Therumancer said:
Samcanuck said:
Therumancer said:
You guys are kidding right?
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No man, its great actually learning from a poster. This is good stuff, don't apologize.
However; being from Canada, I personally don't agree with the free trade deal the United states pushed. Only because the idea was later pushed outside the borders of Canada, U.S and Mexico. Just look at mexico prior to globalizing free trade, they were the chief supplier of textiles to North America. Then after the U.S opened the deal to the rest of the world, suddenly some child labour Tiawan or some place else became the chief suppliers of tectiles and fabrication, putting many Mexican's out of work. Thats what I see as the cause for the mass immigration into the U.S. To my understanding, it was originally intended to strenghten all of North America to push us all ahead into the future, but instead only became advantagous to the U.S...for a time. The debt your country has collected due to free trade is only multiplied due to the fact that business practices of outsourcing have undercut your middle class leaving a debt that seemingly can't be recovered from. The outsourcing was a simple case of greed as far as I can understand. And becuase of it, there is truth to the idea that the U.S is holding back the world economy. Atleast that of it's allies. Same idea occured in the 1920's during the great depression, right...only a bit different (stocks on credit, yadda yadda...though this also reappeared this time around...even in the housing market...but you know all this).
Now lets look at the cattle industry and the BSC scare. Now I know what you might say, the U.S isn't the only one who embargoed Canadian beef. But for 3 plus years the U.S embargoed Canadian cattle, even though the case found of BSC came from a single farm's feed, and the cattle came from the United States. Many farmers lost the shirts off there back due to the falling cattle industry, which oddly enough strengthened the U.S cattle industry. And I'm not sure if you know, but the problem was that particular farms feed practices of feeding cattle animal byproducts...which was a neddy no no. It's these types of trade embargo practices that I see as Amoral. I mean we could also look at the whole soft lumber trade issue...but when it comes down to it, you may say that the U.S isn't self serving in business, but thats not to say it wont screw it's closest ally to get ahead. And I have experianced that.
Now for me, the cheif view of Amoral business practices are due to technology and armament sales for political reasons, not to mention the push of the U.S oil industry to battle Opec. We can look back to when the U.S sold armaments during WW2 for half of the war. Now that may be a case of point of view, but is only backed as an amoral action by the furthur actions of the U.S during the cold war. The United States has continually sold armaments to back a side that will be advantageous to them. Selling nerve gas to Saddam to use on Iran. Selling training and armaments to Afghanistan during the Russian/Afghan war. Selling nuclear weapons to South Korea or Isreal to back them politically. The list goes on. All these speak of divide and conquor business practices which are very Amoral. No different than what other countries like China and Russia do. But what hooks me is when the U.S calls innocent on its own actions when they clearly are not innocent. And thats what nails the coffin of Amoral.
But really, its all about the interpretation, and what points you look most strongly at. I can definetely see your point of view so I'd prefer to agree to disagree and move on from my previous statements (which are more intended to show you where I'm coming from...and I'm a little too stuborn to shift my views right now). But I would like to ask you more questions.
Now, as far as the Euro's push to become the Global currancy (as far as business) this brings up a question raised before (anti China views). Being that China has such strength behind the Juan, it seems as though they are undercuting its worth to continue making more when selling good's. It seems as though the Juan could take the top spot....but why doesn't it then (in your opinion of coarse)? Am I wrong about the strength of its currancy or something?
I'm also wondering your views on North American oil versus OPEC...especially when dealing with foriegn diplomacy. Seems like business is one of the main conflicts between the United states and the middle east. Now, everyone throws around this idea as the main reason for war in Iraq, I know. I personally don't buy that as the chief reason for conflict in the middle east, but what's your take? (mine has more to do with strength in certain area's to two prong aid Isreal...but I can see how that idea includes weakening Opec...chess, not checkers style).
What about your take on Russia energy dependancy. I mean Ontario makes a profit off of Hydroelectric power. The U.S makes a profit off of oil. Arent these all the same idea?
And I dont know enough about Oil for food to even ask about...so I'll leave that.
Alright, I'll try and cover most of this without getting too long.
