Quote Originally Posted by The Gold Standard View Post
Ok, now that I'm not at work I can think about this a little more in depth.



In your example you are looking in the wrong places to place blame. First of all, everyone wants to buy the best product for the cheapest price, and there is no reason to ever stop a company or person from doing so. Cheap cocoa beans do not cause slavery. If the price of cocoa beans tripled tomorrow, those people will still be slaves, because they do not understand their rights or do not protect them. Slavery is a violation of property rights. If property rights are not protected, then you can never have a free market and never have real prosperity. It is a sad situation, but they have to make the necessary changes to protect their rights. Preventing companies from buying their cocoa beans will not solve any part of the problem.

As far as the main question, how would a free market in the U.S. affect trade with these countries? To take your prior example further, what would happen in the chocolate industry? There would be no tariffs on imported cocoa, the cost of shipping will stabilize once oil is purchased in gold or silver instead of Federal Reserve notes, there would be no minimum wage laws to price workers out of the labor market, there would be no endless government unemployment benefits to discourage workers from taking jobs, etc. All of these things will lower the input costs for chocolate makers. There also would not be FDA regulations among others pricing competitors out of starting their own chocolate companies. You would have numerous new chocolate companies pop up driving down the price and mazimizing the quality of finished chocolate products. So setting aside the rights violations by the cocoa farmers, the cocoa beans they export will now result in an abundance of chocolate products to choose from at a lower cost available for the African people to import.

Here is are a couple of good links about free trade:

http://mises.org/daily/1429

http://mises.org/media/1874/Five-Mos...national-Trade

Now a free market here would have these benefits in every industry. Even if nominal wages fall, prices would fall faster, making everyone wealthier. You wouldn't have our current monetary policy discouraging savings and therefore relying on inflation to drive misdirected capital investment. You would have real savings and business cycles would be minimal or nonexistent (assuming bankers that can't redeem customer deposits are prosecuted for fraud instead of bailed out). We would be producing like it was 1922 again, flooding the world with high quality low cost products like we did back when we had some semblance of sound money. This would definitely raise the standard of living of every country. How much it raises that standard of living depends on the policies and systems of government in each of those countries though.
Excellent! This is the type of stuff I'm looking for! I almost feel bad, like you did my homework for me.
I really appreciate your input, I can do some research now to build on some of your ideas and I think I will have a solid paper.

I will also be including some analyzing of the role of these middle-men, and how they are a product of the laws that restrict transporting children over state lines. Seeing as how the law enforcement agencies do not have the resources to uphold these laws, and many of them are corrupt anyway, the laws do nothing but create a racket for the law enforcement and the middle-men so they can exploit the farmers. (Thank you Proph).