capitalism. free trade. comments, please

[tracey]

cheers moridin.

i shall read your post and the others in detail and get back to you all with a plethora of intriguing questions. (like: but what about the status of jam?)
(just kidding)



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offended mistress of the illuminati

Originally posted by tracey: g'kar's comment that 'someone's gotta pay' would also be useful if explained in nuts and bolts terms within a capitalist environ. thanking you in anticipation

Well lets say one nation called "the united Jam federation", or "Jam" for short, opens its border to its neighbor "the cheese republic", or Cheese for short, to cheaper labor and decreases taxes on mass-manufactured goods imported from Cheese. In exchange, Jam gets export gaurantees, higher quotas, and Tax break incentives for their corporations to move factories into cheese, where expenses are lower anyway. These agreements are negotiated under the idea of promoting "free trade". Jam's people lose jobs, But other industries gain more export sales to cheese. Cheese recieves the demands of developing an industrial infrastructure capable of meeting the demands of their neighbor and their own at home. Some businesses in Cheese will be replaced by Jam corporations. People still have jobs, but homegrown business suffers. And so-on...

Both countries pay a price. It's the hope that the benifits outweigh the costs.
Which can look good on paper, but not necessarliy manifest that way. It is free-trade by ideal.

BTW-I'm neither for or against "globalization" The day I saw a sticker on a freight piece from china that read "World Peace Through Global Trade" I realized that for an idea like that, it wasn't worth it to give up on, even if it has its flaws. That became the real definition of the phrase "free trade" to me.

[Silver Cheetah]

Originally posted by Moridin: Fljotsdale: Interesting choice of 'most informed'

Moridin, why not try removing the lemon before speaking (just every now and then, y'know...)



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Ascended Mistress of Illumination OR Paws R Us

[Silver Cheetah]

Originally posted by tracey: in what way are the two connected and how do they work on a kinda technical level? i think they are the same thing by and large but would value some informed input as i'm a bit lacking in inormation on this topic (without trawling through loads of texts, something i don't have time for just now.) cheers.

Free trade - yes, one of those things which may look nice in theory. Personally, I think the implications are horrendous. (Too long to go into at present, don't have time... and anyway, I said a lot of it in the GATS thread.)

A lot of it is rich countries saying, ooh, very nice, do remove your quotas, Bulgaria, Kazakstan, or wherever, and then saying, yes, we'll get round to removing ours in the fullness of time... This is liable to get worse after the incidents of September 11- as America will (understandably) be quite interested in protecting her economy.

Liberalisation of trade is not necessarily the cure all that some present it as being. For more on this, you could take a look at the GATS thread, where Moridin and I discussed some of the points, if I remember rightly.


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Ascended Mistress of Illumination OR Paws R Us