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Is Public Debate of Trade Agreements Against the Public Interest?
onproton writes The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), currently being negotiated in secret, has been subject to numerous draft leaks that indicate these talks are potentially harmful to everything from public health to internet freedom. So why isn't the public involved, and why are the terms of the agreement being debated behind closed doors? According to New Zealand's current Trade Minister, Tim Groser, full disclosure of what is being discussed would likely lead to "public debate on an ill-informed basis before the deal has been done." Leaving one to question how revealing the full context and scope of the agreement talks would lead to an increase in misinformation rather than clarity.
There is a public debate. Every citizen of the Campaign-funding Corporations of America has the ability to vote, through their elected Lobbyists.
Oh, wait... now I see. Whoever submitted the story was referring to the form of government that the U.S. had around 1800.
... the law is so corrupted, they are going to strengthen IP laws (aka screw the public). The public domain has already been stolen.
https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2014/pre-1976
So no public debate based on no disclosure is better than ill-informed debate based on full disclosure? He might as well have said that as a form of government, dictatorship is superior to democracy.
make separate agreements about internet freedom and trade agreements, and let public debate happen about each of them. And find another mechanism than ISDS that retains freedom of the state to release regulations.
And when you claim people to be ill-informed, either inform them yourself, or explain why you think they are ill-informed. This is the way a democracy works. In representative democracies, lots of un-important stuff may not come to the public, this is not bad, but important stuff still should to be debated by a large number of people.
Using treaties and agreements negotiated in secrecy with other nations to do an end-run around the democratic process is *obviously* a subversion of everything a civilized country *should* stand for. Public debate is not actually a bad thing - but because of things like these the public interest is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
According to New Zealand's current Trade Minister, Tim Groser, full disclosure of what is being discussed would likely lead to "public debate on an ill-informed basis before the deal has been done."
"We have to pass it to find out what's in it!" - Nancy Pelosi
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
There is some place for secrecy in negotiation. If our negotiators are trying to get the best deal for us, they don't want to reveal what concessions they are willing to make until they have a sense of the concessions other parties are willing to make.
The problem is that, at least in the US, the trade negotiating agency has its priorities set by a limited number of industry advisory groups, and these groups are not representative of US interests. The composition of the groups is about 20 years behind the times, so as a result you have a trade agency pushing for copyright restrictions without thinking about how they will affect the technology industry.
The trade agency also expends a disproportionate amount of bargaining capital on intellectual property, thus reducing what it is able to accomplish in other areas, such as labor and environmental standards.
Finally, the trade agency writes its own interpretation of US law into free trade agreements. It's usually pretty close to what US law actually says, but sometimes it misinterprets it, or US law changes and the FTA text ends up saying something completely different.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Groser just means that it's ever so much easier to plot world domination by a few key players, and carve up the pie among them, in the ease and relative freedom of the frank and open discussion with those players, away from public scrutiny. He just can't come out and *say* that. Instead, he must only *allude* to the fact that if all this were subject to public scrutiny and debate, it would become necessary to lie, dissemble, deceive, and propagandize to get the desired above agenda accomplished without unproductive concessions to parties who might object to high-handed schemes to sell their interests, not to mention them, down the river.
"Damn the public", right? If you can't cloak *that* in gobbledy-gook, Groser, just don't bring it up at all. You're too transparent ;-)
Seriously, what could be *more* in the public interest than debate about an issue where our politicians have just been caught intentionally if not maliciously lying about?
Quitcherbellyachin' and Clean the House! And let's demand zero tolerance of secret deals behind our backs. If you all vote for business as usual, TPP and worse laws will continue to be run through, and I will laugh at your constant bitching about it for the next two years, then watch you do it again.. and again...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This is why it’s “secret”.
The majority of Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of U.S. corporations—like Halliburton, Chevron, PHRMA, Comcast, and the Motion Picture Association of America—are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement. [...] More than two months after receiving the proper security credentials, my staff is still barred from viewing the details of the proposals that USTR is advancing. We hear that the process by which TPP is being negotiated has been a model of transparency. I disagree with that statement.[94]
Corporations don’t want the hassle of people complaining and/or some members of congress doing something about it.
That tells you right there it’s a bad thing.
Here’s something else.
they are concerned that the TPP focuses on protecting intellectual property to the detriment of efforts to provide access to affordable medicine in the developing world, particularly Vietnam, going against the foreign policy goals of the Obama administration and previous administrations.[79]
Read the entire wiki, then read this article to see exactly what might happen to who gets to set foreign policy.
