Posted by zeugma on March 7, 2006, at 17:48:18 [reposted on March 7, 2006, at 22:17:38 | original URL]
In reply to Re: random discourse on mortality, redirect if nec. » zeugma, posted by 838 on March 7, 2006, at 17:22:35
I had heard... (You might want to correct me) That free trade... Typically what happened was the bigger country subsidised the businesses back home so that the prices could undercut the businesses in the smaller country so that people from the smaller country would go with imported over local product. Then... Eventually the local businesses go under... Then there is fairly much a monopoly and the prices can go up again (and the govt can stop subsidising the businesses exporting to the smaller country). I heard... That seemed to be a pattern with 'free trade'... The result was fairly much... Economic takeover type thing... Though the pattern is complicated by the appearance of choice... And typically it helps things along to employ 3rd world labour so it looks like the product is coming from somewhere else etc etc... If that is right... Then isn't subsidising.... Isn't offering tax breaks to certain products / businesses a form of regulation?>>
your summary shows, to my uneducated mind (philosophy of econmics baffles me, William Blake's "Holy Thursday" is about as far as I got to understanding how these things work, apparently Marx (Karl) got upset by what he saw in industrial England (though it must be said, and I believe he did say it, or Engels did) that England was the only place that let him say what he wanted to say (no small thing)). I don't know, your summary seems accurate, in that there used to be four coffee shops around Union Square under different ownerships and now there are still four but they are all Starbuck's. Naive economics, that's me, the one commodity I have given serious thought to is the coffee bean.
But since you know my desire for exactitiude, I will quote President Bush exactly. He said that the Republican Party was for the "haves and the have mores." He was joking. And we must not take anyone's joke literally. Or seriously. But we can wonder, who is the joke ON? And who exactly is laughing?
-z
poster:zeugma
thread:617294
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20060304/msgs/617306.html