is to find good ways to manage that change.

And that cost needs to be factored in, but don’t forget that there is also a cost to not making the shift.

There are exceptions to every rule, I guess, but I’d need an example of this to respond to.

I’m not following his argument here.

We’d need to break down his last sentence and look at examples, but w.r.t. the first part, this is again where the government needs to manage the country like a corporation. It needs to take substantial royalties from the use of its natural resources, for example, and use those to invest in the country for long term success.

Again, too vague a suggestion to respond to.

Again, too vague a suggestion to respond to.

 

I hate to tell you that posting an article from The Huffington Post is like a conservative posting an article from the Drudge Report. There are a lot of people who consider The Huffington Post liberal propaganda.

 

A good modern day example of something with positive externalities is the medical industry. The money that is used to pay for the medicine does not in any way reflect the addition to value you earn by being healthier, working more productively. That's what he means by a positive externality. The problem the article is pointing out is that because these additional benefits are ignored by the parties involved in the exchange of the good, then they are underconsumed, and therefore free trade is not at its most efficient in allocating goods with positive externalities.

And I'm not sure what you are doing Grizzlied, are you trying to refute his points? Because it seems you are quoting sections of the passage and then posting unrelated things on how to improve the economy (which I agree with btw).

 

His overall argument is that free trade is a bad thing. I’m not necessarily trying to refute each of his 10 points, but rather I’m trying to show that they don’t show that free trade is a bad thing, provided that it’s managed properly. Further, I guess I’m trying to say that free trade managed properly is good capitalism, as well as good progressivism.

With respect to your example, I would say that much of the positive externalities of good health care are realized by the country as a whole. Healthy people are more productive, and they pay more taxes, and they volunteer in the community more, and they probably commit less crime, etc. This is a big reason why there should be universal health care paid for by the government, because the country as a whole, as well as the individual, benefits greatly from it.

At the risk of running off on a tangent, the benefit to society is more than just dollars and sense, of course. We don’t put our old folks down when they stop making money and become a draw on the heath care system, for example. They are valuable to us in many other ways, and just the act of taking care of them is valuable to us. Jean Vanier, who started L’Arche, has said this about disabled people as well. He believes that the gift disabled people give to us is their disability. Essentially he’s saying that what we learn about ourselves through the process of taking care of people with disabilities is more valuable than the resources we spend taking care of them.

 

You could be right about rtsy, but basso is very calculated about what he posts on this forum. I think every post he makes, and pretty well every word, is calculated political spin. I think he’s the guy who’s working people like rtsy, as well as trying to get the progressives worked up and derailed. My guess is that he's paid to work this and other message boards.

 

I disagree with basso on some stuff, but at above. The fact that his posts make more sense than rtsy's stuff means he's paid?

 

The fact that he doesn't debate any of the topics he starts, starts so many topics, ignores information contrary to his point of view, all lead to the conclusion that he is paid.

Most people start topics in hopes that people will discuss them. basso doesn't discuss any of the many topics he starts. He just throws them out there as if he were getting paid to do so.

 

Exactly. You beat me to it. I had this typed up before I saw your post but I’ll post it anyway.

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In response to Kojirou:
The fact that he has no position of his own should make you suspect that. Everything he posts is designed to either support the Republican position of the day - and his position flip-flops in lockstep with the Republicans - or to try to discredit the Democrats. Once in a blue moon he throws in a post that is designed to make you think he’s a real human being and not just a spin doctor, but that happens so rarely I can’t even remember the last one. He’s smart enough to have a mind of his own, and yet he doesn’t have a position of his own. That’s your first clue.

Your second clue might be that his arguments are frequently internally inconsistent. He’s often making it up on the fly and he knows what he wants to make you to believe, but he hasn’t thought through the spin he’s come up with enough to make it internally consistent.

Your third clue might be that when he’s exposed for his lies or faulty logic he never admits it, or even admits he was wrong. He just disappears, only to reappear a few days later with some new spin he’s made up, or been fed by his handlers.

 

I’m not suggesting that he’s only working CF. I suspect he’s working a long list of sites, and probably cutting and pasting much of the same crap onto each site, but I definitely think he’s working this site. He isn’t doing anything else here. He’s not listening to anyone else. He’s not participating in any kind of real discussion. He’s not even giving his own opinion. He’s just relentlessly spewing the Republican party line, and using all their current tricks to try to discredit Obama. He acts like someone who is campaigning in an election, and who has been getting regular briefs on what the party position is on various topics, and on strategy for “getting the message out” and getting buy-in. What he’s doing here is pure politics. There is nothing personal about his involvement here, save the very rare post where he tries to post something that looks personal.

 

Geezzzz Basso has derailed a thread he hasn't even posted in.

 

On topic.

I can agree with most of the original article and still say that Free Trade is a better idea than protectionism.