Posted on 08/01/2003 2:05:33 PM PDT by Jeff Head
TODAY'S FREE TRADE IS NOT ABOUT THE FREE MARKET
We are in a very real battle in this nation and it is a battle for our heart and soul. It is spread out on many, many fronts...education, foreign policy, work ethic (individually and societally), immigration, the economy, moral values...and the list goes on.
Let's focus on the economy and one significant part of it...a major, growing part of it. Free Trade and foreign outsourcing.
I was going to entitle this article..."I used to make something"...or..."We used to make something in this country". But, I thought better of it and realized that such a statment was really focusing on the tail end of the issue as opposed to the root.
So, instead, I am simply calling it, "Today's Free Trade is not about the Free Market."
And it is so, today's Free Trade is NOT about the free market. Instead, in a very similar manner to other key issues in this battle for the heart and soul of America, what is happening is that a very craftily wordsmithed message of "Free Trade" has been put forth that people have bought into, thinking "How could anyone be against free trade? Why, isn't that all-American?".
Like with abortion, "How could anyone be against a woman's right to choose? Isn't that all American?".
In both cases, the craftily worded title has nothing remotely to do with what is actually going on.
The free market is the system our founders based our commerce on, where the intrinsic, underlying moral values of the people involved in the free market governed the equitable, free exchange of goods and services for other goods and services or currency. Sort of like John Adams said regarding the Constitution...
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."- John Adams, Oct. 11, 1798It is that underlying moral foundation coupled woth our liberty that made the Free Market in America the envy of the world, just like those same issues made our governmental form the envy of the world.
Well, as far as I am conerned, Adam's words could be tailored to this topic like so, ie... The Free Market was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the economy of any other.
This is a basic truth. Like our government, our free market was not supposed to be very regulated or burdened with miriad rules. The people and the companies were to use their own moral foundation to govern themselves. But, when the moral foundation is removed, you do not have what was intended for the Constitution, and you do not have a true free market.
When we use our foreign policy and economic policy to set up shop and trade with countries, societies, organizations or to implement policies that exploit their people's mercilessly, who keep them down without a hope for true liberty or freedom, who trample the moral values our own system was based upon...and when we do it knowingly, without compuction for those very underlying values, then we do not create a free market...no, that free trade has nothing whatsoever to do with, and is in no way similar to the FREE MARKET, rather, it serves to corrupt it.
Such notions, such actions are in fact wordsmithing for popularizing and putting forth a policy to drain the United States manufacturing, technological, agricultural, energy and other critical industries in order to weaken us...plain and simple...and it is working.
Based on my own travels on behalf of US firms and then later consulting for them...that is what is really happening here in my own opinion, and until we refocus as a people on that underlying moral foundation and the absolute need for it...we will continue to lose ground.
By the way, those same principles that are working at the societal level, have equal application at the personal level too...in fact, in the end it is the sum of their working at the personal level that creates the issue at the societal level.
Jeff Head
Engineering Consultant and,
Author of The Dragon's Fury Series
How current conditions could lead to World War
August 1, 2003
Emmett, Idaho
I'd like to see you walk into any economics class in this world and make this argument about Karl Marx being in favor of unrestricted free-market capitalism (free trade). Can you show me what examples you have that you would use to make this argument?
Yes, Marx understood the social consequences and implications that Ricardo ignored.
Well I hate to bring this up but it is not the government's job to regulate how much people make! Because when the government gets involved then the free market isn't free any longer!
The reason corps are heading out of America to set up manufaturing is because the government and the unions have made it worth the trouble.
Profit is akin to water, they both flow towards the least resistance.
More government regulation trying to stop corps from cutting and running is gonna get you nothing but more of the same.
The answer to the problem is really simple! Get rid of the stupid regulations, tell the damned Unions to stuff it and let businesses get back to what they are good at... making products at a profit, instead of being forced to hold senstivity training seminars and provide health care beneifts and retirment accounts, and worry if they are in violation of some trumped up EPA or OSHA regulation.
Your question is irrelevant to the discussion. Your methods of discussion are just like any other Democrat shill that breezes through here.
On the other hand, discussions involving "a fair trial and a fine hanging" for Free Traitors might be acceptable.
I've never voted for anything other than Republicans on the national level. Can't say the same for most of the Yellow Dog union-supporting trade protectionists on FR though, as many of them have admitted to voting for Democrats occasionally, and voting against Republicans frequently.
On second thought, I took the time to read it. His "point" culminated in a vague one-sided accusation without evidence to support it, just platitudes and quotes.
Is that like, unrestricted in the since Lenin and Stalin and Mao and Hitler were unrestricted. Should we not restrict ourselves in feeding those types of maws?
This is the entire point of the post...the free market that became the envy of the world, did so precisely because it was based on a fundamental moral foundation. The people were unrestricted because they restricted themselves through their moral conscience.
If you remove that little tid bit from the equation, you do not have the free market anymore.
When you invite the immoral, totalitarian to play on your field, you undercut and corrupt the very most basic nature of the free market and corrupt it.
Our policy in foreign trade, and the constitution provided for it, should be to avoid that happening and trade with those, and open our market up to those, who play on the same playing field we have created...and restrict those who do not until they show signs of doing so. Otherwise, you may have unrestricted free trade...but you do not have the free market that produced the wealth we currently enjoy.
Just my opinion.
First, this is not a simple protectionism issue; there are important moral elements (consuming goods manufactured by political and religious prisoners), and international conglomerates have agglomerated more power than most governments.
Second, Hayak has not mapped all of the routes, since in his atheism he bound himself in the depths of ignorance on the only issues that matter.
Get a copy of his speech to the Democratic Association of Brussels at its public meeting of January 9, 1848. In it he concludes, "...the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.
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Don't pull that crap with me. I know better
READ the bloody post.
UNTRAMMELED.
The sort of "make a buck at any cost, screw your buddy" sort of thing. Unprincipaled , no-hold-barred money-making on the backs of people who cannot defend themselves.
And some American corporations do it. And some people here like it.
And yeah.. I call it evil when it is done that way.
Tia
That's all it is...my opinion about the Free Market and what ultimately makes it strong...and I stand by it.
Come on, man... are you that intellectually lazy? You would walk into an economics class trying to convince them that Karl Marx was for free market capitalism based on that? In that entire text he rants about how much he hates free trade and the people that support it... over and over and over again... and in one quote throws in a tounge-in-cheek rhetorical device saying he would support it over the current system only because he knew that the people of that day were too dumb to understand it, thereby making it easier for his side to win them over with their class warfare demagoguery. But, no... Willie Green found you one little quote that you read which appears to say Karl Marx was a free marketeer, unbeknownst to every student of economics the world has ever heard from. Amazing.
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