My arguments are in this thread, and I’m not going to bother to repeat them for you. I’ve already answered this.
I’m sorry, let me use smaller words … This is a crime, not trade.
Appealing to authority … I agree Congress is expert at passing legislation that they can wave around back home and get more votes … that doesn’t mean they are capable of passing any meaningful legislation …
… unless of course it just bans something that was already illegal. If your argument is based even in part on Congress acting effectively, you’re fucking wrong.
I insist, which country are we talking about, the one where slavery is openly allowed?
This is a very polite way to phrase what the other posters are doing.
More or less. And I’ve been saying this over and over. I mean, I don’t think either slaves or the economy are better off with slavery, and that’s not exactly some radical economics position, but since I’m fundamentally opposed to slavery, it’s not relevant to my argument.
I’d adjust the argument a bit though to say that since slavery is a fundamental wrong, purchasing slave-made goods is a fundamental wrong.
Yep. And since the US often has the ability to get other countries to do what it wants by using it’s trade power, then trade power can be a useful tool to attack the issue.
And, also, a comparative advantage argument is irrelevant to the argument that buying slave-made goods is prima facie wrong. Which is where this all started in the other thread.
It’s a crime that can be attacked using trade sanctions, you dumb fuck.
And, you didn’t even read the cite about the legislation in the GD thread, did you? Again, you are a pig-ignorant moron who doesn’t actually know anything about the topic.
Go fucking read the cite, dickhead.
No, you haven’t.
[Moderating]
Remember: telling other posters “fuck you” is against the Pit’s language rules. Please avoid this in the future.
No warning issued.
[/Moderating]
No, criminals don’t follow trade laws, you’d only sanction the honest businesspersons … maybe take a shit sample to your vet, have him check for worms.
I have, please, chapter and verse where the citation says a specific country has lawful and open slavery. Someplace where one can have deed to another enforceable in the courts.
Pure stupidity to make the honest pay the price, as stupid as trusting the US Congress … and I still don’t think you’re using Google Translate properly.
What BrightNShiny is presenting is a fairly traditional left-wing philosophy that “free trade” is not an end to itself, since economic actors are not all playing by the same internal rules.
The astoundingly piss-poor job he is doing of it, the torrential downpour of emotionally-unhinged blather, is what I’m intrigued by.
Carry on, soldier.
So, I’m going with, “Spectacularly incapable of expressing himself clearly,” with a side of, “Not too good on understanding other people’s words, either.”
It strikes me that this is another place where things may have gone off the rails.
If I understand correctly (far from a guarantee of that), there’s an unspoken, underlying premise here: that tinkering with trade is permissible *only *to remedy harms caused by free trade. Therefore, if someone wants to tinker with trade to affect issue X, then they need to show that free trade is causing issue x.
If that premise is not mutually accepted (or at least recognized), then the whole thread of conversation about whether or not causal links need to be demonstrated is premature and leads to frustrating arguing about windmills. Unshared premises can result in things that only look like straw men (though they are just as empty).
I can’t see how any moral person could believe otherwise. It’s not as if buying slave made goods can ever actually improve the lives of slaves, for the simple reason that they are slaves, and thus won’t get any money from what they do.
I don’t see how you can not come at this with the default being “I won’t support slave labor.” An argument that you can’t prove that it will help makes no sense. It’s not up to anyone to prove it will help. It’s up to others to prove that it will cause harm–harm greater than that of supporting slavery.
As for how it could help, I’m not economist. But I see some assumptions being made that don’t seem to be explained.
The first is that there is another market that is supported by free goods, and that, if the U.S. stops buying slave goods, the slave goods will just be bought up by those who previously had to buy free goods. I don’t see how you can be sure of that. What if the bulk of the goods are bought by the U.S.? One person mentioned that the goods would be bought domestically–well I know for sure there are goods that are produced in one country but not actually purchased by that country.
Is it not a possibility that the slave goods market will go down for a particular good? That free good production will go up to compensate?
I also see a lot of mention of tariffs. What tariffs? My understanding is that buying slave goods is just flat out forbidden. And you have have documentation showing that you didn’t get your parts from slave goods. That would be sanctions, not tariffs. And sanctions have been used for trying to change politics forever. We did it to Iran and Cuba, and it appears to have worked.
I’m not going to get down and dirty with this. It’s not that important to me for various reasons, mostly centering around the serenity prayer: I couldn’t change things if I wanted to. That and I have more immediate concerns.
But I don’t like the fighting in this thread, and B&S is too angry to say any of this stuff. Plus I don’t like seeing the mentally ill be made fun of: if you really think he’s off his meds, leave him alone–he’s harmless, and you will not be able to convince him. If you don’t, then bringing it up is pointless, and only belittles those who do have medical problems.
No, nothing is unspoken, you’re just not understanding it correctly. The words ‘causal link’ mean that the relationship between phenomena A and B is such that if you tinker with A, B changes. They do not mean that B was caused entirely by A. This is very standard usage according to me. But it is possible that it is a slightly technical term that those trained in research will understand better.
I’ll break my argument down again.
a) Free trade is widely recognised by a near consensus of economists to be on balance beneficial to society
b) Slavery can very easily be occurring independently of trade. This implies that trade is not a determining factor in the usage of slaves. Whether you trade less or more with people who use slaves, it will not affect the usage of slaves*, UNLESS you demonstrate a causal link.
c) Imposing taxes and hidden costs on trade (for e.g determining who is using slaves and who is not will have a cost) means you will reduce something that is beneficial to society (free trade) without showing either that the problem you care about(slavery) is a significant one(in terms of number of people affected), or that it will be affected at all by your proposed measures.
Hope that’s clearer.
*As I’ve pointed out earlier, it is very easy to believe that you may even harm the slaves. Slave owners can easily switch to serving other markets, and if they make less profits, why, they can just squeeze the slaves more.
There is, of course, the argument that free® trade HAS helped liberalize regions of the world like Asia, Russia, and Eastern Europe.
Much like the philosophy of the multiculturalist hawks, mere access to outside people tends to soften harden dogmas.
The Post-WW2 global economy has basically been a history lesson on why free trade is a force for good, and protectionist policies in the name of (forced) moral appropriation are usually bad.
I just wish OP could engage in this discussion with some modicum of competency.
/shrug