[sukulaku]

> If TPP was a legit trade treaty I would expect it to have anti-protectionism provisions

Indeed. An actual free-trade agreement would be really simple to implement. Just stop intervening in trade in any way, and you'll have Free Trade.

But that would be against a lot of cronies' interests and very much in the people's interests, so it's never going to happen.

On a related note: Stop intervening in what people do with their property, and you'll have a free market.

That would preclude taxation though, and so, a lot of people who believe they somehow benefit from someone forcefully taking their money would object.

[TeMPOraL]

> Just stop intervening in trade in any way, and you'll have Free Trade. (...) Stop intervening in what people do with their property, and you'll have a free market.

Well maybe, but you don't really want a Free Market. Be happy that thanks to not having it, you can still eat food that, while crappy, is not downright poison.

[phyzome]

Oh I don't know, I would rather enjoy the excitement of never knowing what day a food manufacturer might decide to start adding melamine to my food with no repercussions.

[sukulaku]

When you get downvoted on HN for arguing against freedom, you just know you've screwed up pretty bad.. :p

[TeMPOraL]

  HN moves in a mysterious way
  Its downvotes to perform...

[sirtaj]

> But that would be against a lot of cronies' interests and very much in the people's interests, so it's never going to happen.

Not necessarily always in the "people's interests". Here's a bit of Wealth of Nations that you don't often see quoted:

Corporation laws, however, give less obstruction to the free circulation of stock from one place to another than to that of labour. It is everywhere much easier for a wealthy merchant to obtain the privilege of trading in a town corporate, than for a poor artificer to obtain that of working in it.

[vidarh]

> On a related note: Stop intervening in what people do with their property, and you'll have a free market.

I'm sure you'll enjoy it when your neighbour decides to open a sewage processing plant.

[VMG]

Zoning and contractual guarantees of environmental standards on your property are fully compatible with free trade.

[xg15]

Contractual agreements with whom?

[VMG]

With whoever you purchased your land from.

[sukulaku]

With whatever parties happen to be involved. No one knows, because those circumstances don't currently exist anywhere on the planet.

[aninhumer]

If you're talking about the environment, then everyone is involved.

And we have a name for contractual agreements with everyone in a society. We call them "laws".

[sukulaku]

> And we have a name for contractual agreements with everyone in a society. We call them "laws".

Except that no one asked us if we agreed. Without mutual agreement, there is no contract. In reality, laws are commands that we're punished for disobeying.

Tell me, what's the practical difference between getting punished for disobeying a King's or Emperor's law, and getting punished for disobeying a law written by politicians or bureaucrats somewhere?

Then there's the problem that governments don't actually adhere to their own laws anyway. NSA's surveillance is unconstitutional. That's not a problem for them, but if you disobey laws, you will be punished one way or another.

Who do you think you're kidding?

[RogtamBar]

>Indeed. An actual free-trade agreement would be really simple to implement. Just stop intervening in trade in any way, and you'll have Free Trade.

Is free trade even a good idea?

Suppose industry in your country has higher costs, because people care about say, waterways, and thus there has to be filtering and proper waste disposal.

If you allow free trade from a country where they simply dump waste everywhere, you are punishing industry for doing the right thing, and rewarding polluters.

[devsquid]

The idealized "free trade" view you propose, always makes me think of the idealized "people owned" view of Communism. I think this view, of "free trade", is very popular among my crowd as well as popular among Sci-Fi authors. So I like to try to point out its flaws, as I think it could lead to some scary future consequences.

