Posted on 06/14/2011 11:03:45 AM PDT by Halfmanhalfamazing
I recently got into a discussion about free trade in which the other person was absolutely convinced that free trade destroyed the british empire. Which makes no sense. Who here remembers the post ww2 german years and the Wirtschaftswunder? As Reagan noted at the Brandenberg gate,(link below) free trade was an important part of the Wirtschaftswunder.
Now, onto the flip side. Big government. It destroys everything. It destroyed the roman empire. Yes, the nazis were big government. Big government is currently destroying the United States under Barack Hussein Obama.(Mmm! Mmm! MMMM!!!)
Now, the free trade doom and gloomers will routinely point to NAFTA, yet they can't point to a specific economic calamity since the passage of NAFTA. They will usually point to the NAFTA super highway. And things such as the trans-texas corridor are exactly the reasons why I don't like NAFTA. But the TTC isn't free trade. That's transnationalism. I oppose transnationalism, and that's why I don't like NAFTA.
Anyways, back to britain. How many of you have read Adam Smith's "The Wealth Of Nations"? At numerous times, Smith details the insane regulations placed upon society by the king when it comes to wool and all sorts of other things. Britain was an empire. By definition, big government.
Great nations are always built upon trade. The egyptians, the chinese(Several times) the british themselves, and even us, the United States. Free trade increases trade. To think that more trade destroys a society is insanity.
AND G*D chastises (sometimes severly) those who he loves.
Neither. Britain was basically bankrupt after WWII and began a retreat from its colonies. They were no longer the superpower, we were, and they didn’t have the prestige or money to hold their empire together. The world was realigning US vs. USSR instead of by traditional colonial empires.
In any case, they weren’t able to implement their big government until after it was obvious the empire was going away. For example, Indian independence and the withdrawal from the Palestine Mandate (Israel and Jordan, plus parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia) were already in the works before the NHS was created. I would say the cost of big government probably helped accelerate the later dismantling, as did free trade supplanting the mercantilism that formerly brought huge amounts of money into the government coffers.
I believe that's correct.
Britain, even though a remarkable and even glorious nation at times, got ahead of itself.
Free trade itself wasn't the issue...it was that there was too MUCH of it.
No nation can sustain that much reach across the globe. They should have paid heed to what was happening in the colonies and toned down their pace (though a case can be made that they were obliged to push on in order to fight France) but they were not attuned to the truth. Franklin and Burke tried to tell them, but they could not hear.
Mercantilism built up the empire. Once it was already established Britain adopted free trade.
This was at the time when the US and Germany were strongly protectionist. Having largely captive or unpenetrable markets at home the Americans and Germans were able to undercut British producers in world markets.
Free trade probably didn't destroy the empire, but too dogmatic an adherence to free trade doctrines at a time when other countries practiced protectionism didn't help Britain.
More important than either free trade or protection was the unwillingness to invest in new industries and the inability to get around old ways of thinking and working.
Was it big government? Maybe it went the other way around: when Britain dropped the empire it adopted the welfare state in a big way. Just what the causation was is hard to say.
Empire became more morally untenable at the same time when socialist doctrines were rising, but you didn't see the massive expansion of government until empire was already a dying idea.
Free trade helped them make a comeback after they'd destroyed their own physical plant and that of most of the rest of Europe.
But if you want to understand the rise of Germany in a broader perspective you have to look at the protectionism of 1870-1914, which did much to make Germany Europe's dominant economy.
Once you have all the elements for a modern economy you may be able to benefit from a free trade environment. Those who are still struggling to make it, tend to go in for protectionism while they are still developing industrially.
apparently the sucking sound from the loss of 10,000,000 jobs has gone unnoticed.
I not at all convinced that Germany serves as a good anology. First of all, they EXPORT more than they import, unlike the U.S. or U.K. Running sizable trade deficits (+) is a boost to any country.
The author of the book I am reading is just now broaching this area. He begins by pointing out that Britain led the Industrial Revolution, which is very true. But by WWI it was surpassed by The United States, which used mass production techniques, while Britain was still hand building locomotives. Going into WWI the British found out that the dyes used for their khaki uniforms all came from Germany. They had lost their edge through their own limitations.
We still have to admit that Canada remains a part of the British commonwealth. The British government handled this case perfectly, giving up governmental control enough to retain the loyalty of this colony. I have no doubt that had they handled their American colonies as well, we would still be toasting the Queen Mother.
These are special cases though, given the fact that these two colonies were settled over, and replaced, the indigenous population. In other words, they could have kept India also, if they would have replaced those Indians also.
Racist, triumphalist nonsense.
Nonsense.
Nonsense. The american economy is going down the pan because youve become fat and lazy and pleasure-loving and quite simply priced yourself out of the market. You all believe in freedom of choice yes? So why should I pay an American ten times what I can pay an Indian or a Chinaman for work that’s only half as good? Are you suggesting you coerce your capitalists to do that?
I dont think thats true at all. The Empire didnt really get going until after the American Revolution.
Methinks perhaps it was the fact of being an Empire that, ultimately, destroyed the British Empire. The straw that broke the camel’s back was, of course, WW2; however, WW2 did the breaking because it put the British into the untenable position of having to defend a globe-spanning empire against multiple aggressors (the various axis powers) and having to do so with various colonial populations who were growing restive and were tired of being treated as the “subjects of” the Empire as opposed to full members of it, and who wanted to throw off the Imperial “embrace.”
After all, in my view, it was not mere coincidence that Gandhi started the Quit India Movement - one of the more direct demands that the British leave India - in 1942, when WW2 was in full swing and the Axis powers were at their zenith.
So, I suppose that in a way it was “big government” that finally brought down the British Empire because the demands of Empire and of defending that Empire simply required that the Imperial government spend too much of the society’s wealth on unproductive actions to protect colonial populations that really did not appreciate said “protection.”
More racist eugenics drivel. The losses of WWI were extremely severe of course, not least to the nations self confidence, but to suggest it caused a GENETIC decline is nonsense. Genetics doesnt work like that. To suggest it caused the fall of the empire is also untrue. The empire was in decline already by 1910. Probably had been for fifty years or more.
Wow, the BS level on this thread is about the highest I have ever seen on Free Republic! That’s five statements in a row.
Winston Churchill.
Good one! LOL!
To better understand the deliberate distortion of the social sciences in Academia by inter-disciplinary pursuers of humanist World Government theories, "diversity," etc., see Myths & Myth Makers In American Higher Education.
On the other hand, if you want to understand the terrible combination of the World War I slaughter & subsequent emigration of so many of the former leadership subset, on modern British leadership, you might compare the extraordinary flowering of British talent in Rhodesia, in contrast to contemporary Britain, before Rhodesia was strangled in 1980. (See Rhodesia & The Rhodesians.)
The children of the World War II heroes in Rhodesia probably tested higher on IQ tests than any other community on the planet.
William Flax.
Not only has the Free Trade Fraud cost us millions of jobs but it has fulfilled Carlyle’s statement that: “Free trade means cheap and nasty!” A visit to Walmart confirms that truth. It is a doctrine for cosmopolitan fanatics who have cut loose their moorings and are floating in the ether! The alleged benefits of doctrine are being refuted daily.
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