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nettime's_roving_reporter <nettime@bbs.thing.net>
Counterpunch on Seattle
"cisler" <cisler@pobox.com>
Seattle-pi.com summary article
Seattle talks collapse
katie@imt.net
Re: <nettime> The WTO and the De-synchronization of the Global
Economy
Lucky Green <shamrock@cypherpunks.to>
WTO
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Date: Sat, 4 Dec 1999 09:47:24 -0500
From: nettime's_roving_reporter <nettime@bbs.thing.net>
Subject: Counterpunch on Seattle
<http://www.counterpunch.org/>
December 3, 1999
Here's a might-have-been for you. All day long, Tuesday, November 30,
the street warriors in downtown Seattle vindicated their pledge to
shut down the first day of the WTO talks, in itself a rousing victory.
Locked-down Earth-First!ers, Ruckus Society agitators, anarchists and
other courageous troublemakers sustained baton charges, tear gas and
rubber bullets, hopefully awaiting reinforcement from the big labor
rally taking place around the space needle, some fifteen or twenty
blocks from downtown. As the morning ticked away and the cops got
rougher, the street warriors kept asking, "Where are the labor
marchers?", expecting that at any moment thousands of longshoremen and
teamsters would reinforce them in the desperate fray.
But the absent legions of labor never showed. Suppose they had.
Suppose there had been 30,000 to 40,000 protesters around the
convention center, vowing to keep it shut all week. Would the cops
have charged such a force? Downtown could have been held all night,
and perhaps President Bill would have been forced to make his
welcoming address from SeaTac or from the sanctuary of his ardent
campaign funder, the Boeing Company. That would have been a
humiliation for imperial power of historic proportions, like the
famous greeting the Wobblies organized to greet president Woodrow
Wilson after the breaking of the Seattle general strike in l9l9 when
workers and their families lined the streets, block after block,
standing in furious silence as the President's motorcade passed by.
Wilson had his stroke not long thereafter.
This might-have been is not posed out of churlishness, but to
encourage a sense of realism about what is possible in the struggle
against the trading arrangements now operative in the WTO.
Take organized labor, as embodied in the high command of the AFL-CIO.
As these people truly committed to the destruction of the WTO? Of
course they aren't. It was back in February of this year that the
message came down from AFL-CIO HQ that rallying in Seattle was fine,
but the plan was not to shut down the WTO. Labor's plan was to work
from the inside. As far as any street action was concerned, the deals
were cut long ago. Labor might huff and labor might puff, but when it
comes to the WTO what labor wants, in James Hoffa's phrase, is a seat
at the table.
And what does this seat at the table turn out to be? At Seattle those
labor chieftains were willing to settle for a truly threadbare bit of
window dressing, in the shape of a working group which will, in the
next round of WTO talks, be sensitive to labor's concerns. Here's the
chronology. The present trade round will ponder the working group's
mission and composition and make recommendations for the next round of
trade talks. Then, when the next round gets under way, the working
group will perhaps take form. Guess what? It's at least 20l4AD before
the working group is up and running.
Sweeney's AFL-CIO isn't against the WTO. Sweeney himself is physically
fading into the woodwork. One well informed-friend of CounterPunch
used the brutal comparison (in health terms) of Boris Yeltsin. Gerry
Shea, Sweeney's head of government affairs and the man essentially
running the show at l6th St in Washington, has no ideological posture
on the issue, and listens closely to his old friend David Smith, who
heads the AFL-CIO's public policy department and who is a zealous free
trader, cerebellum thickly stuffed with neo-liberal hokum.
There are unions -- the autoworkers, steelworkers, teamsters,
machinists, UNITE -- which have rank and file members passionately
concerned about "free trade" when, as a in the case of teamsters, it
means Mexican truck drivers coming over the border at $2 an hour. But
how many of these unions are truly ready to break ranks and holler
Death to the WTO? For that matter, how many of them are prepared to
think in world terms, as the capitalists do? Take the steel workers,
the only labor group which, in the form of the Alliance for
Sustainable Jobs and the Environment, took up position in downtown
that Tuesday morning (and later fought with the cops and endured tear
gas themselves). But on that same day, November 30, the Moscow Tribune
ran a story reporting that the Clinton administration has effectively
stopped all cold-rolled steel imports from Russia by imposing penalty
duties of l78 per cent. Going into winter those Russian working
families at Severstal, Novolipetsk and Magnitogorsk are facing tougher
times than ever. The Moscow Tribune's report, John Helmer, wasn't in
doubt why: "Gore must try to preserve steel company and steel worker
support."