Then. read this.
http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
"public debate on an ill-informed basis before the deal has been done."
It's a politician's job to inform us. If we are ill-informed they only have themselves to blame. Once the deal is complete it is extremely hard to impossible for the public to have any input because it then becomes a case of take it all or leave it all and there is always something good in there. This then allows some governments to use these treaties to ram extremely unpopular laws through which they can't get passed using the democratic process and, at the same time, foist them off on other nations whose people don't want them either.
Secret negotiations only work when you trust the people negotiating on your behalf to do so in your best interest. Let's face it, regardless of whichever country you are in, do you really trust your politicians to do that for you in this day and age?
So public disclosure of the terms is "likely to lead this to go immediately into the public debate on an ill-informed basis", and yet aren't secret terms and meetings guaranteed to result in ill-informed debate? If the agreement were truly in the public interest, then it sounds like Groser is saying is that the public is too stupid to be persuaded to support the agreement via educational campaigns. The reality is that these agreements are trying to achieve aims that are in the interests of corporations and other mega-donors, not further the interest of the people, and that's what they don't want known.
probably be sent to the Senate as 1500 blank pages with a cover, "pass it or no selfies with (whoever the incumbent) President." total crap. first, publish it. then, we can talk. until then, one voice in unison, "HELL NO!"
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Whenever there are large parties that have opposing views in the public limelight, you get bullshit.
Just look at the net neutrality debate.
Hell, i've already seen our government's opposition make inane claims about how NZ should be treating the process just to score political points at election time.
As for the trade proposals, and what has been leaked, NZ seems to be negotiating very well, which is pleasing for me as a kiwi.
The biggest thorn from what i'm aware of is USA, who only want to export their IP laws and medical industry onto the us, which would be a huge hinderance for us.
I don't even know why the US was let in, it was obvious they aren't very interested in trade agreements unless they get their laws passed, which our government has already stated they won't support and it seems nearly every other tppa member thinks the same.
I expect this TPPA will be signed by all countries except the US who won't get their IP laws in and thus will spout in some nonsense how unacceptable it is, while the rest of the pacific nations improve their trading efficiency and volumes.
But i could be wrong.
As a final rant, i'd like to say american are dicks with their trade agreements. NZ has been trying to create a free trade agreement with the US for decades now, and they fob us off each time and hint that maybe if we changed our laws so we had your copyright laws and patents governing us, you'd reconsider...
I'd like to point out your country is slowly pissing away our goodwill, in a few decades or less, we'll probably look at China as our greatest ally (Who gave us free trade in 2008).
Regardless, NZ is doing very well all things considered, and we don't need this trade agreement, but it would be nice if its not totally corrupted by vested interests (Which i expect is what the US is attempting: their way or failure).
According to New Zealand's current Trade Minister, Tim Groser, full disclosure of what is being discussed would likely lead to "public debate on an ill-informed basis before the deal has been done.
So instead we get backroom deals that favor narrow interests over the public interest.
There is a nugget of truth in his argument in that sometimes having every aspect of a deal hammered out in public results in a worse outcome. This is well understood by professional negotiators. Sometimes a public debate forces politicians to take a position earlier than they would otherwise not take based on early proposals even though these early proposals will never make it into the finished agreement. Once they say they are against something it's hard for them to switch even if switching is the right thing to do. However I have a VERY hard time thinking how that applies here. In this case we get a bunch of special interests trying to get a bunch of deals done that to all appearances do not serve the public interest at all.
According to New Zealand's current Trade Minister, Tim Groser, full disclosure of what is being discussed would likely lead to "public debate on an ill-informed basis before the deal has been done."
I do not understand the lack of clarity in his speech. He could simply have said, "The proletariat are too ignorant for their own good, and must be protected from their stupidity by the aristocracy, like dogs or goats."
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The short answer is: NO!
End of discussion!
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
The TPP isn't for American Citizens. It's for companies that are buying american politicians. That's why. It's very obvious..
- Kevin.
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
Interesting how we think we are free because we can say what we want. Yet we are not free. We cannot trade with anyone, anywhere, anytime. I mean you cannot freely buy any product directly from the manufacturer anywhere in the world. Why not? Is it a public safety issue? Is it protecting jobs? Or is it an easy revenue stream for those in power?
