#free trade

[ratisangy]

Get ready for the great depression number 2!

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/06/us/politics/trump-us-global-leadership.html

[phoenixyfriend]

Tom Nicholas just posted a video that summarizes like half a semester of business school and honestly teaches it better than a lot of my professors, while also ensuring the viewer is aware of the moral and ethical failings of free trade in the name of comparative advantage and global efficiency.

(Yes, for the unaware: I have a bachelor's degree in international business. I am also one of those people who graduated with a distinct distaste for much of the business world, related directly to the 'taking advantage of cheap labor and bullying less powerful entities is good, actually' model of economic theory that a lot of my classes pushed.)

[thoughtportal]

Cory Doctorow on Democracy Now on tech laws and tariffs

[dailyanarchistposts]

How Do We Get There?

Unfortunately, the environmental crisis cannot wait for a revolution to destroy capitalism, nor will a post-revolutionary society be environmentally sound unless we manage to change the relationship between humans and the rest of nature. As anarchists we need to be doing everything we can to bring these issues to the forefront. We have identified a number of approaches to this.

We must make the link between capitalism and environmental degradation explicit in our politics and critique the role of the state in facilitating this. This pamphlet is a first step towards this, but we also need to work towards the dissemination of these ideas in the wider movement.

We must insert ourselves into the mass climate movements such as divestment, climate marches and third sector campaigns to use these moments of publicity to put forward our ideas. We should try to win the battle of ideas in these movements and shift the aims away from the false solutions identified here.

We must push our unions to adopt an eco-syndicalist stance which argues for a just but rapid transition for workers in extractive industries. We must also, however, be internationalist in our scope and ensure victories for workers in MEDCs does not mean just pushing environmental problems onto workers in LEDCs.

We must use our anti-capitalist analysis to link up different struggles, so that it is clear that we are not facing disconnected problems, but that capitalism is at the heart of the issues that face the global working class. Land justice campaigns have a clear link to climate change as land owners decide how land is used and how resources are exploited, counter to a sustainable commons approach. Similarly, we have identified rising nationalism and authoritarianism as the state’s response to climate refugees. We must continue the work linking anti-capitalism and environmentalism with No Borders and migrant rights groups, ensuring the fair treatment of those affected by climate change in the future.

We must develop networks of like-minded people who are willing to campaign on these issues and work together to build our capacity to organise. A good example of this has been the anti-fracking protests in the UK where actions at the drilling sites have been amplified by activists elsewhere targeting the headquarters of the fracking companies and carrying out other solidarity actions. Some of these networks already exist so we should work more closely with groups such as Earth First!, Reclaim the Power and Rising Tide to further develop an activism which is both confrontational towards capitalism and is inclusive of local and global perspectives. These networks offer opportunities to develop our ideas further and collaborate on future projects and actions.

We should ensure the actions we take, and the struggles we link up for, leave us and others who take part stronger not weaker. We must avoid any so-called victory that relies on the ‘good will’ of a politician or the ‘expertise’ of an NGO. Win or lose, each action and campaign should leave us more aware of the world around us, more confident of our collective power, and more experienced in our ability to self-organise and take the fight to the capitalists. Within the environmental movement we must develop a diversity of tactics that is not dependent on the actions of politicians or corporations developing a conscience to achieve its goals.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Free trade as a general abstract principle was bound to have complex global environmental consequences in the long run. Ricardo's famous doctrine of comparative advantage leaves no room for any consideration of the possible harmful ecological effects of increasing international specialization (for example, through monoculture, or other gross simplifications in farming systems).

Colin A. M. Duncan, The Centrality of Agriculture: Between Humankind and the Rest of Nature

[benjaminallhope-fulltimemind]

Just took this test and wanted to share it, feel free to ask me questions and DM me. I can share more if anyone want to see it.

[barrydeutsch]

Free Trade Is For Peasants, Not Cartoonists

Transcript, discussion, and a gross anecdote about Hugh Hefner at: https://www.patreon.com/posts/free-trade-is-98677035

We can keep making these cartoons because lots of people support us with $1-3 pledges! Join them at patreon.com/barry

[drethelin]

Good evening, sir. May I ask you to explain why capitalism is a force for good? This is a genuine question. Thank you, have a good day.