As the preceding item suggests, there's no such thing as "free trade".
The present argument is not about trade, for which (except for maybe a
few bioregionialists in Ecotopia) all are in favor in some measure.
The argument is about how trade is to be controlled, how wealth is to
be made and distributed. The function of the WTO is to express in
trade rules the present balance of economic power on the world held by
the big corporations, which see the present WTO round as an
opportunity to lock in their gains, to enlist its formal backing in
their ceaseless quest for cheap labor and places to dump their
poisons.
So ours is a worldwide guerilla war, of publicity, harassment,
obstructionism. It's nothing simple, like the "Stop the War" slogan of
the l960s. Capitalism could stop that war and move on. American
capitalism can't stop trade and survive on any terms it cares for.
We truly don't want a seat at the table to "reform" trade rules,
because if we get one, then sooner or later we'll be standing
alongside Global Exchange's Medea Benjamin proclaiming that Nike,
which pays its workers less than 20 cents an hour, has made "an
astounding transformation", and in Seattle actually defending Nike's
premises from well-merited attack by the street warriors. Capitalism
only plays by the rules if it wrote those rules in the first place.
The day the WTO stipulates the phase-in of a world minimum wage of $3
an hour is the day the corporations destroy it and move on. Anyone
remember those heady days in the l970s of the New World Economic Order
when third world countries were going to get a fair shake for their
commodities? We were at a far more favorable juncture back then, but
it wasn't long before the debt crisis had struck, the NWEO was dead
and the mildly progressive UN Commission on Trade and Development
forever sidelined. Publicity, harassment, obstructionism...Think
always in terms of international solidarity. Find targets of
opportunity. South Africa forces domestic licensing at cheaper rates
of AIDS drugs. Solidarity. The Europeans don't want bio-engineered
crops. Fight on that front. Challenge the system at the level of its
pretensions. Make demands in favor of real free trade. Get rid of
copyright and patent restrictions and fees imposed on developing
nations. Take Mexico. Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and
Policy Research reckons that Mexico paid the industrial nations last
year $4.2 billion in direct royalties, fees and indirect costs. And
okay, let's have real free trade in professional services, with
standardization in courses and tests so that kids from Mexico and
elsewhere can compete with our lawyers, accountants and doctors.
A guerilla war, without illusions or respectable ambitions. Justice in
world trade is by definition a revolutionary and utopian aim. CP
CounterPunch
3220 N Street, NW, PMB 346
Washington, DC 20007
1-800-840-3683
counterpunch@counterpunch.org
© Copyright: 1998-1999. All rights reserved.
_________________________________________________________________
CounterPunch is a project of the Institute for the Advancement of
Journalistic Clarity
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Date: Sat, 04 Dec 1999 04:14:25 -0800
Subject: Seattle-pi.com summary article
From: "cisler" <cisler@pobox.com>
<For other articles about the conference, see the www.seattle-pi.com web site>
WTO summit ends in failure
Saturday, December 4, 1999
By MICHAEL PAULSON and ROBERT McCLURE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS
The world's trade ministers last night abandoned their effort to launch a
new round of global trade negotiations, bringing an ugly conclusion to an
ugly week.
The meeting of the World Trade Organization, hampered throughout the week
by sometimes violent protests, broke up just before 10 p.m. when delegates
from 135 nations said they could not agree on an agenda for future trade
talks.
"Essentially, they just could not get the work done," said WTO spokesman
Keith Rockwell.
The defeat for the trade ministers was a major blow to President Clinton,
who had said success in Seattle required the launch of a new round of
global trade talks. It was also a blow to the U.S. business community,
which wants greater access to foreign markets.
U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky attempted to put the best
face on defeat, saying trade ministers will attempt at some later date to
pick up where they left off.
