Comment by PythonicAlpha | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PythonicAlpha | Hacker News Reader

The trend was started long ago. The whole notion of "globalization" is a development to disempower the single nations. Before the globalization was known in Germany, it was a nation that could stand against the big corporations and say "we have our own rules in this country" (e.g. worker rights, environmental, ...).

And we had a state where wealth was rather evenly divided and with many people that did well. Also we had rather low crime and view people had to worry that they could be poor when they are old.

Than came globalization and the notion that the "free market" will be always right and will make things (automatically) perfect. (That was promoted by Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Reagan, to name two early adopters). Than the governments in Germany and all over the world started to bend. "It is the free market, we can not do anything against it" was said by them. "We have to bend our laws to comply with the free market".

So it was going all over the world.

What do we have today: All over the world, people get richer ... 1% of the people. The others get gradually poorer and the lowest part of the people are really poor, because in Germany it is already clear, that a big part of the people working today, will not be able to live from the pensions they will get.

So the "free market" took over and the "free nations" are enslaved by one economic theory, that nobody has ever proved.

We are all at the mercy of "unlimited growth". Our economic systems are only stable, when growth is guaranteed. In biology, unlimited growth is called cancer.

That's basically John Ralston Saul's argument in his book "The Collapse of Globalization". Good story from that book was how the PM of Malaysia was laughed out of Davos for installing capital and currency controls then after the financial meltdown of the late 90s they hailed him as a visionary at Davos for surviving the crisis. Saul also predicted they would try this insane system again because it is ideology and therefore can never be wrong.

Would you kindly point out the countries that are currently being enslaved by a free market? There must be a lot of them.

For example, those that even slightly resemble the low tax, low regulation, low government involvement system of the US between 1820-1920.

It is not about "free market" -- but about the ideology behind the current system. It has the name "free market" -- but it is only free for those, that have the money to control politics. That are the persons that control, what is negotiated at TTIP and other treaties.

To answer your question: Go to Bangladesh, go to Mexico (already have a treaty like TTIP in place, and what happened: The rich get richer, the poor get poorer), go to Germany, go to the US. Must I go on?

I don't think, your question was a real question.

You view the world from your position (of a rather rich guy) -- but there are approx. 5 billion people poorer than you and me around.

Edit: One final thought about it: Even when you are on the profitable side of today's system (what might even change), you even might be effected by its back-sides, when for example environmental regulations are lowered. Many regulations today are lowered or not strengthened, because they could potentially harm big corporations. Also in the rich countries, even rich people are dying of environmental induced deceases. That politics is turning more and more a blind eye to those problems, is showing, that we are indeed enslaved!

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