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nettime's_roving_reporter <nettime@bbs.thing.net> Counterpunch on Seattle "cisler" <cisler@pobox.com> Seattle-pi.com summary article Seattle talks collapse katie@imt.net Re: <nettime> The WTO and the De-synchronization of the Global Economy Lucky Green <shamrock@cypherpunks.to> WTO - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Sat, 4 Dec 1999 09:47:24 -0500 From: nettime's_roving_reporter <nettime@bbs.thing.net> Subject: Counterpunch on Seattle <http://www.counterpunch.org/> December 3, 1999 Here's a might-have-been for you. All day long, Tuesday, November 30, the street warriors in downtown Seattle vindicated their pledge to shut down the first day of the WTO talks, in itself a rousing victory. Locked-down Earth-First!ers, Ruckus Society agitators, anarchists and other courageous troublemakers sustained baton charges, tear gas and rubber bullets, hopefully awaiting reinforcement from the big labor rally taking place around the space needle, some fifteen or twenty blocks from downtown. As the morning ticked away and the cops got rougher, the street warriors kept asking, "Where are the labor marchers?", expecting that at any moment thousands of longshoremen and teamsters would reinforce them in the desperate fray. But the absent legions of labor never showed. Suppose they had. Suppose there had been 30,000 to 40,000 protesters around the convention center, vowing to keep it shut all week. Would the cops have charged such a force? Downtown could have been held all night, and perhaps President Bill would have been forced to make his welcoming address from SeaTac or from the sanctuary of his ardent campaign funder, the Boeing Company. That would have been a humiliation for imperial power of historic proportions, like the famous greeting the Wobblies organized to greet president Woodrow Wilson after the breaking of the Seattle general strike in l9l9 when workers and their families lined the streets, block after block, standing in furious silence as the President's motorcade passed by. Wilson had his stroke not long thereafter. This might-have been is not posed out of churlishness, but to encourage a sense of realism about what is possible in the struggle against the trading arrangements now operative in the WTO. Take organized labor, as embodied in the high command of the AFL-CIO. As these people truly committed to the destruction of the WTO? Of course they aren't. It was back in February of this year that the message came down from AFL-CIO HQ that rallying in Seattle was fine, but the plan was not to shut down the WTO. Labor's plan was to work from the inside. As far as any street action was concerned, the deals were cut long ago. Labor might huff and labor might puff, but when it comes to the WTO what labor wants, in James Hoffa's phrase, is a seat at the table. And what does this seat at the table turn out to be? At Seattle those labor chieftains were willing to settle for a truly threadbare bit of window dressing, in the shape of a working group which will, in the next round of WTO talks, be sensitive to labor's concerns. Here's the chronology. The present trade round will ponder the working group's mission and composition and make recommendations for the next round of trade talks. Then, when the next round gets under way, the working group will perhaps take form. Guess what? It's at least 20l4AD before the working group is up and running. Sweeney's AFL-CIO isn't against the WTO. Sweeney himself is physically fading into the woodwork. One well informed-friend of CounterPunch used the brutal comparison (in health terms) of Boris Yeltsin. Gerry Shea, Sweeney's head of government affairs and the man essentially running the show at l6th St in Washington, has no ideological posture on the issue, and listens closely to his old friend David Smith, who heads the AFL-CIO's public policy department and who is a zealous free trader, cerebellum thickly stuffed with neo-liberal hokum. There are unions -- the autoworkers, steelworkers, teamsters, machinists, UNITE -- which have rank and file members passionately concerned about "free trade" when, as a in the case of teamsters, it means Mexican truck drivers coming over the border at $2 an hour. But how many of these unions are truly ready to break ranks and holler Death to the WTO? For that matter, how many of them are prepared to think in world terms, as the capitalists do? Take the steel workers, the only labor group which, in the form of the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment, took up position in downtown that Tuesday morning (and later fought with the cops and endured tear gas themselves). But on that same day, November 30, the Moscow Tribune ran a story reporting that the Clinton administration has effectively stopped all cold-rolled steel imports from Russia by imposing penalty duties of l78 per cent. Going into winter those Russian working families at