[martin14]

andyt andyt:

Nice to see a thoughtful post from you, Martin. But Lemmy's question still stands - how would we be doing if we hadn't signed those deals? Even the US doesn't have the leverage to go it alone, shut it's borders. As other countries start to catch up after WWII, they're just not going to be able to maintain their dominance. Even harder for us, with our small population, we were never in a position to be insular.

He asked what worked. AutoPact was fine, NAFTA was ok until the Mexicans were brought in.
Signing deals with the US is fine, Europe as well.
But as long as we continue to write deals with countries that have a way too high
competitive advantage in terms of labour rates and environmental get arounds,
we will suffer for it.
Now, if we had a very diversified, full employment, raising standards and lifestyles economy, it would be ok.
But we don't.

$1:

I bitch as much as anybody about losing our jobs to other countries and depressing our wages, but I haven't heard one person come up with a scheme that would actually reverse that. Not from the left, not from the right. As long as capitalism is the order of the day, all this seems inevitable. And as some people point out, it equalizes incomes between 1st and third world. Problem is we seem to be going down the road of the 3rd world, with the elite at the top getting all the benefits, the rest of the people in all countries being peons. And people like you usually defend that system.

We don't have a capitalist system anymore, it's a Corporatist one, and I don't defend it.
Everywhere you can see normal people getting squeezed tighter and tighter.

What you see is me usually attacking the left, something I do with relish.
Because I KNOW the lefty ideas won't work. They just want more and more government,
and government running things is always a complete disaster.

They had a Spending Review in the UK today, a sort of How the Budget is doing.
The Labour Finance Critic actually started his official Response by quoting some
garbage from Mao's Little Red Book.
Seriously.
The guy is fucking complete whack job.
And honestly, Notley isn't much better; I read a little blurb somewhere
that David Suzuki and Justine are all buddy buddy again, so you can just imagine
how the Feds are going to fuck us all soon enough with more climate idiocy.



To reverse it would require some serious vision and policy changes, something
that could only happen under a dictatorship, one that would severely punish any company
violations, and direct resources asymmetrically to benefit only Canada.

Since that isn't going to happen, realistically there is no viable solution.
Just hang on to what you can get.

[andyt]

Well, some good points. I doubt tho that dictatorship would work as intended. Dictatorship is still govt. I think govt could be the answer if people ever wake up - but I doubt they will. Bread and circuses and all. If and when they wake up, it usually just gets ugly and worse.

Thanks for engaging in debate.

[Lemmy]

martin14 martin14:

He asked what worked. AutoPact was fine, NAFTA was ok until the Mexicans were brought in.Signing deals with the US is fine, Europe as well.
But as long as we continue to write deals with countries that have a way too high
competitive advantage in terms of labour rates and environmental get arounds,
we will suffer for it.
Now, if we had a very diversified, full employment, raising standards and lifestyles economy, it would be ok.
But we don't.

The AutoPact wasn't all roses. It meant the end of any Canadian automakers. As for NAFTA, it was adding Mexico that made it work! Again, it's always more advantageous, in terms of potential gains from trade, to deal with countries that are very different from us. There's just not much to be gained from trade with countries similar to us. You say you want a diversified economy. But it's exactly the opposite of that that makes international trade work. Specialization and economies of scale are the keys to international trade. Each country focusses on what it's best at and lets other countries do likewise, then trades for the things each no longer produces.

And there's no such thing as competitive advantage in labour. Labour costs what its value is (Wage Rate = Marginal Revenue Product of Labour). The reason people in 3rd world countries make less per hour is that they they're WORTH less per hour. And if those jobs can be done by unskilled people, better to let them be done elsewhere than wasting our labour force on those tasks. And the facts prove that Canadians are better off not doing dirty, menial manufacturing jobs. Our workforce is better paid and happier no longer doing those shitty tasks we shipped off to Mexico. Furthermore, the Mexicans doing them can now afford some of the more high-tech, skilled production goods that we switched into and are now exporting.

Your environmental point is valid...sort of. It's good for Canada to send our environmentally-degrading processes elsewhere. It's "Bugger-Your-Neighbour NIMBYism" and not very nice, ethically speaking, but good for Canadians.

[DrCaleb]

Lemmy Lemmy:

As for NAFTA, it was adding Mexico that made it work!

I agree with most of your post, except that bit. IIRC, the clauses that let governments be sued over lost profits or anti-competitive practices was put there because the Mexican Government was famous for that sort of favoritism.

That led to UPS suing the Government of Canada over it's running of Purolator, and things like removal of harmful additives from Gasoline resulting in lost profits. And Softwood Lumber. That clause, amped up on steroids, is what I find most offensive about the TPP!

I posted a couple stories lately about parts of the TPP being anti-science and anti-healthcare. And I think that can directly being traced back to the GATT and FTA agreements being modified into NAFTA.

[Lemmy]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Lemmy Lemmy:

As for NAFTA, it was adding Mexico that made it work!

I agree with most of your post, except that bit. IIRC, the clauses that let governments be sued over lost profits or anti-competitive practices was put there because the Mexican Government was famous for that sort of favoritism.

Yep. That and the concern over subsidization, in all its forms, was a global hot-button issue in the '90s. So it's not surprising that a lot of the gobbledygook in free-trade deals of that era is directly related to governments' interactions with its domestic corporations.

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

That led to UPS suing the Government of Canada over it's running of Purolator, and things like removal of harmful additives from Gasoline resulting in lost profits. And Softwood Lumber. That clause, amped up on steroids, is what I find most offensive about the TPP!

I posted a couple stories lately about parts of the TPP being anti-science and anti-healthcare. And I think that can directly being traced back to the GATT and FTA agreements being modified into NAFTA.

You're not wrong but that's the thing with negotiations: nobody gets everything they want. Admittedly, my negotiating experience comes from labour negotiations, but the first thing I always tell the table team I'm working with is: "A good deal is one where both sides come away feeling like they lost". If they both have this feeling, they likely got the things they most wanted and gave up some things they really wanted in the interest of moving forward with a deal.