Free trade a system that reroutes funding to corporate profit
By Lethbridge Herald on January 20, 2022.
Editor:
We often hear criticism of the UCP and Jason Kenney for incompetence; but it might be more useful to inform ourselves of the origins of their belief system.
The “free” trade agenda was a failure on its first introduction in British policy 1830s to 1920. The newer edition is as equally incompetent as the original.
The “modern” version promoted by the U.S. financial Ponzi schemers is just as socially disruptive. One needs only look closely at how it is developing in the United States today.
Many politicians and economic theorists shortchange the public with endless catchphrases that do nothing to explain the practical application of “free” trade, neoliberalism, and what it means to us.
Mr. Kenney wasted his formative years in the U.S. absorbing the fatuities of this theory of trade and social disruption.
He believes in destroying our social programs for the benefit of rich corporate gains-players. (Those greed-driven individuals who see no benefit to anyone but themselves.) Greed is the major motivation for ignoring the cost to the majority in our western democracies. Many studies have demonstrated those social losses since the 1970s in Britain, Mexico, New Zealand, and especially the U.S. where community and family dislocation is evident everywhere in TV, film and actual city life.
“Free” trade neoliberalism is a system that reroutes funding from personal health, social services and financial regulations in our societies to corporate shareholder profit.
John Gray, a professor at the London School of Economics, has documented in several of his books like “False Dawn” and “Straw Dogs”, the “free” trade failures since 1970s. Neoliberal propaganda is hustled by electronic media pundits without clear definition.
The educational failure of TV, film and the Internet is demonstrated by a public addicted to entertainment, convenience and brainwashed by gurus and fast talkers, holding responsibility to nothing, least of all to truth.
Don Ryane
Lethbridge
13-12
Wonderful comments Don. You have just pointed out what the former MLAs from the Lougheed era taught me. You have to make the rich pay their fair share and these phony conservatives don’t believe in it, You can’t trust a Reformer I was taught. Warren Buffet has been saying it for years Rich American are not Paying Their Fair Share. Then you have guys like Trump deliberately ignoring what he should be paying.
the writer presents the truer reality.
good entry from fed up.
the extension to this is that no matter who one chooses to vote for in either of canada or the usa, there is no alternative. just a further embedding of the grand theft, and the grand destruction of the planetary systems we depend upon for survival.
to create a better, fairer way, here is just a short sketch of what should change: 1) we need to move to the .05% tax on all financial transactions, replacing income tax and the other sundry taxes (this would provide far more public money than does the current system, allowing for properly funded health care and infrastructure; in easing the tax burden on the working masses, we would free up more money to grease the economy; the ultra wealthy would have no way out of paying their fair share; we would billions on the infrastructure that is needed to sustain our present wretched and arcane tax system); 2) the people must have ownership of all primary resources, utilities, and banking (compounded interest gutted) ; 3) govt must become far more a system of management, and far less political; 4) notwithstanding point 3, democracy must be entrenched, and that will require some significant overhauls, such as gutting first past the post and bringing in rep by pop – how do people feel they have any effect at all with a vote that is watered down to an nth of vote?; 5) notwithstanding point 3, there should be absolutely no donations to political parties, and absolutely no lobbying, and especially not by former politicians and bureaucrats; 6) whistle blower laws – are we for real?! – must be rendered the illegality they are: they are there to serve corruption, and as such, they must be gutted: it is the duty of one to share information they may have with regard to illegal and corrupt activity in govt; 7) govt “privacy” cannot be permitted – govt must be open and transparent and easily accessed; 8) the privacy of the person must be safeguarded and deemed paramount and essential to freedom and democracy; 9) the corporation cannot be deemed a “person”…an outrageous ruling that was, and an affront to us real persons; 10) govt has no right to legislate consensual an individual choices by and among adults where such choices do not infringe on the rights of others; 11) we must restore the principle of reasonable grounds of suspicion for it to be legal to be stopped by agents of the state; 12) white collar crime must be treated with severity, and include upon guilt the forfeiture of all assets under proceeds of crime laws (examples would be hsbc and kpmg, among so very, very many other corps and individuals that have laundered money and the like); 13) audits of govt depts must come with teeth and adherence, and they must be done with regularity so as to ensure honesty, integrity, and best practices.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot
thanks for a link to a great read. while it does not confer much in the way of solutions, it manages to avoid jargon and is able to share out a complex issue in an easy, “101-type”, manner.