Simply put from an American point of view the whole issue with the "free trade agreement" was that America's business practices at the time were substantially holding back our economy. For example you mention things like Mexican Textiles, the problem was that we were buying from Mexico specifically to support their economy, and made policies making it difficult for anyone to buy from anywhere else. In the end we wound up basically having to increase our debt in order to buy overprice materials for someone else's benefit. Pretty much what I was talking about. So yes, we *DID* wind up crashing a good portion of Mexico's economy, but the bottom line was that we couldn't keep supporting them. There are similar issues with a lot of our business dealings and things like NAFTA in paticular. Basically we're a big hero as long as someone is directly benefitting from us, but if we wind up looking out for ourselves, or simply deciding not to hand out any more charity, we're basically the devil.
I don't know much about soft timber, but with the beef issue that was a matter of international regulation. I do not think the US decided to try and knock Canada out of the beef market, so much as we were put into a position where if we DIDN'T get involved the way we did it would have killed regulation entirely. If say Canada was ignored despite the isolated incident, the US which seemed to be running point, would be accused of favortism and not holding it's own allies (or what some people see as part of America to begin with) to the same standards. Meaning that other countries would start freely trading very sick meat again because nobody would participate in the regulation. That was how I understand things. Basically Canada is ticked off because it wasn't allowed to be an exception.
As far as the US "Arms Trade" it's not really immoral in most cases I'm familiar with. Simply put what we do is fight wars by proxy, as an alternative to engaging in wide scale invasions or getting involved in things like the current ongoing police action in Iraq. Rather than sending our troops into Afghanistan to fight the USSR for example, we provided weapons to the insurgents (enemy of my enemy is my friend). We did the same thing with the whole Iran/Contra situation. When it comes to Saddam Hussein we were being terrorized by Iran and realized that to stop them we'd pretty much have to blow them off the map, but would risk setting off the powder keg that was The Middle East. What we did was back one of the more progressive factions (Iraq) to keep the more insane nations in check so we wouldn't have to get involved directly. In the end however most of our allies in the region wound up turning on us for one reason or another. This is incidently one of the big reasons why I am so judgemental of the region and have such extreme attitudes on how to deal with it.
When it comes to things like OPEC, it can be complicated. A lot of things are going on there. The US's general strategy for the most part is to buy as much oil abroad as we can to try and preserve our own domestic resources. The idea being that when The Middle East finally runs dry, we'll still have oil. We also sell oil at a premium to allies who don't want to deal with the psychos in The Middle East themselves.
Recently things have come to something of a head because of international tensions. Simply put OPEC wants to break agreements with nations like the US and raise their prices, as well as sell to nations they agreed not to. On top of this you have nations like China building up massive war machines (as well as putting more civilian cars on the road) and wanting to buy far more oil than ever before even if they are 'allowed to'. It's not all that subtle, but yeah... a lot of it simply comes down to the fact that we want to reduce the abillity of our enemies and rivals to power themselves. For example China can build all the boats that it wants, but if it can't gas them up it doesn't matter. Sure they can get fuel from other sources but we CAN limit their options.
In general "immoral" behavior for the US is generally defined as anything someone else doesn't much like, or anything we do purely for our own benefit.
To simplify things between the US and Canada, the way it looks to me is that Canada is more concerned about the short term than the long term. Canada pretty much wants to be able to trade with anyone and everyone for their own benefit, raise their own standard of living, and not really care about whose coffers that money will go into and what will be done with it. The US on the other hand does not approve and holds Canada to a lot of agreements it made. The end result being Canada feeling like it's being held back, and the US being more concerned about the big picture. This leads to a lot of games back and forth that amounts to immature bickering and one upsmanship which is just stupid and almost impossible to sort out.
This is way off topic, but that is how I see things in a general sense. No the US is not perfect, and yes as I've said myself we have made mistakes and done some messed up things. We have even gutted entire economies for our own benefit, especially ones that were entirely dependant on us. We've done worse too. I'm speaking in generalities to prevent this from getting too long (overall) but let's just say that there are a lot of things I can (and do) pick on my own goverment for. There are valid criticisms that can be made of any goverment, though I believe even with it's worse the US still pretty much comes down solidly as "the good guys".
One thing to consider though is that you also have to look at desicians as things were when they were made. Consider that most other world powers before us would have totally annihilated The Middle East long before now. We suffered problems due to our relationship with Iraq, but think for a second what would have happened had we decided to invade Iran and set that entire stack of dominos tumbling. Truthfully with some of the plane hijackings and bombings that happened we had every justification to do so, it's easy to crticize from the outside. By the same token you look at things like the attempt to liberate Iranian hostages under Carter (I think it was) that was a complete screw up, but again it was an attempt at a measured response short of outright war.
