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A lot of people argue "free market! free market! The market will take care of itself!"

From Hieronymous on the Commodity Futures Trading Act of 1974:

"the transactions and prices of commodities on such boards of trade are susceptible to speculation, manipulation, and control, and sudden or unreasonable fluctuations in the price thereof frequently result of such speculation, manipulation, or control, which are detrimental to the producer or the consumer and the persons handling commodities and the producer and byproducts thereof in interstate commerce"

Commodity futures markets look to be the free-est markets there are. And maybe it is so. But it is only extensive regulation by government that makes it so.

Extending this to free markets, only government regulation can guarantee a truely free market. Anarchy leads directly to disaster.

This can be extended to real estate and mining claims. Without laws there is chaos.

only government regulation can guarantee a truely free market

Exactly. Fair trade bump. Free is good when everyone has the same set of rules.

Football has rules, yet the competition decides who is really the best team.

No one else's government stays out of the international market. Thats why Bush getting trade powers was/is a good thing.

If our "trade" "partner" sells everything to the US, but at the same time throws every road block to us selling to them, thats not a square deal. The US should take a pound of flesh out of someones @ss when they start things of that nature.

China is on the top of the list.

Better yet, with China there is very little hope to ever have anything nearing, or even resembling balanced trade.

With that being the case, I am of the opinion that we should trade with those countries who offer such opportunities.

We should not screw up our economics in order to satisfy someone's politics. We should do business the way that is fair and balanced. After that, deal with the issues that come up. Don't throw out the first in order to avoid the second though.

You know, now that I think about it, a lot of the time, the real problem here is that these countries are scared of us.

We are pretty darn good at business, marketing, selling, etc. In a fair competition, who is gonna come out on top?

Are they going to out innovate us? No. Are they going to out market us? No. Are they going to be more creative than us as a whole? No.

They know this. We are not hegemons. We are just better at what we do, and it challenges their strongholds.

Without laws there is chaos. Today's Third World republics like Russia have laws, but still there is chaos. Merely imposing a representative democratic political system on a Third World country won't make it suddenly law-abiding or a mirror image of Peoria, IL, overnight. Laws developed in Western society over centuries (English common law, etc.) as a result largely of growing capitalism, which required standardized laws in order for capitalism to grow and become efficient on a large-scale. So the best way to make China or any other country law-abiding is to allow it to have long experience with capitalism, so that the people themselves can gradually over time realize the need for laws and start to respect and obey the law and develop a law-abiding general mindset and culture. Then, if and when a representative democracy is officially adopted, it won't be a crime-ridden joke like Russia or India (which have all the laws in the world but no one obeys them).