New World Order, Inc.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Just yesterday, I read that the belief "that we could have utopian prosperity if we got rid of private businesses and had the government run everything" should be marked down to "stubborn stupidity." Fair enough. As hyperbolic and Straw Manned-up as that statement is, thwarting all independent economic activity would be a bit delusional, given that nobody even agrees upon the definition of "individual", let alone of "collective."

That said, I find it fascinating how many screeds railing against "statism" (again, whatever that might be) completely ignore the actual clear and present danger that non-state actors are continuously exacting on the right of countries to exercise any semblance of sovereignty, and all under the geas of "free trade." Don't these folks know that given enough size, a corporation today has—via the power granted by over-reaching trade agreements—greater legal right than most countries?

Let's ignore the bugaboo of ooga-booga over the concept of a state, for right now, and just recognize actual states as they act to protect and improve the lives of their citizens. Egypt, for example, fairly recently raised minimum wages for some category of employees. All well and good, one might think. Ah, but Egypt signed a trade agreement with other EU countries. In return, they got private investment dollars. When they raised the minimum wages in their country, one investing multinational, Veolia, realized the potential profit on their investment was lowered as the required cost of operation in Egypt increased through higher wages, and is now sueing Egypt for the difference between the former and current wages.

How can Veolia get away with this? Many trade agreements, it turns out, now have "investor protection rules and investor-state dispute settlement" clauses in them that bias the private investor over the interests or political conditions of entire countries. That's right, folks. If you think those bastards that built the factory are despoiling the drinking water, or paying too little, or just might do any thing that demands public action; and as a country you pass legislation to address these grievances; too fucking bad. If you lose the ensuing arbitration hearing by pencil-pushers in some other country, you will have to pay restitution to that company. After all, you caused them to lose money.

That is happening in other countries as well. In El Salvador, the citizens rose up against a Canadian-owned gold mine, blocking its continued operation (and the continued use of massive amounts of water, the effluent issues, worker safety . . . the list is long). The company, Pacific Rim, is now "suing the government there to recoup more than $100 million in lost investments and unrealized profits" over the El Salvadorean government's decision to close the El Dorado mine.

Now, if an international arbitration board finds in favor of the corporation, Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes would be obligated to reimburse the company’s previous investments plus profits it would theoretically have earned if the mine opened.

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I caught wind of this stink not from the "liberal" press of commercially-supported radio or television or ad-supported news desks from what few print journalists are still drawing a paycheck, but from a simple listener-supported podcast. In the interview kmo conducts with Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of Citizens Trade Campaign, I learn that the above two examples about Egypt and El Salvador are small potatoes compared to the corporate over-reach envisioned by the Trans Pacific Partnership currently being negotiated. Not heard of this TPP thing? I'm not surprised.

According to Stamoulis, in fact, members of Congress had a hard time getting details about what is being negotiated in their name. After a great deal of pressure, some members were given a chapter or two—highly redacted chapters, at that. Who is getting full access to the treaty under construction? Why, Wal-Mart, for one. That's right, folks; the corporate interests that would be served by this treaty have full access to the 29 chapters, not the lawmakers who will ultimately be asked to pass the treaty along a straight up-or-down vote, and certainly not the citizens whose lives will undoubtedly be impacted by the terms under which their personal and collective sovereignty will be compromised. What little has been learned of the TPP was leaked to Stamoulis' organization.

If this treaty is ratified by any of the participants in the ongoing negotiations, the power of any of the citizens within the countries affected to challenge the actions or profit strategies of investing corporations will likely be negated. Just as the World Trade Organization, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Central America Free Trade Agreement and many other so-called treaties do, the Trans Pacific Partnership will bias economic gain over the long-term viability of entire economies, biozones and cultures. The one difference the TPP has over the others, though, is one of scale, again according to Stamoulis. Leaked drafts of the TPP reveal that it gives to corporations power and authority not seen in the United States since the days of the East India Company. And let's remember how that worked out.

---

So, anti-statists out there. Do me a favor. The next time you bitch about "coercion" or other such non-sense, puh-leaze have the decency to include corporate over-reach in your criticism. They are, after all, quite literally collective in nature.

Comments

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

Cyberpunk 2020 ... it isn't just a game. It's a prophecy.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

I am less and less sure the world of Snow Crash isn't around the corner. Look forward to nut jobs with nuclear warhead side cars on their choppers to be declared sovereign nations.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

I don't see the problem, I'm perfectly secure in my Red Bull neighborhood, it's not my fault you opted for a Dr Pepper cul-de-sac.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Just yesterday, I read that the belief "that we could have utopian prosperity if we got rid of private businesses and had the government run everything" should be marked down to "stubborn stupidity." Fair enough. As hyperbolic and Straw Manned-up as that statement is

Of course it was, since that was the point of the statement, as it was a parody of the hyperbolic and straw manned-up statement it was in response to.

