The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > The key to power > Comments

The key to power : Comments

By Gilbert Holmes, published 25/8/2010

Opposition to free trade could hold the key to power for the Greens and Independents.

  1. Pages:
  2. Page 1
  3. 2
  4. All
This is a good analysis Gilbert - thanks. I think we are unlikely to see a large scale return to protectionist industry policy any time soon, but perhaps a power bloc of the type you outline could seek to gently swing the policy pendulum in some strategic areas. Would food policy be a good place to start? It's an area where there is already a strong public sentiment in favour of keeping imports out. Before the election the ALP promised a national food policy (http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/03/2971922.htm) - that could be a way in.
Posted by MultiMick, Wednesday, 25 August 2010 10:38:47 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Balance implies a middle path between private decision-making about production on the one hand, and public decision-making about production on the other. However there is no third way. Either you will make decisions about how best to deploy your labour and property, or the government will. The author proves this is the case as, for any perceived defect in private decision-making, the author proposes to substitute public decision-making. Hence this is not ‘balance, but in its own terms, more of one extreme.

There is no issue that production based only on public decision-making – in other words, full socialism - is not viable.

And government gets all its revenue by confiscating privately owned wealth. So the necessity of private production precedes government both in logic and in fact.

So since full governmental direction of production is not viable, the question becomes, at what point does partial governmental direction of production become viable?

The original problem, which governmental direction of production is intended to solve, is that calculation in terms of profit and loss does not comprehend important values that are not exchanged against money. These include environmental costs such as pollution, and social costs such as the dislocation caused when the structure of production shifts, for example, wagon wheel makers become unemployed when consumption shifts to buying motor cars.

Greater governmental decision-making is allegedly needed to “balance” these negative externalities to economic calculation.

However it is not enough for the author to allege the problems of externalities in general. He needs to show that his proposals will be provide a net benefit. But the author’s alternative will not be in any better position, than the status quo, to take into account the positive and negative externalities.

His approach will thus have all the disadvantages of the status quo, without the benefits of economic calculation which it displaces. The result will *greater* environmental and social costs, not less.

It was precisely protectionist food policies - the Corn Laws - that occasioned the great famine of Ireland in the 19th century.
Posted by Peter Hume, Wednesday, 25 August 2010 11:15:57 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Thanks MultiMick, Food sounds like a good place to start. Phillipine bananas, New Zealand apples and South American oranges are causing troubles I hear, not to mention foreigners buying up Australian farmland.

Those of you confused, but perhaps a bit intrigued, by Peter Hume's comment may like to join the ongoing discussion about the free trade ideology (as compared to the specific poltical implications).
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3884&page=0

I have outlined there a proposal for a locality tax, whereby goods and services are increasingly taxed the further away from home they are sourced.
Posted by GilbertHolmes, Wednesday, 25 August 2010 6:23:33 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
*Paul Keating abolished the Wool Marketing Scheme resulting in the price being traded down 50 per cent. The price had doubled when Dough Authority introduced the scheme.”*

Yes we know all about that. The wool mountain of unsold wool
filled storehouses around the country, with millions of bales.
There was talk of dumping the stuff in the ocean and growers were
taxed 27% of clip value to pay for it all! It took many years to
unwind.

The notion that the world had changed, the market had changed, that
housewives no longer wanted to handwash jumpers and other clothes,
that new fibres were being used, had not occured to these fellows.
What a disaster! Keating was correct, let the market decide.

Yes indeed, the Greens might love this stuff, they are economically
illiterate too. Its all touchy, feely, failed philosophy and
a lack of understanding of basic economics.

Gilbert you have yet to show one good reason why free trade should
be abolished.

If you want local production, so convince consumers to buy your
products, don't try to force them to do so via rule of law.
Posted by Yabby, Wednesday, 25 August 2010 7:50:34 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Just a warning here: Australia is not as free-trading as some of us have been led to believe. A proliferation of "Free Trade Agreements" appear to make Australia a global leader in free trade, since these agreements all involve reduction or elimination of tariffs and so on.

But these are all preferential trade agreements with particular countries or groups of countries, in response to the failure of multilateral global trade agreements.

As a result, Australia is not selling its exports for the highest prices on global markets. It is selling its exports preferentially to countries which have made these tariff-reduction deals with Australian DFAT officials, whether or not they pay competitive prices.

Australian farmers are being ripped off. More government involvement in trade is not the solution; it is the problem.

For more detail, please see for example this paper by Ross Garnaut and David Vines: http://www.rossgarnaut.com.au/Documents/Regional%20free-trade%20areas%20-%20sorting%20out%20the%20tangled%20spaghetti%202007.pdf
Posted by federalist, Sunday, 29 August 2010 12:55:54 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Yabby, the main reason Greens and Bob Katter oppose 'free trade' is that there is not a level playing field. In Australia farm labour is paid far more per hour than labour in third world countries from which cheap food imports come is paid for a long day's work. Is that fair competition? Isn't allowing such imports simply filling the pockets of large companies or rich individuals in those countries while keeping the general population in an economically depressed state?
Posted by fedupnortherner, Monday, 30 August 2010 11:43:23 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. Page 1
  3. 2
  4. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy