The move towards profit at all costs to the general public is seemingly global at this point. There's not much escaping it. We all know the trouble with the U.S. Harper's government in Canada has silenced scientists who would speak out about the negative impacts of government policies, the UK is seeing university tuitions triple and then some, with student loans becoming more and more normal, despite the huge flashing warning sign the U.S. is about student debt...
All over - stories about propping up the rich on the backs of anyone not rich. The thing is, the middle and lower classes are complicit in their own demise, voting in conservative governments or lackey liberals who don't even make attempts to keep their corporate connections secret anymore - let alone their desires to make life easier on those that already have it the easiest. Just toss a few "abortion" quotes around and the public will distract themselves with infighting while their standards of living are being destroyed, and for the first time in modern history, your kids won't be better off or live longer than you.
Used to be we could say that at least there were scientists and other altruistic professions out there fighting the good fight. But even they are being actively stifled in order to boost corporate profits (US, Canada, others.)
I guess the middle class is in denial. Global feudalism, directed by an unelected superclass, does indeed seem inevitable. Liberalism was useful to capital when labor was regionally tied (democracy improving morale and public education improving labor quality), but now it's back to basics. I'm interested in what belief systems will be employed to move people away from identities based on citizenship.
God I hope not. Revolution has always been a shitshow and I don't even want to think how it would look given technological advancement since the last time around.
There's reason to hope. As a nation we have faced bigger issues than this and come out on top. Besides, there are still a handful of decent ways out. Social policy like reducing the workweek to restore supply/demand balance in the labor market could work. So could basic/minimum income, although I suspect that it's politically untenable even though it would be cheaper in the big picture. The least efficient but most probable (IMO) approach would be to grow the size of our creaking, bloated menagerie of inefficient social programs.
So far, capitalist societies have generally been far better than Marx assumed at figuring out how to implement the minimum possible social policy to stave off rebellion. I don't know whether to call it optimistic or pessimistic, but I suspect the trend will continue. Hopefully we won't go full Orwell in the process, but I wouldn't put money on it. We're already turnkey-Orwell and I think most of us can tell which way the wind is blowing.
More optimistically, I think there's also a chance that market dynamics will shift for the better due to technological change. Sure, 3D printing has been overhyped to the moon and back, but if rents are increasing while the inefficiency of distributed production is decreasing, then eventually there's going to be a crossing point. Once everyone has self-replicating farms, power shifts back to the people and free market dynamics start working for the masses instead of against them. It'll require a ton of effort and investment to make it happen, but that makes it just the sort of thing to provide opportunity to the HN crowd :)
Self replicating production facilities dramatically lower the barrier to entry for leasors, giving market leverage to consumers. If you can download open source specs for a personal farm and pit manufacturing shops against one another to build the thing, you're still going to get a nearly rent-free price (in this ideal future where the technology exists to, e.g., print an automated tractor). To be more efficient, you could lease rather than buy, but this doesn't change the underlying power balance: if production infrastructure is sufficiently cheap you can disintermediate the system for less than it would cost to be "financially independent" by subsiding on investment revenue. The system would be forced to compete.
You still need the land to farm, something that can be taken away relatively easily[1]
Especially now, with police force having citizenproof MRAPs, drones and all that lovely toys. Or they could tax you to hell and back and then use the toys.
I can't think of a single revolution that ended with a better government replacing the existing one except for the American one. Russia, Cuba, Iran, etc.. don't make the odds seem likely.
One good example might be the Portuguese Carnation Revolution that took place in 1974.
It overthrew a corporatist dictatorship where private enterprise created a feudal system based on state sponsored monopolies handed out to a few families.
The dictator himself was apparently modest in his life style, but his friends running the monopolies were very wealthy.
Life for the common person improved significantly after the revolution with access to free health-care, more education and better worker rights.
In the short run they got Robespierre. However, in the long run things certainly got better. In the meantime the UK still has a queen and the House of Lords. So maybe having Robespierre was worth it.
You mention Russia, and I'll add China. Both countries were massively feudal and got brought forcefully into the 20th century for one, and into the 21st century for the other, over the course of a few decades. The GDP increases of both countries were astronomical once they settled into state capitalism (early for the Soviet Union, after a few decades for China).
Cuba is a more mixed bag because they don't have the benefit of the massive geographic and population sizes that the previous two countries have, but for the ordinary Cuban, for a few decades, the gains were astronomical.
