Satanic/Pyrrhic Advocacy - Can the rules help?

D.L. boddhisatva at mindspring.com
Sun Dec 19 01:07:23 PST 1999


To whom...,

Reading the AFL-CIO wishlist, I was suddenly struck with the feeling that the entire anti-free-trade movement may be doomed before it begins.

Take issue with these statements if you can:

A Tobin tax will not be accepted universally. Witness tax havens.

If not universal, a Tobin tax will simply divert capital from one LDC to another.

Using known systems, including strong government deficit spending, LDC's will not produce adequate money growth of a strong, stable currency for decades.

LDC standards for environment and worker rights are so bad that if they turned on a dime and went in the other direction, they would not reach first world standards for decades.

Internal markets will not be important for LDC development for at least a decade.

LDC's will serve the export market and must do so by making themselves centers for cheaper production.

Even when multinationals are kept out of ownership as much as possible (East Asian protectionism), like-minded capitalists do deals across borders (from sub-contracting to sub-sub-sub-contracting) much the same way branches of multinationals would, with much the same results. In other words, the preceding limitations are business realities in the capitalist system that can't be overcome by protectionism.

In conclusion, major movement in a positive direction could, at best, only slow the flow of industrial jobs away from the first world and the denigration of worker rights and the environment. In fact, indigenous cleptocracies of increasing financial sophistication could well accelerate the growth of destructive business practices despite significant progress on trade rules. Moreover, the tremendous improvements in information technology mean that otherwise isolated producers are integrated into world finance and inventory management, thus overcoming many of the drawbacks otherwise associated with locating a facility in some dictator's hinterland. Witness, for example, the ease with which Korean textile concerns have been able to locate in and shift around Central America.

peace



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