if you appreciate what the writer has presented, we are on the same page with regard to what we see as the source of the very serious issues of our day. where i feel we differ most is with regard to solutions?
Follow the “Mont Pelerin” link in that article though and you see that “libertarianism” is the philosophy that surfaces, your fave despite eschewing “labels.” But if the shoe fits…..
And libertarianism is one of the most broadly appealing shades of the right wing with its siren song of “freedom.” Given some rope however, it has tellingly morphed into “freedumb.” Another label that just fits is “oppositional defiant disorder” which manifests widely among young males actually. Your insistence that authoritarianism lurks in our future unless we ignore public health dictates during a pandemic is absurd, leading to where you currently are which is denying that there even IS a pandemic! Look around at where you live and take note of the fact that the primary threat is a political right wing that has become certifiable.
Simple greed of course is the origin story of neoliberalism in 1947, i.e. rich people didn’t want “socialism” because they didn’t want to have to pay more taxes, hence the current narrative that makes entirely fair-minded, workable and humane democratic socialism interchangeable with the dreaded “communism.” Fear at the ready is made to order for these cold-eyed, manipulative pricks.
haha! still reverting to labels. let me guess, when you were grade 6 or so, you were given one of those label makers with the black sticky plastic and raised white print, and you have been hooked ever since? you have since labelled your cupboards, drawers, plastic storage bins…:)
i am feeling your need to label helps you to avoid discussing points made by another? just dismiss whatever is shared that is contrary to your view as some blathering from a “member” of a group into which you have chosen to subjectively assign that person? once labelled, you feel you have discredited whatever has been shared?
have you read the points i made above? does that really outline the tenets of libertarianism and make me a libertarian? i have made so many other entries, as well, which place me far closer into a socialist perspective. the thing is, i value human contribution, i value all life forms – i see the planet as a whole and as a living organism; i believe that we need far more equity based on hours of contribution, such that the top needs a much, much lower ceiling and the bottom floor needs to be raised a hell of a lot more. we need to respect people and their service with decent living standards, and not just with lip service. the reality of the working poor and parasitic ultra wealthy is repugnant.
i suppose you call be a lib because i value individuality and freedom, as much as i value equality? do you see these as mutually exclusive? your being so opposed to basic tenets as those, and your continuing to champion the system as it is – your support of party politics, support of govt owning one’s body, your belief that our ed system is near as good as it can be, and that it is not elitist, arcane, and woefully lacking in teaching around real lifeskills and empathy and compassion – seems to favour and uphold an authoritarian political system and an oligarchic economic system. not to give you a label that may be well deserved, but that is the de facto scenario of where we are at.
how is it that you stay stuck to the way things are, and yet, you know that significant changes must be made? how may elections have you lived through? are you unable to see the reality? i have in numerous other posts identified issues and provided alternatives and solutions, and other than from seth, there are few to no comments that come with any thought, just neg icons.
and here we have a real beauty of an entry from learjet – a classic soundbite of utter nonsense that they see as the bible to live by.
we get the likes of elohssa g with the ongoing references to her readings and to grammar and to her opinion, but never an original thought nor a basis for her dissenting views – the classic paradigm of the post grad student that just compiles and echoes the soundbites and writings of others.
