Today's Free Trade is not about the Free Market

JEFFHEAD.COM ^ | 08/01/2003 | Jeff Head

[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, 1798

It 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

[GladesGuru]

Please consider adding some of the indian tribes to the list of those damaged by liberals who gave them unearned incomes. As the Crown Prince of Norway said to the National Geographic presstitute, "Perhaps there is something dangerous about unearned money."

Cigarette and gaming money seems to have driven up the levels of addiction, STD's, ad nauseam.

Summary: Wanna really hurt somebody? Give 'em to the Liberals.

[CARepubGal]

300 years ago, Jews were in Ghettos (not the kind with rap music and drugs but walled areas in cities where the inhabitants were REQUIRED (that is HAD) to live in Western Europe (Rothschild and sons was started in a German ghetto btw). They had as much influence in England pre Napoleon as a migrant worker (white since that appears to be your preference) has today. The Napoleonic wars did change things as did a wastrel prince in England to a point. And Jews saved the founding father's hineys at the expense of their families (Haym Solomon died a pauper) and lives. And this was and is for the most part (you and your Jooo fearing pals excepted) a religiously neutral nation. We have no state church and don't need the headaches involved.

One reason you don't read about these folks doing charitable works is because bragging about charities is considered ungodly. The highest form of charity is to give anonymously for a religious Jew. The descendents of the men you mention are like all the rest of the parasitical born rich folks: they had everything handed to them and are Kennedy like in their morals and actions. Unless you want to ascribe some "other motive" to this, it is obvious to thinking people that you have issues with Jews. Try getting to know a few sometime.

[Master Soku]

There's your mistake - government has absolutely no right to dictate who or where a private businessman can hire. If you can't handle that one aspect of free trade, capitalism, and freedom, then you have no right to call yourself a capitalist.

By damning the entire capitalist philosophy because some can not compete in a capitalist free market, you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

The "Outsourcing Bray" has become the new, silky, smooth, seductive argument of the modern day, bloodthirsty communist or fascist, which unfortunately has always had resonance in the masses, i.e., those who always feel that they just do not have enough, and need someone to blame, other than themselves, for their general lack of ingenuity, industriousness, need to reinvent, inability or disinterest to work harder, or acquire new and different skills.

America and its people have always been lean and mean, and ready to compete. Whenever a nation begins to forget that, it starts to look like France, with a sense of entitlement and a need to be coddled and taken care of by a big socialist government.

[Jeff Head]

Fee Trade of today and such a definition of Capitalist does not represent the Free Market as defined and intended by the founders, IMHO.

To allow known and obvious destructive force into the free market to prey on it and destroy it, who have no intention of promoting to their own people or others whom the have commerce with the foundational principles of the free market...is like allowing known child molesters and rapist to come into your home and live there amongst your wife and children when you are away and somehow call it good.

For over 200 years our nation used the constitutional means provided for to ensure that the Free Market stayed free.

See my post 307 for a further rendition of my own feelings in this regard. In a true free market, where both entities base their commerce on those underlying moral principles, there is no such regulation, nor should there be. hat is why our system became the envy of the world. Departing from it (meaning the underlying moral foundation) has led to the imposition of many, many governmental regulations that are destroying our own free market. Allowing the anti-thesis of those principles unbridled interaction is another step in finishing that job of destruction.

Fregards.

Jeff

[Jeff Head]

You continue to reference Eustace in overtones that indicate he is a racist when I have explained to you, and he has explained to you that those are not his feelings. In so doing, you risk painting yourself with the same type of stripe you continue to cast at him...one of unfounded and unreasoned bias towards others.

I have stated my own feelings about the topic you rasie and are discussing with Eustace on several occassions on this thread.

There are people and organizations of many ilks wanting to destroy our freedom. They are all our enemies. It is not wise (IMHO) to be politically neutral (which in my mind is just another word for politically correct) when addressing them. One is not a racist for so doing. One is a racist as a result of their heart felt feelings about another race and how they act with respect to members of that race. In order to determine that, you would have to know a whole lot more about a person than what has been stated on this thread.

One last time regarding Eustace...as I said, I know him and his family personally...he is not, and they are not racist.

This thread is about the current practise of free trade and its impact on the free market. I would appreciate it, if you would like to continue the discussion regarding your impressions of Zionism and the Rothchilds with Eustace, that you both would take it to another separate thread, or take it to private Fremail.

That's just my preference at this point as the originator of the thread...at this point, that discussion is not adding to the point or intent of the thread.

Thanks and Fregards.

[Delphinium]

I got off on the "Zionist" comment before I had a chance to comment on the trade issue. I agreed with what you wrote, it is a sham and is hurting our free republic.

I understand the spiritual wickedness more than I understand the parallel of this earthly realm. As you said there are numbers of very bad people/organizations/movements/ideologies using one another in all of their aims to try and pull down the United States IMHO. They are pulled together by evil that maybe they might not even understand. I personally believe that cults like “Christian Identity” and beliefs like this are part of the evil threatening are freedom.

All I know is that I want to be right on God's side, and this attitude coming from some who say they are not against the Jews, but really are is not on the right side. This is one of the reasons I separate myself from people who call themselves “patriots” but use terminology that I consider evil.

The other reason is political. Being from Idaho you might remember what happened to Larry Craig’s staff person after speaking to a crowd in Riggins. Some of these people used this kind of rhetoric and the press really tried to use it against Larry. Same thing happened to Larry Pratt ,(GOA), and the press used it against Pat Buchanan.

