----- Original Message ----- From: "Rob Schaap" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Anyway, by way of formal kick-off; some things I'd like to hear penpals on > include the following considerations: > > * The 'that was then' argument: Under the 'free trade' environment envisaged > by the mainstream media and the US State Department, capital dances around the > world instantly and costlessly, with governments everywhere dropping their > knickers to attract FDIs.
============= One need only point out how much of this goes into actual investment in the means of production of goods and services as opposed to the global casino and suggest alternative uses for all that labor and computer power. > * The Galbraithian institutionalist argument projected into a Marxian value > argument: Even if markets tend to efficiency in the abstract, the capacity of > big corporations in the real world (whose particular access to capital affords > them an absolute advantage in both information expoitation and > capital-mobility exploitation) to make, rather than take, prices has > (inevitably) distorted the free-market ideal. Where goods trade at way above > exchange value (eg M$), other goods in play must sell below their exchange > value, creating debt-dependence, political distortion, uneven development, and > incipient underconsumption. ============== Connect the above to the entire mess called transfer pricing and global tax arbitrage. A major weakness of international law as a mode of commercial regulation. > * The M$ example also reminds us of Frank Graham's (and Ethier's 60 years > later) comparative economies of scale argument. A national economy doing the > right Ricardian thing, and concentrating on producing something at constant > return to scale (as many LDCs would be encouraged to do, given their current > comparative advantage location) would be bound to protect its rent by through > protection if it were confronted by a trading partner specialising in a good > of increasing return to scale. ================ Use the argument that under 'free trade' somebody somewhere is always being protected. Property rights as protection, the costs of said protection externalized. In conversations with people leading up to Seattle I juxtaposed TRIPS with trade in toxic waste and trade in ecosystem services [forest products, fisheries etc]. Tha list could obviously be expanded to show that somebody is always getting protection form somebody else. There is no free trade without protection. > * There actually being no such thing as 'free trade', the question is really > one of mode of regulation. =============== This is the condundrum of all floating signifiers; either we appropriate the term to our project or we force the other side's hand on the vacuousness of the term to refer given the institutional complexities of the present as compared to Ricardo's time. I broached this issue with Michael Moore in October of '99 when I asked why we were trying to use-operationalize a 19th century [ok 18th or even earlier given the term was around before Ricardo and Smith] to solve the problems of the 21st century. He had no answer. This can be connected to the fact that since 'free trade' does not yet exist, it's yet *another* attempt at prediction by economists, who, as we all know, have outstanding records at predicting the best path forward into a brighter better human future. Keynes' International Clearing Union argument > (that both deficit and surplus national economies needed to be disciplined) > implies that incentives are all wrong under Bretton Woods institutions if free > trade's advantages are to be optimised, because investors are not encouraged > to develop. Keynes would be even less comfortable with the chaoplexic charges > and retreats of capital around the world, as the dangers of this were > precisely whatthe Bretton Woods talks were initiated to avoid. And the > greenback as international currency affords the hegemon unfair advantages > (hence Keynes' bancor: > http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/bwi-wto/2001/braithwa.htm ). ============ The "finance capital has attention deficit disorder" thesis, whereby speculators prefer continuous, positive-feedback driven asset price inflation on acutally existing assets to committing to long term projects of technological restructuring given our growing knowledge base regarding ecological complexities. Never mind solving the logistics problems surrounding food security [the planet is quite capable of feeding itself for a *real* *long* time] and health care, education etc. for all. Chaoplexity speaking one can tie this to the prediction conundrums alluded to above with: "Most human beings can work out the dynamics of a two or three state system -- eg, what happens to them if their spouse is angry at them or is friendly with them-- but very few can carry on chains of recursion of even ten periods, not to speak of the hundreds or thousands that easily arise in complex financial transactions or complex diplomatic or military confrontations. Even periodic systems, if they evolve a large number of degrees of freedom, can challenge the computational resources built into our brains by evolution." [Duncan Foley, intro to "Barriers and Bounds to Rationality, Peter Albin, page 47]. Hence a little strategic diffidence on the part of economists combined with a concerted effort to place trade in the context of democratic norms of governance at all scales of social organization of production-distribution throws the great big ball back into the court of political deliberation where policy makers can be held accountable. To the extent the BWI trio does not have a democratic ethos regarding representation and accountability, it should be morphed into something [what, is the bazillion $ ?] else. > > *The Martin Wolf 'you don't and can't have free trade until labour is as > mobile as capital' argument Ian just posted. > > Cheers, > Rob. > ============== Joan Robinson's "Beggar Thy Neighbor Remedies for Unemployment" and "The Pure Theory of International Trade" would tie that argument to the full employment critiques....Although it could also go in the Autonomists direction.... "Free trade is a 90 pound theory trying to solve a 20 ton problem" [myself, traveling the Pacific Northwest spring-summer-fall of 1999] I think we all know what the 20 ton problem is. Ian