Don't these folks know that given enough size, a corporation today has—via the power granted by over-reaching trade agreements—greater legal right than most countries?

Uh, via the power granted to them by governments, actually. So, where is the source of the problem there? That's right, governments. The concentration of power in government is what allows for the concentration of power in a megacorp. Without the first, you wouldn't have the second.

they act to protect and improve the lives of their citizens. Egypt, for example, fairly recently raised minimum wages for some category of employees.

An example of them not actually improving the lives of their citizens. It's possible that's what they were trying to do, but they also could have just been trying to bribe the populace into keeping them in power.

And then you give two examples that show exactly how the problem is government power being used to give things away to businesses. And you don't see the problem is that government is allowed to do this in the first place?

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

Fight a strawman with a strawman? Awesome!

STRAWMEN, TO YOUR MARKS! FIGHT!

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Uh, via the power granted to them by governments, actually. So, where is the source of the problem there?

An excellent point, one I will address by pointing out that the megacorp's power would not exist without mega profits. Without that enormous operating profit, there would be no money power to affect government decision making through bribery er, massive (read, "expensive") lobbying and the preferable treatment that comes from strategic campaign contributions.

We are looking at a chicken-egg "which came first" problem. The entirety of the blame or credit does not fall on any one actor.

One may counter that the massive war chests enabled by the profit may have its source in the government allowing such profits to be kept; but here, I think, is where we diverge. The societal allowance of massive individual wealth goes beyond mere government tolerance.

And then you give two examples that show exactly how the problem is government power being used. . . .

Ah, here you are mistaken. The two examples reflect how one or two governments are forcing the populace of other governments into enabling corporate taking. To assign the blame, we must once again delve into what forces caused any of the signatory governments into their signing, and again we reach non-governmental influences.

Chicken. And. Egg.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

The government power came first, which allowed for megacorps which allowed for mega profits. Note that the "mega profits" are not that high a percentage, they are only a high amount because of the scale of operations. That money wouldn't be spent on buying government favors if government had no favors to sell.

To assign the blame, we must once again delve into what forces caused any of the signatory governments into their signing, and again we reach non-governmental influences.

I disagree. The influences are very much governmental.

[il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com]

yeah . . . the direction this is taking is causing me to ponder the types of individuals and/or personalities who tend to be attracted to governmental roles/careers.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

I disagree. The influences are very much governmental.

*sigh*

Work with me here in considering just one example. When a body of bureaucrats needs advice on economic matters, to whom do they turn? Economists. Economics as a body of research has skewed remarkably to the right, toward the side of private fortunes and away from the view that an economy should benefit all the members of society.

Private fortunes agree to fund schools of economic thought as long as that thought is the kind that will support the continued aggregation of vast fortunes. A bank endows a prize (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_for_Economics) for "excellence" in economic thought, and awards most of the prizes to those economists who toe the vast fortune enabling dogma.

By the time the private money has fought this ongoing battle against social good and for private fortune, the committee of functionaries at the government is reduced to a rubber stamp for the established mythos of Private Riches.

That's what I meant by forces that affect governmental decision making.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Economics as a body of research has skewed remarkably to the right, toward the side of private fortunes and away from the view that an economy should benefit all the members of society.

That's not skewing to the right. You're using a political spectrum to describe a non-political setting. And I disagree with your assessment that economics is tilted that way.

Private fortunes agree to fund schools of economic thought

Citation needed. Prizes are not funding.

That's what I meant by forces that affect governmental decision making.

You're looking at a minor reflective influence and calling it the driving force.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

That's not skewing to the right. You're using a political spectrum to describe a non-political setting.

No. Economics has always been political. Most schools that taught the subject before the turn of the last century, in fact, called themselves schools of political economics. The slow change to calling economics a "science" rather than a series of political observations, in fact, has led to the confusion you so ably demonstrate. That, in turn, has allowed the right-ward shift to occur unnoticed by many. Including, it seems, yourself.

Citation needed.

Fair enough. (http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/billionaires-role-in-hiring-decisions-at-florida-state-university-raises/1168680)

A conservative billionaire who opposes government meddling in business has bought a rare commodity: the right to interfere in faculty hiring at a publicly funded university.

