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[Ukrainian Ranger]

Go Switzerland!
I can't express how happy I am with those news. Maybe humanity is starting to move in the right direction, away from blurring nations in one ugly gray mass

[Mr. Strange]

Do note that "unions = higher costs" thinking will drive most international corporations to move their business elsewhere, and benefit those countries that oppose (or downright suppress) unions.

Unfortunately union activity has been several decades late in starting, and there's lot's of money working against it, while local govenments have been dependant on foreign corporations and will be very reluctant to change status quo. First you have to sever those dependencies and create more fair conditions for local economical growth, exactly what big corporations try to avoid. Why do you think so many fasistic dictatorships, military juntas and faux democracies has been established trough the ages, needs of "free trade" in the form of cheap labor and materials has always outweighted the value of human rights in realpolitiks and doesn't show signs of changing anytime soon. Did you know that in Israel some of the most vocal supporters of separate palestinian state and normalization of relations are the local business man? They want their own Mexico that would provide cheap workforce with zero pollution and safety standards.

"Free trade" in it's current form is obstacle for developing countries, it has to change and stop it's lobbying to western governments. If there were more unexploitative form free trade then maybe...

[Helgoland]

We don't need to "create more fair conditions for local economical growth" - we need to give the workers political power! They'll sort out the rest themselves. And if they do so everywhere, companies migrating will stop being an issue: Proletarians of the world, unite!
Free trade, however, is very much necessary for this to happen. You can't get unions without industry, and you can't get industry (today) without exporting stuff. Look at Korea, look at Taiwan, look at China, look at Japan during the Meji time - they all went the same route, and that's only possible if the other states don't fall back into protectionism. Free trade != exploitation, just like globalization != exploitation - they only currently go hand in hand because there's no political force to stop them.

[scriver]

all this talk about taking jobs reminds me that i should find something to equate you guys to, given you're eager to lump in everyone who shares that opinion with rednecks

It's because you have to be pretty stupid to look at the west and arrive at the conclusion that "they'll take our jobs" given that 1. Most countries are having such shortages in unpopular specialist fields that they have to actively head-hunt or start special "attraction programmes" in order to attract educated qualified personal (see brain drain), and 2. Research upon research showing that businesses much rather hires "natives" than immigrants, regardless of profession. This is,made especially ridiculous given that the very same people tend to shout "all immigrants are criminally stealing our wellfare!" in the very next sentence. And if the immigrants do end up dumping wages despite the above then that should be on the conscience of the employers who hire them and are all too ready to take advantage of poor people rather than the men and women who just want to earn a decent pay and give their families a better future.

Well, the thing I had in mind is that case in Sweden about them being disease-free in cows or some such livestock, and the regulations forcing their market open, letting in diseases they'd escaped.

I could be wrong about the details, and that could have been an abnormal situation.

You're just mixing up two different things:
A) The EU stubbornly refusing to understand that certain diseases are a lot less likely to to infect Swedish animals simply because we have much higher standards for livestock (as well as butchering and food-business) than down on the continent. For example, when it comes to Mad Cow Disease, Sweden didn't allow it's farmers to let cows eat other dead cows in the first place.

B) Sweden has much lower rate of many animal diseases that are very common down south because of said higher standards and because our state has been actively working pre-emptively to limit them for a long time. Over time, several diseases have come to be  decreased to near-extinction, or they never spread naturally (in the pre-global world) to the Scandinavian peninsula to begin with. One major part of this pre-emptive work has been rigorous processes on import involving health tests and quarantine to make sure they don't bring in those diseases. Or at least, that is how it used to work - we're no longer allowed to make sure that the livestock as import his healthy because, according to the EU, apparently this is "limiting competition" (For people who aren't European, this is the EU's go-to argument when they don't actually have any arguments for what they want). This is despite the fact that if those diseases we'be never had were to get here it could wreck havoc among our native breeds.

I do know that in the gay community, there are people on both sides. Guys who actively try and infect people, as some sort of sick "mission", and guys who actively try and get infected, seeing it as inevitable and wanting to get it over with. I think they're called "gift-givers" and "bug-chasers" respectively.

I do not see why this would be a purely gay-people-only phenomenon, at least in the "gift-givers" point of view.