The seeds of the Iranian revolution were that of a popular, anti-colonial revolt, before it got high-jacked by the clerics and turned into a theocratic shitshow.
The Russian one improved greatly the life of the Russian people. They ended living oppressed under a dictatorship, but it was miles better than starving under the Tsar's monarchy.
Are you trying to be ironic? You're aware that they (and numerous neighbour countries) ended up starving oppressed under communist dictatorship, as opposed to starving oppressed under Tsar's monarchy, yes?
I absolutely agree with you, but it's worth mentioning that communism brought some temporal and local improvements to the lives of some people that is used for arguing for communism. E.g. an individual from a poor family who could study engineering was probably satisfied with the changes. But the big picture is pretty bad anyway.
I have an alternative, but I'm not sure how you implement it. The crux if the problem is the greed for profit. As consumers we act as individuals and the corporations like it that way. The key to controlling corporations is hitting them where it hurts, I.e. their wallets. If we could unite as consumers we would have the power to crush corporations who do not play fair. If we could find a way to unite consumers such that tomorrow we could get 99% of the population to boycott a company until they changed their practices, then we could demonstrate to consumers that they had a trenendous power to wield. At the moment people don't think like this.
In my opinion, the middle and lower classes don't vote enough, and therein lies the crux of complicity. If it were somehow required that you had to bring 8 other people with you to vote, if you knew of them - i.e. make it a 'thought-crime' - and knew they were openly stating that they were not going to vote - then it'd get fixed right up.
i.e. a voters bounty for registered, un-voters.
I suppose there are huge flaws in this, but I seriously think it'd be fun for a lot of people if there were suddenly 'vote sheriffs' out there, making sure that people exercised their right to apply power to the politics. People always deserve the whips and bonds they freely choose, when done in freedom. If todays democracy is merely the lesser evil, then a lesser evil even still is total democracy.
At least, I favour organized means of encouraging every 18+ person, citizen, to vote. Voting is meant to solve problems created by incumbent possessors of force, who get too used to their power.
(Note: I also do believe in the right to not vote - i.e. as protest over 'the system', but in the immediate reality of our world today, we need more people actually voting to support their point of view than just those who feel the need to express their point of view. Voting is existence.
I get the impression a good number of people are cheering it on. Hyperelitism and hatred of the poor or "stupid" seems a major zeitgeist of the age. People have given up on the idea that the human condition can be fundamentally improved.
The state of student loans in the US don't really seem like a warning sign for student loans in the UK, which work so differently I'd almost argue they should be called something other than a 'loan'. What's more it wasn't really a profit move (the universities don't make any more money) as much as a who should pay move.
If you want to draw parallels between the situation in the US & Canada and the situation in the UK, I would point you at the Conservative government's attempt to stifle education on global warming, and the cosy relationship between the government and corporations, particularly the banks.
> What's more it wasn't really a profit move (the universities don't make any more money) as much as a who should pay move.
I was aware of that argument at the time, but has it panned out that way? I wouldn't be surprised at figures showing either direction. e.g.
1. The initial loan/funding is still from "the government" so from day zero, the government is most likely paying 3x the amount. It'll be years before each student pays this back and until then, "the government" is hardest hit?
2. With the push to send more to university, there'll be more students this year than e.g. 4 years ago. Did projections hold up? At £27k/head it doesn't take a large % increase to make a considerable difference & I wouldn't be surprised to hear that universities have far larger incomes than the past or projected.
3. And then you get into the issue of whether the majority will ever manage to pay off these loans... will we 'all' end up paying for anyway in the end to cover the deficit...? Would it've been cheaper just to tax us to begin with before letting interest acrue?
It could be seen as a political profit move though. I've once heard someone describe the whole university system (or what it's becoming) as a clever way to hide unemployment. Even better, you're making the unemployed themselves pay (loans) for the privilege of not being technically unemployed!
True. Shouldn't have left that in there - it's a conflagration of a number of stats showing upward mobility for the next generation in a lot of the western world has stalled or is going backwards.
To be fair, a lot of these corporate interests, if applicable broadly and without prejudice (unlikely), would just reinforce property right.