I recently finished the book Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang. He makes a very good point that the "free" trade agreements themselves are frequently against the public good and primarily benefit entrenched corporations at the expense of developing nations and, often the workers in developed nations. Because the field of economics has been captured by the neo-liberal wing (not liberals in the sense of the word as used in the US.. . think 1700s' liberal) it is essential that the people impacted by these policies, not just those who stand to benefit, have a voice in the process. [link to book; no, I do not get a cut http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Sama... ]
Leaving one to question how revealing the full context and scope of the agreement talks would lead to an increase in misinformation rather than clarity.
Two Words: Fox News.
I encounter this *every mother f***ing week*. I've got people at work who do the network and email setups who absolutely refuse to share their documentations. They say "just ask us for exactly what you want and we'll do it for you". But what they provide, when I give them an exact and precise network change description, has filtered through 5 layers of management and 3 layers of Windows admins who couldn't spell DNS with a spell checker and has nothing to do with what I asked for in the ticket. And even their own 2 line description of that they did in the ticket is *absolutely not wha tI asked for*.
It's the same game at the political level. By keeping their operations in the dark, and presenting the plan as only a mass at the end of all the work, and saying "it's too late now, we're already committed", they're preventing anyone from seeing or trying to address fundamental architectural concerns in their most basic practices. "Ohh, we're going to sanction Zimbabwe for making AIDS drugs and violating patents", but refuse to address the fundamental nightmare of patent law for software or of the nightmare of umbrella patents in pharmaceutical industries and any attempt to enforce them internationally.
It's also *exactly* what happens when an entrenched bureaucracy wants to protect itself. The bureaucracy is considered the goal of the bureaucrats, rather than the service to the industry or the community, and *this* is how they hide what they're up to in the back room discussions.
Ah, the old "Common people can't understand these things"excuse, as old as the bible.
If both the R and the D support the expansion of copyright, for whom should someone who opposes the expansion of copyright vote?
Contrary to Betteridge's law, the answer here is Yes
Despite all of America's faults our freedom of speech and self correcting form of democracy had always made me proud to be and American. These days however we seem to teeter on the edge of Fascism in order to preserve the interests of the top 1%.
The freedom of the internet and the cultural clash with ideologies like radical Islam seem to have created a perfect storm to motivate those at the top to grab what they can now and lock down everything to keep it for themselves in perpetuity.
Automation will increasingly make goods cheaper. Intellectual property is essentially free to distribute once created. Since there will be less profits in making goods going forward, the way to more riches is to lock up IP and make it artificially expensive. The ultimate cash-cow.
The top 1% decry the inheritance tax (death tax in rich parlance). By all measures class mobility in America is declining – lowering taxes for the rich is increasingly a scam to produce a new nobility, not a way to spur more hiring. It is not a coincidence I think that as tax rates for the rich have declined that the rich are pulling away year after year from the middle class. The advantages the rich have had over the last few decades never seem to trickle down to the middle class, so why always the argument the rich are needed to create jobs? The more we give the less we get.
Letter To Iran
Director General of MI5: There was a lot of media speculation, you remember? ... ... Things might get out. We don't want any more irresponsible ill-informed press speculation.
Prime Minister: Vaguely
Director General of MI5: All totally irresponsible and ill-informed.
Prime Minister: You mean the press suggested John Halsted was a spy?
Director General of MI5: Yes
Prime Minister: Well, he was a spy!
Director General of MI5: Yes, but they didn't *know* that! They were being totally ignorant and irresponsible. They just happened to be accurate, that's all.
Director General of MI5:
Prime Minister: Even if it's accurate.
Director General of MI5: Oh, *especially* if it's accurate. There's nothing worse than *accurate* irresponsible ill-informed press speculation.
Its not so much that we (as individuals) will get screwed. Its that the USA might be trying to pull a fast one on China, Viet Nam, Singapore. Or even New Zealand (and Groser is a party to selling out his own country for some shiny things).
Have gnu, will travel.
We decide on something, then put the in the room and wait a while to see what happens, If there will be no great cry and no uprisings, because most people have no idea what has been decided, then we move on -. Step by step, until there is no turning back
Most Canadians have never heard of FIPA, the Canada-China Foreign Investment Protection Agreement, because Prime Minister Harper sneaked it through without a single vote or debate in Parliament.
