The Corporate-Friendly World of the T.P.P
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
The whole point of a free state is that the entities within that state, people or groups of people (for example, companies) are able to keep their rulers in check.
Let's remember, the Government is sometimes wrong and needs to be kept in check.
I tell you what, if I was PM of my country and, say, a foreign company discovered a significant oil field within our territory, I would want to nationalise the shit out of it, reputation be damned.
To take your example, if my country nationalizes an oil field found and owned by your country's citizens (assuming that my country originally tricked them into searching for oil by promising it'd be theirs to some extent or other when they find it - otherwise why would they search for it in the first place?), why would your country stop at "tarnishing my country's reputation" when it could apply force, ranging from economic sanctions to an actual war?
And our elected leaders should have that power so that bad laws can be fixed.
Imagine if, in pre-civil-war America a lot of British investors had invested in cotton plantations whose profitability depended on slavery. Should Lincoln have said "gee, I guess my hands are tied, banning slavery would be bad for our foreign investors" and done nothing?
You might argue that in the past we had bad laws, but we don't have bad laws any more and all our laws are perfect. But the fact we still employ legislators rather implies we think we might need some legislating done.
Whether your infringement upon the foreigners' interest is good or bad is an entirely separate question, all I'm saying is that sovereignty does not grant you the ability to automatically get away with it and I don't understand why this word became so fashionable in this context recently (a similar example is defaulting on sovereign debt.)
And I guess if the other country can seriously threaten force without bluffing then we never really had sovereignty all along...
The problem with TPP is the ISDS goes far beyond these simple goals (the treaty has been "commandeered by corporations", if you like).
But for simple, limited protection of assets in foreign countries, it's a good thing, encouraging inward investment.
I see this as actually giving power back to the people.
Companies are not democracies. Especially multi-national corporations and the lobbying arms of entire industries are in no sense representative of the will of the general public -- or even of their own employees (see unions)! This is significant because it is categorically not possible to actually choose not to interact with a particular corporation. In fact, the historical truth of that observation is the root cause of environmental, health, and many other regulations.
A defining characteristic of democracy is one person, one vote, and it is that characteristic that safeguards the will of the people. There is no corporate structure (other than unrepresentative radical experimental structures) that even conceits to affording one vote to each person. In fact, there's no provision of the TPP that requires the suing company to be publicly traded, so in some cases it may not even be possible to buy votes.
If anything, corporate structure creates a multiplier effect on the influence of single humans or small groups of humans thereby corrupting the one-person one-vote intent of democracy. While I agree with the philosophical kernel of the Supreme Court's citizens united ruling that money is free speech, just like many things, at large scale, it has unintended side effects that need to be thwarted by campaign finance reform so that some people don't have MORE free speech then others.
And because they did sue, Tobacco companies are specifically excluded from the ISDS procedure in TPP.
What makes you think companies would win such cases?
Let's say an arbitration court lawyer made a billion-dollar judgement in a corporation's favour, then the corporation offered the lawyer a position as an "expert legal advisor" paying a million dollars a year for very little work. I wouldn't turn down that offer if I was the lawyer, and I wouldn't hesitate to make that offer if I was the corporation.
And that's even before we even begin to discuss the idiotic idea of making your own companies and citizens accountable to foreign entities past local law.
http://www.flushthetpp.org/call-to-action-against-global-cor...
There are tons of deplorable examples of what they've done already and it will only get worse if the T.P.P. passes. Some seriously tragic outcomes that have already been caused by Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS) are recapped here: http://www.isdscorporateattacks.org/
There is an older documentation, that is still valid with the name "The Corporation" which shows, how corporations have used the US constitution and decades of lobbying and court cases to gain more and more power. So today, the corporations are difficult to held liable for things they do (in many cases they come away with small fees that don't even cover the harm they caused), but enjoy many of the rights which where meant for real citizen.
This documentation comes to the conclusion, that many corporations behave like psychopaths, because when a corporation has to decide, (for example) to keep the environment clean or make more profits, the corporation rule is, to go for the money and forget about the rest.
Anybody should watch this. Either on DVD, or I also spotted it on worlds favorite video site.
With international treaties like that, the power of international corporations is hardened and it gets more and more difficult to reverse this global trend. With all their lawyers and lobbyists, the corporations are bound to win over the democracies -- what dictators did not manage to.
This trend is undermining democracies and human rights, because corporations are not democratic and have only one rule to obey: The profit rule.
So finally, we are all governed by money and nothing else.