we get the learned tom j that always bails out when he hits a wall. i suppose he feels vindicated in equating the ability to send some people to jail for breaking the law as being the basis upon which the govt ultimately owns one’s body; i guess we can add to that faulty reasoning the “precedents” of people being forced to work for poverty-slave wages, and govts having gotten away with making criminals out of people that choose to ingest things the govt says one cannot.
let me ask you: how have you come to support that govt has the right to determine what a person can and cannot ingest? is that not exactly what an autocratic or totalitarian govt would practice? how do you disagree with the erosion of longstanding jurisprudence that has underscored that the rights of one end at the “nose” or body of another? how do your rights extend such that they get to enter into the realm that is the body of another?
i have also asked you: how do you reconcile your compassion for creatures (which i believe you have), with your support of serial animal torture by pharma? i have asked you if you feel it would then be ok for a more powerful entity than humans to torture us in the name of “science,” “medicine,” or “knowledge” (and there has got to be more powerful entities than us ignorant cavefolk in our incomprehensibly enormous universe)?
anyone else have any thoughts?
I have also been baffled by what I perceive as you, perceived as a fair-minded, left-wing if overly idealistic type suddenly going over to the “dark side” and in order to justify the irrationality wholly manifested there (how do YOU argue against the swollen suite of stupidity that currently lounges so arrogantly and intractably among the political right wing) you steadfastly claim instead to eschew “sides” altogether despite the newly, deeply binary climate we are now living in, choosing instead to lump it all in with the unfair stereotyping of mere “labels” (or even frigging capital letters which now makes more sense actually.)
Bottom line, this behaviour simply brings to mind a rebel- without- a- pause 18 year old guy, (shorthand for libertarianism for the most part), where the male ego sails solo and blinkered above the ever-emotional, ever irrational fray that is human society, so full of himself is he. I can’t pluck the heart out of your mystery, but siding with anti-vaxxers during a pandemic in the guise of having apparently deeper insight than top- drawer science and hard-won epidemiology and/or pretending that animal rights EVER trump human life in the crunch, is regarded by most intelligent, reasonable people as just nuts two years in.
You can choose to martyr yourself or again, as I’ve said a couple of times, just look around you at your freedumb cohort. Not the thinkers, not the ones with adult perspective, not even the common sense utilitarian ones. Just the selfish and perverse, not unlike the creators and sustainers of neoliberalism outlined in that Guardian article, who are obviously not liberals.
I guess you haven’t seen any of the footage of utterly exhausted doctors and nurses along with people lying in beds panting like puppies. I haven’t seen ONE medical person who doesn’t say that the unvaccinated are prolonging the ordeal for them and the rest of us, and basically on a whim, which is fairly close to the definition of “criminal.” It’s not just about your particular body; no one’s asking you to have a kidney removed for gods’ sake! Get a perspective already.
it is unfortunate, again, that the basis of your position must default to stereotyping – and faulty, at that – rather than to respond to the questions i posed, questions with which i have been grappling; and not just due to the covid concerns, but with regard to concerns that have a long standing history. mind you, you did state your position whereby you feel animal torture, serial animal torture, is acceptable in the hope of saving human lives. on that, we reside at polar opposites. somehow you have bought in to some belief, erroneous it is, that, 1) medicines/treatment only can be, or, are best derived from animal torture. the fact is that effective “medicines” can and have been derived from plants and minerals that pose little danger to humans and require no torture of animals in order to examine their safety and efficacy; much of pharma’s wares are based on the natural world, but they have to get risky and go synthetic in order have patents – as it is all about money, to such a lurid degree that they have no qualms about torturing sentient creatures in their pursuit of money; and, torture they do, 24 hours a day every day of the week, inestimable numbers. i see that as bad karma on the one hand, and whether one acknowledges karma, it is an utterly sick, depraved, and revolting practice on the other hand. 2) that humans have the right to do as they wish to whatever and however they wish. this is the basis for the plunder of habitat and environment that undermines the existence of not only flora and fauna, but peoples and cultures. surely, you are aware that it is not only flora and fauna that are imperiled and extincted by human greed and primacy and grandeur and self service and hubris – this approach of might gives right is exactly what is homogenising and killing the diversity upon which the health of the planet is dependent. do you think the agent-oranging, burning,clear cutting and bulldozing of the brazilian rainforests, for example, have not wiped out vast quantities and varieties of flora and fauna – and peoples and cultures? why do i bring up this reality? – because it is similar to the woeful basis upon which even otherwise compassionate people support abusive and cruel practices.
