Posted on 02/18/2005 5:36:56 PM PST by average american student
The United States and six members of the Organization of American States have signed new agreements on trade and the environment.
The agreements are aimed at strengthening environmental protection and creating a Secretariat for Environmental Matters to help implement the environmental provisions of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).
The accords were signed in Washington D.C. Friday by senior representatives of the governments of Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the United States.
Which is not to say that the two do not propose concommitant means.
It sounds great, but it doesn't mean much. It certainly doesn't authorize blue-helmeted eco-nazis into our country to tell us how to run things.
A whole slew of small things that add up to a lot or mean a great deal to individual enterprises.
For example: When you enforce open importation of agricultural goods without adequate inspection, you reduce the cost of imports that compete with domestically produced goods. The socialized risk is of importing a pathogen or seed of a weed. Right now we have anopheles mosquitos in little artistic bamboo house plants. We have eupatorium (a weed) escaping all over the central coast (think of a dandelion bush that grows six feet tall and four feet wide with ten times the seed). Americans bear the risk of the cost of malaria or treating those problems which exist as an externality to the contractual participants who benefited by the import transaction.
See Part IV, Chapter 2 – Dangerous Species Act. :-)
This is to say nothing about the value of a local food supplier who is loyal to American interests. To export that production is to socialize the risk of a politically motivated interruption by which to create artificial shortage maintained by regulatory power. It will (no, not "may" but "will") work EXACTLY the same way the power crisis did, which is no accident because the principal proponents of this kind of liberalization and regulation are the same people who created that debacle.
Liberalize imports and investment overseas, regulate domestic production to death, control distribution with middlemen to screw the little people abroad (as is going on in the coffee market), drive people off their farms and into cities as cheap labor for factories (and teach them communism), socialize the risk of resulting shortages, and cash in. It's the same old game.
That might be significant to El Salvador, but it's about the value of all the vehicles I saw in the Sam's Club parking lot today.
Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing.
He is his father's son, and hopes to hasten the NWO.
Who will the Royal family be??
One thing that these "great thinkers" have failed to consider is China..
It may end up a "new order" but they will not be the one that has drops power in their laps
"Tisk Tisk.. and there you go again.. putting your economic needs above the needs of the world."
You forgot your sarcasm tag.
The solution isn't to cut off trade or hire more inspectors to test each strawberry. The solution is to choose produce carefully and wash it, anyway.
I do understand your concern about bringing in non-native species to a new area. That's a huge problem. Those of us in the south know all about fire ants and kudzu, neither of which were here a hundred years ago.
I don't think it can really be stopped without ripping up our roads, or closing our harbors and airports. This is going to be a matter of how to deal with the problem rather than how to prevent it. It's a given that it's going to happen. What we need is a rapid reaction taskforce to respond to it.
Supply disruptions, whether they are gamed or are the result some catastrophe, always play out the same way. New suppliers enter the market to capture the high prices. Supply increases, prices fall, everyone gets over it and moves on.
The purpose of CAFTA is to increase the supply of goods available to everyone. That's a good thing.
When retailers withold information in order to equate the two products, when suppliers can't get country of origin labeling because there are but two or three distributors who collude to keep it so, a consumer hasn't that option.
Frankly, I think the way to beat the system is direct purchase from the supplier; i.e., buying your groceries from the farmer, even overseas, by the Internet. With global shipping as efficient as it is, a secure supply chain that cuts out the middleman and/or the need to drive to a store could well benefit both as long as that shipment was via a fully integrated supply chain.
Consider coffee. The growers are getting record lows for their crops, about $0.90 per pound. Given that four companies control virtually all distribution into the US, the price to the market approaches $4.00. A LOT of that is profit by collusion. If I could buy the beans from the farmer over the Internet, he could ship it by Fedex or some other custom shipper and we might both benefit. As I have written many times, the key to web-based distribution and the reduction of many of our transportation headaches lies in firing the US Post Office.
Sorry to be so cryptic about that, if you want an article on the topic, I'll email you a draft.
I don't think it can really be stopped without ripping up our roads, or closing our harbors and airports.
The reason has nothing to do with infrastructure and everything to do with powerful political interests. There is a way to manage and apportion that risk, as I have proposed in the book.
This is going to be a matter of how to deal with the problem rather than how to prevent it.
In some cases prevention is cheaper. It varies. Information networks go a long way toward reducing the cost of the risk. As I said, see Part IV, Chapter 2, because it has some workable proposals.
It's a given that it's going to happen. What we need is a rapid reaction taskforce to respond to it.
I'm sorry to say I disagree. We'll get the "weed police" who will harass the victims of the policy, themselves competitors of the perpetrators.
Supply disruptions, whether they are gamed or are the result some catastrophe, always play out the same way. New suppliers enter the market to capture the high prices. Supply increases, prices fall, everyone gets over it and moves on.
It's the multigenerational investment we have in domestic producers as collateral damage to which I object. When they go, they sell for a song, often to the same interests who supported said destructive policy. T'was ever thus:
Amos 8:5 Saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit?
Thanks.
ping
Actually people need to wake up to what's really happening out there.
The fact is China and India are destinted to become the world's super powers unless something can be done.
The only America will be a viable force 30 to 50 years out is if we form our own union with north and central America becoming all but a certainity within the next 15.
It will be the only way long term that we can compete with those countries and I'm not talking just militarly.
The long term surival of this country will depend on leaders of this country realizing that we have to expand our population and thus production base.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.