FREE TRADE

There is a lot of rubbish for sale. Some of the rubbish needs to look nice since it is never going to be used, some of it is services you would never want, much of the rubbish however is stock. Of course, wherever there is a market, there is a salesperson and this tends to increases the amount of rubbish in our environment creating rubbish pollution. We talk about free trade in terms of materials going back and forth across a border. We talk of free trade as a way of enhancing our distribution base and thus our market place. We talk about free trade as a way of providing services through out-sourcing. We talk about free trade and open markets as if we can make them into what ever we want – more rubbish. Indeed free trade was never meant to be a principle. It is always meant to be an actuality. It has much less to do with scientific economic theory and much more to do with what is actually happening. Theories like Wealth of Nations and the Communist Manifesto try to grasp what is actual. Free markets, free trade, Marxism are not comments of what aught to be, but rather descriptions of what people have seen. Let us look honestly at what free trade means.

We think of free trade in terms of flow of goods. We understand that goods are produced by worker time (wages). When we buy a hamburger or export missiles, it is the product of our time. It us ultimately our time we sell or somebody else’s time we buy. Human labor is fundamental to any process, shining stones, building machines, and treating illnesses. Money only represents the abstract value of our time. Thus how do we trade time in a free way.

A couple of hundred or so years ago, people spoke of free trade as a dropping of interstate taxation, thus founding this nation on federalism. The central principle of federalism was that states have separate economies and political interests. These ultimately would war with each other and thus weaken each other. This principle remains true today. Political boundaries inhibit trade. Wars result from such inequity. Thus free trade must be without political boundaries. But this must mean the free exchange of goods, services, and labor. So long as any part of an economy is closed, free trade does not exist. Primary in this process of free trade is the allowance of moving labor force. This does reduce the cost of labor and it allows the labor to move away from poor markets to better markets. People (and large corporations) fear globalism out of self-interest, but this fear is indeed cowardice. Cowardice is running away from a fight or fixing a fight. The so called anti-globalist oppose free trade that uses boundaries to exploit one labor force or set of rules against another. This inequity must be nullified by the removal of migrational borders. This is no less radical than the creators of the USA creating a federalist government for the peace and security of a people.

The efficiency of a market is based on competition and cooperation. Some see competition as catharsis - that a corporation that does not compete well should be removed from the market place. A corporation that is not working well is inefficient or is not useful to the community, its demise is positive. We see competition in a very positive sense. We see competition in terms of war. We understand competition in terms of inequity and we understand that competition is best suited for those who are already in privilege. But what is the result of a competition between a 300 pound guerilla versus a 5-year-old human being – is this catharsis, inefficiency? Is this a law of nature? Natural selection is not for survival but success. Success can mean survival but also self sacrifice. In society success suggests that competition is not in killing the weakest, but in caring for the weakest. Such a society, in claiming no one is left behind place success as survival of the community. They claim compassion as a source of the society. This sense of competition can improve social values and is not an end value in itself. It follows that a society may promote, measure, and control economic competition to improve the society. The ultimate success would be the recruitment of a greater labor force due to better administrative structures etc.. Societies that could not support this would be forced into the marketplace by open migration, this would in turn force them to improve their administrative structures to retain the ultimate resource – the population. This, then promotes equality and peace.

Cooperation is seen as a pretty tutee fruity pleasant idea of the 60s. However, cooperation is fundamental to life. All of us carry non-human DNA without which we could not survive. Without us, our symbiotic mitochondrial DNA would not survive. There is no competition, only cooperation. If a species overexploits an ecosystem, that species dies out as the resources die out. In species, factories, or societies, the foundation of economic growth is not in the destruction of the enemy, but rather a creation of diversities. This diversification of markets through cooperation stabilizes the species, economy, etc. Cooperation also entails responsibility. If a society pollutes into anther society, the first must be responsible for the clean up. If I throw sewage on my neighbors land this is neither competitive nor cooperative. It is simply wrong. Thus in cooperation with my neighbors I must have civil agreements of not polluting in their air, water, land, genes, etc. Cooperation mandates a conservative (conservationist) environmental policy against pollution. And when pollution is unavoidable, the polluter is fully responsible for the clean up. If the cost of clean up is too great, the enterprise needs to be abandoned. Cooperation also mandates renewability. If I destroy a resource for ever, I deplete it without regard to its future uses. In so doing I lack the moral will to cooperate with future generations that claim equal right to the world. Of course we all know that growth is desirable but our numbers that measure growth do not measure the commensurate decay imposed on the resources of the world. I would love to run a business that doesn’t measure costs only income, it certainly would feel good until I had destroyed my resources. In balance sheet of non-responsible, non-renewable usage, there is only a diplomatic face to exploitive inequity, not a system to promote free trade.

Thus free trade must have a goal to increase competition (the actual number of competitors) and cooperation with the respective values of the society. But the word freedom entails certain restrictions on what we mean by free trade. Freedom suggests an environment of openness and knowledge - secret deals are not free trade. Freedom exists in environment without coercion - trades made by unequals are not free. Freedom entails the ability to walk away and have alternatives - mandates are not free. Free trade indeed demands goods be exchanged without rules and regulations. It is to allow services to move as the services are needed and to allow labor to move as labor is needed. In fact free trade must violate political boundaries, economic tariffs, knowledge inequities and must maximize individual freedoms. A laborer in Mexico not allowed to labor in the United States does not have free trade. A producer of goods in America compelling a Vietnamese woman to buy American goods does not have free trade. Those who see free trade with boundaries in place use false words to enforce special interest rather than seek to create an environment of free trade. Until people, goods, and services are free to move, we have at best a system of trade designed to promote the powerful and wealthy and thereby reduce free trade. Free trade is self propagating and controlled trade propagates inequity.

This standard of free trade may seem radical. It was radical when the federalists founded this country and established states as free trade zones without taxation boundaries. Back then it was a radical thought for those who wanted to control trade. The founders wished to solve the problem of Europe: the wars that had plagued it through the centuries, the antipathy between cultures in Europe, and the narrow-mindedness of the leadership of Europe. It is a radical thought to tell one’s leadership that my interests lie in freedom from your control and that freedom should entail economic with political mobility.

It is that same idea that free trade proposes to the modern world. We must allow a free movement of peoples. We must allow the free movement of goods. We must allow the free movement of services. When we are rich, it is difficult for us to accept that we may have to compete on a fair basis on those that are less off. We feel we have nothing to gain, but perhaps we do. If the market does expand, diversify, and allow individual freedom of movement, then we increase freedom itself and we hand to our own children and a future more free and more safe. If people are integrated into the world markets, it becomes very difficult to have wars. Indeed the wars won are won upon this social coming together. This profound radicalism is true for the world as it is true for the US. The more divided we are, the less free we are to trade with each other, the more likely we are to war with each other. This is, after all, why gluttony is a mortal sin.

The fear of free trade is one to protect our special status. This is cowardice and greed at its’ most subtle. If we fail to embrace equality and freedom of trade, indeed we will not pass through the gates of heaven any more than a camel pass through the eye of a needle, and in this we will fall into the footnotes of history as free trade passes us by.