Canada: Proposed legislation to toughen penalties for buying illegal satellite services

CBC ^ | 02/26/04 | CBC

[William Terrell]

the canadian economy would lose by not having the less expensive version available in the marketplace.

If the same type of car, one imported and one domestically made, both equivalent in quality, and the import is cheaper because of the labor situation at the source, how does the domestic car manufacturer stay in business without lowering wages to match those in the source country?

i am taking the long view. free market policies will lead to a higher standard of living in the long term, because the higher annual growth rate will be compounded. your leftist policies will help some few people in the short term, but will do far worse in the long term.

How specifically can this version of free trade have a positive long term raise in the standard of living, when items made using dirt cheap labor in foreign countries drive domestic industries out of business?

for that reason, a society that adopts protectionism will lose in the long term to a society that adopts free market policies. protectionism condemns a country to insignificance in the long term, since the free market economies will rise to the top.

These are nice statements, but far from being proved. They are economic theories and most economic theories by experts in the field turn out to be dead wrong. Likewise, they make no sense. A nation without a hard industrial base loses its sovereignty to those with a hard industrial base.

as for global government and regulation, i am unalterably opposed. these are many times worse than national regulation, because there is nowhere to flee.

World regulated trade leads to world government. If a global organization can override national sovereignty in issues of trade, they can quickly move to national economies to world economies. A nation is nothing without it domestic economy

why do you care what country i am a citizen of? i am an individual. my arguments stand on their own merits. it does not matter where i was born, nor where i live, nor where i will die.

I was interested in your refusal to answer the question. Had you asked me, I would have said, "Yes, I am." with no hesitation.

It does matter where you were born and live when discussing "free trade". You could be a citizen of a country that benefits from the massive trade deficits being endured by my country, and that gives what you say an obvious spin toward your benefit and my detriment.

If one hides any basis for prejudice, one is being fraudulent. I never hide. Do you?

[William Terrell]

why would a free man be willing to turn over his freedom, to let some politician decide how he will live his life: who he may buy from, who he may sell to, even what tv shows he can watch?

Would you prefer that private corporations, NGOs and global agencies make those determinations?

[Persephone Kore]

"It does matter where you were born and live when discussing "free trade". You could be a citizen of a country that benefits from the massive trade deficits being endured by my country, and that gives what you say an obvious spin toward your benefit and my detriment."

oh i see. that hadn't occurred to me. i just reflexively do not answer idle personal questions.

i am a u.s. citizen.

i am employed in an industry which is undergoing much movement of labor to the third world.

i am confident of my ability to find something useful to do, in the real world as it really exists, even when the world changes. i do not plan to cry like a baby to some thug to demand "protection" for my job, whether the competition is an upstart twenty-something american or somebody willing to work for what seems like a pittance in rupees. for i have no choice. the world is what it is.

we should not run from the future; we should not freeze like a deer in a shining light. we must live in the real world, and we must adapt to whatever the real world is. countries would be well-advised to follow the same motto. for we have no choice; one can only pretend so long - if you live a lie, sooner or later reality comes crashing in on you.

i hope that the third world will pull itself up out of poverty. this is in the interest of the united states, just as it helps a homeowner if poor neighbors who live in ramshackle houses do well, fix their broken windows, make improvements on their properties, and start to have a higher standard of living.

i urge you again to consider that the economy is not a zero-sum game. if the third world bootstraps its way to the middle class, it will not be by stealing from the u.s. and europe; it will be by producing goods and services of value, and so adding things of worth to the world. we all stand to benefit from that.

[Persephone Kore]

"World regulated trade leads to world government. If a global organization can override national sovereignty in issues of trade, they can quickly move to national economies to world economies."

we agree on this. i do not support regulation by global organizations, or so-called managed trade, or, God forbid, a de facto world government. true free-trade is what i am in favor of.

[Persephone Kore]

so permit me to ask you something now.

what political philosophy do you base your economic views on? i understand a liberal or a socialist taking your position, since they believe in governmental solutions to problems, and in some significant governmental control over the economy.

but you're here on free republic, you seem sincere and not at all like a troll, so i take it you are some species of conservative.

conservatives usually are in favor of individual decisionmaking. they are very wary of the all-eggs-in-one-basket nature of government solutions. they believe that a large number of people making individual choices will yield better solutions than a small number of politicians making one choice for everybody - and if the politicians succumb to the usual temptation of corruption, it's even worse.

how do you square your economics and your politics?

so this isn't coming from left field, i will say that politically i support a strong-defense libertarianism. i believe very strongly in the constitution and the bill of rights. i usually vote republican, sometimes somewhat enthusiastically, sometimes as the much lesser of two evils.

my politics are consistent with my economics.