This deal allows China’s massive companies to sue Canadian governments in secret tribunals if we make decisions that put Canadian interests ahead of their corporate profits – restricting Canadians from making democratic decisions about our economy, environment and energy.
It gets worse: this international investors’ deal binds us for at least 31 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I'm sort of hoping that enough people will be outraged and the folks working on the TPP deal will be dealt with accordingly..
I'm thinking forced volunteerism to assist with Ebola victims without hazmat suits or even rubber gloves. They can pick up by hand or mouth the bloody rags, bedpans, etc...
Hearing this, I cannot help but thinking that our political systems reflect something called Inverted Totalitarianism.
Inverted totalitarianism is a term coined by political philosopher Sheldon Wolin in 2003 to describe the emerging form of government of the United States. Wolin believes that the United States is increasingly turning into an illiberal democracy, and uses the term "inverted totalitarianism" to illustrate similarities and differences between the United States governmental system and totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany and the nationalist Spain.
Wolin holds that the United States has been increasingly adopting totalitarian tendencies as a result of transformations undergone during the military mobilization required to fight the Axis powers in the 1940s, and the subsequent campaign to contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War:[2]
He refers to the U.S. using the proper noun "Superpower", to emphasize the current position of the United States as the only global superpower.
While the versions of totalitarianism represented by Nazism and Fascism consolidated power by suppressing liberal political practices that had sunk only shallow cultural roots, Superpower represents a drive towards totality that draws from the setting where liberalism and democracy have been established for more than two centuries. It is Nazism turned upside-down, “inverted totalitarianism.” While it is a system that aspires to totality, it is driven by an ideology of the cost-effective rather than of a “master race” (Herrenvolk), by the material rather than the “ideal.”[6]
According to Wolin, there are three main ways in which inverted totalitarianism is the inverted form of classical totalitarianism.
- Whereas in Nazi Germany the state dominated economic actors, in inverted totalitarianism, corporations through political contributions and lobbying, dominate the United States, with the government acting as the servant of large corporations. This is considered "normal" rather than corrupt.[7]
- While the Nazi regime aimed at the constant political mobilization of the population, with its Nuremberg rallies, Hitler Youth, and so on, inverted totalitarianism aims for the mass of the population to be in a persistent state of political apathy. The only type of political activity expected or desired from the citizenry is voting. Low electoral turnouts are favorably received as an indication that the bulk of the population has given up hope that the government will ever help them.[8]
- While the Nazis openly mocked democracy, the United States maintains the conceit that it is the model of democracy for the whole world.[9] Wolin writes:
Inverted totalitarianism reverses things. It is all politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash.[10]
I was scanning for this argument because I am prepared to set your ass straight on some points:
Your interpretation that the 2nd amendment was intended, in part, to help citizens defend itself against the government is whack.
For one, you are supporting the folks who are of the opinion that:
1.) the government (whether police officer or federal agent, soldier or sailor [who have died protecting your gun rights]) have to be killed ...
2.) to the point that something must be done, so they get their guns and then YOU are disgusted when they kill someone of authority. Do you support those killings, like goddam Westboro church?
Who, precisely, gets to decide when it's time to take the government out and who, precisely, gets to decide how much force is necessary?
For another, look at what's happened since the amendment was written:
The US government has enjoyed exponential growth in weaponry sophistication what with smart bombs, night vision, drones, attack ships, fighter jets, napalm, and a holy host of others.
If you seriously entertain killing our armed forces, why in God's name aren't you bitching about, "weapon parity?"
You have to be out of your goddam mind if you think your piddly-ass pea shooters are going to take out a goddam United States Navy aircraft carrier.
Why are you not campaigning for citizens' rights to own grenades, rocket launchers, tanks and fighter jets?
You are not doing that and you are not going to.
And the reason is simply that you are a simple-minded non-fucking thinker who will come up with any excuse to own a fucking gun that you have never used in self-defense, anyway, and would do you zero, zip, nada fucking good in killing off the public's defenders of the goddam Constitution of the United States.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Problem solved.
If a ill informed public votes for a bad law, then that is not so bad.
If a single person decides the fate of millions, that is very bad because being informed has nothing to do with the overall well being of a Republic.
We have a small number of people in Europe, USA and Asia creating lots of problems.
Let me be the first to say they are VERY informed about what they are doing, and very well educated.
