I was tear-gassed protesting free trade. Now that Trump’s tariffs may signal the beginning of the end of globalization, do I get to say, “I told you so?"
You seem to miss that my entire argument was predicated on the countries we free trade with being properly aligned with us first, once we have shared values then we can trade freely with all the things we share values on, which should be almost everything. Free democratic countries around the world large and small were doing fucking great with free trade until the broken nominal democracies and despotic dictatorships started to hijack the system for their own gain. We should never have been trading with them the way we did, I am anything but a libertarian, but I am absolutely a humanist and a globalist on the whole. I don’t mourn the death of the current system of globalization because it has been corrupted likely beyond repair and has failed at its goals, like you pointed out and that I agree with, but in principle I support the idea, but only with like-minded aligned countries that support human rights and progress. Otherwise we’re not just wasting our time we’re actually economically supporting that evil. I don’t believe in that.
‘Remember when outsourcing was good?’ is not better. The US didn’t give a shit about human rights in South Korea, and they’re one of the countries we like. They were aligned in the sense they did what corporate and military interests wanted.
Sweatshop labor is a gift, says standard libertarian take. All those bottom-of-the-barrel economies are doin’ fucking great.
You seem to miss that my entire argument was predicated on the countries we free trade with being properly aligned with us first, once we have shared values then we can trade freely with all the things we share values on, which should be almost everything. Free democratic countries around the world large and small were doing fucking great with free trade until the broken nominal democracies and despotic dictatorships started to hijack the system for their own gain. We should never have been trading with them the way we did, I am anything but a libertarian, but I am absolutely a humanist and a globalist on the whole. I don’t mourn the death of the current system of globalization because it has been corrupted likely beyond repair and has failed at its goals, like you pointed out and that I agree with, but in principle I support the idea, but only with like-minded aligned countries that support human rights and progress. Otherwise we’re not just wasting our time we’re actually economically supporting that evil. I don’t believe in that.
‘Remember when outsourcing was good?’ is not better. The US didn’t give a shit about human rights in South Korea, and they’re one of the countries we like. They were aligned in the sense they did what corporate and military interests wanted.
I don’t consider the US to be aligned with my values. I didn’t then, and I certainly don’t now.