Posted on 11/25/2002 8:15:37 AM PST by SAMWolf
I hope they don't kick me out of the Republican Party for this.
But free trade is a bad idea.
For years it hasn't set right with me, and I've tried to figure out why. And now I know. It's because it violates a simple principle of life.
And that is self-reliance.
International free trade, while certainly necessary and useful to an extent, can easily be overemphasized to such a degree that it jeopardizes a country's economic self-interest and national security.
The United States is a good example.
But first, let's look at Mexico.
Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, all Mexican protections against American or Canadian agricultural imports are about to disappear. That means cheaper Canadian and American farm products are going to flood Mexico.
And Mexican farms are going to close down. The impact on Mexican agriculture is going to be immense.
Which means Mexico is going to be less capable of supplying its own needs. And it means a ton of farm workers are going to be out of work and headed north. And that's not good for anybody.
Just like it's no good that the United States has a dramatic trade deficit, that it buys far more from overseas than it sells. And that there are entire sections of the American economy which are dependent on foreign goods. For whole product lines, there simply are no American manufacturers anymore. From electronic goods to clothing to steel, we don't make things anymore.
And American corporations are closing domestic factories to shift manufacturing overseas.
All of which fits perfectly into the world of free trade.
And all of which screws us royally.
Because independence is good and interdependence is bad. Because interdependence is the same as reliance and that is the opposite of self-reliance.
And history teaches that -- without exception -- prosperity and security require national self-reliance. Americans should eat American agricultural products and use American manufactured products and channel their income back into the economy that produced it -- the American economy. When a nation becomes reliant on foreign products -- as the United States clearly is -- its comfort and peace are held hostage by the producers of those foreign products.
If a nation cannot produce what it needs -- as the United States now cannot -- it is in a precarious position that weakens and enslaves it.
We will be weakened as we exchange our prosperity -- hard currency -- for foreign products, and we will be enslaved as our national policy inevitably must be tailored to preserve our access to foreign goods. These are truths which have been understood and implemented around the world for centuries. To abandon them now is to abandon national self-interest and to doom the United States to premature but certain decline.
And it is to bring the same fate to many nations of the world.
In developing countries, lingering poverty and delayed development are tied directly to a failure to be nationally self-reliant. When nations feed themselves, they do not starve. When they manufacture their own goods, they don't go without.
When they understand that their consumer dollars must be recycled into their own economies, they do not long linger in recession or unemployment.
Free trade serves a very few at the top of international corporations, but it does not serve the average American. Rather, it takes away his job and his nation's strength.
Certainly, the flow of goods and produce around the globe is needful and beneficial, but so is protection, and buttering your own bread first. The sense of national economic identity must not be lost, and neither should the commitment to protecting American prosperity -- even at the cost of limiting free trade.
Our first obligation is to feed, house, clothe and prosper American families. Every thing else comes second. That must be our attitude. Just as Mexico and every other nation must have the same attitude about its people and its economy.
Independence is good, interdependence is bad.
Self-reliance is the key to prosperity -- for individuals and nations.
Now does it sink in to you that that country (who probably is not a friend of ours - only our money at present) has control over whether or not you have shoes? If he decides he does not want to sell y ou shoes, you just might be barefoot, because all those horrible union - and non union - Americans no longer make shoes. So you are dependent on someone who may want more from you than $200. for a pair of shoes.
Now you say you will just buy from some other country - of course suppose this big guy convinces the little countries he will not tolerate them selling shoes to you - and they comply. What are you going to do then?
Now I don't hate the union so much that I would rather REd China decided whether or not I could have shoes. But that is just me.
Once again, suppose big guy tells little guy they had better not sell to you or else.
[No, we'll merely sink every China-bound oil tanker with a genuine AMERICAN-MADE Mark 48 torpedo.]
Now keep in mind Big Guy probably has those torpedoes also.
[ We have munitions factories already, son, they're just not being used right now]
Well, didn't I read we were going to purchase nuclear subs from some other country to give to Taiwan - because this other country makes our subs? Hmmmmm? NOw the operative word is 'not being used now'. Well, their factories are being used now.But let's us continue to give them money to keep those factories working. No need to worry because we are paying for the munitions that will be used against us - just because we want cheap shoes or Christmas lights - or ----
Hey it's free trade and that is wonderful. We have replaced the gospel of common sense and self reliance with the gospel of free trade - even though there is nothing 'free' about it.
Now you and some others are trying to cloud the issue that the 'Guvmint' had no part in creating the debacle we are in right now. They had much more to do with it than cheaper products.