These enemies of humanity are working very hard to bring about the destruction of the human race with their greed, lust for power and absolutely blood thirsty rule.
The issue as I see it is to deconstruct or decentralized control of societies. As these blood thirsty people plan the next disaster or take advantage of natural ones to destroy our lives with fiat rule by decree, or executive orders or whatever, we simply prevent large structures of political blocks from forming.
We can start by preventing banks from becoming too large, because they are, well..enable the construction of these large blocks of control in the first place.
Ever since banks in the USA for example became a monopoly things have been going down hill fast.
There funding of mischief is ever increasing through out the world.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
If there was ever a government operation that needs to be exposed to public view, it would be this treaty. And because the details are being released to large corporations who fear losing their control over us, it should be comparatively easy to find leakers.
These are not trade agreements.
These are attempts by corporations to obtain by stealth what they never could obtain from open political processes (you know, quaint things like votes in Congress or Parliament). Of course they don't want a public debate on it, which is why it is an "agreement," not a "treaty," even though they routinely and unconstitutionally try and give them the powers of treaties.
These agreements should be opposed as the fruit of an undemocratic and corrupt process, regardless of the actual content of the agreements. Of course, given the way they are negotiated, there is no shortage of substantiative things to oppose as well.
Let big brother ^H^H^H^H^H me protect you from these troubling decisions you are not capable of comprehending anyway. Remember, slavery is freedom and ignorance is strength.
The mantra of modern leaders.
our money moves out of our economies
And then back into our economies when no longer "poor Africans and Asians" seek to purchase our goods and services. Mercantilism's singular focus on trade balance and Hoarding Teh Money has long since been discredited in favor of rising tide and comparative advantage theory.
I REALLY wish people would get this right, because it is important.
Why is it important? because as soon as you cann it Fascism people think of the NAZIs and turn off, thinking you are being over the top.
It is Totalitarianism, of which there have been a number of examples, both extreeme left and right wing.
The different now is we are talking about multi-country politically-centre Totalitarianism, which is a much more slimy fish to pin down.
Totalitarianism is about control of the majority by a minority of power players, who make sure the rules always fall their way.
It is, of course, incompatible with any true Democracy.. however the veneer of Democracy is not that difficult to maintain..
It is of course nothing new, the main cause is a mixture of career politicians, and a strong link between financial and political areas.
The only answer is to return to making politicians responsible for their actions - something they of course will fight to the bitter end.
Right now we live in a world of almost zero political responsibility at almost all levels - THAT is the main cause of the problems.
As a graduated, and no practicing economist, the answer appears to be "yes and no". That is to say, everyone wants their own special interests protected, Japan wants its awful rice farming practices protected, and public debate there could only strengthen the support for protection of this highly inefficient practice, as its done by harmless seemingly little old men and grannies who are highly sympathetic. While in the US copyright lobbyists appear to have the ear of the political machines involved, and copyright lobbyists aren't the most sympathetic public figures, meaning public debate could dampen their demands.
That the lobbyists are so powerful on all sides is hilarious, the entire point of these talks is to get special, narrow interests like them to butt out so that everyone benefits. That they are so involved is also the reason they aren't making any progress, it's like two countries talking about banning the colors blue and purple respectively, but then inviting lobbyists for the two colors to influence the entire process.
'According to New Zealand's current Trade Minister, Tim Groser, full disclosure of what is being discussed would likely lead to "public debate on an ill-informed basis before the deal has been done"'
"The TPP would even elevate individual foreign firms to equal status with sovereign nations, empowering them to privately enforce new rights and privileges, provided by the pact, by dragging governments to foreign tribunals to challenge public interest policies that they claim frustrate their expectations." ref
> The US government has enjoyed exponential growth in weaponry sophistication what with smart bombs, night vision, drones, attack ships, fighter jets, napalm, and a holy host of others
Sophisticated US aircraft, navy ships, etc fought vs small arms many times, from Vietnam to Iraq. The results have been fairly consistent - missiles cannot control the local population. An armed populace beats a superpower military every time, from USSR-Afghanistan to US-Iraq. That's because the locals don't need to destroy the aircraft carrier or the country sending it, they only need to keep doing what they do in their own private homes. If soldiers raid homes looking for "illicit" material, simple booby traps put an end to that after a while.
