Please cite where I lied about your position. I’ll make it easy for you and other folks following along - below are all my posts in that thread.
To summarise - You constantly claimed that you were concerned about slavery in a thread about free trade. I asked you to substantiate. You gave me an anecdote about slavery in Thailand. I pointed out that if you want a discussion of slavery in the context of free trade, **you have to show a causal link ** between free trade and slavery. As any economist knows, good intentions very often pave the road to worse outcomes. Instead of discussing this rationally, you became strangely unhinged in that thread. Is this personally important to you in some way?
There are numerous reports coming out of Thailand and Burma that there’s slavery going on (particularly in the fishing industry). Here’s one example:
22 years a slave in Asia's forced fishing industry - CBS News
I’ve got more if you want it.
Just to head this off, though, since everyone keeps lying in this thread:
I haven’t made any claims about how widespread this is. What I’ve said is that I’m concerned about this, and if someone is advocating free trade, they need to tell me how to address this concern. And I’ve said the data I’m seeing (because I’m seeing a lot of reports out of Burma and Thailand) contradict the one economic model proposed in this thread for reducing this problem. And I’ve said that if someone wants to convince me that the proposed economic model will actually reduce slavery, I’m willing to listen, but they have to do some data crunching.
But, given how this thread has been going, there will probably be a few people along shortly to lie about my position.
First of all, because you have to establish that there is a statistically significant problem of slavery that exists. A few anecdotes that some people in some countries have been forced to work for X years is simply not enough to base public policy on.
Secondly, you have to establish a statistically significant causal link between free trade and slavery. I don’t find it hard to believe that Burmese workers desperate to find better living and working conditions wouldn’t end up in similar conditions anyway, free trade or no.
Your question is too imprecise to answer. I am of course not OK with slavery at any point. But that doesn’t mean I would oppose free trade among countries if a small number of slaves were being used to supply labour in some of them.
Let’s take the example of Bangladesh that you brought up earlier. It is true that many work in dangerous conditions, which occasionally results in tragic loss of life, but if someone was to argue on that basis for Bangladesh to institute regulations which result in the apparel industry in Bangladesh becoming uncompetitive, the utilitarian in me certainly thinks that would be a greater tragedy. Does that make me OK with loss of life? I don’t think so, but you’re welcome to your own interpretation.
Pardon me? What am I lying about? Besides which, am I posting in the pit without realising it?
Also, the plural of anecdote is not data. If you have data, you should post it, instead of just threatening that you will.
Who’s stopping anyone from not trading with someone they don’t want to trade with? If all you want is a mechanism to deal with slavery (such would generally come under domestic law and police), why do you want to bring it up in a thread about free trade? I agree that there ought to be a mechanism to deal with slavery. What does it have to do with trade? Why are you posting about it in this thread?
I noted earlier “which result in the apparel industry in Bangladesh becoming uncompetitive” so it’s factored into my hypothetical. But beyond that, I can say for a fact (because the analysis has been done by many economists, read for e.g, Besley and Burgess) that India’s labour regulations have prevented growth, particularly in labour intensive sectors. It’s very plausible that this is why Bangladesh has a much larger apparel exporting sector (relative to its smaller size) than India, since otherwise the two countries are very similar. So harsher labour regulations in Bangladesh would likely reduce their comparative advantage strongly, and hurt them on the margins. I think opposing free trade* or western countries insisting on better or worse regulations is just the perfect being the enemy of the good. Buy the stuff if you like it and it comes to you cheaper than you can make it. Let the countries and people providing it to you sort out their own issues. They’ll probably end up better for it than if you try and stuff your solutions down their throats.
This is strange. I specifically asked you to go ahead and make a claim about slavery and support it. And then I asked you to post data instead of threatening to do it, but you’re still just threatening.
Once again, I refute that I have lied about a single thing in my statements, or misrepresented what you’re saying.
Here you go
On the contrary, using US trade power to try and fix complex local issues * is * stuffing a solution down their throats, and a solution by which you’ll likely end up harming more people than you help, including the ones you want to help.
ETA: Didn’t notice he was suspended. BnS, I think you’re a good poster, but it’s unfortunate that you’ve become so agitated in your responses in this thread. We can continue the conversation when you’re back and calmer.