^_^

Trade means different resources can be combined to achieve results greater than the sum of their parts. It also means shortages in one place can be alleviated by trading with other places. It also means people can specialize and gain the ability to provide services that no one could provide if they had to do everything for themselves. Money means you can do trade between many many more people without having to do billions of barter negotiations deciding on the value of every good and service in an ad-hoc way. Capitalism, ie financialization and debt and large-scale transactions and corporations, allow all of this to be multiplied across civilization and to take place on national and international scales. You have not just the town blacksmith making metal tools for a few hundred villagers, you have factories making machine tools which allow other factories to make cars or farm tools which allow a relatively tiny amount of labor to feed billions of people. Capitalism's ability to produce greater returns on labor and capital also enable science and engineering research which increases health and wealth for everyone

[dancesingay]

Hi, I'm native American and instead of spirit animals, I propose we buy Otomi hand embroidered masks to see which animal represents us. They're $17 and the money goes towards the Otomi tribe and supports the women who make these beautiful pieces of wearable art. It's free trade, despite it being so cheap, and each design is original and unique. The animal you get is random, I got a Turkey, which I loved so much, but I lost it in San Francisco, so I just got a new one...

It's a deer... are you kidding me? I'm in love 💗

[anyoneknowwhatbrexitmeans]

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Donald Trump’s election as US president had “fundamentally changed the context” of EU-UK relations, the report by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) thinktank said.

“There is a remarkable consensus on both sides of the Channel that the time is ripe for a reassessment of EU-UK relations,” it concluded, with closer relations being the most popular option in every country surveyed – and public opinion on the question well ahead of government stances.”

[objectivistnerd]

[jackassdemocrats]

Trump Levels The Playing Field With Tariffs

[thepastisalreadywritten]

[lutnistas]

Chinese side of Khorgos Free Trade Zone ( Kazakhstan - China border )

[dailyanarchistposts]

Climate Change and Capitalism

The concept of human-caused climate change is not new. Joseph Fourier first discussed the greenhouse effect in 1824 and suggested human activities could influence global temperatures. Other famous names of chemistry and physics such as Tyndall, Arrhenius and Bell developed this theory and understood its implications. By the early twentieth century there was an understanding in the scientific community that burning fossil fuels could alter the earth’s climate.

By the 1970s, public awareness of the issue had grown and the scientific community began to develop models of how CO2 emissions would affect the future climate. During this period, the oil company Exxon conducted a great deal of research into climate change and global climate modelling. Their findings threatened the company’s profits, so they suppressed the research and instead spent money on a misinformation and lobbying campaign to limit public acceptance and government regulation (see Environmental Research Letters: Bibliography). This was largely successful, with successive governments in the USA and elsewhere questioning the science of climate change and limiting regulation of CO2, despite overwhelming scientific consensus. Misinformation of the public has been supported by many media outlets controlled by the ruling class, allowing governments to stall environmental regulation and treat climate change as a fringe issue.

In more recent times, we’ve seen even the right wing move from the climate denial of George W. Bush to the acceptance of environmental policy by the mainstream. For example, consider David Cameron’s ‘hug a husky’ greenwash. Whilst greenwashing has conceded some small victories, many of the major global players are still delaying any meaningful action as far as possible, whilst promoting false ‘green capitalism’ solutions. Others have accepted climate change, but denied the human cause or that we can do anything about it. Donald Trump claimed in 2016 that climate change was a hoax promoted by China to weaken the economy of the USA, neatly bringing together both economic nationalism and climate denial. By painting the issue as one of national defence and economic necessity, Trump has managed to cast further doubt on the need to lower carbon emissions.

Environmental pollution is one of the great failures of the free market. Fossil fuels are cheap because CO2 is a ‘negative externality’; that is, the cost of emitting it, namely the threat of global environmental change, is not borne by the companies responsible but by society at large. Private companies, therefore, have little incentive to reduce CO2 emissions, and the costs of their products are kept artificially low by this societal subsidy. These emissions have no market value — they add nothing to the cost of a product and yet have huge ramifications for the global climate. The market, therefore, cannot be relied on to fix this problem. The options available to us are to either control the market so that environmental costs are considered, e.g. state capitalism, or to remove the market’s control over our lives altogether.

The longer we delay action on climate change, the more difficult to fix the problem becomes. This pamphlet proposes that the only way to achieve meaningful change is to abandon the capitalist model; to reclaim the energy and production systems from their corporate owners, and bring them into the hands of the people. This is no small task, but offers an escape from the multiple environmental disasters we currently face. We also point out that state power expands in times of crisis and, as such, we must be careful of solutions which increase the power of the state to control our lives. To achieve this, we must consider the maxim of ‘think globally, act locally’ and work towards decentralised solutions which give control of energy and production systems to the people who use them, for the benefit of the whole global ecosystem.