The Drug War doesn't have a sound moral basis, so I'm okay that the banks were undermining western governments in the interest of free trade.
I say this as someone who used to work in drug policy reform and strongly opposes the drug war: Providing money to cartels isn't exactly a noble proposition either. Banks that do that really do have blood on their hands. Between 2006-2012, over 100,000 people died incredibly gruesome deaths in Mexico alone since 2010 at the hands of these cartels[0].
I'm not going to defend the drug war, but I'm not going to defend banks that willingly funnel money to them either. And I'm not going to claim that providing money to cartels actually undermines the drug war, in any meaningful sense. The cartels are, ironically, the largest profiteers of the drug war, right alongside the LEOs and correctional facilities that enforce drug laws. Pumping money into the pockets of the drug cartels only further entrenches the current system; it does not provide pressure to dismantle it.
There are plenty of great ways to work actively to end the drug war. Funding drug cartels (or enabling their business operations) is not one of them.
[0] The number of deaths in Mexico have dropped slightly since then, but only because the violence has moved further south in Central America
I would disagree with this sentiment. There is plenty of pressure in Mexico to decriminalize/legalize drugs as a result of cartel violence.
First, what Mexico wants has (unfortunately) very little connection to what the US will actually do, and it's the US's drug policy that matters here.
Second, this is like saying that the arrests and drug-related violence in the US creates pressure for legalization. It may in a way, because it raises the stakes, but that's not necessary to create pressure for change. And it's a rather horrible way to do so, because it involves putting people's lives at (even more) risk in the meantime. On top of that, it also further empowers the people who profit off of the status quo, providing them with even more money (and therefore power and influence) to maintain the status quo.
For comparison, it's a good thing that police violence has gotten attention recently, which may ultimately lead to substantial reform. But that's not to say that facilitating (and profiting off of!) police violence in the US is a noble act.
We can argue about whether the connection is nonexistent or simply 'very weak', but my point remains that it's hard to defend a profit-hungry bank funneling money into the hands of violent murders so they can profit off of more murders, all on the grounds that it will eventually translate into fewer murders later on. Especially when there are much more compelling ways of addressing the issue directly and immediately.
http://www.amazon.com/El-Narco-Mexicos-Criminal-Insurgency/d...
http://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Scream-First-Last-Drugs/dp/162...
can you recommend any other good books on the topic ?
Drug War is immoral because drug laws almost exclusively enforced on the poor and minorities. Big banks getting away with funneling money to cartels is the heart of why the drug war is immoral!!
Edit: what the hell, I'll play your game.
"Critics of the TPP reference the failures of NAFTA, which was first conceived during this period by the original champion of trickle-down, Ronald Reagan. Leading up to the 1994 elections, NAFTA garnered bipartisan support, but lone wolf, Independent candidate Ross Perot warned of the "giant sucking sound" that America would hear if NAFTA passed and American jobs were drawn south. Global Trade Watch's assessment of NAFTA's "20 year legacy" demonstrates just how right Perot was. An estimated one million jobs have been lost to NAFTA. It's put downward pressure on wages, and exacerbated America's income gap. And while pre-NAFTA, the U.S carried a trade surplus with Mexico, and was just $26 billion in the hole with Canada--as of 2014, we had a combined trade deficit with both countries of $177 billon."
From the following article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heather-gautney/why-the-transp...
So, in summary: it suppresses wages, costs jobs, and exacerbates income inequality. Market efficiencies created by globalization also have a tendency to drive all but the largest players out of any given market. Surely you don't claim lowered wages and pressure on small to medium sized businesses to try to compete on a global scale are in any way beneficial to the larger populace? You don't honestly believe having access to cheap goods is more beneficial than plentiful, well-paying jobs?
Edit: some additional light reading: http://www.citizen.org/nafta
I think it's hard to deny that in general free trade produces net benefits. (If it didn't, then we would presumably each make all of our own stuff and never trade.) I could well believe that a particular trade deal has problems or is even net bad, and I don't have a strong opinion on NAFTA. But but even if NAFTA is bad says very little about whether all trade is bad.
