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Comment by notpc | Hacker News Reader

TPP was a threat to the sovereignty of the United States. It would have encoded in a multilateral trade agreement, representing huge amounts of economic activity, massive regulatory requirements, enforcement courts, and processes for further multilateral regulation. It would have made the cost of changing those regulations unbearable for any future administration.

We almost had the regulatory state imposed at an international level. Good riddance.

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It's nice to see I'm not completely alone on HN in defending the concept of national sovereignty these days, because often it can be a very lonely field to argue about.

Having spent a lot of my time since getting out of the military trying to understand the bigger geostrategic picture, I am fairly confident in saying the national sovereignty is one of the most important, and most under-discussed, issues of our time as we progress towards an increasingly global economy. The global economy itself is here, and I am not disputing that the world needs more cooperation on international issues such as global climate change, but far too often I see these arguments being used to then turn around and use those issues to advocate overthrowing the idea of sovereignty, which I find is logically fallacious reasoning, callous, naive, and can only imagine such touting comes from the ivory tower of intellectuals, academics and other insulated peoples who haven't experienced the stark reality of this world when the sovereignty of nation states is violated.

In short, those who call for an end of nationalism fail to understand the proper and right role of sovereignty in the apllication of the rule of law, and in the ability for the people to affect their government.

My question for those who propose national sovereignty as being an outdated concept, I have one question:

What would you propose to replace the nation-state with once you toppled it down?

Well said. There is no replacement for the market of ideas.

The TPP doesn't weaken the nation-state. Like every other "trade deal", it has much more to do with foreign policy and geopolitics (reinforcing US power and isolating China) than with economics or trade.

I agree about the importance of sovereignty, for the same reasons as Nassim N. Taleb. He says the EU results slightly increases efficiency at the cost of vastly increased complexity and fragility, and therefore weakens the world order and threatens global peace. This isn't the case for the TPP, and it's unlikely that Trump can negotiate something much better economically.

It's not about sovereignty, it's about the rule of law. Every international agreement involves governments committing themselves to do certain things and not do others. Sometimes that also means agreeing to abide by judgements by an arbitrator. But they're free to negotiate changes to those agreements or withdraw from them. That means they retain sovereignty.

Treaties passed by the legislative branch of the government are laws. Do you believe that your governments executive branch should be bound by the laws of your nation, or not?

You retain sovereignty in a technical legal sense, but the cost of exercising that sovereignty becomes prohibitively expensive if you can't get the other signatories to agree. That's why trade agreements that mandate extensive intellectual property and other regulatory frameworks are so dangerous.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Sovereignty is the only barrier between you and a global government that turns tyrannical. If you can't run away from a bad government when you need to, you'll be in deep doo-doo.

For me, the optimal outcome is actually as much secession as possible - to a state or county level. With so many options in place, people can self-select into what fits their style and culture. This would be, in my view, a recipe for increased global peace. It is when forced integration is in place that conflict emerges.

So you're aware, you're being downvoted for "liberal internationalism". I'm completely a liberal internationalist, and I opposed TPP- for a lot of the reasons you described! This is a class issue, not a partisan issue.

I just removed it because it's not even the right word. I meant to refer to the philosophy that seeks to incrementally build an international legal order. It's commonly called "liberalism" within the context of international relations but isn't directly related to contemporary western leftism, also called "liberalism". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_(international_rela...

I think the word that most clearly states what you mean, and would be understood by the greatest number, is "neoliberalism". In any case, I've undone my downvote.

The TPP was far greater than a class issue. It was part of the War on General Purpose Computation (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg). It cut through class lines, into our ability to control the technology in our lives.

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