The US military COULD carpet bomb the US and destroy it, if soldiers and airmen were robots, but nobody would ever want to do that. There's no need to protect the population against our own cruise missiles. The idea is that groups of citizens can protect themselves feom soldiers regularly entering homes to enforce the dictatorial president's will. Small arms have been proven to be very effective for that.
I wondered the same thing, except that few seem to believe we all got raked over the coals as a result of NAFTA,the WTO fast track vote, Glass-Steagall, trickle-on economics or the outsourcing of blue collar America.
We succeeded in encouraging global environmental pillaging by allowing the WTO to require us to conflate environmental regulation with cost accounting by letting other member states claim that the cost of compliance is an unfair barrier to (unfettered) trade.
If Chinese companies who pollute or abuse their employees China couldn't supply Walmart or Apple, we'd all be better off. Granted stuff would cost more, but we'd all be supporting a healthier world.
With AI, robotics, and other automation, goods and services can be delivered with minimal involvement of human labor. This breaks a fundamental assumption of mainstream capitalism that the right to consume will be fairly evenly distributed to labor which will compromise a big enough percentage of the population for the system to work. As more and more human labor is replaced by capital, we have seen flat wages and, worse, increasing competition by desperate labor against other labor, driving wages for new hires down (in some cases to zero or below to try to gamble serving an unpaid internship in the hope to eventually get a job).
Also, as in the case of Microsoft, and assuming you don't include copyrights or patents in your "monopolies" you don't want government to grant, companies can create bad standards that prosper via social effects (natural monopolies?). Microsoft has done enormous damage to society by imposing bad standards on us (like sabotaging web standards, including things like Java and JavaScript and aspects of HTML) and disrupting competitors with various deals with manufacturers from their market power. Even for a local bagel shop, one could imagine ways that market power and advertising and social connections and control of employees and becoming enmeshed in local civic life as a gathering place and even covert actions against competitors could be used to all reinforce each other, even if the bagels are pretty bad tasting. My point is that business success via market power does not necessarily equate to the best deal or best product for the purchaser along various criterion.
Also, you generally can't buy either community or health from a big box store. So there are huge limits to what capitalism can achieve regarding issues that affect much of people's day-to-day happiness.
That said, I agree with you that corruption may be a bigger issue than wealth disparity. We could try a few things:
* get rid of patents and copyrights (or limit them severely) to remove corrupting monopoly power
* provide a basic income to every resident so everyone has a right to consume and small businesses could have more predictable demand and there would be less need for employment protection laws
* vastly increased transparency in government decision making, especially by both local and internet-powered discussions, of which this story of secret trade agreements is a prime anti-example; to an extent, in theory, elected officials provide a way to separate rewarding good decision makers for public capital (by rel-election) from concentrating private wealth that could be used for consumption (however, the need for expensive re-election campaigns distorts that via pandering to wealthy donors as a form of legalized corruption)
* expanding the US the house of representatives to thousands of representatives (back to the original founders intent before the size was fixed: "The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand...") to dilute the power of concentrated wealth to influence government, and reinstating the rule that senators are appointed by state legislatures: "The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, chosen by the legislature thereof for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote."
* Up-front pricing of products and services based on their true lifecycle costs (including recycling, risks, pollution, and so on); for example cars using gasoline should have pollution costs priced in and also the cost of maintaining a US military presence abroad to defend long oil supply lines, and electricity from US Midwest coal-powered plants should be priced to include acid rain and mercury pollution on the US East Coast, and prices of financial products like derivatives should include a risk cost of total market failure if they all unwind badly at once, and so on.
* Probably various other similar things
Another issue is that capitalism only works well when there is roughly equal information and capital and purchasing power be
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
> Wrong on all counts.
You're suggesting that the US won in Vietnam? And that we effectively have control of the daily activities of the local population in Iraq?
> We have never been let loose to engage North Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan ISIS, in full-scale warfare.
Which is all quite irrelevant, because the topic is the US military going to war against the US population, not North Korea's military. Please try to follow your own thread - your claim is that the US military can and will use aircraft carriers and cruise missiles to subdue the local US population and enforce a president's unconstitutional dictates. This has nothing to do with one military fighting another. It has to do with your claim that the US military can control the day-to-day activities of the American people.
I've given some examples of the US military and the USSR military being unable to effectively exercise general police power - the ability to control the day-to-day lives of local populations. If you have a counter-example, please cite it.
In this thread you haven't mentioned anywhere that the US military has effective control of people's daily lives. If you've done so in any other thread, please provide the link (or just name the country).
