Economics

Is It Really Free Trade?

This entry was posted in Drug Laws Economics Government on by

Free trade, free trade, all aboard for free trade.
The Canadian and Columbian governments are close to executing a free trade agreement:

Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier concluded an official visit to Bogota Tuesday, saying a Canada-Colombia free trade pact was imminent and praising its peace efforts in a statement.
“Discussions on a free trade agreement with Colombia are ongoing and Canada remains committed to concluding the negotiations in the near future,” Bernier said.

But will it really be a free trade agreement?
That would require that any individuals or groups of individuals in the two countries can voluntarily exchange goods and services without government restrictions in forms such as taxes, tariffs, prohibitions, etc.
Columbia is the world’s leading cocoa cultivator. Will there be unrestricted trade in cocoa related products?
The only role that the respective governments might have to play in a truly free trade environment is to provide a dispute resolution process (judicial system) and to provide police services in cases of fraud, theft or violence that the involved parties can not resolve amongst themselves without resort to violence.
That these agreements may make some steps in this direction can be a good thing. To the extent they serve to maintain the current state enforced corporate welfare system, well…, they are not so good.
Via Poliblog.

Is It A Market Economy?

This entry was posted in Anarchism Economics Libertarianism on by

Thoreau asks:

When so many major elements of the ostensibly private sector–the press, telecommunications, and oil, just to name a few (I’m not including the “defense” industry, because there’s nothing even ostensibly “private sector” about it)–are part and parcel of our security state and imperial policies, does it make sense to describe this as being even the faintest semblance of a market economy and system of private enterprise?

That is a question that really shouldn’t need asking. The US economy is not a market economy and has not been since, well, pretty much forever.
It is important to remember that every time someone blames the market, or the free market, or some other similar entity for failing that it is a corporate state economy that has failed and the corporate state economy will fail again and again except at achieving its primary objective: scraping wealth off of the backs of the rest of us.

For more details read Kevin Carson’s The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand.

So You’re Going to New York to Make the Bigtime

This entry was posted in Culture Domestic Terrorism Drug Laws Economics on by

You might want to check out the New York Profit Calculator first:

The wild risks, unexpected niches, and day-in-day-out grind behind making a dollar in New York for everyone… from a drug dealer to Goldman Sachs.

Thanks to the war on drugs it looks like the meth dealer made out pretty well. No wonder there is always someone to fill the void when a dealer gets carted off to jail.

Via Henley.

May The Force Be With You

This entry was posted in Biology Economics Education Games on by

If you can’t concentrate you may not win your next light sword battle or make your next put:

Behind the mask is a sensor that touches the user’s forehead and reads the brain’s electrical signals, then sends them to a wireless receiver inside the saber, which lights up when the user is concentrating. The player maintains focus by channeling thoughts on any fixed mental image, or thinking specifically about keeping the light sword on. When the mind wanders, the wand goes dark.
…
Technology from NeuroSky and other startups could make video games more mentally stimulating and realistic. It could even enable players to control video game characters or avatars in virtual worlds with nothing but their thoughts.
Adding biofeedback to “Tiger Woods PGA Tour,” for instance, could mean that only those players who muster Zen-like concentration could nail a put. In the popular action game “Grand Theft Auto,” players who become nervous or frightened would have worse aim than those who remain relaxed and focused.
NeuroSky’s prototype measures a person’s baseline brain-wave activity, including signals that relate to concentration, relaxation and anxiety. The technology ranks performance in each category on a scale of 1 to 100, and the numbers change as a person thinks about relaxing images, focuses intently, or gets kicked, interrupted or otherwise distracted.

Read the rest of the article for the beginnings of what could be an interesting debate over both intended and unintended benefits of bringing biofeedback to the popular market.

Will learning to keep a light sword bright improve our ability to focus on other tasks?

Update: Here is a picture of Neurosky’s prototype and here is NeuroSky’s homepage.<.p>

Global Nonsense

This entry was posted in Anarchism Capitalism Economics Libertarianism on by

At Cafe Hayek Don Boudreaux reacts to a New York Review of Books review by singing the praises of globalization :

I doubt that McKibben knows what he’s talking about. That is, I doubt that he has any real appreciation for just how much our lives depend upon global commerce and industry. I doubt that he understands that each of us daily depends for our standards of living — indeed, for our very lives — on the creativity and efforts of tens of millions of people worldwide.

The good folks at Catallarchy pick up the drum beat:

It’s illuminating how expensive these experiments in buying local-only turn out to be. You never seem to hear about “working class” people rejecting global capitalism to prove some sort of ecopolitical holier-than-thou point. Maybe because they are too busy shopping at WalMart just trying to get by. Eliminating or reducing global trade would make their lives unbearably more difficult, if not impossible.

This is true enough. Pull the plug now on today’s global economy and things would look pretty bleak for anyone not currently “living locally.”
But, it is surprising to hear such supposedly strong free market supporters praising so loudly a structure so substantially built and maintained by the force of the state.
Boudreaux goes on to say:

…McKibben’s prescription would ironcially also likely require a vast, global government possessing awesome powers to force we humans to live — and to keep living — in local economies.

Right.

Just like our current version of a global economy is subsidized and maintained by vast government structures possessing awesome powers.