[William Terrell]

Across the thousands of years of civilization, many methods of interpersonal relationships, forms of government and international relationships, like trade and war, have been tried. Methods have been found to succeed and fail. Many that have failed have been retried and still failed.

Of personal relationships, forms of marriage between male and female to raise children for the enrichment of the group (nation, you might say) to which they belong has been found to succeed. Saturation of homosexuality and similar methods of casting marriage has been know to fail to the detriment of the group. Roles of male and female ordered after each's natural inclination and physical attributes have successful for the group. Ventures outside these ordered roles have been found to be detrimental to the group.

Of the natural forms of grouping and organization that have been found to consistently work has been the nation or state. Much evil, indeed, has been done in the name of a nation or state, but it has been done by leaders thereof, corruptible human beings. But people return to that form again and again because it has the best chance of success.

There are certain forms of interaction within the nation/state that have been found to be successful. Among these are laws sanctioning destructive behavior of one to another, the mentioned family structure, and trade with one another to the benefit of both and all.

The forms of international relationships that have succeeded have been the unit of a nation or state, well organized toward benefiting the people that make it up, dealing with another. Whatever the relationship between states, there are practices that must remain internal and only in the aggregate may be practiced externally.

A nation is an abstraction. It is only people. The people work to maintain the stability of their nation and assure a secure place for themselves.

Any and all attempts to break out of the nation state form has been to dominate, conquer and hegemonize for the benefit of one and the detriment of all else. It has always failed, in whatever approach it has been tried, militarily or economic, and had egregious consequences.

As conservatives, we look to conserve the ways that have succeeded from trial and error. As liberals, we are willing to try new things in areas that have not been previously explored in order to provide future conservatives with tried and true methods. In like way, we evolve as a social people. The mistake many make is being liberal toward established maxims.

I see this current attempt to try again something that has failed in its concept in history, the attempt to organize widely disparate human cultures under the rubric of trade, forced against its natural intention. That natural intention is equal benefit for all.

In no way is the current method being tried beneficial to all. It is only being used in another attempt at hegemony, to the detriment of all, as has been proved over and over in the past, and recently in this century.

Holding the production of a goods and services that is used within a nation, within that nation, has worked. Making that nation dependent on the goods and services of other nations has not worked. The idea being pursued here is to create an interdependency of nations, so that the wealth of all depend on those that produce and those who consume, albeit those that produce and those who consume be in different nations, with some exception and bleed over.

That is the bottom line of of the current effort, hegemony, using trade as a wedge to pry apart the self sufficient nature of the nation and allow outside controlling factors in. This is not new, and it has not succeeded in the past. But what it does offer is the realization of power for an elite group. "Elite groups" are a common creature in world history, and we are not free of them so long as human nature prevails. The common denominator of "elite groups" is always the attempt to liberalize establish maxims.

My position is a conservative one by the very definition of "conservative".

[Persephone Kore]

"If one hides any basis for prejudice, one is being fraudulent. I never hide. Do you?

so, what are your political views?

you avoided the question by writing vague generalities.

one's politics are a greater source of bias or direction than one's geography. i have far more in common with maggie thatcher than with hillary clinton.

what are your politics anyway?

[William Terrell]

I'm a conservative and patriotic American. I told you why I'm a conservative on trade. Not a generality in the whole post.

[Persephone Kore]

"I told you why I'm a conservative on trade."

is that what you call it? you agree with dennis kucinich. lol.

http://www.kucinich.us/jobstalk.php

http://www.kucinich.us/trade-030104.php

you wouldn't answer the question on your underlying political views. based on this, i can see why.

[William Terrell]

What underlying political views do you wish to know about? "Political views" is a pretty wide field.

The reason trade is conservative is because the tariff method of regulating imports is constitutional. This so-called "free trade" is not constitutional, therefore liberal.

The reason is that we, as the people, have rights, acknowledged in the constitutions. A corporation is solely a creature of a state, and has no rights beyond those the state sees fit to confer on it and is not protected by a constitution.

If My Kucinich agrees, then he is right in that, whatever else he is right or wrong about.

You are on the wrong side of the issue. Perhaps I should ask you what your "politcal views" are.