They promote the moving of businesses offshore.
They made loans to businesses to build factories offshore. They used our tax dollars so businesses could build factories in other countries so we could loose our jobs. No government involved here.
Why in the world the government have 'trade missions' if not to promote business moving offshore.
When a person looses his job due to NAFTA - why does the taxpayers have to pay that person unemployment for 2 years and train them for another job - no government interference here - just free trade.
The government did'nt tax companies to death, they didn't affirmative action them to death, they didn't politically correct them to death, they didn't in general regulate them to death - no no government interference here - just the old bad unions and good old free trade.
I think there would many government actions that would make all of us turn blue if we knew of it.
Now the pioneers did make it across the prairie without the government - but we would not have made it to this very precarious position without the government.
I suspect this country wouldn't know free trade if they saw it.
Now Thomas, we are getting a little literal aren't we? I was taking an example given by someone else.
You do know I was not talking literally about shoes, don't you?
Surely you do?
Surely you do?
Yes, I thought so.
You just wanted to disagree with what I said and couldn't actually come up with anything but - 'it is preposterous that we can't buy footwear."
Even if one of the MANY nations that produces shoes for our companies decided to force their citizens into starvation and cease making our shoes, for them to convince any of the many other nations that do the same to also starve their citizens would be quite a feat. This is why FREE markets work. When the demand for something increases, people JUMP at the chance to fill that demand. Never will it be the case that people sit around jobless and say, oh look we need shoes, I wonder who in the world is going to get rich off that opportunity....
"A world of no trade and tariff barriers is the north star," Paul O'Neill
The pursuit of wealth for its own sake is a sad reason for living. Entropy guarantees that everything we build will eventually crumble to dust, rendering all our hard work pointless: "Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair". The only wealth that lasts is that wealth that exists outside this universe "where moth and rust doth corrupt" -- that is, the intangible but ultimately real wealth that comes from loving and being loved.
(Please note that I'm not saying that we should be laissez-faire hippies on some kind of groovy leisure trip: loving people is hard work, and not to be taken lightly. On the contrary, what I'm saying is that we should work hard, but not out of an infantile desire to acquire physicial wealth; that road leads a man to a lonely dead end, where he finds himself trapped with only his nerve endings for company. Rather, we should each work out of a sense of duty, out of a manly desire to fulfil our obligations to our family, nation, species, and God. Contrary to the soidisant Objectivist "virtue of selfishness", the only virtue that truly exists is the virtue of unselfishness, of a man's duty done well.)
Is there anything intrinsically evil about capitalism? No. What is evil in capitalism is the same as what is evil in socialism: the practice of treating human beings as mere wealth generating/consuming objects -- human beings reduced to the status of "human resources" or "proletarians" instead of being recognized as unique and intrinsically valuable persons. For man is not an economic animal; man, as Aristotle points out, is a political animal, an individual who is at once separate from and intrinsic to a human community. Man considered as an atomistic physical machine is just another clever animal; man qua man can only exist as part of a community, the basic unit of which is the oekos, (ekos) the Home, whence comes the very word "economics". It is respect for the home and family that is the basis of moral economics; a capitalist society that does not honor the home and family above the individual is morally no better than antlike communism; in both, human beings are callously reduced to mere cogs in an economic machine. That way lies slavery.
So -- to swipe the title of a well-known book -- two cheers for capitalism, but only for a Christian capitalism, capitalism as if people mattered, capitalism with a human face -- a capitalism mwhose prime motivator is not acquisition, but duty. It is only when a man is doing his duty to himself, his family, and to God that he is truly a free man.
If that neighbor who desires also has a job and the wherewithall to pay for that AND if it is not already being done by one of the millions of workers we have imported - both skilled and unskilled.}
[The purpose of the government is to defend my liberty and property. Not to cause pain to me or those I seek to trade with.]
True but you are suggesting the government had nothing to do with the situation and it had much to do with it. While it is not designed to cause pain, it is not designed use our tax dollars to finance other countries to put us out of work and it is not designed to use our tax dollars to finance the moving offshore of American companies to put us out of work.
[So what? Not every American was in the candlemaking business when light bulbs were invented. The candlemakers had to adjust to meet the demands of those who have money to exchange. This is beneficial as it steers production (of goods and services) to meet demands. Surely you don't hold otherwise?!]
When the light bulb was invented - it didn't move the work offshore - it remained here so the candlemakers could perhaps learn to make light bulbs. Big difference.]
[Non sequitor. If you want to make money you have to do something that people want. It matters not that your father, and your father's father were candlemakers. Times, thankfully, change.]
That sounds so good. Now once again, you have to do something that someone can pay money for, that means those people also have to have jobs and disposable income. This is not a shifting of jobs, this is an elimination of jobs in America. That is the difference.]
{I will work in a capacity that meets the demands of my neighbors for goods and services. No different than now.]
Now that sounds good also, but you see what if those neighbors do not have the money to pay for your services or goods and if those service jobs are already filled by someone else (millions of foreign workers, for example).
[ Why would people be unable to earn a living wage? Free trade has boosted the standard of living of Americans to the lead in the world. Our poor have air conditioning, refrigeration, automobiles, and a host of goods that would have been unthinkable luxuries for the rich just 150 years ago. The reason this has taken place is specialization of labor and the associated relative reduction in costs. You propose undercutting the process that has made us the envy of the world. Limiting our ability to cut consumer costs would only serve to stagnate the standard of living by locking spending on goods at their current level
Now are you saying that all this great standard of living we have in this country is all due to foreign trade? Don't think so. Remember when we made TV, washers/dryers, refrigerators, all those luxuries? WEll, guess what, people could afford them then. I haven't seen a reduction in price. I have seen the price of items rise drastically. Just looked at a new stove - $500 to $800 for just a normal electric stove. Now our salaries have not quadrupled in the last 15 years (since I last bought a stove and they were made in USA), but the price of stoves have.
Yes, Christmas lights, widgets, cheap shoes, cheap clothing (by the way, you do understand the difference between 'cheap' and 'economical' don't you. WEll we are getting cheap things, not economical. (But that is a different story).
What we are attempting to get across to you is someone, somewhere, has to be making money at some time. WE can't just reach into the sky and pull it out. To do that we have to have a product or service that someone, showhere, somehow has the money to buy. You never say what kind of jobs you think will be available - it is always the 'one my neighbors want' - now what will that be in light of the fact your neighbor may and probably will be either out of work - or seriously strapped for the monies to pay you.
But you refer to society as if it was something of an entity in itself. It is nothing more than a collection of individuals.
As to freedom and liberty, God gave us that. He chose to give us free will to accept or reject him. He could have done it any other way he chose. He made us in his image, that is to say, with free will.
Economic freedom is about property rights. They were bestowed by God in the ten commandments. "Thou shalt not steal" confers property rights.
Government and rights are how we relate to each other, not to God. Freedom may be an illusion to you, but it is the best way for men to live on this world. Rights are a gift from God, what you do when you are enabled with them is to be taken up with him.
Well for starters - that is a good tactic if you don't really have any facts or reason in your arsenal. Just call names - Hitler, Facist, Cretin, Racist - you know the drill. Don't fall for it. Don't defend. They know those are just smoke.
Now sometimes (not calling any names) when I read posts on here, I am reminded of the phrase 'educated beyond their intelligence'.
But you know some of us are making a killing of this so-called free trade. Some of us still have very lucrative jobs and just believes that anyone else out of work is there because they are just lazy, ignorant, etc. Some of us just are not willing to admit we are on a greased hill, going down fast. If we admit that, we will have to do something about it. But what? If we admit we can do nothing - well that is just too unthinkable. So what do we do - we attack people who are speaking out - we deny - we pontificate - we repeat what we were taught in the colleges - you know the ones who can't teach history, math, science - how many times have I heard just how uneducated college graduates are - yet those same economics that are being taught are just right on the money. We blindly follow the politicians - hoping against hope.
And then I suspect some on here are just here to post some disinformation.
I used to be so suprised when people began to call me names on here - I was flustered, amazed - then I saw the pattern. So I never answer those except to put all those words in capitals so they will know I do not fear them. I recognize them for what they are . An attempt to intimidate so I, and others, will cease to speak. It is really a victory -
I feel no need to disagree with you or anyone else for that matter. It's all about ideas. Some are preposterous and I disagree with them. Like the idea that this country could not find (or create) alternate supply OF ANY COMMODITY. You used shoes so I responded to that.
It's all about price, which is the great determiner of what will be produced and by whom. To embrace the first idea of dependance is to fundamentally misunderstand economics.
So true. If everyone who obtained the high standard of living in the 90's had to pay it off today, we would have hordes of people in the streets. That is another factor that makes it look as if we are doing great with free trade - people and the government are living off credit cards to keep up the charade.
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