"It would be best to take a time out, consult with one another and find a
creative means to finish the job," she said.
WTO Director-General Mike Moore described the Seattle meeting as "a
remarkable meeting. Much was done. That will not be lost."
And then in remarks that provoked derisive laughter from delegates, some of
whom had been mauled on Tuesday trying to get into the convention center,
he said: "This city, what a magnificent place. If only the world could be
like Seattle."
WTO critics, who had marched in the streets seeking to stop the WTO's push
toward ever-expanding global trade, were delighted.
Outside the King County Jail, hundreds of protesters cheered and banged on
drums when they learned talks had collapsed.
Across town, they danced in front of the hotel where Clinton stayed earlier
in the week.
"The allegedly unstoppable force of globalization just hit the immovable
object called grass-roots democracy," said Lori Wallach, director of Public
Citizen's Global Trade Watch.
Environmentalists also were elated.
"I'm very happy," said Andrea Durbin of Friends of the Earth. "It's very
clear that the governments couldn't agree because of the lack of openness,
and it's clear that the WTO is never going to be the same again."
U.S. labor unions also proclaimed victory. Earlier in the day, the WTO had
been poised to reject everything sought by organized labor.
"They can't go home and forget this," said David Smith, the director of
public policy for the AFL-CIO. "This is a turning point in the debate."
Inside the convention center, however, some officials downplayed the role
of the protesters in killing the talks.
Rockwell said the talks failed because the WTO, with 135 countries trying
to operate by consensus, proved too unwieldy. He also said the topics
discussed in Seattle were too complex to be resolved in a week, and he said
that Third World nations "became furious" because they were not involved in
enough of the negotiations.
"The idea that we can just sweep into some town somewhere on the planet and
pull together a document in four days is probably an antiquated notion,"
said Bill Bryant, a Seattle international trade consultant. "You have an
organization that is run by 135 countries . . . If this were run by
corporate elites, the trains would have run on time."
Ultimately, the talks were sunk by the ire of delegates from the developing
world, who have repeatedly complained that they were not benefiting from
globalization. The United States and Europe offered preferential trade
treatment to those nations, but that was apparently not enough to soothe
delegates from Africa, Asia and Latin America.
But the delegates said that the protests and resulting disorganization set
them back two days. They never recovered.
"It started off on the wrong foot and we scrambled to get into gear," said
Kobsak Chutikul, director-general for economic affairs in Thailand. "We
couldn't get the big picture together."
The collapse of the talks does not mean that the move toward globalization
ends; trade officials will gather at WTO headquarters in Geneva next year
and continue to talk about reducing barriers to trade in agriculture and
services. But there is now no guarantee anything will get done because the
delegates could not set specific deadlines by which they would agree to a
specific agenda, such as the elimination of agricultural subsidies.
Barshefsky asked for negotiators to resume their talks at an unnamed time
and place, and Anthony Gooch, a negotiator for the European Union, said
there was no date set for resuming negotiations.
"We tried to build bridges, but it was too far," Gooch said.
Plans for any resumption of the new round of trade talks were completely up
in the air. And there is no broad, agreed-upon pact that would outline what
areas of the world economy should be liberalized next.
"I don't know if there is a chance of restarting the negotiations in weeks
or even in months," said Gregor Kreuzhaber, a spokesman for the European
Union.
Smaller and poorer countries have long felt slighted in the WTO, where they
say they are pushed around by bigger, stronger countries. Many Third World
countries view with suspicion initiatives advanced by developed countries,
and this week they complained that they were being excluded from important
meetings.
Third World countries found themselves disadvantaged as wealthy countries
with huge delegations were able to send people to a variety of meetings at
all times of the day. Japan had 88 negotiators in Seattle; the United
States 85 and the Europeans 76. By contrast, Belize, Burkina Faso and the
Congo each had five, while Dominica could afford only four.
"The Third World countries are reeling," said Victoria Corpuz of Third
World Network, a Malaysia-based group working to protect indigenous tribes.
