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Comment by swatow | Hacker News Reader

I'm a big supporter of free trade, but the article makes some good points. Free trade agreements where companies agree not to impose import tariffs are a simple and good way to encourage free trade. But when it comes to government regulation that might in some sense be regarded as restricting free trade, things are a lot murkier. I wonder why these free trade agreements don't just lower tariffs even further, instead of setting up this sort of agreement. E.g. Australia still has a luxury car tax, which is a barrier to free trade that could easily be removed.

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TPP is not about free trade, it's about helping bigger players getting a deeper dip in the trough. Pretty much the opposite of freedom to trade.

(As usual, "free trade" or "free markets" is a euphemism for "trade policy that will help the guy using the term 'free trade'". Truly free markets would entail lots of bad things like freedom of children to work and the freedom to create Bohpal disasters. This is no exception)

Free trade is not a euphemism when it means eliminating tariffs.

It allows a lot of good things like Chinese workers being able to earn $2 an hour instead of $0.20 an hour.

EDIT: $2 an hour is from about 5 years ago when Chinese manufacturing was more controversial. Now it's more like $3.50 (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-manufacturing-wages-rise...)

I know what you mean, but in America free trade means NAFTA and TPP so it basically is a euphemism.

> bad things like freedom of children to work and the freedom to create Bohpal disasters

Children working is better than a family starving to death no? Child labor laws are a first world problem, and could have disastrous consequences for the third world. Union Carbide was a corporation, a legal fiction in which ownership is divorced from responsibility, that cannot exist without privileges given to it by a state. State capitalism has little to do with actual free markets i.e. voluntary trade in a free society.

Agree with you about the TPP, though, and the way that the term "free market" is often used in the vulgar sense.

Why are they starving in the first place? Pay the parent(s) a survivable wage already.

Who is going to pay the parent a survivable wage? And how is that person going to get the money to pay them?

People are starving (well usually the problem is that they are very poor, not literally starving) because they don't have money, because they don't produce things of value that they can trade for money. Free trade gives people the opportunity to produce more value (e.g. by working in factories or producing cash crops) so that they can earn more money.

Why does this feel like another one of those 1 2 3 ? PROFIT jokes?

I don't know. Why does economic orthodoxy result in smug self assured replies and downvotes, even though when people choose to educate themselves (by taking college courses, not reading blogs or non-mainstream sources) they almost all are convinced by the orthodox outlook?

I honestly feel like a pro-vaccination advocate when I post about economics.

EDIT: And to address your (very weak) point, how does working in factories not make people in poor countries richer? Are you aware of what a Chinese farmer makes per year, compared with a Chinese factory worker?

You're a free marketer who's against the limited liability corporation? That's a combination I've never encountered before. Start a business, risk losing your house.

It's not that uncommon among the people who defend free markets (as opposed to the ones who pretend to support it for their own benefits). E.g. Rothbard opposed it, saying that you could have limited liability as a clause in contracts, which could be negotiated (that also implies that you would be fully liable to third-parties you harm, since there's no contract).

It would turn that around and say that people who pretend to defend free markets support limited liability companies as a pragmatic solution, while people who pretend to support free markets, but want to have the social cred of rebelling against the existing system, make a big deal about the theoretical problems of limited liability.

In practice, a corporation by far is most likely to owe money to its creditors, and not random third parties. In this case, all limited liability does is create a default contract (and rule out alternatives) in which the creditors cannot go after the investors, but can seize the company if it stops repaying its debt.

I have never seen someone making a big deal about the theoretical problems of limited liability, so I wouldn't know. Rothbard in particular only mentions it - in a single paragraph of one of his books - because he's trying to show that corporations don't need the State to exist, not because he's railing against it specifically.

Im a suppirter of free trade too, but most 'free trade agreements' arent about free trade, they are just trade agreements.

That said, a luxury car tax is far from the worst offender for free trade.

What is a "trade agreement" that isn't a free trade agreement? And what is a worst offender than the luxury car tax? I guess corn subsidies are an example.

Tariffs are already quite low and it wouldn't make much of a difference (between some companies, like the US and Europe). Regulations just have become the more important factor hampering trade and thus have to be a focus of trade agreements if you actually want to increase trade. In a few cases, countries do use regulation as tool for protectionism (the french do fun things to keep german trains out of France). In other cases, consumer preferences lead to different regulations, like Europeans hating GMO.

And then there's Phillip Morris suing Australia and Bolivia for trademark infringement, because they require shock images on cigarette cartons...

Free trade agreement doesn't require negotiation: either you agree to trade free, or not. The so-called free trade agreements are about trade-restrictions and exceptions. Doublespeak at its best.

Prisoner's dilemma? It's in the best interests of both parties to drop trade barriers, but not if the other party doesn't, so you need negotiations to make sure they will.

Free trade is not compatible with secretly negotiated treaties.

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