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I am not opposed to free trade. I am suggesting that when the wealthy and powerful create the trade rules, they will not create a free market. Ask yourself - What are the advantages of a free market? Increased competition, a demand for increased productivity, a drive for technological investment, lower prices, thinner profit margins,......etc. Why in the world would a company that is already at the top of the food chain spend millions of dollars passing an agreement that would force it into that type of scenario? If I were them I would spend millions of dollars creating a market that was tilted in my favor. This would of course be anything but a "Free Market"

I am not opposed to free trade. I am suggesting that when the wealthy and powerful create the trade rules, they will not create a free market. Ask yourself - What are the advantages of a free market? Increased competition, a demand for increased productivity, a drive for technological investment, lower prices, thinner profit margins,......etc. Why in the world would a company that is already at the top of the food chain spend millions of dollars passing an agreement that would force it into that type of scenario? If I were them I would spend millions of dollars creating a market that was tilted in my favor. This would of course be anything but a "Free Market"

Very well. But this is the classic argument against Wal-Mart. IMHO monopolies aren't necessarily bad and seem inevitable in a free market system. But, we could always let the government come in and "save" us as they're wont to do (and so good at).

I am suggesting that when the wealthy and powerful create the trade rules, they will not create a free market. Ask yourself - What are the advantages of a free market? Increased competition, a demand for increased productivity, a drive for technological investment, lower prices, thinner profit margins,......etc.

PS - who is more wealthy and powerful than the government? And things such as increased productivity, a drive for technological investment, lower prices, etc. drive profits UP. It's how Sam Walton once came to be the wealthiest man on earth, how Rockefeller made what was expensive (sperm whale oil) absurdly cheap.

A nation doesn't become wealthy by raising taxes - you don't become rich by raising prices. Name for me, please sir, an absurdly rich man that didn't get that way by making his products or services cheaper? And, for that matter, a rich man that didn't do his damnedest to give it away before his death?

Freedom is absurd. But it is correct and moral.