Severstal, Novolipetsk and Magnitogorsk are facing tougher times than ever. The Moscow Tribune's report, John Helmer, wasn't in doubt why: "Gore must try to preserve steel company and steel worker support." As the preceding item suggests, there's no such thing as "free trade". The present argument is not about trade, for which (except for maybe a few bioregionialists in Ecotopia) all are in favor in some measure. The argument is about how trade is to be controlled, how wealth is to be made and distributed. The function of the WTO is to express in trade rules the present balance of economic power on the world held by the big corporations, which see the present WTO round as an opportunity to lock in their gains, to enlist its formal backing in their ceaseless quest for cheap labor and places to dump their poisons. So ours is a worldwide guerilla war, of publicity, harassment, obstructionism. It's nothing simple, like the "Stop the War" slogan of the l960s. Capitalism could stop that war and move on. American capitalism can't stop trade and survive on any terms it cares for. We truly don't want a seat at the table to "reform" trade rules, because if we get one, then sooner or later we'll be standing alongside Global Exchange's Medea Benjamin proclaiming that Nike, which pays its workers less than 20 cents an hour, has made "an astounding transformation", and in Seattle actually defending Nike's premises from well-merited attack by the street warriors. Capitalism only plays by the rules if it wrote those rules in the first place. The day the WTO stipulates the phase-in of a world minimum wage of $3 an hour is the day the corporations destroy it and move on. Anyone remember those heady days in the l970s of the New World Economic Order when third world countries were going to get a fair shake for their commodities? We were at a far more favorable juncture back then, but it wasn't long before the debt crisis had struck, the NWEO was dead and the mildly progressive UN Commission on Trade and Development forever sidelined. Publicity, harassment, obstructionism...Think always in terms of international solidarity. Find targets of opportunity. South Africa forces domestic licensing at cheaper rates of AIDS drugs. Solidarity. The Europeans don't want bio-engineered crops. Fight on that front. Challenge the system at the level of its pretensions. Make demands in favor of real free trade. Get rid of copyright and patent restrictions and fees imposed on developing nations. Take Mexico. Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research reckons that Mexico paid the industrial nations last year $4.2 billion in direct royalties, fees and indirect costs. And okay, let's have real free trade in professional services, with standardization in courses and tests so that kids from Mexico and elsewhere can compete with our lawyers, accountants and doctors. A guerilla war, without illusions or respectable ambitions. Justice in world trade is by definition a revolutionary and utopian aim. CP CounterPunch 3220 N Street, NW, PMB 346 Washington, DC 20007 1-800-840-3683 counterpunch@counterpunch.org © Copyright: 1998-1999. All rights reserved. _________________________________________________________________ CounterPunch is a project of the Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Sat, 04 Dec 1999 04:14:25 -0800 Subject: Seattle-pi.com summary article From: "cisler" <cisler@pobox.com> <For other articles about the conference, see the www.seattle-pi.com web site> WTO summit ends in failure Saturday, December 4, 1999 By MICHAEL PAULSON and ROBERT McCLURE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS The world's trade ministers last night abandoned their effort to launch a new round of global trade negotiations, bringing an ugly conclusion to an ugly week. The meeting of the World Trade Organization, hampered throughout the week by sometimes violent protests, broke up just before 10 p.m. when delegates from 135 nations said they could not agree on an agenda for future trade talks. "Essentially, they just could not get the work done," said WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell. The defeat for the trade ministers was a major blow to President Clinton, who had said success in Seattle required the launch of a new round of global trade talks. It was also a blow to the U.S. business community, which wants greater access to foreign markets. U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky attempted to put the best face on defeat, saying trade ministers will attempt at some later date to pick up where they left off. "It would be best to take a time out, consult with one another and find a creative means to finish the job," she said. WTO Director-General Mike Moore described the Seattle meeting as "a remarkable meeting. Much was done. That will not be lost." And then in remarks that provoked derisive laughter from delegates, some of whom had been mauled on Tuesday