Henry C.K. Liu
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> Henry C.K. Liu wrote:
> >Persoanlly, I am against "free trade" because it has been a vehicle to
> >globalizing unregulated and "destructive" capitalism and inhuman labor
> >pratices.
>
> Whatever one thinks of propaganda about 'free trade' or actual practice of
> 'free trade,' politics organized mainly around opposing 'free trade' seems
> to consist of strange bedfellows, many of whom are downright reactionary,
> in the United States. Populism doesn't work here. (It may work elsewhere,
> depending on its content.) Encouraging right-wing populists at a time when
> many of us expect spectacular effects of global deflation--not to mention a
> possibility of collapse--at the heart of imperialism doesn't sound like a
> great idea to me.
>
> >What free trade has done for the Third World is to pop up corrupt
> >governments, abuse the environment and lift a small part of Third World
> >labor from desperate poverty to statsitical poverty. It also
> >neutralizes scial and political pressure for national development.
> >I know that the "better than nothing" arugment of neo-liberals like
> >DeLong.
> >Sometimes, "nothing" is better than disguised slavery.
> >A total collapse of free trade would be a very progressive development.
>
> Are you also against the emigration of the Third World people and people of
> formerly socialist countries into the USA and other core states, which also
> does a whole lot to 'neutralizes social and political pressures for
> national development' at the periphery, via brain drains (i.e. of
> discontented intellectuals who could have become leaders), money sent back
> home by emigrants that alleviates deprivation, etc.?
>
Yes!
Henry C.K. Liu