Early yesterday, at a meeting of all delegations, representatives of
African countries reportedly booed Barshefsky. Then in the late afternoon,
delegations from Africa, Latin America and Asia joined to begin drafting a
statement saying they would not agree to the new round of trade talks,
which would throw the launching of the round into jeopardy.
A joint communique of the Latin American and Caribbean countries on
Thursday attacked "a process of limited and reserved participation by some
members."
Negotiators attempted last night to salvage the talks by agreeing on a very
vague description of what the new round of talks would include -- which
trade negotiators would term a failure -- or by staying late to satisfy the
Third World delegations.
"Maybe it's better to have it more vague, because that opens up the door
for more reviews of these agreements, which is what we want," said Corpuz
of Third World Network.
The week got off to a tumultuous start as tens of thousands of protesters,
upset about the WTO's impact on labor, environmental and consumer issues,
stormed the streets. Some of the protests turned violent, and police
responded with tear gas and rubber pellets.
A security scare on Monday forced a delay of the WTO's first-ever
full-scale meeting with critics from non-governmental organizations. On
Tuesday, protesters blocked access to the Paramount, forcing cancellation
of formal opening ceremonies, and to the convention center, causing a delay
in the start of negotiations.
Protests continued throughout the week, but tougher police action,
assistance from the National Guard and the imposition of a downtown curfew
meant that delegates were largely unaffected by the ongoing guerrilla
theater. Yesterday marked the first protests inside the convention center,
when on two occasions accredited non-governmental officials unfurled
smuggled banners and shouted slogans inside the building before being
collared by police.
The policy debate, always difficult in an organization with as diverse a
membership as the WTO, was protracted and unpleasant. The United States
attacked European and Japanese farm subsidies, Japan attacked U.S.
steel-protection measures, and the developing world complained that it was
not gaining any benefits no matter what the WTO did.
President Clinton, who spent about 30 hours in town on Tuesday and
Wednesday, threw a further wrench into the works when, on the eve of his
arrival, he told the Post-Intelligencer that he wanted a proposed WTO
working group on trade and labor to develop labor standards that would
eventually be enforceable by trade sanctions. That comment, although
welcomed by labor groups, irritated developing nations concerned that they
would suffer as a result, and Clinton's labor agenda was sunk.
Clinton yesterday intervened personally to try to rescue the U.S. agenda,
telephoning foreign leaders, including Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi
and European Union President Romano Prodi.
The administration was facing another defeat as the WTO was poised to
review the U.S. use of anti-dumping laws, which punish countries for
selling products here below cost. The United States has aggressively used
the laws to defend politically powerful industries such as steel, and had
been adamant that it would not agree even to talk about the subject at the
WTO.
And the United States was losing another fight over opening the WTO itself
to greater public scrutiny by opening tribunals to the public, and by
allowing environmental, labor and other groups to file "friend of the
court" briefs. But the U.S. effort won little support, in part because many
smaller countries fear that allowing participation by non-governmental
organizations, which often are based in industrialized countries, would
further bias the WTO toward the interests of wealthy countries.
Dan Seligman of the Sierra Club acknowledged that there was little to
celebrate. Still, Seligman was comforted by the high turnout at anti-WTO
demonstrations.
"Regardless of what happens to the negotiations, we achieved our objectives
beyond our wildest expectations," Seligman said.
"The average American simply didn't know the WTO existed on Monday. Just
five days later, the average American has now heard of the WTO, and they
know that it makes some people angry -- some of whom look like they do, and
some of whom they saw on TV carrying American flags."
Ritchie and Seligman both predicted that the protests and the attention the
WTO got in Seattle will eventually force the organization to reform.
"I think the WTO has changed forever," Ritchie said.
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Date: Sat, 04 Dec 1999 04:06:08 -0800
Subject: Seattle talks collapse
From: "cisler" <cisler@pobox.com>
I got back from Seattle on Friday morning. I have not had time to write up
my impressions of Thursday. I took part in Food and Agriculture Day which
involved some wonderful events, all of which ran smoothly. Farmers from
around the world took part in a breakfast, a meeting in a safe place with
no admission charge or police, a peaceful march to a park, and then
break-out sessions to strategize. Others marched to a Cargill grain
elevator. It went well.