A foundation bankrolled by Libertarian businessman Charles G. Koch has pledged $1.5 million for positions in Florida State University's economics department. In return, his representatives get to screen and sign off on any hires for a new program promoting "political economy and free enterprise."

Did you notice the appropriate use of the phrase "political economy" there?

You're looking at a minor reflective influence and calling it the driving force.

The assumptions at the base of a society's decision making are at the heart of how that society behaves. Such core assumptions can therefore hardly be called "minor."

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Work with me here in considering just one example. When a body of bureaucrats needs advice on economic matters, to whom do they turn? Economists. Economics as a body of research has skewed remarkably to the right,

Well I'd say you have the collapse of the soviet union and current state of countries like Venezuela and North Korea to blame for that one. Face it, Marx was straight-up wrong and Hitler has poisoned the old "3rd way" for at least another generation or two. That just leaves the various flavors of capitalism to duke it out.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Well I'd say you have the collapse of the soviet union and current state of countries like Venezuela and North Korea to blame for that one.

Huh?

Face it, Marx was straight-up wrong. . . .

Ah, but here you prove my point. It turns out ol' Karl wasn't that far off the mark at all. Several of his observations in Das Kapital were right on the mark. Steven Keen calls him the last great classical economist (the first was Adam Smith).

Sadly, since he called for a revolution of classes he helped define, and since Russia wound up following that advice, there followed his writing and life a time of instability in the field of economics where folks bent over backward inventing theories—many of them based on absolute bullshit—that attempted to debunk Marx's contributions. It got so ugly that other economists (like Keynes) in return bent over backward to disguise any reference to Marx lest they get branded as "Marxist" even though that theory was absolutely proven correct.

The result?

The advantage Marxists have over economists is that at least they are upfront about having an ideology. Marxists are as consciously committed to the belief that capitalism should give way to socialism as economists are to the often unconscious belief that, if only we could rid ourselves of government intervention in the market, we would currently reside in the best of all possible worlds.

(Steve Keen, Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor Dethroned?, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, p. 442.)

That just leaves the various flavors of capitalism to duke it out.

Again, proving my point. Keen's entire book points out that those various flavors are seriously flawed. He doesn't suggest alternatives, which means that we seriously have to examine our financial system (which is what capitalism ultimately distills to) and see how it can be improved before it crashes yet again.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Saying that Economics skews right, is a lot like saying that Chicano Lit skews towards the study of latino writers or that Womens Studies majors skew towards feminism.

Communism and other forms of collectivism fail because Marx's labor-based theory of value is demonstrably false and has lead to nothing but murder mayhem and oppression everywhere it has taken root.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

LJ ate my first two replies for Thanksgiving, so I'll be short.

Saying that Economics skews right, is a lot like saying that Chicano Lit skews towards the study of latino writers or that Womens Studies majors skew towards feminism.

No, wrong. Economics can be either right or left without not being economics. What's at stake here is which school of econ will be supported by society/monied interests. Those monied interests have the most to lose if the econ shifts left.

Communism and other forms of collectivism fail because Marx's labor-based theory of value is demonstrably false and has lead to nothing but murder mayhem and oppression everywhere it has taken root.

Marx wrote both economics observations and dialectic dualism in the Hegelian style. Only the latter "class tensions will inevitably lead to revolution" bullshit has anything to do with the murder and mayhem you mention. (I gave examples earlier, but again, screw LJ.)

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

I'm also going to challenge your implication that only the left engages/leads to "nothing but murder mayhem and oppression." One need not be left-leaning to be an oppressive jerk.

Sadly, there are plenty of historical right-wing, left-wing and middle-of-the-road jerks engaging in "nothing but murder mayhem and oppression."

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

actual states as they act to protect and improve the lives of their citizens
The political and social elites who form governments may have a "l'etat c'est moi" attitude, but their interests do not always coincide with the best interests of the majority of citizens. There are plenty of examples of governments polluting, persecuting, ripping off, killing and otherwise inconveniencing their own citizens.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

The political and social elites who form governments may have a "l'etat c'est moi" attitude, but their interests do not always coincide with the best interests of the majority of citizens.

Exactly. In the podcast, KMO quotes Pres. Obama on the TPP, noting he says the TPP will allow "us" to "win" against "them" and "others." Given the actual bias the TPP seems to have toward corporations and against governmental redress, it's a fair question to ask who the President meant by those quoted words.

Are "us" the US citizens, or US corporations? Are "them" the workers in other countries, or in our own? And how much pain will all this winning inflict on the US and others?