trying to get into the convention center, he said: "This city, what a magnificent place. If only the world could be like Seattle." WTO critics, who had marched in the streets seeking to stop the WTO's push toward ever-expanding global trade, were delighted. Outside the King County Jail, hundreds of protesters cheered and banged on drums when they learned talks had collapsed. Across town, they danced in front of the hotel where Clinton stayed earlier in the week. "The allegedly unstoppable force of globalization just hit the immovable object called grass-roots democracy," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. Environmentalists also were elated. "I'm very happy," said Andrea Durbin of Friends of the Earth. "It's very clear that the governments couldn't agree because of the lack of openness, and it's clear that the WTO is never going to be the same again." U.S. labor unions also proclaimed victory. Earlier in the day, the WTO had been poised to reject everything sought by organized labor. "They can't go home and forget this," said David Smith, the director of public policy for the AFL-CIO. "This is a turning point in the debate." Inside the convention center, however, some officials downplayed the role of the protesters in killing the talks. Rockwell said the talks failed because the WTO, with 135 countries trying to operate by consensus, proved too unwieldy. He also said the topics discussed in Seattle were too complex to be resolved in a week, and he said that Third World nations "became furious" because they were not involved in enough of the negotiations. "The idea that we can just sweep into some town somewhere on the planet and pull together a document in four days is probably an antiquated notion," said Bill Bryant, a Seattle international trade consultant. "You have an organization that is run by 135 countries . . . If this were run by corporate elites, the trains would have run on time." Ultimately, the talks were sunk by the ire of delegates from the developing world, who have repeatedly complained that they were not benefiting from globalization. The United States and Europe offered preferential trade treatment to those nations, but that was apparently not enough to soothe delegates from Africa, Asia and Latin America. But the delegates said that the protests and resulting disorganization set them back two days. They never recovered. "It started off on the wrong foot and we scrambled to get into gear," said Kobsak Chutikul, director-general for economic affairs in Thailand. "We couldn't get the big picture together." The collapse of the talks does not mean that the move toward globalization ends; trade officials will gather at WTO headquarters in Geneva next year and continue to talk about reducing barriers to trade in agriculture and services. But there is now no guarantee anything will get done because the delegates could not set specific deadlines by which they would agree to a specific agenda, such as the elimination of agricultural subsidies. Barshefsky asked for negotiators to resume their talks at an unnamed time and place, and Anthony Gooch, a negotiator for the European Union, said there was no date set for resuming negotiations. "We tried to build bridges, but it was too far," Gooch said. Plans for any resumption of the new round of trade talks were completely up in the air. And there is no broad, agreed-upon pact that would outline what areas of the world economy should be liberalized next. "I don't know if there is a chance of restarting the negotiations in weeks or even in months," said Gregor Kreuzhaber, a spokesman for the European Union. Smaller and poorer countries have long felt slighted in the WTO, where they say they are pushed around by bigger, stronger countries. Many Third World countries view with suspicion initiatives advanced by developed countries, and this week they complained that they were being excluded from important meetings. Third World countries found themselves disadvantaged as wealthy countries with huge delegations were able to send people to a variety of meetings at all times of the day. Japan had 88 negotiators in Seattle; the United States 85 and the Europeans 76. By contrast, Belize, Burkina Faso and the Congo each had five, while Dominica could afford only four. "The Third World countries are reeling," said Victoria Corpuz of Third World Network, a Malaysia-based group working to protect indigenous tribes. Early yesterday, at a meeting of all delegations, representatives of African countries reportedly booed Barshefsky. Then in the late afternoon, delegations from Africa, Latin America and Asia joined to begin drafting a statement saying they would not agree to the new round of trade talks, which would throw the launching of the round into jeopardy. A joint communique of the Latin American and Caribbean countries on Thursday attacked "a process of limited and reserved participation by some members." Negotiators