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To: Paul Ross
Unfortunately, there is no reaction possible which will bring about a favorable outcome in the situation you describe.

[...where one nation is large enough and their government totalitarian power over its people is sufficient to game the free market...]


This does in fact happen as you say in China, and the result is that it economically hurts its trading partners, such as the United States, but it also economically hurts China as well, though like all short sighted governments they only see the immediate and close at hand benefit of their "gaming" the system and don't see how those benefits must always be offset by larger costs to their overall economy.

There is no way that any government can legislate its way around the law of supply and demand or make the total value of goods and services which are bought and sold worth any more or less by altering the supply of the money that keeps track of such transactions. Weather a democratic country like the United States or a non-democratic country like China attempts to do so doesn't change the fact that nobody benefits in the long term.

In my opinion, it can only be hoped that the countries which have discovered this inevitability will continue to put "diplomatic" pressure on reluctant governments and try to convince them of the long term benefits to everyone of abandoning all forms of economic protectionism. This is the theory behind "free trade" agreements, which I support on ideological grounds, and when properly and fairly enacted, encourage just this outcome.
160 posted on 11/11/2005 12:51:13 PM PST by spinestein (Screw the Golden Rule. Follow the Brazen Rule.)
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To: spinestein
Well, it sounds like, at least at the theoretical level, we have much more in agreement than disagreement.

I guess I am just more dubious about the success of diplomacy. Particularly whereas the Chi-Comms have already successfully intruded themselves into our own hemisphere...and obtained allies with not merely Cuba, but Venezuela and Brazil... and have their bases in the Bahamas and at both ends of the Panama Canal. So much for the Monroe Doctrine.

Diplomacy is essential still, but is by no means sufficient, nor effective without the tools of retaliation.

This was the force that Reagan brought to bear on the "allies" who were intemperately "sharing" U.S. technology with the Soviets which they didn't have the right to...they were threatened with a complete cut-off of all such licensing rights and trade with the U.S. market.

162 posted on 11/11/2005 1:19:00 PM PST by Paul Ross ("The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the govt and I'm here to help)
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