Free Trade Agreements

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What I am saying is that if the american millitary weren't there the third world countries could pass environmental legeslation and elect "communist" leaders, thus preventing the corporations from doing any real damage.

If it weren't for American millitary bullying then the people in the third world working in the factories could protest and the American corperations would have no choice but to pay them higher wages.

Or move out. The corps can leave. If they can't sell their property they should blow it up.

ruveyn

Wow ok...that is kind of horrible but I guess everyone is entitled to their opinion...

Well its not just the military nessisarly, but there are 'ecomomicists' who use their skills to manipulate leaders of these these countries to make deals with U.S corporations to basically put them in debt to the U.S thus helping the rich of those countries and further enslaving the poor so to speak. So yeah there is a lot of bullying taking place because some of these huge profit oriented corporations ran by powerful indivudials do not know when enough is enough.....they behave like psychopaths actually.

Or not invest at all in those countries. Why bother?

ruveyn

America is not the reason there are third-world countries where people live in desperation and squalor.
It is not the U.S. military's fault, nor the fault of "American money".

Parts of Africa and Asia were hell-holes long before the U.S. became a major player in world affairs.

ruveyn

As a citizen of a small country with what is arguably the least regulated and least protected ecconomy in the OECD I don't think 'free trade' has worked for us.
We were thrust into it by disciples of the Chicago school in the mid 1980's and as a small and remote ecconomy it just does not work, with the exceptiom of China and Australia all our trading partners continue to subsidise industry, place tarrifs and in some cases even block products entirely to protect their own ecconomies [both Chaina and Aussie still do but to a lesser degree].
Free trade only works for large developed ecconomies and invariably rapes the smaller or lesser developed ecconomy who end up locked into redource exploitation or primary product production and then either fail to develop their ecconomy or actually go backwards. It's like declaring a bare knuckles fight between a 6'3'' grown man and a five year old and declaring it 'free and fair'.
New Zealand has effectively been asset stripped by global capital and our manufacturing sector shrunk, we are as in debt as a nation as we ever were yet the state assets we once owned built by the sweat and blood of our forebears are now owned for the most part off shore and are undermaintained, run entirely for profit and not within a social dimension. We have almost no indigenous banking sector and our farming industry works to pay huge debts to foreign banks in order to farm our own damn country producing products our own people often can't afford because they must buy at internationally set prices [dairy for example] or we get all the sub standard produce that was not deemed worthy of export.
Free Trade has catergorically not been good for most New Zealanders, our rich/poor gap is greater than ever and we are bullied and coerced into actions by our state that have no real popular support just to try and keep 'in good' with our trading 'partners'. We have less independence than ever before and are effectively being stripped back to a colonial third world state managed by a conciencless 'globalised' corporatocracy [a more venal bunch of souless vampires you could not find].
I fully support the renationalisation of our essential infrastructure, state support for natural and native industries and nationalisation of the banking and oil industries the profits from which enable the state to manage our society at a high standard while allowing low personal tax rates. All this could be done if we had patriotic leadership and realigned ourselves out of being bullied by ecconomic and military giants, instead networking with smaller nations and other developing and highly socialised ecconomies like Venezuela, Cuba, South Africa, Bolivia, Brazil although continued alignment ecconomically with our neighbours across the ditch would make continued sense.
The 'Washington Consensus' has proved to be a failure and Free Trade as concieved by the Scottish liberals of the 19th century is an unravelling disaster.

peace j