Reass,
Gardhole
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?
Inspite of the incredible amount of vitriol you’re spewing at me for reasons I can’t entirely fathom, I’ll be polite one more time. You are concerned about slavery and believe that US trade power can help solve that problem. THAT IS WHY I have asked you to show the causal link between trade and slavery.
Like I said in that thread, I don’t find it hard to believe that poor Burmese fishermen would end up getting exploited by Thai businessmen regardless of whether or not there are tariffs imposed on trade. A slave is cheaper than a worker whether you’re producing for the domestic market or for export. Without you having shown that causal link, I think it’s pretty likely that trying to use US trade power to fix a problem that has much more to do with local laws and institutions is bound to do more harm than good.
I can tell you are upset.
I didn’t mean to upset you.
Maybe we should work on our communication to avoid these problems in the future.
I’m at a loss for words right now, so I’d like to share something with you now.
I can tell you’re a liar. Maybe we should work on your need to constantly lie.
Oh, I am so done dealing with this lying bullshit. I have not claimed that free-trade is a cause of slavery, so why the hell should I show a causal link? Keep lying, asshole.
But the idea that regulations or financial penalties will have a tendency to discentivize a specific behavior is old-hat economics. The idea that incentives affect behavior is one of the foundational assumptions of capitalist economic theory.
Much as I don’t like lowering myself to your level, you need to show a causal link because, you mentally incapable drooling idiot who doesn’t understand what a causal link means, YOU keep claiming that changing trade rules WILL CAUSE AN IMPACT ON SLAVERY.
Only where incentives or disincentives have an actual causal link to the underlying behaviour and can be applied consistently. Empirical economics is chock full of examples where well intentioned incentives/disincentives distort markets and result in worse outcomes. As just one example that I know very well, India has some of the strictest labour regulations in the developing world, championed by morons just like you. Does this mean Indian labourers are some of the best protected in the world? No, it just means that most Indian labour operates in the informal sector, where they are covered by NO regulations at all. And this isn’t even taking into account the unseen counterfactual where poorer worker protections could see much more work and prosperity(in relative terms) for many more people, albeit with higher costs borne by a very few, ala Bangladesh.
And I’ve already given you a very plausible scenario where the same thing could happen to slaves in South East Asia. I’ll repeat myself again using small words since you don’t seem to have the required number of functioning brain cells to process anything else.
Slave owner in poor country catches fish, sells to USA!
USA think slave owner bad man, slaps tax on slave owner!
Slave owner shrug shoulders, sell to own country instead.
Slave owner make less money now, maybe treat slaves worse than before
Slave owner pay less money in taxes, less chance for his country to develop
Slaves, worse off
People in poor country, worse off
People in USA pay more money for fish, worse off
Everybody worse off other than the smug righteous asshole who’s pleased he’s done ‘something’ about slavery.
Bright, as a fairly neutral observer I’ve got to say I’m not seeing any lying in that thread or here. You seem very worried about slavery and want to cut off free trade with any place that might have slavery. While the people arguing against you are saying that everyone’s life is better or at least no worse if we have free trade and that included the slaves.
Their argument is much more convincing then yours is unless you can show that my life wouldn’t be worse and the slave’s life wouldn’t be worse if we restricted trade with the slavers. I find it very easy to believe that as imports become cheaper some of them get used to improve the lives of slaves even if it is something a simple as it is worth giving them a new pair of shoes each year because it only costs $0.50 and them cutting their foot is more expensive but if the price of shoes goes up to $1 maybe them walking around on bloddy stumps is preferable. I think you would be better of leaving the trade barriers down and educating people to boycott products made by slaves that is the economic pressure that will work and not harm the people you care about.
This is such bullshit. As I pointed out repeatedly in the thread, we can target sanctions against specific industries that are using slavery.