Fakeedit: It's possible that the "gift-givers" are not people who do it to unsuspecting blokes, but rather they're the term for HIV+ guys who comply with the "bugchasers" wishes. Though, because humans, I'm sure there are HIV+ guys who do it criminally anyway. And it IS against the law, though I think only to sleep with someone without disclosing your status. If they know and still go through, I think it's legal. Could be wrong.

I remember a case of a man deliberately spreading it to women here in Sweden. Serial disease spreaders. Makes you wonder if that's what Typhoid Mary was rather than just a lady with shitty hygiene.

[Guardian G.I.]

While I would like to agree with Helgoland here, I have to point out that complete "no trade barriers" approach is what's causing much problems in both western and developing countries. Since international corporations get to run free in africa and asia (USA and friends will make sure of that) and dominate the markets there won't develop large and lasting middle class that could kickstart locally owned/financed economy same way that happened here. Cheap labor and raw materials will attract industry (read: jobs) away from west and leave unemployment and instability behind. Pretty much only third world country that avoided ending as massive production centre for our consumption is China, and look how that ended up...

If you just remove borders jobs will drift to where there are people so poor they have no options but to do them no mater how dangerous or poorly paid it is. And those with money/connections will leave for purer air as soon as they can. Divided society, even without borders. Not a world I want to live in.

This.

[LordSlowpoke]

naaaah you have to be pretty stupid to look at the west and think that taking the bad isn't a drain of our resources and taking in the good isn't a drain of the resources of their home country, which could in turn be used to increase their own wealth instead of having them live in poverty for no good reason

by the way - that's a really cool ad hominem, dude. you use these often?

hope you don't mind me stealing yours for the purposes of my own post ^^

[Sheb]

Helgoland, you're only half-right. Yeah, poor countries need to export to gain the foreign exchange needed to import better technology and develop (importing machinery, paying for IP, etc etc). But no poor country got rich by free trade. They got there by cheating, copying IP, and giving generous support to their own companies. China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Germany and the US in the 19th century... All of them did it the same way.

Of course, rich countries don't like this, and try to prevent developing countries from imposing "unfair" competition (because apparently a fair competition is a poor country without much in the way of support, financial markets, IP, infrastructure or educated workforce.) They've always done so: just look at Britain's turnaround from protectionism to free trade champion once it established its position as an industrial leader in the 1870's.*

So yeah, the end goal is a more or less homogenously rich world with freedom of movement and trade. But free trade too soon will prevent us from ever achieving this goal.


An amazing book about China, Taiwan, Japan and SK's road to development is "How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World's Most Dynamic Region", by Joe Studwell, probably the single best book on development I ever read. "Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism", by  Ha-Joon Chang is pretty good to, but focus more on free trade. Also in favor of the second, it is available on some other bay-sites I'm not going to mention explicitly here.

[Helgoland]

Of course, rich countries don't like this, and try to prevent developing countries from imposing "unfair" competition (because apparently a fair competition is a poor country without much in the way of support, financial markets, IP, infrastructure or educated workforce.) They've always done so: just look at Britain's turnaround from protectionism to free trade champion once it established its position as an industrial leader in the 1870's.*

So yeah, the end goal is a more or less homogenously rich world with freedom of movement and trade. But free trade too soon will prevent us from ever achieving this goal.

Hm, let me give you a counter-example from that period: The German weavers got very, very angry at the cheap machine-made English cloth that was taking away their jobs. But Germany didn't go all "We have to protect our workers from foreign competition" because a) it didn't exist yet and b) the rulers didn't care. And what happened? A few years later Germany was an industrial powerhouse, because it rose to the challenge.

I'm not advocating free trade as a panacea, but when in doubt free trade is preferrable to protectionism. You can limit free trade easily (as can be seen by the general opinion in this thread, especially in LS's post up there), but it's very hard to abolish established protectionist privileges.

[Max White]

Now as far as economics go I'm somewhat of an amateur, so maybe somebody could help me out...
Buying and selling power is tied to the exchange rate of a currency, so if your currency is valued highly it is easier to buy, and if your currency is low it is easier to sell. Common sense would dictate that when multiple nations use the same currency, such as the EU, they all have exactly equal buying and selling power... Would this be an accurate statement? After all, common sense and economics are sometimes worlds apart.

