Unless your goal is to reduce your own nation to slave status.
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
Unless your goal is to reduce your own nation to slave status.
Sorry... I didn't mean for it to appear to be a trick question. I'm just asking... "If you were President right now, would you nuke China today?" That's all I'm asking. Would you drop a nuclear bomb on China right now if it was up to you? No trick here. Just a Yes or No.
Second, one of the gospels of "free trade" is comparative advantage. If everything is being sent overseas, what is the comparative advantage of the United States? It used to be productivity and ingenuity, but with factories and intellecual property being sent to foreign countries, it would seem that we don't have much to offer the rest of the world except a rapidly declining customer base.
I asked a very simple question and you folks took it to 1 million different conclusions.
So how do you suggest we win this war?
It doesn't directly. I'm just curious. Just a simple Yes or No question.
Those who try to engage in economic warfare are those who are inept at both.
That's odd... I seem to be doing just fine. Same goes for 99.999% of Americans I know.
I doubt you know 100,000 people and if you did, I suspect more than one of them would have financial problems linked to exported jobs, etc.
And the Chinese, and some of these American corporations make scads of dough on the backs of kids, all because "Free Trade" has gone nuts.
The Chinese are getting way more out of the deal than we are too.
Me?
I just don't need that many cheap t-shirts. ( Although it is getting harder and harder to find anything that DOESN'T have a "bad" label in it! ) It's all inter-related.
Tia
Actually, comparative advantage - the notion that countries should specialize in producing what they can do cheapest - came from David Ricardo, an advocate of "free trade", but NOT, as the astute Mr. Head points out, of free markets. It's basic flaw is that ignores the profit motive.
Ricardo, incidentally, greatly influenced Marx and his ideas formed much of the bases of Marxism / Socialism.
That is classic. You make this great statement about what it takes "for free-market capitalism to exist" (and I assume you want it to exist in America) and then in the very next sentence argue why Americans should not be allowed "individual liberty to make choices about purchasing products and services with [their] own money".
Doesn't Hillary have some other tasks for you to do today?
There's a lot of room for action between letting our country get economically raped, and waging war in return.
If you were so opposed to government intervention in economic matters, you would be giving equal time to the elimination of taxes and regulation on American workers.
That's inane even for you, Poohbah.
I said no such thing. I don't think there should be any gov't involvement in sales transactions between private parties (except for sales tax on new goods).
Not sure exactly how many people I know or know of but I know a bunch and have not heard one single person complaining about "illegals" or "exported jobs". I tend to surround myself with people that work hard and don't look for government handouts (welfare, tariffs, etc.) to solve their problems.
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