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Politics : Bush Bashers & Wingnuts
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To: Red Heeler who wrote (607)1/17/2004 2:51:35 PM
From: Ann Corrigan  Read Replies (1) of 1347
 
CC,

Those planning to re-elect GW Bush's "never saw a free-trade agreement they didn't like" crowd, should consider this:

>>ADAM SMITH and the MESS WE ARE IN

The St. Thomas Aquinas of Capitalism, Adam Smith, would weep. He never realized that a nation would be so foolish as to sell off its assets and give up its comparative advantage on the whim of transnational businessmen who have no loyalty to any nation. How could he have understood that a nation would throw out quality for quantity? He never figured an ostensibly capitalist nation such as the U.S. would shoot itself in the foot by perverting the doctrine of free trade and the free market.

Smith was also smart enough to know that businessmen and government working together can be a dangerous mix. That is why in the U.S. today we don't really have capitalism but rather corporatism; that is where government and business corrupt the market in unison. In the end they kill off the goose that lays those golden eggs and they do so without a care for the future, as they live in the virtual reality of things being as they always were.

Smith's comment about the nature of businessmen applies to managerial bureaucratic government types as well. He said, "silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains . neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind."

Smith might have understood that the amoral cohabitation between large corporations and the government usually clash with the best interests of a nation. Too bad most of us never read his 1,000-page tome to get the entire picture. Certainly free traders, transnational corporations and our government leaders never have.

Diane Alden is a research analyst with a background in political science and economics.
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