Lots of other things were going on at the city level and with the WTO
itself. For me, the most amazing thing was that delegates booed Charlene
Barshefsky when she spoke! And when Moore announced the end of the talks,
he paid a tribute to the city of Seattle. According to the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, it "provoked derisive laughter" among the delegates.
The best quote may be this:
"The idea that we can just sweep into some town
somewhere on the planet and pull together a
document in four days is probably an antiquated
notion," said Bill Bryant, a Seattle international
trade consultant. "You have an organization that is
run by 135 countries . . . If this were run by
corporate elites, the trains would have run on time."
So where is il Duce, now that the WTO needs him?
Steve Cisler
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From: katie@imt.net
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1999 16:30:04 -0800
Subject: Re: <nettime> The WTO and the De-synchronization of the Global
Economy
12/3/99 fr 4:04 pm mst
This is a very exciting post from Stratfor; really it is just an
astonishing new viewpoint. And this analysis is something quite fresh and
original to me.
Of course we have discussed the effect of capital controls elsewhere, with
special attention to the Malaysian maverick, Mahathir, who put on capital
controls in Malaysia and come through the recent Asian slump quite a bit
better than the other Asian tigers who let the short term speculators come
in and rip them off, and then let their own fright/flight capital leave for
greener pastures in the bloated US capital markets.
And we have discussed the general and continuing disconnects and
incongruities between the "promises" of glocorpse econ theory as
exemplified by IMF and WTO and the *actual* results of allowing these
PGO's to make the economic rules for other nations, and for us.
So it is with some satisfaction that i see these points vindicated in this
astonishing Stratfor essay. ---this de-synchronization factor is a
brilliant insight.
http://www.stratfor.com/SERVICES/GIU/112999.asp
"
Weekly Analysis GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE UPDATE The WTO and the
De-synchronization of the Global Economy
29 November 1999
SUMMARY The World Trade Organization (WTO) is meeting in Seattle this
week. The participants are so divided that they could not even develop a
formal agenda for the meetings. While everyone is focused on China’s
admission, the fact is that the WTO is moribund, only a few years after
its creation. Its failure is rooted in the fundamental reality of today’s
global economy: desynchronization of regions of roughly equal bulk. Ever
since the Asian meltdown, the world’s economic regions have been
completely out of synch. Indeed, individual nations within regions are out
of synch. That means that the creation of integrated economic policies is
impossible. What helps one region hurts others. Thus, organizations like
the WTO cannot function. Instead, regional institutions are emerging. They,
too, face conflict among constituent nations, but are more likely to create
coherent and beneficial policies for their regions. This points to
increased tension among and within regions. Such de-synchronization has
been seen in the past. It is, over the course of a generation, a warning of
the potential for serious international conflict.
"
See the stratfor report in full at
http://www.stratfor.com/SERVICES/GIU/112999.asp and posted to nettime with
this heading:
"
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 1999 21:30:02 -0600 (EST)
From: "alert@stratfor.com" <alert@stratfor.com>
To: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net
Subject: <nettime> The WTO and the De-synchronization of the Global Economy
Sender: owner-nettime-l@bbs.thing.net
"
With regard to the Stratfor report, a comment was offered that
"desynchronization" may be merely the normal workings of markets; and that
the lack of sychronization could be addressed by "more adaptive universal
trade agreements."
But I think to fully appreciate the desynchronization analysis, one has to
realize that "Free Market" theory has become in fact a theology--and this
*theory* does guide the formation of political policy and economic movement.
And Free Market theory, which comes straight out of Adam Smith and
Ricardo, as John the Baptist and Jesus, or Abraham and Moses (you pick),
is based on a miracle or "law of economics" as it is called.
This miracle or "Law" is the unproven and completely assumed property or
quality that money mediated transactions can, will, and MUST reach a state
of ****self-regulating**** equilibrium called a Free Market, if it is left
alone to work properly. (The corollary is that any human policy
intervention will inevitably tilt and skew this perfect and self-balancing
equilibrium.)
Now this is clearly a deus ex machina, with God in the form of Money and
the Free Market as Holy Mother Church, which by its existence manifests the
will of God and the spread of all innate blessings on
chaotic-and-tending-toward-badness human beings, or bank accounts, as we
like to represent them.
