tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861605.post8806488799009934157..comments2024-02-20T13:32:06.704-05:00Comments on Resource Insights: Neoliberals know the price of everything and the value of nothingKurt Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05330759091950742285noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861605.post-56476073947904228742017-01-15T14:55:32.451-05:002017-01-15T14:55:32.451-05:00- Continued -
What is needed now is the measureme...- Continued -<br /><br />What is needed now is the measurement of goods' 'external' costs and benefits, to include both societal goods such as employment pay and conditions and ecological goods such as the recovery of a stable climate, and the application of tariffs to encourage or discourage their importation accordingly. To this end there are some production practices (such as knocking out womens' front teeth to make them efficient at stoning dates) and some goods (such as heroin and cocaine fuelling the modern slave trade) that can't be tolerated. But there are also grey areas where some goods from one country's production will have a better score on production and use impacts than those goods made in another country, while for other goods the reverse may be true.<br /><br />By providing an open door to goods with better production-and-use-impacts [PAUIs] than our own, our producers are encouraged to improve their performance; and by progressively closing the door to imports with worse PAUIs than the home production, along with sending one half of the resulting tariff revenues to small producers in the exporting nation to help improve their performance, the fundamental influence of international trade is re-oriented.<br /><br />From being a zero-sum game serving the ever-greater centralization of wealth by ever-increasing liquidation of societal and ecological assets, it shifts to the market-led encouragement of best practice globally. It will require a sophisticated research and evaluation secretariat (funded out of a % of tarrif revenues) and no doubt some nations now under the sway of the laissez-faire neo-liberalism will need to feel badly left out before they'll accede to such a change. But given that we face a collapse of critical resources on which geopolitical stability is wholly reliant, the present trade regime and its dire alternative have to be replaced.<br /><br />I'd suggest the title of "Trade Stewardship" for the arrangement proposed above, and would be much obliged if you'd care to put your mind to exploring the idea's potentials and practicalities, and let me know what you think.<br /><br />Regards.<br />Lewis CleverdonAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861605.post-4510063985550880522017-01-15T14:51:54.219-05:002017-01-15T14:51:54.219-05:00Well said.
With regard to:
"a very old syst...Well said.<br /><br />With regard to: <br />"a very old system . . . of corporate and state power in which the corporations tell the state how to govern"<br />no less an authority than Il Duce - Mussolini - is credited with remarking:<br />"the corporations and the state as one - that is fascism."<br /><br />With regard to trade, it would seem to me unwise to ignore the fact that trade is by far the most potent driver of global change - for good or ill - and has been as far back as we can discern. <br /><br />For example, DNA of Einkorn wheat has been found at a UK mesolithic site from ~8,000BP (6,000BC) https://theconversation.com/ancient-britons-had-wheat-2000-years-before-they-had-farms-38012 - which at the time was not being grown anywhere nearer than the southern French coast. The logistics of that grain supply are impressive, being at a minimum: - by canoe up the length of the Rhone, on foot across the watershed, by canoe down the length of the Seine, and by hide-on-frame boat (sailed or paddled) ~ 135 miles across the English Channel to the north coast of the UK's Isle of Wight, plus the return journey carrying whatever was given for the grain.<br /><br />While I share your abhorrence of the Viking economics underlying the facade of 'Free Trade' (being roughly: "Trade when you must; Pillage when you can; Rape when you get the chance!") the alternative of 'Trade Protectionism' has not shown remotely desirable outcomes for ordinary people - on the contrary, the nationalism that drives it empowers the same bandits, but does so under a more adversarial geopolitics that has repeatedly fomented wars on an ever greater scale. Neither of these trade policy options deserves popular support.<br /><br />What is needed (AFAICS) is an entirely new approach, extending governments' proper regulation of the market beyond, for instance, requiring that all traders will use a chosen set of weights and measures accurately, or will face severe consequences.<br /><br />(Due to the rise of “Artificial Stupidity” that sees 3,999 characters as over the limit of 4,096, this post has to be in two halves).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com