4 ms·

go on...

phkahler 6y ago
Let's use NAFTA as an example. Free trade between the US, Canada, and Mexico should be something you can explain (ELI5) in one or two pages. A lawyer might extend that to 10 to 20 pages to make it formal using legalese. The actual agreement ran over 700 pages and included carve outs for all sorts of things for many different companies and industries. It was a trade agreement. Maybe there were some "free" parts in it too but it did not establish "free trade" in general.
- andrepd 6y ago
  The world is a complicated messy place. A newspaper webpage has how many hundreds of pages of js code? 700 pages of legalese "source code" for a free trade agreement between ~500 million people doesn't seem that bad.
  - vmception 6y ago
    *1.5 billion?
    - cambalache 6y ago
      Nafta
    - wenc 6y ago
      I believe parent is talking about NAFTA (or USMCA) countries. The population covered under the agreement is 493 mil.
  - hartator 6y ago
    Or a huge room for corruption.
  - wwweston 6y ago
    Wish I could give this 100 upvotes. HN of all places should be a place where people understand that domain models matter, that precisely specifying them for either purposes of automation or legal formalization is going to involve significant descriptive effort, possibly even volume, and even apparently simple things -- from trade and health care down to how the arithmetic you think you're used to -- have a lot of complexity underneath them.
- vmception 6y ago
  Sounds like something worth reading before the general public understands it :) I haven't been this excited since I read the entire CARES Act
cmroanirgo 6y ago
There is a vast diversity of differences in these countries, from gdp to population density and cost of living. Every time my Australian government has signed "free trade" agreements it has meant massive sector decline in different clusters of industry, ranging from steel production to primary industry (food and veggies). Eg. My family's orchard no longer grows oranges, nor kiwi fruit, nor other exotic fruit due to "free trade". The local supermarket chains (coles and woolworths) both decimated these industries by forcing farmers to suddenly sell at Asian market cost. My whole area used to be renowned for oranges... But there are all but a small handful of tiny orchards now. Because of fruit fly, the other owners, including my family, had to destroy the trees. So, there's no chance of ever returning the property to it's former orchard status. A secondary effect of "free trade" is that the above mentioned supermarkets started buying the land of the farmers they'd driven to the wall, and put in "manager farmers" who do not look after the land near as much as a family owned property does. