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Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
LOL
If you want free trade, you need rules and a body to enforce those rules to ensure that trade remains free and fair and rule on disagreements. Otherwise, either side can do what they want and violate the free trade agreement. If that is what you mean by "sovereignty destroying clauses". Yes, it means you can't violate the treaty whenever you want to or it suits your fancy. It would have meant the lowest barriers to trade in modern history. Without enforcement, the agreement is worthless.
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
now who is advocating for globalist managed trade? didn't you just read in this thread from @CCTelander how Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, and Ron Paul are against managed trade? Other countries should just follow their teachings because its the best thing for everyone right?
I just want objectivity on this forum and will point out flawed sources or points of view at my leisure.
Originally Posted by spudea on 01/15/24Originally Posted by spudea on 04/20/16Originally Posted by spudea on 05/30/17
Chris
"Government ... does not exist of necessity, but rather by virtue of a tragic, almost comical combination of klutzy, opportunistic terrorism against sitting ducks whom it pretends to shelter, plus our childish phobia of responsibility, praying to be exempted from the hard reality of life on life's terms." Wolf DeVoon
"...Make America Great Again. I'm interested in making American FREE again. Then the greatness will come automatically."Ron Paul
Chris
"Government ... does not exist of necessity, but rather by virtue of a tragic, almost comical combination of klutzy, opportunistic terrorism against sitting ducks whom it pretends to shelter, plus our childish phobia of responsibility, praying to be exempted from the hard reality of life on life's terms." Wolf DeVoon
"...Make America Great Again. I'm interested in making American FREE again. Then the greatness will come automatically."Ron Paul
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
Trade agreements are by their very nature very complicated. Trade is not simple and the varieties of products is vast. Consider the simple sounding idea of a tariff on steel. Is that just raw steel or does it include refined steel? What about things made with steel? Does the tariff apply to them? If so, does it apply to just the percent of the item made from steel or the entire item? There are different types of steel. Does it apply to all of them? What if they buy the steel from you and make something from it? Is that exempt?
where's the resident anarchist that can tell us how governments shouldn't exist at all to impede voluntary exchange?
I just want objectivity on this forum and will point out flawed sources or points of view at my leisure.
Originally Posted by spudea on 01/15/24Originally Posted by spudea on 04/20/16Originally Posted by spudea on 05/30/17
Tariffs are the government telling companies who they should and should not be trading with rather than letting them decide for themselves. They are the government picking winners and losers in the economy. Then consumers get to pay for that privilege with higher taxes and fewer jobs.
Should we allow another country tell the US how to treat our businesses? Should China allow the US to tell them how to treat their companies?
Our tariffs on steel help US companies which make steel but hurt US companies which use steel to produce products. The US government said that the steel industry should be subsidized by those other businesses and consumers to protect steel makers from the Chinese. (only about three percent of our imported steel came from China). All in the name of "national security".
Last edited by Zippyjuan; 10-27-2018 at 09:52 PM.
We should if we want an agreement with them and they are telling us to treat them in a more liberty oriented fashion.
Chinese steel is routed through other countries so that useful idiots like you can spout that 3% number, their dumping in other countries also causes those other countries to dump their steel on our market as well.
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
Last edited by Zippyjuan; 10-27-2018 at 10:13 PM.
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
Devil's advocate:
What if tariffs actually work? What if economic think-tanks based all their negative opinions on tariffs purely on theories that were formulated in a vacuum that doesn't exist in the real world?
Americans seem more motivated to work harder and achieve more today than I've ever seen in my life. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the endless supply of people who will work for peanuts is no longer factoring into the equation. This isn't just "protectionism" for big business. Average Americans are benefiting as well. There's a massive attitude shift. Almost like a 'Fk' it, we'll go it alone' 'can and will do' sort of attitude. It beats the hell out of giving up and sitting on a couch at home living on food stamps and credit card debt, which seems to have been what we've been groomed to believe and expect. I see a build-up of character once again. The easy path, of course, is to just continue to live on cheap labor and nothing changes. There's no reason to open your own business when you can just keep finding people who are more desperate than you to see how much you can get with your allowance.
I'm keeping an open mind, that tariffs might actually work and we've been fed a bowl of lies that was so appetizing even free-marketers lined up for a serving. I would be curious to see who is proven correct in a world where we wake up tomorrow and no governments exist and we can finally see how a global economy works without any government at all. Since that's not likely to happen, trial and error is the order of the day.
One thing I've been thinking about lately is the southern democrat attitude towards tariffs in the antebellum days. I'm not drawing the correlation to villainize people. But, I'm gonna pose a question: Could an economic system based on slavery and an endless quest to find cheaper and cheaper labor survive with tariffs? Or, if the south had supported tariffs, would people who had been settling for a minimum eventually be running their own businesses as well, like those in the North? (even if, with the help of government intervention —horrific thought I suppose). I'm not really wording that the best way but I just woke up and haven't had my coffee yet. Hopefully you can kind of see the question I'm posing there. What if, it was a bunch of lies? If they were wrong on the issue of slavery, could they have also been wrong on the issue of tariffs?
I expect to be challenged on this post. What I lack are facts—which I acknowledge, but really what I'm posing here is more an alternative theory to "tariffs are bad", just to provoke thought. Take it as an opinion, at best.
Last edited by nobody's_hero; 10-28-2018 at 12:23 PM.
T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." - Plato
We Are Running Out of Time - Mini Me
Originally Posted by Philhelm
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
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