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Comment by homulilly | Hacker News Reader

I agree that free trade is generally a good thing but the TPP had too many serious problems to make up for that.

Can you elaborate?

Michael Geist has some excellent coverage [1] of TPP, albeit from a Canadian perspective.

Biggest problem with TPP in my mind is that it codifies many aspects of IP law overreach - like extending copyright terms even further and mandating DMCA-like anti-circumvetion rules [2].

[1] http://www.michaelgeist.ca/tech-law-topics/tpp/

[2] https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/upload...

Subsidies for international corps.

Countries that allow slavery shouldn't be allowed to be in a free trade agreement competing against American workers, for one.

This is easily my biggest problem with the way free trade currently works out. Fighting for good worker protections, 40 hour work weeks, decent salary, and against slavery and child labour, is all pretty pointless if you just outsource all the misery to poorer countries where workers are still exploited like that.

I think western countries should have free trade with all countries that have decent labour conditions, but raise tariffs on countries with bad labour conditions. That way your own workers don't suffer under unfair competition, and other countries are actively encouraged to improve the lot of their workers if they want more advantageous trade with you.

And the same for internal variations in environmental protections & so forth. I like the sound of some general system of assessing how big an "unfair advantage" the lack of a given regulation grants in the other country, and counterbalancing that edge with an equal tariff.

Which countries allow slavery?

It depends on the definition of slavery and allow. As I understand it, slavery is officially abolished globally. Other forms of forced or coerced labor exist throughout the world, of varying legal degrees. Enforcement is also varies, so whether or not something is legal can be irrelevant if the laws aren't effectively enforced.

Is there a source that can give me information on countries that are shady in this way as it relates to the tpp?

Good question. I didn't look specifically into that relationship, but rather into slavery in general. One of the reasons the statement piqued my interest is because of the idea of what constitutes slavery, if it isn't specifically defined as outright ownership of another human being.

I found this Wikipedia entry useful:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_slavery

I haven't looked deeply into this. To approach it specifically as it relates to TPP, questions I would want answered would be

- What forms of slavery would be relevant to the TPP?

- What level of slavery would be considered relevant?

- What level of enforcement would be considered lax or insufficient?

I know I'm unqualified to make these determinations.

Here's an example of where this has been discussed:

"Is the TPP Okay With Slavery? Really?"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-lux/slavery-really_b_7462...

The biggest if I recall, was that it was a virtually never ending agreement that nobody could exit after they'd entered into it which exposed each countries legal system to the others.

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