[LordSlowpoke]

while the currency is the same, wages and cost of living still varies between regions

theoretically, importing things would cost the same in every country of the union though (loltaxes)

[Helgoland]

Now as far as economics go I'm somewhat of an amateur, so maybe somebody could help me out...
Buying and selling power is tied to the exchange rate of a currency, so if your currency is valued highly it is easier to buy, and if your currency is low it is easier to sell. Common sense would dictate that when multiple nations use the same currency, such as the EU, they all have exactly equal buying and selling power... Would this be an accurate statement? After all, common sense and economics are sometimes worlds apart.

In medieval times gold was accepted as payment everywhere, and you still had differences in buying and selling and power.

(Come to think of it, the gold standard nutters shouldn't complain about international currencies like the Euro - they're practically advocating one themselves...)

[Sheb]

Yeah, my fault actually, I wasn't clear enough. Protectionism is needed, but it's not so much about protecting workers as about protecting firms to let them invest.

First of all, tariffs were already in the 15% range on average during this period. So all firms had some protection. Moreover, those were average tariffs, "strategic" industries like iron and stell were even more protected, and, unsurprisingly, industrial Germany was better known for its steel than its cloth.

Germany also stole  and copied everything it could get its hand on at the time, to the point where a British journalist wrote a book about how the Germans were making a joke out of IP, like making fake Singer sewing machine with the "Made in Germany" stamp written underneath the machine, where no one could see it.

[Mr. Strange]

Hm, let me give you a counter-example from that period: The German weavers got very, very angry at the cheap machine-made English cloth that was taking away their jobs. But Germany didn't go all "We have to protect our workers from foreign competition" because a) it didn't exist yet and b) the rulers didn't care. And what happened? A few years later Germany was an industrial powerhouse, because it rose to the challenge.

Had the English acted like corporations today they would have gathered German orphans from the streets and locked them in some cheap half rotten barn outside of town working nonstop all daylight hours for food and place to sleep, while trying to prevent other Germans from getting their machines in use either trough bribery legislation or by hiring local thugs lobbyists to "convince" it's better to work for them. German weavers wouldn't have stood a chance. Lucky us that English government didn't try to pressure German states to accept conditions so one-sidedly in favor of English industries.

Don't get me wrong here, organizing unions and empowering people are all good and much needed, but when large portion of the economy of the whole country is dependant on industry in foreign control (as opposed to partially domestically owned as in China, Japan and others that were mentioned) that has had decades of headstart in lobbying for power there's not much room for them to make changes. And if those changes aim to change status quo the industry will threaten to close the shop and move away, reducing jobs and taxes that are already in short supply to begin with. That's heavily in heavily against any changes, and curent "free market" system is dependant on curent state of things to survive. If people have the choice between job in locally owned joint that's possibly all the owner owns so he can't easily run away and another job offered by international corporations who can afford to cut their losses if it looks like costs rise and there won't be profit to be made, people actually stand a chance to demand decent pay for their work and effort because they are not forced to accept whatever shit job they can get just to make a living. You can't underestimate the affect that has on peoples psyche.

Paying as little as possible to produce as much as possible, that's how profits are made today, and that guarantees that whoever ends up doing all the dirty work has very little to show at the end of the day. The ones who reap the profits on the other hand are acting as consultants to government agencies deciding where and how much developement founding and aid will flow to those countries they profit from...

[Helgoland]

That's why we need unions (and unified legislation, for example environmental laws) everywhere. They can only pull that sort of shit that they do because they can play out the various populations against one another.

Also, the German weavers pretty much starved. Nobody gave a crap. Working conditions were as bad as you described (or even worse, for that matter), And retrospectively, it worked out much better than a protectionist policy. A moderate protectionist approach with a gradual tapering-off would've been ideal, but - as I have already pointed out - that's not politically feasible.

[Leafsnail]

I do know that in the gay community, there are people on both sides. Guys who actively try and infect people, as some sort of sick "mission", and guys who actively try and get infected, seeing it as inevitable and wanting to get it over with. I think they're called "gift-givers" and "bug-chasers" respectively.

I do not see why this would be a purely gay-people-only phenomenon, at least in the "gift-givers" point of view.

Fakeedit: It's possible that the "gift-givers" are not people who do it to unsuspecting blokes, but rather they're the term for HIV+ guys who comply with the "bugchasers" wishes. Though, because humans, I'm sure there are HIV+ guys who do it criminally anyway. And it IS against the law, though I think only to sleep with someone without disclosing your status. If they know and still go through, I think it's legal. Could be wrong.

Wait, what does this have to do with anything?  In any case I thought that scare was largely made-up.