For instance, articles such as these always sensationalize some of the issues. This article claims that the agreement would allow corporations to sue governments for instituting policies that hurt their bottom line. This is probably true but this would cover expropriation, which many people feel is unjust. I know many in US cringe at reports of Venezuela's government expropriating business through force. Many would agree that if you have a law abiding business it would be wrong for the government to come in and take all your capital as their own. What I imagine corporations believe is that this should be interpreted more broadly.
For instance, if you agree that expropriation is bad, at what point does negatively harming a brand image effectively become expropriation? If a government makes you put a warning label? Plain packaging? Patent infringement?
Unfortunately, even if you agree with very strong property rights, this will almost certainly not be applied evenly and without special carve-outs.
In many instances, the property right is questionable. Much of the property right, such as with IP, was built on the back of a looser interpretation. Disney's earliest years of spoofing mainstream cultural vernacular with Mickey Mouse is perhaps the most well cited example. We could also question the legitimacy of the well documented fleecing of earlier African American musical artists during the 40s-70s that in turn amassed vast libraries of IP.
Art moves as language and relies on an interaction with the language of the culture. The excessive IP is nothing more than a locking away of the keys that permitted the mega corporations to come to power in the first place.
Illegitimate hegemony. Appropriated content. Preserved as capital by those with little to no involvement with its creation.
I completely agree with you on IP and I am concerned over cooperation among countries to enforce IP protections. What I'm more concerned about is what I consider valid property rights such as physical property (equipment, your home, business) and your own body (expression, substances, etc).
NPR had a great article about US tariff policy. It detailed a 3,000 page book that's used to set the appropriate tax:
> The book lists the tax that importers have to pay on approximately every single thing in the universe — including, of course, T-shirts. They're right there under heading 6109: T-shirts, singlets, tank tops and similar garments, knitted or crocheted.
The average tax rate on stuff coming into the U.S. is around 2 percent. The tax on T-shirts is much higher: 16.5 percent. That's what we'll be paying on the Planet Money men's shirts, which were made in Bangladesh. But the Planet Money women's shirts were made in Colombia — and those, according to the book of everything, come in duty-free, with no tariff at all. [0]
To me it just seems very arbitrary and hence rife for corruption.
“What I'm more concerned about is what I consider valid property rights such as physical property (equipment, your home, business) and your own body (expression, substances, etc).”
To an extent, even these forms of capital are accrued on the back of societal and cultural context.
If one inherit's a home from a family member, under what contexts was that permitted? Did we stop to evaluate how much capital and property right was appropriated illegitimately? Did we evaluate government endorsed privilege and bias in the transaction[1]?
Did we stop to evaluate what property was accumulated under corrupt special-interest lobbying such as the TPP itself?
Ultimately, all capital and property is birthed from the culture. In many instances, gender and sex, birthright, race, and a plethora of other chance based factors result in an accumulation or deflation of capital and property.
I completely agree. The problem is that I, along with other people who lean libertarian in their ideology, read the word "we" and interpret it as "politicians" as they are the only party that can reasonably make these judgement calls. Did [Dick Cheney|Barack Obama|Hugo Chavez|Kim Jong Un] evaluate what property is legitimate? I honestly would rather not find out.
One can argue that we can vote but most decisions made are so far removed from the democratic process that its effectively meaningless. In my home town of New York City, I hear people argue that such and such should be allowed or disallowed and there should be more discretion from officials. I always then question them as to who these officials are or who the relevant party is that makes such decisions. If they cannot answer, which they almost always cannot, I ask why they have such faith that those unknown, probably unelected officials will make wise decisions. Maybe I'm just a cynic and regulatory capture isn't really as prevalent as I imagine it is.
> To be fair, a lot of these corporate interests, if applicable broadly and without prejudice (unlikely), would just reinforce property right.
That argument is unlikely to hold much weight for anyone who isn't an extremist libertarian.
Even libertarian moderates usually accept that property rights are a means to an end (usually liberty, hence the name) and qualify their beliefs about property rights being a good thing to acknowledge that there are circumstances in which they can be abused. Perverse incentives are real and most sane people feel a need to at least acknowledge them in their philosophical wanderings.
I don't want to speak for all libertarians, but I would argue that liberty and property rights are essentially very linked in that you exert liberty over your own property, be it your body, mind or personal belongings.
Perverse incentives are real but I guess I'm just skeptical of a centralized authoritative body sanctioned to use force can make them any better.
To quote the (extremist?) classical liberal economist Friedrich Hayek, "the curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design"
> I'm just skeptical of a centralized authoritative body sanctioned to use force can [do better than enforcing property rights].
I disagree but this is not what I was calling the extremist position. If you are skeptical that there are better ways of achieving liberty than enforcing property rights then you still acknowledge that the fundamental desirable quantity is something other than the property rights themselves. You admit the possibility, as I believe any reasonable person would, libertarian or not, that under some circumstances the connection between enforced property rights and the underlying good may occasionally break down and that you must therefore always ask yourself if enforcing a particular notion of property in a particular instance is a good idea -- even if you tend to lean one way or the other by default.
(The "particular notion of property," by the way, is the bit that is especially amusing to watch libertarians dance around. It's possible to construct notions of property to make nearly anything seem reasonable or unreasonable, revealing the concept to be about as subjective as any other utility metric. But I digress.)
On the other hand if you take the position that property rights are a fundamental good in and of themselves, then you close your ears to arguments like "X company is using Y strategy to take Z's money without adding net value to the situation. They should be stopped." I don't think that's reasonable. People find loopholes in the system all the time and if actions weren't taken to stop them the world would be a miserable place even fuller of monopolies than it is today.
I agree that property rights are not as objective as some would like to believe but there are some clever alternative methods to solve disputes. For instance, Ronald Coase addressed this issue in an article called "The Problem With Social Cost"
> A candy maker had had the same property for over 60 years when a doctor moved next door. After eight years passed without incident between them, the the doctor built a consulting room right against the confectioner’s kitchen. The doctor then found that the noise from the confectioner’s equipment interfered with the doctor’s ability to work, and in particular to hear with a stethoscope. The doctor filed suit to force the confectioner to stop using his equipment. The court recognized that the confectioner might suffer some hardship – thus admitting to the reciprocal nature of harm that Coase would later recognize – but it argued that to avoid even greater (unspecified) individual hardship and inhibiting land development for residential use, the confectioner must stop
Coase proposed considering how the parties might settle the dispute in a market transaction once the court made its findings; for space reasons I will present a simplified version of Coase’s argument. Though the doctor had won, in a market settlement he would be willing to allow the machinery to continue to operate were the confectioner to pay the doctor a sum that was greater than the doctor’s loss of income from having to either move or install sound abatement material. Conversely, had the confectioner won, in a market settlement he would have been willing to accept payment from the doctor to stop using the noisy machinery if the amount were greater than the confectioner’s costs to move the equipment or install sound abatement material.
In difference with Pigou, for Coase the general principle in cases of damage is that each case should be considered for its particular circumstances: “When an economist is comparing alternative social arrangements, the proper procedure is to compare the total social product yielded by these different arrangements” [0]
I'm not saying one solution is perfect but I am just more open-minded as to how disputes are handled without the use (or threat) of force. It's always interesting how a crowd like HN is so vehemently anti-authoritarian in some respects is willing to grant so much liberty to that same authority in some respects.
As far as "underlying good", that's above my pay-grade. To me, I just read that as either "think of the children" or "national security".
Governments have an imperative to serve their people, and no obligation at all to corporations. I get that corporations are made up of people, so sometimes protecting people benefits a corporation. But unless you're willing to make the blanket statement that all repatriations are bad for people, I don't think you can make a blanket statement about whether or not repatriations are unjust, at least not meaningfully. Corporations aren't owed justice, people are.
Given that, the rest of what you're saying based on that unravels quickly.
To add to your argument: Although corporations are made up of people, the interest of the majority of the people that make up the corporation isn't necessarily aligned with that of the corporation.
I think I agree, but I believe you're saying "repatriation" when you mean "expropriation." Repatriation usually refers to a requirements to realize gains, etc. in one's home country--not the taking of property by force. The taking of private property for government use is expropriation.
The negotiations and drafts are in fact secret even from Congress at this point, and there's a movement underway to give "fast-track authority" to the president which would also remove the debate from the bill.
"Obama has asked Congress to pass so-called Trade Promotion Authority legislation that would prohibit congressional amendments before an up or down vote on the Trans-Pacific Partnership"
From what I understand, only certain members of congress have access to it before it is finalized.
"Congress, and the American public, will be fully informed of what’s in the Trans-Pacific Partnership before lawmakers vote to make the agreement part of United States law. But he has a point that lawmakers won’t know what’s in the Trans-Pacific Partnership before they cast a separate, precursor vote -- the vote to authorize Obama to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership on a fast-track basis in the first place."
