MESSAGE
| DATE | 2017-01-21 |
| FROM | Rick Moen
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout-NYLXS] Word of the Year for 2016
|
Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben-at-mrbrklyn.com):
> >
> > I'm a capitalist, and one who agrees with the basic economist consensus
> > that lower tariff barriers and free[r] trade is in almost every case
> > better on balance for all participating countries (though obviously not
> > for every individual in every country), where by 'better' I mean in a
> > material sense. Closing down trade opportunities makes all partners to
> > that trade poorer.
>
> Yeah this is the disagreement and not just between us. First, I'm a Jew
> and not a Capitalist or Socialist or any other 'ist'. However,
> Capitalism requires fair competition and markets, which are regulated
> fairly and similarly.
This seems so far to be changing the subject in particularly bizarre
way, since nothing about lowering tariff barriers and free[r] trade
would imply otherwise.
> It is not Capitalism to have trade agreements (which is not the same
> thing as trade perse, BTW) with organizaitions/nation states/powers to
> be use slave labor or strip the environment. it is JUST supporting
> slavery and stripping the environment etc etc.
Er, actually, it _is_ capitalism to exchange goods and services with
countries that deal with their own citizens and environment in
questionable or even downright horrific ways. The United States has
done that since before there even was a United States, i.e., for our
entire history as a people.
Our laws attempt to prevent our trading firms from directly supporting
the worst bits of behavior of some foreign governments. For example,
the laws against trafficking in human beings prohibit commercial deals
that involve workers in slavery. A recent Associated Press
investigation found that US import firms Santa Monica Seafoods,
Stavis Seafoods, and Sysco, possibly inadvertently, had been buying
seafood products processed in Thailand for enslaved Burmese fishing
workers caught in the 'employ' of Thai firm Thai Union Frozen Product,
Thailand's largest seafood company.
The US firms involve, asked to comment, replied that that despite their
best efforts, at present there could not be guarantees that their supply
chains did not contain illegally caught fish. The problem is that the
fish in question comes into a particular Thai port (Samut Sakhon) on
long-distance trawlers returning from fishing, and then divided up at a
market hub implicated in this illicit trading, in order to make the
catches untraceable.
WIth reasonable luck, based on the new AP data, there will now be an
investigation attempting to ensure that the US firms were at least not
complicit in the crime, and making sure they do everything reasonably
possible to avoid criminally produced product.
This is of course a fallible process, because we cannot have visibility
into all the details of other people's business. But, as with the
problem of North Korea, we have more influence if we have a presence
in those countries' marketplaces than if we are totally absent.
Now, in the above, I've made some significant effort to be specific and
discuss the real world rather than just bandy ideology. Would you be
kind enough to do the same? You know, 'specific'?
Since the orange menace with cute little tiny hands foams at the mouth
so much about China, let's also discuss China in that regard. Just as
with the Soviet gulag system, China does have prison industries in
camps where convicts are forced to produce product, which makes them by
any honest assessment slaves. These prison camps are domestically
called 'laogai', a contraction of 'láodòng gǎizào', which literally
translates to 'reform through labor'. Some millions of Chinese
convicts (and also prisoners awaiting trial) are, at any moment, caught
in this system. How many millions you hear depends on who you ask.
This system's pretty horrible, and one might also spare a thought for
horrible aspect of the rule of that country generally. However, US
firms doing trade with China are strictly forbidden from having any
commercial connection to the laogai system. Those factories you hear
are so horrible like the Foxconn factories that build computers,
smartphones, and tablets for Apple, Inc. and other US companies?
The workers are not only not enslaved, but also those are much-prized
jobs that CHinese workers vie for and practically beg for.
[...]
Going ahead with plans to double the size of its Zhengzhou campus,
Foxconn is hiring. And, as you can see from photos via M.I.C Gadget's
Chris Chang, these jobs are competitive. Below we have what Chang
described as a "Huge crowd of job seekers was seen outside the labor
agency throughout the day." And, above we have a similar sentiment from
Reuters photographer Donald Chan taken at an August 2010 job fair.
[...]
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/many-chinese-workers-want-those-jobs-foxconn/332419/
This is because, even as long and brutal are the hours required and the
exacting nature of the quality control, these are incredible
opportunities for the job-seekers in question. They're dream jobs --
compared to the rural poverty that the workers are fleeing to seeks the
limited number of factory openings. Industrialization is a huge leg
up for Chinese families and for Chinese society in general; it beats the
heck out of what preceded it. And, if that were not true, the crowds
would be fleeing Foxconn and banging at the doors of rural villages with
rice paddies. You know how many workers do that? Zero. And there's
nothing stopping them.
So, in short, what's your point, Ruben?
You want the USA to cut off commercial relations with China because you
don't like how that country treats its people? If so, then fuck you,
and I'm glad you're in no position to make any decisions for anyone.
If your point is that people in some foreign countries work cheaply, and
frequently might undercut US goods and services, gosh, I'm glad you
learned at least _that_ much in Economics for Poets, but if your remedy
is 'Then, we need to prohibit or punish goods and services from
countries that do it cheaply', then you have sadly flunked the
successor course, Macroeconomics 101. And, guess what, Ruben? Some
stupidity is just too much trouble for me to deal with. If you really
think that, you're going to have to get your remedial Macroeconomics 101
from somebody other than me.
And that is largely because, no, I am actually not a sucker, but thanks
for checking. You wore out that welcome permanently when you asked me
about the claims of chemical and biological weapons in Saddam Hussein's
Iraq leading up to the 2003 invasion, I obliged with a careful, long,
and nuanced analysis, and then you blew that off without reading it.
You can do that to me -once- only. Massively wasting my time and
treating my careful analysis with contempt is a mistake you now have on
your record and I am unwilling to do that ever again.
So, yeah, trade protectionism is a moronic idea, and the reasons are
blindingly obvious and well known, but I'm not going to bother to teach
them to you because I learn from experience. And also, very sincerely
fuck you for your prior ingratitude and disrespect on that prior occasion.
> > And at least with trade relations with those countries,
> > you have hopes of influencing labor laws, environmental regulation, and
> > transparent government that you didn't have before.
>
> There is no chance of this.
It actually happens all the time. You can find examples of same very
easily. If you want me to prove it to you, though, fuck off.
I expect you're able to see the pattern in that.
> > You know what most
> > of those Chinese workers would have gotten out of life without their
> > soul-destroying factory jobs? Soul-destroying rural poverty. And you
> > know the single biggest reason we have no influence inside North Korea?
> > Because of no trade.
>
> no... In fact, it is the opposite.
You have no fucking clue on this subject. But I have zero patience to
pursue that matter further.
[...]
> > On Dec. 22nd, the president-elect tweeted that the US 'must greatly
> > strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the
> > world comes to its senses regarding nukes'. Pretty much everyone
> > familiar with nuclear policy rose as one to say 'WTF?' To clarify, he
> > spoke the next day on television's Morning Joe interview program, and
> > rather than walk that remark back, he doubled down, saying he is fine
> > with the country taking part in an 'arms race' if it puts the U.S. in a
> > stronger position against foreign adversaries.
>
> That is the correct position, IMO.
You are pretty much insane.
I see no reason to debate an obviously insane position.
> Correct....
>
> He is not alone in that assesement.
I'm sure the locked wards are full of them.
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