attempted last night to salvage the talks by agreeing on a very vague description of what the new round of talks would include -- which trade negotiators would term a failure -- or by staying late to satisfy the Third World delegations. "Maybe it's better to have it more vague, because that opens up the door for more reviews of these agreements, which is what we want," said Corpuz of Third World Network. The week got off to a tumultuous start as tens of thousands of protesters, upset about the WTO's impact on labor, environmental and consumer issues, stormed the streets. Some of the protests turned violent, and police responded with tear gas and rubber pellets. A security scare on Monday forced a delay of the WTO's first-ever full-scale meeting with critics from non-governmental organizations. On Tuesday, protesters blocked access to the Paramount, forcing cancellation of formal opening ceremonies, and to the convention center, causing a delay in the start of negotiations. Protests continued throughout the week, but tougher police action, assistance from the National Guard and the imposition of a downtown curfew meant that delegates were largely unaffected by the ongoing guerrilla theater. Yesterday marked the first protests inside the convention center, when on two occasions accredited non-governmental officials unfurled smuggled banners and shouted slogans inside the building before being collared by police. The policy debate, always difficult in an organization with as diverse a membership as the WTO, was protracted and unpleasant. The United States attacked European and Japanese farm subsidies, Japan attacked U.S. steel-protection measures, and the developing world complained that it was not gaining any benefits no matter what the WTO did. President Clinton, who spent about 30 hours in town on Tuesday and Wednesday, threw a further wrench into the works when, on the eve of his arrival, he told the Post-Intelligencer that he wanted a proposed WTO working group on trade and labor to develop labor standards that would eventually be enforceable by trade sanctions. That comment, although welcomed by labor groups, irritated developing nations concerned that they would suffer as a result, and Clinton's labor agenda was sunk. Clinton yesterday intervened personally to try to rescue the U.S. agenda, telephoning foreign leaders, including Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi and European Union President Romano Prodi. The administration was facing another defeat as the WTO was poised to review the U.S. use of anti-dumping laws, which punish countries for selling products here below cost. The United States has aggressively used the laws to defend politically powerful industries such as steel, and had been adamant that it would not agree even to talk about the subject at the WTO. And the United States was losing another fight over opening the WTO itself to greater public scrutiny by opening tribunals to the public, and by allowing environmental, labor and other groups to file "friend of the court" briefs. But the U.S. effort won little support, in part because many smaller countries fear that allowing participation by non-governmental organizations, which often are based in industrialized countries, would further bias the WTO toward the interests of wealthy countries. Dan Seligman of the Sierra Club acknowledged that there was little to celebrate. Still, Seligman was comforted by the high turnout at anti-WTO demonstrations. "Regardless of what happens to the negotiations, we achieved our objectives beyond our wildest expectations," Seligman said. "The average American simply didn't know the WTO existed on Monday. Just five days later, the average American has now heard of the WTO, and they know that it makes some people angry -- some of whom look like they do, and some of whom they saw on TV carrying American flags." Ritchie and Seligman both predicted that the protests and the attention the WTO got in Seattle will eventually force the organization to reform. "I think the WTO has changed forever," Ritchie said. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Sat, 04 Dec 1999 04:06:08 -0800 Subject: Seattle talks collapse From: "cisler" <cisler@pobox.com> I got back from Seattle on Friday morning. I have not had time to write up my impressions of Thursday. I took part in Food and Agriculture Day which involved some wonderful events, all of which ran smoothly. Farmers from around the world took part in a breakfast, a meeting in a safe place with no admission charge or police, a peaceful march to a park, and then break-out sessions to strategize. Others marched to a Cargill grain elevator. It went well. Lots of other things were going on at the city level and with the WTO itself. For me, the most amazing thing was that delegates booed Charlene Barshefsky when she spoke! And when Moore announced the end of the talks, he paid a tribute to the city of Seattle. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, it "provoked derisive laughter" among the delegates. The best quote may be this: "The idea that we can just sweep into some town somewhere on the planet and pull together a document in four days is probably an antiquated notion," said Bill Bryant, a Seattle international trade consultant. "You have an organization that is run by 135 countries . . . If this were run by corporate elites, the trains would have run on time." So where is il Duce, now that the WTO needs him? Steve Cisler - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: katie@imt.net Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1999 16:30:04 -0800 Subject: Re: <nettime> The WTO and the De-synchronization of the Global Economy 12/3/99 fr 4:04 pm mst This is a very exciting post from Stratfor; really it is just an astonishing new viewpoint. And this analysis is something quite fresh and original to me. Of course we have discussed the effect of capital controls elsewhere, with special attention to the Malaysian maverick, Mahathir, who put on capital controls in Malaysia and come through the recent Asian slump quite a bit better than the other Asian tigers who let the short term speculators come in and rip them off, and then let their own fright/flight capital leave for greener pastures in the bloated US capital markets. And we have discussed the general and continuing disconnects and incongruities between the "promises" of glocorpse econ theory as exemplified by IMF and WTO and the *actual* results of allowing these PGO's to make the economic rules for other nations, and for us. So it is with some satisfaction that i see these points vindicated in this astonishing Stratfor essay. ---this de-synchronization factor is a brilliant insight. http://www.stratfor.com/SERVICES/GIU/112999.asp " Weekly Analysis GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE UPDATE The WTO and the De-synchronization of the Global Economy 29 November 1999 SUMMARY The World Trade Organization (WTO) is meeting in Seattle this week. The participants are so divided that they could not even develop a formal agenda for the meetings. While everyone is focused on China’s admission, the fact is that the WTO is moribund, only a few years after its creation. Its failure is rooted in the fundamental reality of today’s global economy: desynchronization of regions of roughly equal bulk. Ever since the Asian meltdown, the world’s economic regions have been completely out of synch. Indeed, individual nations within regions are out of synch. That means that the creation of integrated economic policies is impossible. What helps one region hurts others. Thus, organizations like the WTO cannot function. Instead, regional institutions are emerging. They, too, face conflict among constituent nations, but are more likely to create coherent and beneficial policies for their regions. This points to increased tension among and within regions. Such de-synchronization has been seen in the past. It is, over the course of a generation, a warning of the potential for serious international conflict. " See the stratfor report in full at http://www.stratfor.com/SERVICES/GIU/112999.asp and posted to nettime with this heading: " Date: Sun, 28 Nov 1999 21:30:02 -0600 (EST) From: "alert@stratfor.com" <alert@stratfor.com> To: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Subject: <nettime> The WTO and the De-synchronization of the Global Economy Sender: owner-nettime-l@bbs.thing.net " With regard to the Stratfor report, a comment was offered that "desynchronization" may be merely the normal workings of markets; and that the lack of sychronization could be addressed by "more adaptive universal trade agreements." But I think to fully appreciate the desynchronization analysis, one has to realize that "Free Market" theory has become in fact a theology--and this *theory* does guide the formation of political policy and economic movement. And Free Market theory, which comes straight out of Adam Smith and Ricardo, as John the Baptist and Jesus, or Abraham and Moses (you pick), is based on a miracle or "law of economics" as it is called. This miracle or "Law" is the unproven and completely assumed property or quality that money mediated transactions can, will, and MUST reach a state of ****self-regulating**** equilibrium called a Free Market, if it is left alone to work properly. (The corollary is that any human policy intervention will inevitably tilt and skew this perfect and self-balancing equilibrium.) Now this is clearly a deus ex machina, with God in the form of Money and the Free Market as Holy Mother Church, which by its existence manifests the will of God and the spread of all innate blessings on chaotic-and-tending-toward-badness human beings, or bank accounts, as we like to represent them. You laugh! Well, this is a quite accurate description of the Free Market theory. It is assumed without proof that a *truly* Free Market will self-regulate between the scylla of fascist cartels and the charybdis of totalitarian government control. The Free Market theology has *as its foundation* a belief that the truly Free Market exists something like a law of physics, a sort of monetary law of gravity, and this truly Free Market has immutable mass/energy equations which work everywhere at all times equally, and CANNOT BE AVOIDED. Unfortunately, this is error, and it is usually known by the phrase: "The Invisible Hand of The Market." Modern Free Market Theory, triumphant since the 70's, has been used as the theoretical underpinnings for an "efficient" power grab by fascist cartels, who since then have become far more fascist, far more cartelized and far more in control. But what in fact is demonstrated by the spread of Free Market Theology as a substitute for reasoned and balanced government policy, is that cartels and monopolist structures become *inevitable* *inexorable* and *divinely manifested* by the nature of fiat money and debt-issued financing on the one hand, and the absence of political restraint/regulation/redistribution on the other There is *no* natural tendency to competitive equilibrium and competitive self-regulation in a Free Market, just as the sun does not revolve around the earth however so much you believe that it does. But what Stratfor's desynchronization analysis does is to attack the Free Market Theory at its fulcrum---it attacks the primary and unproven axiom of a *natural equilibrium* in global economics by demonstrating the impossibility of achieving this equilibrium because the regional markets *cannot* be brought into time based synchronization, and thus they cannot be brought into *natural equilibrium* by the supposed "Invisible Hand of The Market." The current Free Market theology is *stuck* with the glaring fact that Free Markets cannot and do not resolve the paradoxes of central-bank debt-issued currency, particularly multiple central banks and multiple debt currencies. And the Free Market theology cannot resolve the universal human tendency to prefer gambling to working if gambling (i.e., speculation without productive purpose or outcome) can be made simple and slow and incremental enough, and if it rewards those of merely financial acumen and cunning, as opposed to those who engage in productive and distributive activity. Thus, it is not a property of the Free Market to self-regulate, but rather as we have seen, the actual inherent tendency of the Free Market is merely to pool wealth in the service of non-productive activity. From this derives the transfer of wealth from productive enterprises to gambling enterprises *if* gambling can be made to seem safe enough and slow enough. And with increasing transfers of this wealth-from-labor to speculative market movements, the Free Market system becomes increasingly drained and impoverished and unable to maintain the basic economic production and distribution required for political stability. Thus, Free Market Theory when it is practiced as a political orthodoxy---instead of stabilizing the political entity in terms of greater mass approval and enthusiasm, in fact acts to ultimately destroy its own consensual and democratic political basis, and to ultimately require the imposition of police state politics. Human *financial* self-interest should be the reliable engine but not the "magical" pilot of our economic management systems. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 23:56:44 -0800 From: Lucky Green <shamrock@cypherpunks.to> To: Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl> Cc: Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>, tbyfield@panix.com Subject: WTO With all this nonsense about electronic sit-ins, below is the most enlightened WTO related post I read in the last two weeks. Enjoy, --Lucky Green <shamrock@cypherpunks.to> "Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest." - Mohandas K. Gandhi, An Autobiography, pg 446 http://www.citizensofamerica.org/missing.ram --- begin forwarded text Resent-Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 19:25:07 -0700 Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 19:23:21 -0700 To: vinsends@ezlink.com From: Vin_Suprynowicz@lvrj.com (Vin Suprynowicz) Subject: Dec. 1 column -- world trade Resent-From: vinsends@ezlink.com Resent-Sender: vinsends-request@ezlink.com Resent-Bcc: FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED DEC. 1, 1999 THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz The 'Free Trade' plot A strange amalgam of Buchananites, trade unionists, and leftover environmental kooks have gathered in Seattle this week to protest the supposed "conspiracy" being hatched there by 3,000 trade officials from more than 100 nations, gathered in hopes of further reducing barriers to international trade. Such Luddite protests have an ancient provenance. Surely there were demonstrations among beet and turnip growers