Congress has access, but it is quite limited. Unlike industry representatives, they are only allowed to read the document in a special sealed room, but may not make copies, may not take notes and may not bring along any staffer, even those would be in a better position to interpret the opaque and complex legal terms used.
Where are these rules written down, surely such anti-democratic actions have to be unconstitutional?
Plus where does USA get off in trying to impose laws on the rest of the world through secret treaty negotiations the details of which are only open to a very limited and controlled politically chosen group and a second group chosen entirely on wealth.
Land of the Free my arse - plutocratic hegemony more like it.
TPP is the most blatant "we're rich we'll decide the rules" that I think I've ever come across.
From the OP:
>"is there any way to look at this situation and not judge it to be a case of massive corruption?" //
The drafts will be secret for everyone not involved directly in the negotiations until it'll have to be passed in the national Congresses. Which is of course how things work in a democratic society.
This is all about ensuring China isn't the only game in East Asia: Giving the non-Chinese half of East Asia's population a chance of fending off Chinese economic domination by creating a market union. I don't want to defend it considering the lack of transparency which requires us to be cynical... BUT we need to keep this in mind. This isn't all about the US or business per se. Rather, East Asia, the US, and big business all are in political alignment here, and that's how you build policy that happens... We're not the center of this. East Asia is
Err, so you're saying this is about reducing the power of Chinese manufacturing and cost of labor by playing other east Asian countries against them, and that's somehow NOT about US power and interests?
It is primarily due to the military threat China poses to its neighbors and Chinese disrespect for international rules and is neighbors. US interests are international stability and freedom of commerce, Chinese interests are much less enlightened and do not consider anyone else but China.
Well, he's not absurd. The US does have those interests but they are (invariably) curbed toward the benefit of American citizens and allies. The US order and global trade has done a lot of good. It's also committed and supported atrocities for its own core or security interests and made flat out mistakes. If you cherrypick either side the US can look like a paladin or an ogre.
I definitely agree with this. Despite all of the US hatred, I would say that overall America does pursue these goals relative to China. Imagine if the things that the Chinese government happened in America. It would be surreal.
Not taking a side here, but wanted to add details to your list.
America does not have a firewall, but they do have means to stop certain things from circulation. A great example is ISIL video. It is expunged from Youtube and Facebook and other social media platforms - Twitter is compelled to delete accounts of ISIL members. The US uses mass social media propaganda to countermessage the ideas of ISIL (http://minerva.dtic.mil/doc/samplewp-Lieberman.pdf).
This not being the only target, there are ways that the US engages with ideas (look up Cass Sunstein's Nudge and work on cultural persuasion) and Air Force social engagement flowcharts.
Bribery in the US is composed on tacit agreements, shared interests and possible financial reprisal. It is subtler but not difficult to call for what it is. In business, agreed. It's there and sometimes in places the US isn't interested in intervening. But it isn't ubiquitous.
The US applies sanctions and embargos, abuses its Export-Import Bank and connections with the World Bank and IMF, and fixes political situations - aren't we in a TPP thread? - with economic warfare. You can't buy salmon in the Eastern tip of Russia right now. The US also hauses tariffs to compete with other nations' industries (cars, sugars, ...).
Maybe. But all of those big business are using the opportunity to basically bypass sovereignty in the western world, as well as ram a lot of other harmful legislation.
So it's not all about China anymore - and in fact, East Asia is basically independent of the way it will be felt by most people. So practically speaking, it isn't about China and East Asia at all.
To have a good understanding of why the USG wants the TPP, yes, it's about China.
As citizens we feel that inequality of wealth opportunity is the high, urgent priority - and that tools inside the TPP will exacerbate these issues.
As the government the existential threat to the US hegemonic uni-power world order - and by extension the political power and much of the economic opportunity and strategic interests of the US - is the high, urgent threat.
TPP is a bad deal because it only seeks to solve one of these and may actively harm the other - but I remember Obama saying something to the effect of "find me a better deal."
A better deal in a "free trade agreement" is just that - a free trade agreement. Enforcement and length of IP rights, the ability of corporations to extrajudicially sue governments, GMOs (as is the case in the Trans-Atlantic trade agreement) etc. has nothing to do with free trade, i.e. trade without import taxes.