people have the right to choose with regard to their conscience, and with regard to their body. that is the very basis of of rights and freedom and liberty. that is what this is about – not about how much of a pandemic is covid, not about whether vaxing will save your life. so, even if the vaxes came about without animal torture, and even if they were unequivocally proven to be 100% safe and effective – not just today but forever – that would still not give govt/third party/you the right to dictate what another must or must not ingest. again a question, which you and other forced vaxers fail to answer: if the vax works and you have vaxed, why do you feel a need to force it on others? if “saving” health care is your basis, and i have said all i can about the red herring crock that is, then the discussion should turn to whether or not the unvaxed should be given hospital care for covid.
i have made the decision to not turn to hospitals for care for covid. my choice. perhaps i lucked out with my covid bouts, but the stats overwhelmingly said that i was safe enough, not being 80+ and without comorbidity. meanwhile, what you and the pro-forced vaxers fail to acknowledge: 8 billion humans, two years of “pandemic” and just 280 million cases. of those just 5.5 million covid deaths. hardly scary, and hardly a dent in our numbers. without the vaxes, those under 80 and without comorbidity are utterly unlikely to die from covid. so, those that actually might have benefited from covid vaxes are the 80+ and the comorbidity affected.
the basis of your position is to revert to labels, and that is a failure to acknowledge the crux of positions you seem unwilling to comprehend. moreover, those stereotypical labels, with which you further create disparaging caricatures around, are presented as though one size fits all is accurate. so here, in addition to your usual expression of male hate, you now malign all 18 yr old males as though they are all bad and the same. you also malign those that wish to invoke their right to their body, and even some that are entirely opposed to animal cruelty, as right wing, libertarian, 18 yr old and very old white males that are emotional, irrational, full of themselves….and on and on along a path that avoids the actual issues.
that you and others are ok to allow the govt or some other third party to dictate what you may or may not ingest, that is your choice. but that choice does not extend whereby you, govt, or some other third party have that power to extend into the body of another – no matter how made desperate and irrational one may be due to one’s stoked fear. and let’s face it, it is fear, and indifference, cruelty/psychopathy, or a combination thereof that underscores one’s support of serial animal torture for any reason.
i do continue to invite you respond to the questions i have posed in the prior entry, and sure hope you might do so without labeling and using those faulty stereotypes as some basis for your position.
Well there’s a freedumb convoy on its way as we speak, bent on challenging Ottawa’s egregious “authoritarianism.” (Mind you they need to roll on to Washington after that because the same mandate exists there.) But excitement is building because some of these guys (and yes, they ARE always guys) along with their followers/cheerleaders are pumped, imagining themselves to be the Canadian version of the January 6th insurrection. So this convoy, like the last (against the carbon tax I believe) seems to be attracting “extreme” right wing elements. Go figure. But in all fairness, 85% of truckers are actually vaccinated already, so that nutbar contingent is starting to look consistent across all populations it seems. That’s your cohort.
