In an efficient free market sure.
But not in practice. The biggest proponent of free trade, the US had been protectionist and only lifted trade barriers when its local industries got strong enough to compete globally.
900 karma · joined October 30, 2017
But not in practice. The biggest proponent of free trade, the US had been protectionist and only lifted trade barriers when its local industries got strong enough to compete globally.
Zuck isn't just selling data. The ads which are deeply targetted haunt you, it feeds on the insecurity of a person and reinforces their beliefs. This has caused many teenagers to suicide.
He is as dangerous as Ramdev if not more.
2 wrongs don't make 1 right.
>> No one can deny, Asians and Arabs robbed other nations of their prosperity.
Scale vastly differs. You should be checking how much Europe extracted out of Asia/Africa before bringing Japan into the discussion.
I bet most Europeans are not taught about Europeans atrocities committed in Africa/Asia at school. That's why you are not able to even perceive scale of exploitation correctly. Europeans killed 4 million people deliberately engineering famine in South Asia. Pretty, sure they've removed these things out of their textbooks but feel free to do your own research. These things are less than 100 years old.
Yes, Japan/Europe are both rich today so are those Arab nations too.
What about the countries who they robbed?
"This year, Russia is ranked 40th in the World Bank Group Global Doing Business report, which assesses the ease of doing business across 190 measured economies."
Hiring developers in St Petersburg is no longer easy as developers have come to expect salary like you are getting.
>> Take Poland, which was one of the major powers of the pre-industrial Europe (around XV-XVII centuries), and which never ventured outside Europe.
It seems to support my claim perfectly. Poland was only able to become a major power because it did not have an excess of those resources, partly because it did not venture outside Europe. It had no option but to polish its industrial strength in order to compete with rest of Europe.
There was literally no incentive for other European countries of that time to become a major industrial power, they were awash with wealth and resources.
Imperial Japan - 14th century
The Soviet Union - They mostly annexed poor territories. I am not sure, how much wealth they extracted but 2 bads don't make 1 good.
In comparison, European Imperialism started at 1400 ended just 70-years ago.
Till then the world had a global currency, industrialization had started. Heck, we even had structures representing modern companies, banks, and the stock market.
So, yea something which ended roughly 70 years ago is too old on nation timescale?
According to your argument, is it ok to rob your grandfather, so that your father and you are born in near poverty and judge you by your success today?
No one can deny, Europe has robbed other nations of their prosperity.
If you've your bucket of wealth full. You'll against the free market, which can transfer your wealth to other nations.
If you are a poor nation, you are more likely to try your luck after all what you can lose when you've nearly nothing.
Or if you are confident in your companies' methods of extracting wealth from other nation, then you are more likely to favor free trade.
Europe after imperialism was a bucket full of wealth and just wanted to shut off the door to prevent wealth from escaping.
Today, Europe's population is aging fast, plus they do not allow immigration. They just can't compete today!
Europe is in wealth preservation mode and American companies like Apple, Facebook, Google are superior at "value extraction".
Europe no longer wants to play this game and signals by enacting unreasbly difficult to comply with laws like GDPR.
Europe got its most of the pre-industrial era wealth from plundering nations of South Asia and Africa.
Winners write history, but still, it's damn too hard to make elephant in the room disappear.
Europeans have never been apologetic towards the nations they've robbed during Imperiasic Era.
Until they correct their mistake. Only nation who we should trust the ones who have never robbed other nations.
I would love to know how Europeans can defend their actions of past.
America did not exist yet and Europe was a poor place. India and China were rich and had a huge trade surplus, they were getting richer and Europe was getting poorer. And they were not interested in invading other countries.
Europeans invaded and robbed India and Africa from where they got most of their wealth.
This wealth helped Europe industrialize.
During this time someone looking to travel to India accidentally discovered America.
I'll leave rest on you to research.
Fast forward today, American companies (facebook, google) have succeeded in extracting huge value from the European continent. Partly due to their economic policies and immigration of talented labor from other countries.
Europeans do not welcome immigration, considering the fact they are the nations who've robbed developing nations.
And Europeans do not like it because they've rapidly aging population, they are not in a position to compete with America and rising nations (India/China etc...)
Europe is now in wealth preservation mode. They want to stop wealth from leaving their shores.
As Europeans come together to protect the wealth and they've somehow made a case for the welfare state.
Today, Europeans ride their moral high horse and advocate for high standards, but why should anyone give them any creditability when their roots are imperialism / plundering poor nations.
GDPR is yet another unreasonable and difficult to comply with policy coming out of Europe. It's their wealth preservation plan.
Add fee of lawyers (and future litigation/compliance risk damage) into EU customers' subscription fee.
EU has never done anything about them.
Europe has got most of its wealth through imperialism back in time robbing countries of Africa and South Asian countries.
This is the primary reason countries of South Asia/Africa so poor today.
Before imperialism, most of Europe was poor while countries like China and India were way richer.
India is just 70 years old by comparison which is not long enough to make back the lost wealth due to its sheer size and diversity.
Now, American companies are able to an extract huge amount of money from European nations using mostly legal (maybe unethical?) using companies like Google and Facebook. They are set to make this illegal.
It's nothing more than a wealth preservation strategy. European nations can't compete against America and rising nations (India, China etc...) due to their aging population in near future.
So, they are going to shut off the market by making unreasonably harsh laws which are quite difficult to comply with.
You are finding compliance difficult because it's intentionally part of their design.
Keep an eye open and expect more unreasonable laws coming out of EU in near future. They are not going to stop here.
How has embargos done anything?
At one place we get to hear about "GDPR" and how it's "delayed gratification", "society first".
Then there is this obsession with cash. Where "society first" does not apply.
Cashless society can easily track terrorist funding, corruption, illegitimate cash dealings used in trafficking, drug deals etc...
This kinda seems hypocritical to me.
No wonder Germany is the largest human trafficking country.
Imagine if a thief robbed your store, not having a contract with thief does not stop you from recovering theft amount from the thief.
Even if you don't have a contract It does not mean someone can keep your money.
As long as you can prove it's your money which is unlawfully kept hostage, you can sue.
It should be a fundamental right in the capitalist country, right to process payment for any party. Today, we need special license/approval for this which limits the "access to disrupt" to few lucky people who have a connection in the big banks. Startups like stripe have to give away a chunk of their equity to old guards at big banks in return of access to a market.
Is this the best a capitalist country may offer?