First the most poignant issue with it is; "power begets more power" or "money begets more money". For the most part the rich get richer. Also the truth of the matter is the market can never be "free", there will always be someone clever or rich enough who will seek to exploit and control it. Thus you need regulations to keep these individuals and corporations in check. You then need a strong government that can stand up

Second the idea that the money you earn is the money you deserve is wrong. I come from a middle class and stable family. They have provided a world of support to help me succeed in this world. Do I deserve this? No I got lucky. The self made man myth, is utter bullshit. People that "succeed" in life have been helped along the way by the community. Do you really believe a poor person is poor because they don't work as hard as a wealthy person? What about people with mental disabilities, or physical ones? So people who acquire wealth don't really "deserve" it, I put that in quotes because they certainly deserve the money but so do a lot of other people that don't have it. Thus we impose taxation, to serve as a form of wealth redistribution and to create a safety net. This pays for public schools, public roads, transportations, military, etc. Basically the world is not fair and our governance should work to fix that.

Third, maintaining a "free market" is also equally important. You need good level of competition in society. Something for people to strive for and to power the whole system. Honestly this market would not be any freer than a libertarian's "free market", as stated previous the idea of a "free market" is a farce.

Fourth, think about the world you want to live in. Do you really want to live in a world where poor people are never given decent opportunities? Where they have to struggle and get by purely on corporation donation? What about if everything in your life goes bad, would you want to end up in the gutters or be able to rely on some form of assumed social aid.

-ps I don't know very much about TPP, I am just responding to what I perceive is your world view. -pps Clearly neither of our views are how any country operates, but I feel like we should be striving for something that works and not extremism -ppps Sorry if this seems a bit indirect, I'm not necessarily addressing you, but the numerous libertarians on the web in general and this has been partly cut and pasted from another convo.

[TeMPOraL]

> I think this view, of "free trade", is very popular among my crowd as well as popular among Sci-Fi authors.

In the sci-fi I read/watch, "free trade" is very popular and very well presented (and I'd say pretty accurately) - it all looks cool and pretty at a first glance, but then it turns out that big parts of the population are extremely poor miners slaving away their whole lives in some godforsaken hellholes, and on the free market you can easily buy anything from innocent people's organs to weapons of mass destruction.

As for libertarianism - it has some good ideas, but the more extreme forms burst into flames at the first mention of the word "externality".

[devsquid]

Yea you're right in a lot of Sci-Fi it is represented as such. I guess I was thinking of how much they gloss over the the fact that a majority of the population is poor af or things like the Prometheus Award, which includes some very good books.

Yes there is a certain aspect of libertarianism that both touches on something true and is attractive, but so does communism. Not that that means libertarianism is wrong it is just similar to communism that way, but I think it is wrong for the reasons I stated. Also Karl Marx offered many good critiques of capitalism.

[TeMPOraL]

That's why I believe we should stop talking about whole ideologies, because all of them - libertarianism, communism, reaction, etc. - are nonsense if you take them wholesale. But each has some good ideas, each appeared as a response to particular problems. So instead of buying into politics wholesale, we should ask ourselves whether or not e.g. free market, or top-down management, or voting, is the best way to approach a particular problem - building a power plant, ensuring access to health services for everyone, figuring out which foods should be imported, etc.

[devsquid]

Well yea, but I think the high minded discussion is good as well. Its not that any one country will ever be X or Y ideology, but having good guiding principles helps to make sound judgements.

I have studied each of the modern ideologies a bit, and Modern Liberalism is a good blend of both Libertarianism and Socialism. Rawls is a good source if you're interested in perusing, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rawls

I have to say tho, I see a pretty heavy trend towards libertarianism. Particularly among my peers in the Bay Area and their idols. I find it pretty annoying because they are the pinnacle of privilege and have embraced a ideology that alleviates their "guilt".

[pdkl95]

Absolutely - strict adherence to any ideology assumes that that ideology is correct in all cases. I've always considered politics to be like an inverted pendulum with "we the people" as the balance controller. Forces are always present that create instability, so we need to continually make corrections by pushing back in the right direction. Tipping to far towards any ideology can cause catastrophic failure.

Also, there is another reason to keep a diversity of ideologies: they serve as a check on each other. For example, allowing either capital or labor to gain too much power tends to cause problems. It is the competition between them that keeps power from consolidating on one ideology.

(for a better description of that idea, see http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-cap... )

[sukulaku]

> Forces are always present that create instability, so we need to continually make corrections by pushing back in the right direction. Tipping to far towards any ideology can cause catastrophic failure.