Stating unregulated trade hurts workers isn't a "belief". It's not like it's a faith-based assertion lacking any real world evidence to support it. Trade tarrifs have been used as a revenue stream for the federal government and as a protective measure for domestic industry since the 1700s.
The heart of the issue is working class humans benefit from a certain level of market inefficiency. Having many small local concerns engaged in a a particular market segment is inefficient as each has to capitalize equipment and labor force to do essentially the same thing.
When the market "optimizes" one of two things happen, wages in that market segment make a run for the bottom, and smaller concerns either consolidate through a series of mergers and acquisitions or they are squeezed out of the market.
What you're arguing in favor of is one of the major market forces that is driving income inequality in the US. Are you proposing that trickle down economics actually work?
Again, if you believe that unregulated trade hurts workers, shouldn't we stop trade between the US states? My guess is no. Because it's not like your proposing an optimum economy size for maximum worker friendliness. You're just opposing a kind of change from the status quo.
I agree that too much industry consolidation is a problem for workers. But I don't think that's a problem of trade. That's a problem that comes whenever you a) increase disparity in power between workers and employers and b) decrease opportunity to switch to a different employer. If we had a situation where no countries traded but each country allowed monopolies to form, workers would be screwed. If, on the other hand, we have free trade but vigorous enforcement of anti-trust and merger review, I think workers can do pretty well.
I also agree that increasing trade can shift what industries do well in particular locales, which is good for some workers but bad for others. The obvious solution there is not to protect the inefficient jobs, but to tax the people doing better (some workers, all consumers) and pay for excellent retraining, and to pension off the workers who can't be retrained, and/or fund nonprofits to employ them doing something societally valuable but not profitable.
As an example, look at the American auto industry. As a Michigander, I know how devastating the rise of import cars was. But honestly, that industry needed some devastation. They produced low-quality, low-reliability products and then milked consumers on repairs and flim-flam sales techniques. They did provide jobs, but often pretty terrible ones. And none of this was necessary; it's just that consolidation (which, remember, happened without trade) made a cozy oligopoly, leaving management to focus on exploitation. 40 years later they are still struggling to break this pattern, but at least now Americans can buy decent cars at reasonable prices.
If you want to hear the costs of your protectionist approach, listen to this TAL episode: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/N...
Listen to the pain in the GM workers' voices. Listen to the change that came from working for one of those foreign companies. And then tell me again of how workers benefit from economic inefficiency.
You'll excuse me if I don't find anything obvious about this. We can't even get political consensus in this country that healthcare is a basic human right that everyone should have free and equal access to and you're proposing that a massive program of worker reeducation and pensioning is credibly possible?
I parse this as you saying "Free Trade is great if you live in a tiny socialist country with sufficient budgetary reserves to afford continuous retraining of workers and the political will to make that investment in labor force." So...free trade is great for Finland?
And actually, it's what happens in the US. It's a pretty common thing to go along with trade bills. [1] It happened again as recently as June. [2]
I think we can agree that there should be more, and that we should do more for all sorts of workers, not just those affected by changes brought on by particular trade bills. In which case, it sounds like your problem isn't with free trade, it's with the US's generally poor treatment of workers. I'd agree with that, but I think more trade helps the situation in that it benefits consumers, and people are more willing to be generous when they feel richer.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_Adjustment_Assistance
[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2015/06/24/p...
With respect to your argument, I would consider Mexicans and Canadians to be part of the 'greater population' I was referring to. Sure, globalization is terrible if you're used to making $20/h with no education in a factory in Detroit. Globalization is great if you're a Chinese peasant who can now earn a meal in an hour at the factory instead of 12h of subsistence farming.
Overall I'm pretty sure it's a net positive to humanity at the expense of the American lower-middle class.
And while it may seem to be a net positive to humanity, that could very easily be a relativistic perspective that breaks down in the long term.
Discusses how all free-markets are somehow government regulated.