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Global commerce is ugly, nasty business. It's basically lawless frontier. Only fools and the unscrupulous dare tread there. You can bet that in any given deal,

Global commerce is ugly, nasty business. It's basically lawless frontier. Only fools and the unscrupulous dare tread there. You can bet that in any given deal, human trafficking is going to be involved at some point, everybody involved does their best to look the other way or justify it. Systems of justice are easily perverted to suit personal schemes. Slavery may not exist anymore in the sense of humans being bought and sold on the open market, but instruments of sovereignty are regularly bought and sold on semi-open markets. Trade deals like TPP are attempts by the governments of the world to regularize this world and bring it to heel, like a sheriff to a frontier town. They can be politically controversial, because you can't build a system of international law without infringing on the ability of people to pass their own laws. But it's either trade deals or the Wild West. Goods and capital are going to move around the world no matter what, all we can do is try to regulate it the best we can.

ajmurmann 10y ago
This sounds very interesting and I've always been intrigued by international trade. Do you have any references where I can learn more?
- vinceguidry 10y ago
  I follow Tyler Cowen's Marginal Revolution and Matt Levine's Money Stuff. Popehat is another excellent resource. Quora has excellent contributors that are good at synthesizing and distilling deep lessons for easy consumption. Finally Stratfor is the best resource for geopolitics. It takes awhile to piece everything together to get a full picture of how the world works, but in my opinion it's worth it. Then you can read articles like this: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/dec/21/sepp-blatter-fifa-power-politics https://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/dec/21/sepp-blatte... And gain insights on how global patronage networks tend to work. You can't just take a course or something on international trade and expect to be able to understand it. It's too complicated, even the top dogs only themselves know pieces of everything, they hire lawyers and accountants to actually understand the details.
  - tomp 10y ago
    Do you have any links to relevant and insightful Quora questions?
tomp 10y ago
I disagree. Actually, I kind-of like what the US is doing - it's creating laws that have international reach (e.g. you can't launder drug money, and you can't bribe foreign officials), and then they apply it to (i) domestic companies doing business abroad, and (ii) foreign companies wanting to do business in the US. So, each country could very easily create, and enforce, its own set of laws that would prohibit all of the crimes you mention. Companies would do business where they could, and if two countries would have incompatible laws (e.g. in country A, women can't work; companies from country B need to have 50% women employees in every region), there would be no trade between them. Unless they synchronize laws or create exceptions, of course. In the end, you'd arrive to something similar to what we have today (global trade), except that it would be created democratically, bottom-up, as opposed to what we have now, which is top-down and inherently undemocratic.
- vinceguidry 10y ago
  > So, each country could very easily create, and enforce, its own set of laws that would prohibit all of the crimes you mention. The problem here is enforcement. It's one thing to pass a law. But you have to devote state resources to every law to make sure people aren't evading it. Competent, incorruptible public servants are rare and even if they weren't, you'd have to pay all of them. Resource-poor states just can't do it. In practice all small countries can really do is accept foreign aid wherever you can get it. When you're dealing with bad actors with legal budgets bigger than your entire annual tax revenue, enforcement is hard.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    In ISDS cases where foreigners seek relief from the US government, corporations with giant budgets aren't facing off against other countries. Instead, the US itself appoints an arbitrator (since the US isn't taken to ISDS panels all that often, you can quickly get a sense of the kinds of arbitrators they pick from the UNCTAD site: spoiler: they're international trade lawyers). In ISDS cases where US investors seek relief from foreign countries, the US is only slightly better than 50/50 in winning cases. Most US->foreign cases are done under NAFTA and most of those pertain to Canada. If you narrow the 138 US->foreign cases tracked by UNCTAD down to those against countries whose annual tax revenue is lower than the largest US corporation, you'll find 20 cases, most of which pertain to Venezuela and Kazakhstan. To me, this cuts against the argument that ISDS is just another vector with which the rich can buy justice for themselves.

ajmurmann 10y ago

This sounds very interesting and I've always been intrigued by international trade. Do you have any references where I can learn more?

vinceguidry 10y ago
I follow Tyler Cowen's Marginal Revolution and Matt Levine's Money Stuff. Popehat is another excellent resource. Quora has excellent contributors that are good at synthesizing and distilling deep lessons for easy consumption. Finally Stratfor is the best resource for geopolitics. It takes awhile to piece everything together to get a full picture of how the world works, but in my opinion it's worth it. Then you can read articles like this: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/dec/21/sepp-blatter-fifa-power-politics https://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/dec/21/sepp-blatte... And gain insights on how global patronage networks tend to work. You can't just take a course or something on international trade and expect to be able to understand it. It's too complicated, even the top dogs only themselves know pieces of everything, they hire lawyers and accountants to actually understand the details.
- tomp 10y ago
  Do you have any links to relevant and insightful Quora questions?

tomp 10y ago

I disagree. Actually, I kind-of like what the US is doing - it's creating laws that have international reach (e.g. you can't launder drug money, and you can't bribe foreign officials), and then they apply it to (i) domestic companies doing business abroad, and (ii) foreign companies wanting to do business in the US. So, each country could very easily create, and enforce, its own set of laws that would prohibit all of the crimes you mention. Companies would do business where they could, and if two countries would have incompatible laws (e.g. in country A, women can't work; companies from country B need to have 50% women employees in every region), there would be no trade between them. Unless they synchronize laws or create exceptions, of course. In the end, you'd arrive to something similar to what we have today (global trade), except that it would be created democratically, bottom-up, as opposed to what we have now, which is top-down and inherently undemocratic.

vinceguidry 10y ago
> So, each country could very easily create, and enforce, its own set of laws that would prohibit all of the crimes you mention. The problem here is enforcement. It's one thing to pass a law. But you have to devote state resources to every law to make sure people aren't evading it. Competent, incorruptible public servants are rare and even if they weren't, you'd have to pay all of them. Resource-poor states just can't do it. In practice all small countries can really do is accept foreign aid wherever you can get it. When you're dealing with bad actors with legal budgets bigger than your entire annual tax revenue, enforcement is hard.
- tptacek 10y ago
  In ISDS cases where foreigners seek relief from the US government, corporations with giant budgets aren't facing off against other countries. Instead, the US itself appoints an arbitrator (since the US isn't taken to ISDS panels all that often, you can quickly get a sense of the kinds of arbitrators they pick from the UNCTAD site: spoiler: they're international trade lawyers). In ISDS cases where US investors seek relief from foreign countries, the US is only slightly better than 50/50 in winning cases. Most US->foreign cases are done under NAFTA and most of those pertain to Canada. If you narrow the 138 US->foreign cases tracked by UNCTAD down to those against countries whose annual tax revenue is lower than the largest US corporation, you'll find 20 cases, most of which pertain to Venezuela and Kazakhstan. To me, this cuts against the argument that ISDS is just another vector with which the rich can buy justice for themselves.