Regardless of which side of the gun argument one may support, we should all agree on one thing.
The second amendment, as written, ensures that government cannot limit the right of private citizens to possess nuclear warheads. This is undesirable. In the spirit of rule of law, we should repeal this amendment and replace it with one that does not have such undesirable outcomes (as opposed to the much more convenient approach we've opted for instead: merely ignoring it).
I agree we should not ignore it. Rather, if we feel it must be changed, there is a process in place to change it.
Unfortunately, we do not agree that it limits, or allows, anything in particular. Liberals believe that the second amendment means essentially nothing. By ignoring the plain words "the right of THE PEOPLE to keep and bear arms", ignoring the difference between a dependent clause and an independent clause, and ignoring the definition of the word "militia", and ignoring the context in which it appears, they claim it means that the government has the right to bear arms. Which is funny, because the Bill of Rights is a list of individual rights which the government "may not infringe". ("What is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials" - Mason, convention on ratifying the Constitution).
Some conservatives also would argue that it doesn't mean they have the right to own nuclear weapons, for several reasons:
a) You may not legally possess Pu-239 at all without license, weaponized or not. Nuclear power stations require years of approvals. A restriction on dangerous radioactive substances may well be fully legal, regardless of it's side-effects on what would otherwise be a legal activity.
b) Freedom of speech does not give you the right to yell "fire" in a crowded theatre. No right is absolute, all are limited at the point where they affect others. "One man's right to swing his fists ends at another man's nose". If my neighbor merely possesses dangerous radioactive materials, my safety is threatened, so his right must be limited to preserve mine, and vice versa.
c) Possibly the most important consideration when interpreting the full implications of a short phrase is to look at it's purpose. Any "interpretation" which castrates it's stated purpose is invalid, any interpretation which accomplishes the stated purpose may be effective. The stated purpose is to maintain the security of the free states - in other words, to avoid having anyone take away our freedoms. If the local drug lord were allowed to have nuclear weapons, that would REDUCE security and freedom, not protect it. Therefore, such an interpretation is at odds with the stated purpose and therefore incorrect.
b)
You've argued that the US military could control the US people and enforce unconstitutional dictates, so that's exactly the examples you need - cases where the military turned against their own people and successfully controlled their day-to-day lives for an extended period of time.
If a military turned against it's own people and several years later that military still doesn't have control of the three largest cities, that's yet another example showing the military is INcapable of controlling the people. (hint - Tripoli, Benghazi, and Misrata)
You may find an example where the military successfully controlled, for a time, a people who had previously turned over their arms peacefully. I don't think you'll find any cases in which a military successfully controlled an armed populace.
Yes, I (and anyone with a clue) will tell you that the three largest cities in Libya are controlled by people the military considers their enemy, to the extent anyone has control in those areas. Nobody has the ability to effectively enforce laws which govern people's private lives in those cities.
If Libya is your example of what the US military could do, you've just defeated your own argument. Now you have a choice. Having proven your old idea wrong, you can learn something from this line of thinking, or you can willfully choose to be ignorant. Your call.
I most whole-heartedly agree with your point:
> I'm merely saying that over the years, we've chosen the expedient route to fixing our legislative problems ...
> (generous judicial interpretation of written law) instead of one that is consistent with our stated ideals (amending the constitution).
>
> If we don't like what our constitution says, we'd be better off amending it than ignoring it.
The enumerated powers have been ignored and the interstate commerce clause stretched to cover people growing their own food, for their home consumption, in their own garden. (The wheat cases, etc.)
Also, two other things are clear. It is clear that rights sometimes conflict. My freedom of speech can not include using a megaphone outside your bedroom at 3 AM. I don't know that we want to cover the details of each case in the Constitution, making it several thousand pages long. Thus, we can, without defining the precise limits in every situation, know that no right is absolute - my right to swing my fists ends at your nose.
The statement I just made must not be to generously applied, however - it comes into play only when there is a genuine conflict of _rights_. Specifically, democracy without individual rights would mean that the law is whatever the majority wish it to be. The unique feature of rights is that they exist and must be protected EVEN WHEN THE MAJORITY PREFERS OTHERWISE. That is to say, freedom of speech can never be only the freedom to say things that aren't offensive. My rights extend to the point where they interfere with your _rights_, they do not end where they interfere with your _preferences_.