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To: WOSG
The terms of the exchange most definitely is very often coerced.

Free trade does not occur between individuals. It occurs between vast concentrations of political and corporate power who are able to arbitrage and pocket the differential between the labor costs of that section of humanity that worries about being overweight and that section of humanity that isn't too sure where it's next meal is coming from. "Free trade" isn't at all about freedom. It is about callous, utterly unaccountable power deciding the terms of the exchange.
923 posted on 08/26/2003 4:14:49 PM PDT by Tokhtamish
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To: Tokhtamish
You talk like a Socialist.
You describe something in overwrought highly emotional and non-rational language that disguises rather than explains the real proces at work.

Both you and the Socialists are wrong.

Whether between individuals or organizations, voluntary trading is just that: Voluntary. You could say the same overwrought nonsense about the Stock Market "occurs between vast concentrations of political and corporate power who are able to arbitrage and pocket the differential ..." BUT IT IS STILL VOLUNTARY. The moral GOOD of that is that *only through such exchange can societal wealth be created*.

Now, you may be UNHAPPY that Mrs Consumer goes to Walmart and buys a plastic toy from Walmart Co that buys a wholesale plastic toy from the HongKongtoyDistributor that buys a plastic toy from a low-wage Shangai plastics maker paying 7 yuan a day to laborers, but every exchange is voluntary. And the series of exchanges makes all better off than if Mrs Consumer had no toys to give little Jimmy.

Couch that in whatever morality you choose, but rest assured that each player in the chain would rather do it than not do it.

It is about callous, utterly unaccountable power deciding the terms of the exchange. " Karl Marx couldnt have said it better. Actually, he didnt say it better; he said it about that way. In the interim our standard of living has gone up about 20X, thanks to the improvements in our lives brought to us by "callous" free-enterprise oganizations and corporations.

936 posted on 08/26/2003 4:39:39 PM PDT by WOSG
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