You laugh! Well, this is a quite accurate description of the Free Market
theory. It is assumed without proof that a *truly* Free Market will
self-regulate between the scylla of fascist cartels and the charybdis of
totalitarian government control.
The Free Market theology has *as its foundation* a belief that the truly
Free Market exists something like a law of physics, a sort of monetary law
of gravity, and this truly Free Market has immutable mass/energy equations
which work everywhere at all times equally, and CANNOT BE AVOIDED.
Unfortunately, this is error, and it is usually known by the phrase:
"The Invisible Hand of The Market."
Modern Free Market Theory, triumphant since the 70's, has been used as the
theoretical underpinnings for an "efficient" power grab by fascist cartels,
who since then have become far more fascist, far more cartelized and far
more in control.
But what in fact is demonstrated by the spread of Free Market Theology as a
substitute for reasoned and balanced government policy, is that cartels and
monopolist structures become *inevitable* *inexorable* and *divinely
manifested* by the nature of fiat money and debt-issued financing on the
one hand, and the absence of political restraint/regulation/redistribution
on the other
There is *no* natural tendency to competitive equilibrium and competitive
self-regulation in a Free Market, just as the sun does not revolve around
the earth however so much you believe that it does.
But what Stratfor's desynchronization analysis does is to attack the Free
Market Theory at its fulcrum---it attacks the primary and unproven axiom of
a *natural equilibrium* in global economics by demonstrating the
impossibility of achieving this equilibrium because the regional markets
*cannot* be brought into time based synchronization, and thus they cannot
be brought into *natural equilibrium* by the supposed "Invisible Hand of
The Market."
The current Free Market theology is *stuck* with the glaring fact that
Free Markets cannot and do not resolve the paradoxes of central-bank
debt-issued currency, particularly multiple central banks and multiple debt
currencies. And the Free Market theology cannot resolve the universal
human tendency to prefer gambling to working if gambling (i.e., speculation
without productive purpose or outcome) can be made simple and slow and
incremental enough, and if it rewards those of merely financial acumen and
cunning, as opposed to those who engage in productive and distributive
activity. Thus, it is not a property of the Free Market to self-regulate,
but rather as we have seen, the actual inherent tendency of the Free Market
is merely to pool wealth in the service of non-productive activity. From
this derives the transfer of wealth from productive enterprises to gambling
enterprises *if* gambling can be made to seem safe enough and slow enough.
And with increasing transfers of this wealth-from-labor to speculative
market movements, the Free Market system becomes increasingly drained and
impoverished and unable to maintain the basic economic production and
distribution required for political stability.
Thus, Free Market Theory when it is practiced as a political
orthodoxy---instead of stabilizing the political entity in terms of greater
mass approval and enthusiasm, in fact acts to ultimately destroy its own
consensual and democratic political basis, and to ultimately require the
imposition of police state politics.
Human *financial* self-interest should be the reliable engine but not the
"magical" pilot of our economic management systems.
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Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 23:56:44 -0800
From: Lucky Green <shamrock@cypherpunks.to>
To: Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>
Cc: Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>, tbyfield@panix.com
Subject: WTO
With all this nonsense about electronic sit-ins, below is the most
enlightened WTO related post I read in the last two weeks.
Enjoy,
--Lucky Green <shamrock@cypherpunks.to>
"Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look
upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest."
- Mohandas K. Gandhi, An Autobiography, pg 446
http://www.citizensofamerica.org/missing.ram
--- begin forwarded text
Resent-Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 19:25:07 -0700
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 19:23:21 -0700
To: vinsends@ezlink.com
From: Vin_Suprynowicz@lvrj.com (Vin Suprynowicz)
Subject: Dec. 1 column -- world trade
Resent-From: vinsends@ezlink.com
Resent-Sender: vinsends-request@ezlink.com
Resent-Bcc:
FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED DEC. 1, 1999
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
The 'Free Trade' plot
A strange amalgam of Buchananites, trade unionists, and leftover
environmental kooks have gathered in Seattle this week to protest the
supposed "conspiracy" being hatched there by 3,000 trade officials from
more than 100 nations, gathered in hopes of further reducing barriers to
international trade.
