Reply #71: You Have It Exactly Backwards, DSB... Congratulations [View All]

[Leopolds Ghost]

Free trade is about starving those poor Filipino farmers, causing them
to abandon their "oldest economy" subsistence farms and move to the city
and get "old economy" jobs that have been exported from these shores, thus
providing "labor market fluidity" which in turn justifies outsourcing by
increasing the number of jobless, decreasing the cost of food, so you have
a large number of poor but non-starving people willing to work for nothing
to basically manufacture US-bound products in exchange for cheap US grain
made by Monsanto or ADM, which is just about the only thing we export.

It is a triangle trade very similar to what the British Empire set up --
and the British Empire perfected the use of free trade to exploit cottage
industry around a global trading empire benefiting the wealthy few. They
got the idea from the Athenian Empire (which collapsed because of trade
inequalities and "exporting democracy" military adventures by Athens.)