The TPP is not merely a free trade deal. It is a trade deal made exclusively to isolate China, and then allow it to participate in a few years only if it (China) follows certain rules (i.e. Western Intellectual Property law).
This is true except that the US would not be getting involved unless it aided US security or other interests. In this case the US would like to contain China from becoming too large a global player (the US Grand Strategy for defense for the past few decades has been to prevent any other superpower from rising).
I never understood why you need an agreement for free trade. Free trade should be the default. What is being negotiated is a perversion of free trade used to mask corporate subsidies and crony capitalism.
Lots of countries aim for protectionism. The reason is they need to boost their manufacturing base or else they'll be stuck exporting raw materials to import manufactured goods to no end.
They're are called "free trade agreements" because they do away with protectionism, thereby liberalizing those markets. There are no absolutes in the real world but markets do usually become freer as a result of these trade negotiations.
People don't have beef with FTAs because they aren't liberal enough. I know that liberals like to get in on board the hate train but it's a bit disingenuous to pretend that you're on the same page as most of the folk protesting FTAs when you stand at odds on the basic question of whether protectionism can be economically beneficial or not.
Free trade is the default, but practically every country has passed laws that override that default, which is what makes free trade agreements necessary.
I've been an advocate of transparent discussion for some time. The TPP represents a huge constellation of laws and it is absurd that the negotiations are done so secretively.
But discussion about the TPP, too, is done in an opaque way. Everyone seems to have their favorite issue with it - for example information and piracy advocates will point to how grossly IP law is expanded internationally - others questions why only 5 or so chapters of a couple dozen have to do with trade if it's merely a trade deal - others will alarm at international corporate tribunals, worried that the largest and most aggressive corporations may abuse the liberal world order's tools to concentrate wealth and control.
But to understand the TPP - why it has few trade chapters relative to international law chapters and why IP and American corporate legal capabilities are strengthened as well as all of the secrecy - one needs to understand why the US has been pushing it on the Asia-Pacific region.
Washington Thinktanks and Defense Officials have come to the conclusion that the meteoric rise of China represents an existential threat to the supremacy of US hegemonic world order. The US's grand defense strategy has always been to 'balance' regions of the world where one country may otherwise dominate so that they can not then 'grow up' to play the global power game.
Take Blackwill's recent publication: Revising US Grand Strategy Toward China.
Blackwill suggests a series of measures: the first being to get the TPP out the door to isolate China from international trade in its region. He goes on further to suggest that the DoD should invest in cyberwarfare and other capabilities - indeed these measures are being taken, as the DoD is now partnering with VC firms inside the Valley to steer funding toward national defense.
Secretary of Defense Carter penned his interest in the TPP, publicly stating that he would rather have the TPP than another aircraft carrier.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe just visited Congress, whereupon he spoke to them about the new unprecedented collective defense pact (think Asian NATO) being entered into by the two countries which required Japan to reinterpret its constitution. In the speech he discussed the importance of the TPP for defense purposes, and took questions about the rise of China.
None of this is a defense of the TPP. What it is is a call for transparent discussion. We can do one better than those discussing the TPP behind closed doors. We can speak openly about what it gets the US and its allies.
US is a benevolent guardian of international world order and its geopolitical supremacy has brought nothing but benefits to other parties (Asia, EU, Japan). Unlike China, which only considers its own interests and has a leadership that is politically backward, does not hold any civilized values and poses a military threat to world peace and stability. Your feral Anti-Americanism is cute, but you offer nothing of substance.
The US with the EU has kept both the Ottoman Empire and its conquered native cultures divided for a long time (even coup'ed a democratically elected government), has neocolonialized South America, has couped and/or occupied many other nations, denied anyone without an American passport the inalienable human rights enumerated by her Constitution, and has not intervened evenly on every crisis involving dictators and human rights violators.
The US does a great deal of good. But it also renders its own costs.
But to speak highly of her, if you would like me to do that, she has done and continues to do incredible things around the world including humanitarian assistance not riddled with policy objectives, treatment of epidemics and disastors, and some incredible interventions and transformations of societies (I do not begrudge what US NGOs/CSOs are doing for North Korea).
"Pax Americana" could have been much worse, I think. And thank god she avoided nuclear war. We owe many people for that.
I suppose world peace is defined as tyrants and terrorists running the world and US doing nothing about it? US has used military action to promote long term peace and stability. China actively harasses sovereign nations in the pacific region and may invade them some day.