when those products were in part displaced from European dining tables by imported American tomatoes and potatoes 500 years ago. Surely at least a few of those Mediterranean shipwrecks the archaeologists keep discovering were caused by protesters upset that the island's local vineyards were under "economic assault" by those darned cut-rate Athenian amphorae. The term "saboteur" comes from the habit of unhappy Northern European tradesmen who would throw their wooden shoes -- "sabots" -- into the belts and cogs of newly-built factories to stop "greedy industrialists" from manufacturing and selling for mere pennies the lace and other textiles which had once been available to the wealthy alone. (Why, so hideous was this capitalist plot that it eventually allowed even the poor to buy cotton clothes -- made from a cheap imported fabric, much to the detriment of domestic wool-gatherers -- and thus wash and change their clothes, sometimes as often as every week!) The opening of international borders to trade in recent decades has done more to spread affluence and raise standards of living than any other factor. Yet it appears we will never run out of those who whine that free trade "destroys jobs and harms the environment." Now, the Seattle protesters have every right to voice their opinions, of course. And in fact, the intricate compacts enforced by the World Trade Organization don't always promote trade "freedom" at all -- preliminary talks failed even to agree on an agenda last week, as one delegation after another sought to open other people's markets to (start ital)their(end ital) products while "protecting" their own. (The French, as usual, proved most amusing -- Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Jean-Andre Glavany declaring he had no intention of abandoning the import restrictions and price supports which keep Frenchmen paying three times what they should for their bread, milk, and cheese, since "I oppose the ideal of vast empty tracts of land." Would those be vast empty tracts of land like the ones that now surround Boston, since Massachusetts no longer finds work exporting striped cloth to clothe the Southern slaves? Or vast empty tracts of land like those that now typify Silicon Valley, since the California cattle industry collapsed in the face of cheaper imports a century ago?) The rules against "dumping" now enforced by this so-called "free trade" outfit are a classic case: The concern is always that a powerful exporter will drive his competitors out of business and then raise his prices. So ... when (start ital)will(end ital) the Rockefeller interests get around to tripling the price of kerosene? And now that Japanese manufacturers dominate the television and VCR markets, when (start ital)are(end ital) their prices going to start climbing, instead of dropping every year in the face of Korean competition? Yes, foreign nations may experience some societal upheaval and even environmental degradation as the Industrial Revolution sweeps through. But there is no better answer to the problems of the Industrial Revolution than the affluence (start ital)created(end ital) by the Industrial Revolution -- complete with more discerning consumers, who promptly start demanding better wages and cleaner air and water than could ever have been imagined in the days of ox carts and peat fires. Professor Hans-Herman Hoppe of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, probably best answers this "America First" argument when he asks, "Well, why stop there? Why not Nevada first?" Why should Nevadans tolerate the "exporting of jobs" from the Nevada horse-breeding and buggy-manufacturing trades, by allowing the free importation of cheap automobiles from Michigan? Think of all the Nevada glass-blowing jobs that could be saved, if we simply stopped allowing all that cheap glass to "pour in" from Pittsburgh and Corning, N.Y. ... No, there's no stopping trade -- though politicians are free to temporarily punish their own people if they wish, creating massive black markets in anything from smuggled cheese to Freon. As to this concern that other nations may be unwilling to open their markets as quickly as ours -- England found the right answer in the 1850s, becoming the wealthiest nation in the world by the simple expedient of dropping all her tariff barriers ... unilaterally. Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers," was recently named 1999 Freedom Book of the Year by the kind folks at Free-Market.Net. Copies are $24.95 postpaid from Mountain Media, P.O. Box 271122, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127. Or: dial 1-800-244-2224, or visit web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html. *** Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com "The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872 "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken * * * # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net