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

Ideally, both and both.
US citizens would benefit to greater access to goods and services from other countries, and to greater competition for their spending. US corporations would have access to a wider range of suppliers and to foreign markets, resulting in greater investment, employment and tax revenues for the United States, ultimately benefiting citizens.
Better access by foreign suppliers to the American market means more jobs, investment and employment for foreign workers, with the resulting increases in wages, standard of living and quality of life. As a result, they can buy more quality goods and services from countries like the United States.
How much pain? There will be short term pain as adjustments are made, followed by long term gain. The same pattern was seen with other trade deals, such as NAFTA.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

US corporations would have access to a wider range of suppliers and to foreign markets, resulting in greater investment, employment and tax revenues for the United States, ultimately benefiting citizens.

That and the rest of what you said is the established mythos, yes. In practice, the corps have access to a wider range of lower paid labor, which does indeed lower the cost of the goods they manufacture, but which also guts the economy which will buy those goods. Wal Mart for one is not doing well in this new economy, since their prime customer base has become so impoverished that they can no longer afford to shop even there. The race to the bottom has bitten them on their ample backsides.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

What you call the wider range of lower paid labour is the burgeoning middle class of China, India and other places, people whose newfound purchasing power represents a huge market for American companies. But, only if American companies can access these markets. Thus, the trade deals.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Not anymore. The current TPP in the OP is specifically courting Vietnam, whose extremely low minimum wage is very attractive to those who are tired of getting screwed by Chinese workers and their exorbitant wage demands.

Will the lower wages make the final product less expensive here? Don't count on it.

[il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com]

I'm sure someone, somewhere, has asked the President to clarify those exact terms. Maybe a bit of surfing will lead us to some clarity . . . . .

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Go for it.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

Actually, with you El Salvador example you have given a great example against signing international agreements, I mean what happened to the good old days of just nationalizing companies if things don't work out? After all (so far) these international mega corps don't have real armies. :D

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

I mean what happened to the good old days of just nationalizing companies if things don't work out?

Let's remember that nationalization was a response to some countries funding juntas against other countries in order to privatize nations. Banana republics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company), anyone? :-P

[il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com]

Sounds to me like we could learn a thing or two from what has happened there in Egypt and El Salvador. Maybe the word should be spread to other countries . . . when allowing a corporation to do business in your country be sure to have them sign the statement detailing how they (the corporation) cannot sue the government and/or people in the case the business venture is not fruitful, doesn't yield as high a profit as anticipated, does not meet any projected productivity as predicted by internal/external analysts.

All business is a gamble. There is no way around it. If a corporation cannot comprehend this factoid, then that is problematic. Unrealistic goals will be set, and the tracks for greed lain.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

Business risk is one thing, but arbitrary and malicious actions by a government are quite another.
What if governments change the rules after the investment has been made? Or, what if they apply one set of rules to foreign companies, and another to domestic companies? Or, what if the venture is profitable, and the government decides to sabotage the business so that investors are forced to sell the business at a loss, for example, to friends of the government?
Clauses that allow companies to seek redress if they feel that they have been treated unfairly are in important part of international agreements related to foreign trade and investment.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

If by "arbitrary and malicious actions" you mean the ability for citizens to seek redress for injustices committed in the name of profit, then I'm afraid we do not agree on this statement of yours.

People died in El Salvador preventing the mine from opening simply because many of those people would be out of a livelihood if it did open. The mine would claim all the water people needed and pollute the remaining rivers, often with cyanide (used in gold mining). If the option is death, why not die trying to stop it?

I thought about including in the OP the What If scenario where the US is home to the foreign corporation and cannot stop the extraction/destruction because it signed the damned trade agreement. What if your well was poisoned, your children hired in sweatshops?

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

The company is playing by the rules established by El Salvador's own 1999 mining law. El Salvador's president in 2008 publicly stated that he was willing to pay $90 to cancel the project. The government of El Salvador, if it really didn't want the mine, could have turned down the project before accepting $77 million of the company's money. If someone took your money and then refused to give you what you paid for, or to return the money, you might seek redress too. Cheating foreigners may play well to the local crowd, but if you call it justice, I suppose we won't agree.

As for your hypothetical scenario, the United States has a long record of breaking trade deals. Its economic heft usually ensures that Americans can tilt the playing field in their favour. If there is a threat of poisoned wells and children in sweatshops, I would be more afraid of domestic companies and governments than of foreign ones.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

If there is a threat of poisoned wells and children in sweatshops, I would be more afraid of domestic companies and governments than of foreign ones.

Ah, but a domestic company wouldn't be able to appeal to an arbitration court. . . .