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Comment by jstanley | Hacker News Reader

> Or UK citizens would not be able to buy products from the EU because there would be no agreements in place that'd allow companies in the EU to export goods.

This is where you and I fundamentally disagree about how trade works.

If I want to trade with a person in a foreign country, I don't see why our governments need to even know, let alone come up with some agreement. If the foreign person and I can agree a deal, why can't we trade without asking permission from our governments?

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Because you have agreed, implicitly and in concert with your fellow citizens, to live in a polity with rules around how members of that polity interact with members of other polities in order to collectively wield the power of your polity for the aims of that polity.

You can try to change the direction your polity takes with its stances towards others. You can leave if you don't approve of those stances and see no signs of changing them. But the question belies a fundamental misunderstanding of...yanno...why polities, why politics, exist.

You're absolutely right. There's no such things as tariffs, customs, border inspections, fines, fees or other such leverage a country can exact upon it's citizens and businesses to enforce foreign trade rules...

It works on reciprocity. If you never consider disallowing trade with some countries, you cannot use it as an argument when negotiating access to other country markets; and so you open yourself to exploitation via dues etc. And maybe if no one hindered trade in any way, everyone would be better; but you have no ability to decide what everyone does - only what you do yourself.

Plus, there's actual reasons to think completely open, unhindered, and uninspected trade is not desirable. Think human trafficking, etc.

But we have open unhindered and uninspected trade within countries, and we don't have out-of-control human trafficking within countries. Why is it different just because it crosses an imaginary line drawn on a map?

If you really believe that trade within your country is unhindered and uninspected, then I fear that you are one of the deluded. There are quality controls in every aspect of your life, even if they're mostly invisible to you.

Although, if the British public really want the 2013 horse meat scandal and the 2017 Grenfell Tower disaster to become the norm rather than the exception, I guess now is the time to seize the opportunity.

Because countries are the units that humans organise themselves. Why do laws differ between countries? Why is international policing difficult? Because within a country you have a fairly (not very, but to a functional degree) unified mode of operation; you have laws, organisations, policies. But coordinating those between countries is hard.

This isn't a real argument. What if you agreed to buy slaves from a foreign person?

Governments obviously have a real interest in what their citizen do regardless of where that activity takes place.

What if I'm buying non-slaves from a foreign person? What if I tried to buy slaves from a non-foreign person?

I'd argue the former is fine and the latter is still not fine. So international trade agreements are surplus to requirements, since basic decency is enforced anyway.

Wow Stanley, where do you live? You really believe that (quote) "basic decency is enforced anyway" ?

That’s a really bad example the US has a trade agreement with Mexico it doesn’t mean that one can buy cocaine from a Mexican cartel.

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