Both of you are right. China is a bully and so too is the United States.
Superpowers bully.
So the question is about how to handle this situation between conflicting interests. We need to figure out how to keep as much peace as we can with two superpowers, and make them both agree to something they feel great about.
These aren't facts but this is how I feel:
With the opportunity to lift all of humanity from poverty around the globe in our lifetimes, and opportunities to use technology to solve physical mysteries, and with global economic trade both can prosper from I hope, I wish, I imagine that there are ways to find a symbiosis.
I'm afraid of hawks playing a game that forces there to be other hawks - of there being a race to the bottom into a cold war (whose balance and controls have been loosening - the US is not without blame here).
The instability that we currently have in the world is in almost all cases caused by actions of the US. Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia financed terrorism, the list goes on and on.
Whenever the US intervenes it's either creating a mess or involving itself in a mess that was created by the US in the first place.
The stability and victories of peace are also due to the US. It is the US world order. It has problems, but it's also very difficult to determine what alternate histories would look like.
Neither the US nor China are evil or good. They are both rationally inclined to their own interests, which compete. Each have their own issues and histories. The US for the most part tries to find solutions that meet ideals and at the same time meet US interests.
The ideas you talk about are great and noble, but the implementation shitty. Iraq is no better off than 10 years ago. In Syria, first Assad was the enemy, so they helped the militias, who turned out to be Isis. I'm not saying that China will always remain peaceful (internationally), but so far, their non-invasion policies have resulted in much less deaths than the US's invasion policies.
By "guaranteeing stability" you mean disband the dictatorships and armer groups they established in order to stop the CPPP expansion? Now, these same leaders that militarized the world in order to stop the Soviet Union are deciding our domestic laws in order to stop another country from threatening their economic and military supremacy.
Containing China (as if this will work:) does no good for me if I'm simply handed over to corporate masters who have control over my government and I have no say. Thus the secrecy I suppose.
So could someone clarify this for me? Is is that the TPP negotiations are occurring in secret, or is it that the TPP will be passed without it being available for the public to view (which should be the case for most bills?)?
The former seems very reasonable to me (that negotiations happen in secret, and then the final product is presented to the public/congress for a vote), but up to this point I'm still not sure which is the case.
The negotiations are being done in secret. The result will be presented as ordinary bills to legislatures.
But I'm not sure if there is anything reasonable about non-national security issues being discussed in secret. We're talking about commerce here, not nuclear weapons.
Not to defend potentially terrible policy (the lack of transparency makes cynicism the only reasonable reaction):
But the elephant in the room with the TPP is China.
Ultimately at a high level East Asia has about as many Chinese as Non-Chinese. This means that a strong economic block uniting non-China East Asia and granting it strong market access actually has a chance of fending off China's economic domination of the region.
If this is about controlling China, and China obviously knows it, then I don't see any reason for hiding it from the public instead of saying "this all is in order to combat China". Or maybe the means proposed are something that most of us aren't ready to accept in order to guarantee the economic supremacy of the West enterprises?
This is more about military domination of the region and strengthening economies of non-Chinese Asian countries so they can defend themselves from a potentially aggressive China.
This is a necessary and enlightened agreement to put a check on China that does not respect international rules, and give non-Chinese Asian allies and US an economic boost. Whoever is leaking this is not doing a service to the world as it only panders to a misguided populist impulse. This agreement is leading us towards a more free and prosperous world.
100% agreed on impulses of all sorts by citizens who don't understand what the TPP is about. But this is because there is no discussion about it on frank terms - the US can't even take a real stance on it and have to work in vaguaries and "and for national security". The closest they came was Obama's SotU. Without a real explanation there no way for citizens to understand, so they panic. And populists do have legitimate grievances.
All over - stories about propping up the rich on the backs of anyone not rich. The thing is, the middle and lower classes are complicit in their own demise, voting in conservative governments or lackey liberals who don't even make attempts to keep their corporate connections secret anymore - let alone their desires to make life easier on those that already have it the easiest. Just toss a few "abortion" quotes around and the public will distract themselves with infighting while their standards of living are being destroyed, and for the first time in modern history, your kids won't be better off or live longer than you.
Used to be we could say that at least there were scientists and other altruistic professions out there fighting the good fight. But even they are being actively stifled in order to boost corporate profits (US, Canada, others.)
I don't even know. I hate being pessimistic.
Apologies. End rant.