From the Idaho GOP Platform:

”We believe the effect of NAFTA, GATT and the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the Idaho economy has been negative. Therefore, we support favorable appropriate revisions to these treaties and organizations. .”

The Idaho GOP also passed a resolution saying the US needs to get out of the UN.

The language in the platform is not strong enough for me. And unfortunately until we get rid of the open primary in Idaho we will not be able to elect people who will respect he platform.

[CARepubGal]

You are personalizing my concerns for some reason I don't understand. Eustace is an unknown quantity to me, as is Jeff. I do form my opinions based on the posts I see and the results are not so favorable And in accordance to your desire to stick to the topic, let's resume discussing Free Trade,

I prefer Von Mises' opinion about the subject (Von Mises came over to the Univ of Chicago to teach Libertarian economic theory and avoid being imprisoned and/or killed when Hitler and friends took over Austria: libertarians and socialists are not a good mix). After emigrating to the US, he began teaching and writing. Von Mises theory on government is that there are only TWO legitimate Federal roles: to prevent fraud and prevent the imposition of force. The Free Market in Von Mises view is self governing and self correcting: if a vendor sells a poor product, the market will drive this vendor out of business. And if someone sells a product produced in a questionable manner (child or slave labor or a multitude of bad practices), the market will drive that person out of business when the information is made available. I find his ideals more and more realistic these days (at first I thought Von Mises was a bit of an idealist about the nature of humans). But reading his writings during the Clinton era was a good reason at the time to see mankind as irredeemably depraved.

[Jeff Head]

Thank you for returning the discussion to its intended topic. I appreciate that.

As to the roile of the government, In tend to agree. But, when the Federal governent, through its policies, invites and encourages nations and entities to participate in the free market who are the anti-thesis of every defining moral principle that establishes that free market...it is not only allowing fraud, it is committing it.

I agree that there needs to be much, much less governmental involvement and regulation as regards the free market...but unfettered participation in the free market must be by those nations that are free. Otherwise you not only make a mockery of the free market, you corrupt it. That is exactly what is happening today IMHO.

As I have said before, otherwise you can compare it to hoping that your wife and children will be alright amongst known rapists and pedophiles whom you have invited into your home while you are away.

...and this does not even begin to speak to the national security issues of such so-called free trade with our technology and critical industries through outsourcing with nations like Red China, which outsourcing influence on the free market is what this thread was meant to be about.

But...in this I am repeating myself. See my post 307 for further thoughts regarding the same.

[StatesEnemy]

That's odd... I seem to be doing just fine. Same goes for 99.999% of Americans I know.

What a tiny man you are...

[GOP_1900AD]

Today I have witnessed overt expressions, on the parts of supposedly "professional" corporate representatives, of anti governmental (in a bad way, not in a good way) Jacobin revolutionary fervor, and an attitude which despises Borders, Language and Culture. Specifically, names which would make big headlines have been heard to deride the renewed (albeit still too weak) focus on national security, and to claim that everything being done by our President to protect us is somehow a joke. It is incumbant on those who protect this nation to crack down on *all* who make war on us, or who enable it, no matter how high their station, no matter how much they contributed to W in 2000 and no matter how much they plan to contribute in 2004. There is no quarter for traitors and those who, while not commiting treason, clearly violate common sense ethical considerations in light of the assault on us by the enemies of the West.

[GOP_1900AD]

Ping.

[GOP_1900AD]

I feel sorry for Bush and everyone else trying to do even a fraction of what is right. Unfortunately, the utter lack of cooperation by corporate leaders is going to doom even our lagging efforts to defeat. Something drastic needs to be done. These kumbaya corporate globalism people have no respect for anything or anyone and have no real sense of rightful authority. I hate to say it but someone needs to start, figuratively speaking, cracking heads. Perp walks of frauds is nothing. We need draconian controls and restrictions on the activities of corporations as they pertain to our security and our geopolitical position. And enforcement must be sure, swift and brutal. Realistically, only public executions would be dramatic enough to convince the most egomaniacal perps of just who is the overarching authority over them. I know this sounds a bit fascist but let us remember even "liberal" FDR almost went this far in WW-II. I guess I've got the blood of a remnent archgeneral running in my veins today, but you would too if you heard what I heard in the halls of corporate power I sit in. Some a**hole whose name you'd recognize was saying that even the *wimpy* tightening of borders, etc, thus far is a "knee jerk reaction!" Excuse me! We are the ones being attacked! Knee jerk reaction? These are the words of a traitor, if not in deed, than at least in spirit!

[Mathlete]

PING

[FBD]

bookmarking.
Thanks for the link.

[Jeff Head]

FYI...posted this a couple fo years ago. Still feel the same way.

[investigateworld]

Good article. What some are calling free trade appears to be nothing more than wage arbitrage, i.e. seeking the lowest wage to produce goods intended solely for another market.

[Jeff Head]

Exactly...among other things.

Thanks for responding and BUMPING this oldie but goodie!

PING to some other freepers.

[SunnyD1182]

Right on. I'm not going to bother reading the comments, as I'm sure that the free trade mongrels have been dropping their talking points all over you. But you're absolutely right, keep up the good work.

[tahotdog]

Amen.

[Jeff Head]

Actually...it got a lot of really good posts and some good discussion. A little vitriol, but not too much.

When hoping to educate people who have long been told something different, you have to be able to stand up to that and continue to try and dialog with those who will carry on a reasoned discussion, and ignore the pure detractors.

At least, that is what I try to do.