Is enforced free trade "free?" For whom is this free trade enforced? There is smart trade. But smart trade means little unless tied to purpose. Those who govern can deploy smart trade (1) to preserve a nation, or they can deploy it (2) to serve interests of those who wish to reduce the world to a collective that is ruled by a cohort of corporatists. One can (1) value a nation that protects liberty, or one can (2) value a world that submerges masses to the collective service of an international economic elite.
Look around. America as a city on a hill for preserving individual liberty is fading fast. Borders are being erased; industry is shipping out; assimilative values are being unraveled. The coming election will do nothing to reduce the grip of corporatist money for progressive (collectivizing) goals. Is the rapid fading of the idea of America just a byproduct of “free trade” and cheap prices, or is it part of a deliberate policy, which is necessary in order to collectivize the world, economically (de facto)? What good are (de jure) lines on maps if they don’t really mean anything?
As corporations succeed in trading for political influence, what's efficiency got to do with profit motive, once corporatists acquire political power to move production to labor markets that are forced to undercut one another? Once the world is collectivized, what difference does it make whether rulers are international corporatists or nomenklatura? Are fiscal “free traders” speaking with a smart and straight tongue? Are they straight with regard to their purposes? How much will be taken, before Americans realize they have squandered their birthright to liberty?
To advocate that America should sponsor free trade even when it means placing sovereignty under thumbs of foreign despots is to advocate that Americans should surrender freedom in exchange for cheaper prices for goods produced in China. This is selling freedom as if it were of no value. Democrats often devalue freedom as another word for nothing worth doing anyway. But how to fathom Republicans?
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In death, all particular perspectives of consciousness must eventually become collateral damage from the unfolding purposes of the field of consciousness. Our material world is not the best of all possible; we are only its gardeners, always pursuing communion, and perhaps eventual merger, with a happier state of being.
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5 comments:
Is it because Congress has usurped the role of Santa Claus that every hyphenated group clamors to enforce its idea of equal access? If Congress disciplined itself to provide only for essential infrastructure, and if it left most of local governance to states, would our laws tend more to treat Americans simply as Americans? Or would disputing enclaves arise, based on tribes, races, and creeds? Is there now enough infrastructure and cross border trade and communication so that it is spurious to worry about any restoration of segregation? Is the modern impetus for segregation (often voluntary) into divisive enclaves because central government is too cynically removed and too big, or is it because central government is too small?
Re: "The decision to pay a higher price for an inferior product to protect a local corporation or industry ought to be a citizen's choice -- not the govt's (politicians, lobbyists or unions)."
I take it, conversely, that the decision to pay a lower price for a superior product in order to strengthen an enemy state whose fundamental philosophy is antithetical to American values ought to be the choice of traitors and their elected henchmen?
Of course, the traitors then say they would be fools not to continue in such vein, since everyone else is doing it, and the henchmen politicians would say they must perpetuate such activities, because their constituency demands it. With that mindset, whence goes liberty, decency, and country? We are giving international sovereignty to corporations that have bought our politicians, in order for them to erase islands of liberty and replace them with a worldwide, Chinese-like economy. To give domestic corporations this power is to turn our borders into little more than lines for maps in crayon books.
Ask: Why is Obama choking domestic oil production in order to enrich Soros and Brazil? So long as Rinos think free trade is a fair trade in exchange for surrendering national sovereignty, then why should Soros and ilk give a fig whether we celebrate a day of bread and circuses this coming November 2? Is China's trade policy meant to spread wealth to its general populace, or to increase hegemony of its ruling class, worldwide? Why are we licking suckers and dancing la la la into the plantation collective? Soros, et al, know China is the banker playing us for fools in a game of monopoly, but do not care. Why?
Why are our rulers killing us with regulations, ostensibly to protect the environment and spread wealth, when really, before our eyes, they are sacrificing the idea of America on the altar of a worldwide collective?
Re: "It should be my choice,not yours, to spend my money the way I want"
Well, why "should" it? No one has the "right" to spend his money free of all restrictions. You can't (or at least aren't supposed to) spend it to hire goons to do crime. You can't use it to buy stuff in lieu of paying taxes. You can't use it to buy or import contraband. You can't, in times of rationing, use it to exceed rations. You can't evade taxes on income by taking it out of the country. And, if government deems it in the interest of national security to protect home industries, you can't violate regulations regarding tariffs.
Each American citizen has the right to vote; none, acting singly, has the right to dictate law; all have the right to participate in shaping the idea that is America. The issue is not primarily one of economic science; it's an issue of what kind of country we want ... and whether we want to preserve it in the face of competition with regimes that are less free. It's not just and only about any particular "me."
I wonder whether the main argument against scaled tariffs is that all tariffs are bad? If not, apart from scaling, then when ARE tariffs good? Does it have to do with whether we have businesses at home that are competitive, so long as they aren't undercut by policies of foreign nations?
I take the authors as looking for ways to preserve the economic viability of America, more so than the viability of international corporations or the viability of nations that are run under corporate dictate. But what is the main thought of opponents? Do they consider it best for everyone if paper profits are enhanced for businesses and corporations generally --- regardless of whether nets are favorable to America? Is not money only a relative and fluxing measure of what one has earned in rights to obtain from others? Isn't relative difference in wealth at least as important as absolute increase in numbers of paper bills?
Were Congress looking out for America, common sense suggests developing our own energy resources, gradually imposing tariffs against non-Nafta producers, and cutting federal spending. Why is that common sense wrong?
@Paul, the main question pertained to when, if ever, a tariff would be a good idea. By your response, may I take it to be your position that America should never impose a tariff, regardless of whether everyone else does? If so, that's an interesting take.
The "my money" take is also interesting. Did the vets who defend this country have anything to do with how you made "your money?" If a federal financial policy militarily weakens America, should our vets not have anything to say about it?
I suspect the world is more complicated. Sure, there is an individual "its MY money" perspective. But there is another perspective, which is: in a dangerous world, "its OUR country." When a company extracts profits by polluting our common environment, so that taxpayers in general are charged to pay for clean up, are the profits still "my money" to the company? I don't know about the philosophy behind that, but I do know a great many environmental protection laws take strong issue with that approach. When a company extracts profits by buying governmental influence to grease approval to sell military secrets by exporting technology, for that company, is that also, for them, "my money?"
It's not individuals' wealth I care that much about; it's the country. I don't quite get how hobbling America in relation with every other tariff-imposing nation, even the Chicoms, is good policy. Indeed, isn't the balance of trade of a nation part of the environment that sustains its citizens? Why should that be sacrificed just so more corporations can make money exporting OUR industry and resources overseas? Didn't MY tax money pay for part of the education of these exporters?
I sometimes wonder how much propaganda is hosed at Americans by apologists for international corporations to "justify" bringing about our demise. Which is worse: policies that invite cheap labor to overrun our borders, or policies that invite the exporting of jobs to overseas cheap labor? If the marketplace is the best way to run a country, then why have either borders or tariffs?
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