Such Luddite protests have an ancient provenance. Surely there were
demonstrations among beet and turnip growers when those products were in
part displaced from European dining tables by imported American tomatoes
and potatoes 500 years ago. Surely at least a few of those Mediterranean
shipwrecks the archaeologists keep discovering were caused by protesters
upset that the island's local vineyards were under "economic assault" by
those darned cut-rate Athenian amphorae.
The term "saboteur" comes from the habit of unhappy Northern European
tradesmen who would throw their wooden shoes -- "sabots" -- into the belts
and cogs of newly-built factories to stop "greedy industrialists" from
manufacturing and selling for mere pennies the lace and other textiles
which had once been available to the wealthy alone.
(Why, so hideous was this capitalist plot that it eventually allowed even
the poor to buy cotton clothes -- made from a cheap imported fabric, much
to the detriment of domestic wool-gatherers -- and thus wash and change
their clothes, sometimes as often as every week!)
The opening of international borders to trade in recent decades has done
more to spread affluence and raise standards of living than any other
factor. Yet it appears we will never run out of those who whine that free
trade "destroys jobs and harms the environment."
Now, the Seattle protesters have every right to voice their opinions, of
course. And in fact, the intricate compacts enforced by the World Trade
Organization don't always promote trade "freedom" at all -- preliminary
talks failed even to agree on an agenda last week, as one delegation after
another sought to open other people's markets to (start ital)their(end
ital) products while "protecting" their own.
(The French, as usual, proved most amusing -- Agriculture and Fisheries
Minister Jean-Andre Glavany declaring he had no intention of abandoning the
import restrictions and price supports which keep Frenchmen paying three
times what they should for their bread, milk, and cheese, since "I oppose
the ideal of vast empty tracts of land." Would those be vast empty tracts
of land like the ones that now surround Boston, since Massachusetts no
longer finds work exporting striped cloth to clothe the Southern slaves? Or
vast empty tracts of land like those that now typify Silicon Valley, since
the California cattle industry collapsed in the face of cheaper imports a
century ago?)
The rules against "dumping" now enforced by this so-called "free trade"
outfit are a classic case: The concern is always that a powerful exporter
will drive his competitors out of business and then raise his prices. So
... when (start ital)will(end ital) the Rockefeller interests get around to
tripling the price of kerosene? And now that Japanese manufacturers
dominate the television and VCR markets, when (start ital)are(end ital)
their prices going to start climbing, instead of dropping every year in the
face of Korean competition?
Yes, foreign nations may experience some societal upheaval and even
environmental degradation as the Industrial Revolution sweeps through. But
there is no better answer to the problems of the Industrial Revolution than
the affluence (start ital)created(end ital) by the Industrial Revolution --
complete with more discerning consumers, who promptly start demanding
better wages and cleaner air and water than could ever have been imagined
in the days of ox carts and peat fires.
Professor Hans-Herman Hoppe of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas,
probably best answers this "America First" argument when he asks, "Well,
why stop there? Why not Nevada first?" Why should Nevadans tolerate the
"exporting of jobs" from the Nevada horse-breeding and buggy-manufacturing
trades, by allowing the free importation of cheap automobiles from
Michigan? Think of all the Nevada glass-blowing jobs that could be saved,
if we simply stopped allowing all that cheap glass to "pour in" from
Pittsburgh and Corning, N.Y. ...
No, there's no stopping trade -- though politicians are free to
temporarily punish their own people if they wish, creating massive black
markets in anything from smuggled cheese to Freon.
As to this concern that other nations may be unwilling to open their
markets as quickly as ours -- England found the right answer in the 1850s,
becoming the wealthiest nation in the world by the simple expedient of
dropping all her tariff barriers ... unilaterally.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers," was recently named
1999 Freedom Book of the Year by the kind folks at Free-Market.Net. Copies
are $24.95 postpaid from Mountain Media, P.O. Box 271122, Las Vegas, Nev.
89127. Or: dial 1-800-244-2224, or visit web site
http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.
***
Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John
Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and
thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series
of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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