By "instability" do you mean draconian legislation like SOPA / PIPA / CISPA / NDAA / TPP / TTIP and all the other nasty shit we're supposed to keep "pushing back" on, because otherwise they'll just inflict it all on us, and then it's too bad because we kind-of-sort-of asked for it by voting in the bums and not resisting.. ? :P

Let's hope we never experience whatever catastrophic failure would follow from pushing back too successfully!

[sukulaku]

> As for libertarianism - it has some good ideas, but the more extreme forms burst into flames at the first mention of the word "externality".

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems you're suggesting that "externalities" are better handled by rulers ruling over their subjects than voluntary co-operation between individuals.

That's what we have now, you know. Rulers and subjects. There's a small elite imposing their will on everyone else, and it seems you think they're taking care of externalities better than we could without rulers.

Presumably, if you didn't think so, you'd support voluntary co-operation instead of our current societal arrangements.

But it's pretty damn difficult to believe you sincerely think so, considering we all know corporations around the world are somehow managing to pollute their hearts out despite our benevolent overlords being there to protect and serve us.

The people of Beijing can't be particularly happy with how their externalities are handled, for example.

It's like there's this thing called "bribery", and it's a really effective way of getting to do whatever the hell you want with the environment, as long as you keep handing money to the right politicians.

Oh, and by the way, this way of circumventing any negative consequences for destroying the environment wouldn't be available without political power, as you may be able to comperehend.

But nevermind, I wrote this message not so much to you, but to some innocent bystander who might happen to read this.

[aninhumer]

>Now correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems you're suggesting that "externalities" are better handled by rulers

No, they're suggesting that externalities are not handled well by entities that, by definition, have no incentive to care about them.

But as it happens, yes I tend to think co-ordination problems are solved more effectively by a co-ordinator, rather than decentralised actors.

You can call them "rulers" if you like, but then you'd be ignoring the concept of democracy.

>you'd support voluntary co-operation

Except you don't support "voluntary" anything, because you're talking about property rights. You know, a system where people are forced to follow particular rules about resource allocation, regardless of whether they agreed to follow them.

As long as there is scarcity, there will inevitably be coercion in the distribution of resources. You can argue that a system of pure property rights minimises it, but please don't pretend that it magically avoids it.

[sukulaku]

> externalities are not handled well by entities that, by definition, have no incentive to care about them

Entities like rulers, perhaps? You know "campaign contributions" are an euphemism for bribes, don't you?

When the people who you think are preventing externalities get bribed, they actually have an incentive to not care about them.

> You can call them "rulers" if you like, but then you'd be ignoring the concept of democracy.

What exactly am I ignoring? The idea that you can affect something by dropping a piece of paper into a box? That belief is extremely convenient for the people who are in no way bound by that act, you know?

> Except you don't support "voluntary" anything, because you're talking about property rights.

Do you sincerely think the main reason why people don't steal from others is that they'd be punished for it?

> As long as there is scarcity, there will inevitably be coercion in the distribution of resources.

That's probably true in the sense that someone somewhere will rob someone regardless, but.. if you actually have a problem with "coercion in the distribution of resources", then you just can't sanely support the idea of an organization that coerces potentially hundreds of millions of people in how their resources are "distributed".

[aninhumer]

>You know "campaign contributions" are an euphemism for bribes, don't you?

Sure, US democracy is badly implemented, but that doesn't mean the idea is inherently flawed. If you want to argue that it is, feel free. But until you do, please stop pretending there is no alternative to your false dichotomy.

>Do you sincerely think the main reason why people don't steal from others is that they'd be punished for it?

No, but most people following the rules of their own volition is not sufficient for the system to work. If you make it truly "voluntary", then anyone who doesn't agree can just take whatever they want.

> if you actually have a problem with "coercion in the distribution of resources"

I don't, as I said it's inevitable. I just object to libertarians pretending they can avoid it.