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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: frankw1900 who wrote (20807)	3/7/2002 9:58:44 AM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 281500

I've got a chance now to stir the pot a bit. Nice post, Frank. I've got some home repair work to do in just a moment but as soon as I get a bit of time later today, I'll write a longer response. I've been thinking about the Bush steel decision as a possible topic of conversation for this issue. John

To: frankw1900 who wrote (20807)	3/8/2002 11:48:30 AM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 281500

Frank, I'm responding to your response to my "human face on globablization" posts. I've done this post once and lost it by hitting a return key in the wrong place. So here goes again. If it seems a bit thin, it's because I've lost too many thoughts. I enjoyed the post. Some thoughts. 1. I agree on the war and "kleptocratic" (wonderful term) govts. arguments but I have some concern about just how widely the latter term applies. I can imagine, for instance, an argument that the term is a redundant one for govt (LindyBill might, for instance, make that argument). I would, of course, disagree with that formula. But, with that exception, I agree. 2. I like your introduction of rural-urban exchanges into this discussion. Geographical elements don't often appear in trade arguments, at least at the level we're working. We tend to think with industries as the units and, sometimes, with geography but then only as nation states. Rarely, urban-rural stuff. 3. I'm not certain about agricultural subsidies. Probably because I only know enough here to use certain stories. Hard to generalize beyond the stories. It's my impression that, by far, the bulk of such subsidies in this country go to agri-business not to small farmers. And that's why they keep getting voted through the congress. Just exactly how critical they might be to the welfare of small farmers and how important a part of a good national agricultural policy, I genuinely don't know. Our political talk has degenerated to such a low level that I can no longer trust anyone to actually be talking about that. I see them rather as talking about how many votes they can preserve or gain. It looks to me to be a bit of a stretch, however, to link US farm subsidies to variations in the rate of drug cultivation. I see how you get there but can't help believing you've missed some portions of the chain of the argument. 4. The last two paragraphs of your post puzzle me. I don't understand what you mean by governments denying their citizens access to global markets. Do you mean that subsidizing agriculture "denies" that access? If so, then I'm genuinely too slow to understand the meaning of the words "access" and "deny" in that sentence. Could you give me some illustrations? You write: A libertarian should say doing the right things would lessen the pain considerably. Foremost among the things to do is remove western agricultural subsidies, quotas and tariffs. (At the very least subsidize them for not producing; subsidies tapering off over time). If a human face is to be presented by globalization, then human activity such as participating in the global market must be allowed. To distort a well known slogan, acting local is acting global. Compared to their internal activities western nations' foreign policies are minimally harmful to lesser developed nations. A visiting Martian would say: Riffs by self serving development experts, consultants, western business people, officials and politicians on themes of better law, improved bankng, transparency, etc, etc, are at least hypocritical - if not meaningless - when their governments deny the majority of citizens in less developed places access to world markets. That is the source of the inhumanity in globalization and not surprisingly, much of its ideological content, as you would define it John