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Pastimes : No to WTO! Seattle 1999 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ray Emery who wrote (12)	12/1/1999 3:08:00 PM
From: Opioi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 187

Of course I don't think we should all be growing vegetables. And I'm fully awake. I admire your enterprise, I aspire to run a bookstore someday or something. What concerns me is corporations and super-conglomerates that have the power to bend government to their own selfish ends through lavish campaign contributions and (in developing nations) threats to close up shop if such and such demands aren't met. This kind of awesome economic blackmail always leaves the little people behind, and is a completely different animal than your own business plans. Our government is for and by the people, not for and by big business. Oppression is oppression, whether its caused by Shell Oil running amok in Nigeria or Saddam Hussein crushing the Kurds. Pure capitalism is economic darwinism and is absolutely not good for everyone. We can't all be bosses, hello! It must be attenuated in some manner to protect the rights of those who can't buy power. I am not a socialist, but a realist (a social democrat, like all those pesky Greens in Germany). So far capitalism has proven itself best at providing for the greatest amount of people. But this doesn't mean that there isn't a slightly better approach to capitalism that may provide for even more people. It's not all so black and white! Good luck with the biz--and take some time off to cultivate a garden.

To: Ray Emery who wrote (12)	12/1/1999 7:36:00 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 187

I want no part of anyone who wants to restrict my right to trade with anyone that I want. I'm interested to see that you are violently opposed to the trade embargos on Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Iraq, Yugoslavia, etc. You were certainly adamantly opposed to those people who sought to restrict trade with South Africa in order to pressure it to abandon Apartheid. (Without international pressure, if the WTO had existed back then, it's perfectly possible that Apartheid would still be the law in S.A. Which I take it wouldn't bother you, since S.A. was a capitalist country and since "Capitalism is good for everyone" it was obviously good for the blacks as well as the whites.) I used to be an ardent capitalist myself. But like others, I have seen to much of the down and dirty side of unrestrained capitalism.