Nope. I gave them that out. I said that if they are okay with slavery, then we have a fundamental disagreement about how to structure the economy. If they had just said “yes, we think slavery is okay,” then I probably would have not have continued, since I can’t fathom how people can actually think that slavery is okay. But instead, they repeatedly lied about my position.
I don’t really give a crap what you find “easier” to believe. We’re talking about economics here, so if you have evidence that slaves are better off under a slavery system than a non-slavery system, produce a study. And when we’re talking about slavery, I don’t really give a crap if your own pocketbook might be worse off in a non-slavery system.
I want to clarify this here. I don’t know how you are using the term “place” here. If you are trying to claim that I advocated total sanctions against a country when a specific industry is using slave labor, then you are lying. If you are claiming something else, then you need to clarify.
Up your dosage.
Regards,
Shodan
Regards,
You’re an asshole.
If you are trying to be a wit, you are half way there.
Regards,
Shodan
Regards,
You’re an asshole.
Yes. But in order for the incentive to impact behavior, there has to be some sort of causal link. That’s just what it would mean for a change in incentives to have any effect whatsoever. I don’t know if you’re just so hung up on a specific, narrow notion of “cause” that any disagreement makes you go apoplectic or what, but you’re coming off as a bit unhinged.
Looks like I was wrong. It’s just deeply pathetic, instead.
BrightNShiny, have you considered the possibility that, rather than all these people lying about what you’ve said, that instead you’re just spectacularly bad at expressing yourself? Certainly, your exercise of wit (such as it is) in this thread demonstrates someone who is not comfortably at home with the written word.
Uh, no. Let me explain it to you clearly, you dumbfuck. If I make this statement:
This is not a statement that I support Cuba sanctions. This is not a statement that I’m against Cuba sanctions. This is not a statement that I support free trade. Or that I’m against free trade. Or that I support protectionism. Or that I’m against protectionism. Or that I think Tom Cruise is the best actor in the world. Or that I think he’s the shittiest actor in the world. But, hey, a lot of dumbfucks are going to try and pretend I have those positions.
Economics is a complex topic. I’m happy to explain it or debate it with people who are actually willing to do that. But I’m tired of listing to dumbfucks who don’t know about the topic throwing strawmen at me.
Maybe you could try sounding out the big words?
This is a definitional change in the term “causal.” You and bldysabba discuss how you are using the term and get back to me.
But, if I were to fine people who are making widgets, are you really trying to claim that we shouldn’t get less widgets? I mean, I’m not an Econ 101 fanaticist, so I’d be willing to entertain the notion that this might be true in the widget market. But if we’re debating capitalist economics, then I think the starting assumption has to be that a ban or a fine will disincentivize something, and it’s up to you to explain why it doesn’t work that way in the widget market. And there are markets that do function this way (like illegal drugs), but you can’t just point at those markets and tell me that the slavery “market” works this way without an argument.
EDIT: All the “yous” here in the 2nd paragraph are general “you,” not referring to the poster I was responding to.
Or perhaps you could explain what you mean by ‘causal’.
Let’s explore for a moment what it would mean for there to be no causal link whatosever between trade and slavery. This would imply that, no matter how you tinkered with the parameters of trade, you could have no impact whatseover on slavery. Whatever changes Nation A made to their practice of free trade with Nation B, no chain of causes and effects would reach Nation B’s use of slave labor.
We could take another example. You wrote about incentives; when I was in grad school (for economics, no less!), I did research on how incentives can impact health behaviors (specifically smoking). If we want to know how taxes on cigarettes affect smoking behavior, there has to be a causal link between the two. Taxes -> higher prices -> less smoking, for example. That doesn’t mean taxes were the sole, direct cause of smoking, which I suspect is how you’re idiosyncratically using ‘causal’ here.
So if you say “changes to free trade can impact slavery”, and someone asks you for the causal link you posit between free trade and slavery, they’re not ‘lying’ or strawmanning you or whatever else is going on in your crazy head.
I’m ignoring this because it has no bearing on my participation in this conversation.