In response to your allegorical scenario of aliens or some other more powerful entity torturing humans for their own purposes, the only entity more powerful than humans is nature, which is what this whole thing is about. I’m as green as they come, but if a medical treatment could save my life, regardless of from whence it came, I’d want it, as would any rational person. You’ve been fortunate enough to not get sick from covid you say, having had it more than once even? Well, lucky for you, and therein lies the heart of the matter, and the source of the widespread disdain– the tunnel vision and arrogance of some people who somehow can’t comprehend the fact that just because THEY didn’t get sick…..also the fact that they are individuals, yes, but obviously are also part of a larger group and so their basic responsibility is to protect themselves from a virus to help contain it because even though it’s only killing a certain percentage, it IS still killing people, and we haven’t even mentioned the long-haul version, speaking of truckers. So fear is a rational response, because as part of nature, our bodies run wild without us, i.e. we can NOT know how our particular immune system will respond.
And as you repeatedly hammer on about your “questions” not being sufficiently addressed, I think of Pierre Poilievre in the House of Commons, a con of course, and one of those obnoxious guys laser- focused on his takedown, totally oblivious to ANYone else or anyTHING else like, say, context or maybe the bigger picture, saying over and over again, “how much, how much, how much, how much…
and so your approach continues. dismiss and evade and avoid and insult in an attempt to attack a position rather than to address the issue.
and, good for you, that you have no qualms with torturing creatures so as to prolong your life. something to be proud of? seems so. you choose, or are at present unable, to acknowledge the purpose of my “allegorical scenario.” avoid that by stating only nature is more powerful than humans. haha! are you so certain? but, that still is not the point, is it now. mind you, i get a deeper insight into where you are at. not judging, we each are where we are at, and ideally, we continue to evolve along a path of enlightenment. however, i suppose you are aware that there are inestimable numbers of galaxies in the universe – billions and perhaps trillions. now, what do you think are the odds of there not being other life forms out there? have you heard of stehpen hawking’s take on that? regardless, do you not see your statement as being about as robust and sane as those that believe in the bible in its entirety? consider how massive is the universe, how massive are the objects we can see in the night sky, or that are so many many light years away. massive, and just grains in the grand scheme of the universe and its billions to trillions of galaxies. and here we are, on a tiny chip of rock, and we ourselves just tiny little specks of things – and you say we are the most powerful things save for nature? perhaps you may wish to reconsider that thought, which you use as a basis no less to avoid acknowledging my “allegorical scenario.”
be the change…. but be certain of this: we are what do, what we support, what we buy into. there can be no denying that, even if you are reading those words from an entry by a self absorbed, libertarian, 18 year old, old man, conservative, misogynist, selfish, right wing clone of donald trump.
Apparently Mr. Rayne admires the ideals of Mssrs. Engles and Marx rather than Adam Smith. You, sir, clearly have no understanding nor appreciation for a system that has created the most affluent society with a the longest lifespans and lowest infant mortality rates in history. We do have a choice, as Churchill elegantly stated. “Capitalism is the unequal distribution of wealth. Socialism is the equal distribution of poverty.” If you’ve ever watched a government agency try to efficiently deliver goods or services you’ll understand why this is should be the case.
you know, churchill was great with the one-liner quip, but what you have quoted is hardly the basis of a greater truth.
your other statements are narrow and faulty. how do you base the low infant mortality rates on the greatness of capitalism? are you saying we could not have got to this without capitalism? have you considered that life spans and infant survival are higher in places that have socialist elements in their economic systems? compare the greatest capitalist nation on the planet, the usa – also one of the planet’s greatest human rights abusers – with canada, sweden, denmark, norway…. as for your fairy princess portrait of capitalism and affluence, take a closer look at the complete picture: consumerism destroying the life blood of the planet; greed and self service rule; toxic and degraded land, water, and soil; man made extinctions galore and the exponential loss of diversity, both in terms of flora and faun and cultures and habitats. the only way capitalism works is via an ever growing human population that must consume.
we do, however, agree that govt is a pathetic agent. however, that has much to do with graft, corruption, and service foremost to the greediest and greatest capitalists. if audits had teeth, and of there were no whistle blowing laws that undermine integrity and transparency, and if there were laws to adequately allow for the prosecution of white collar criminals….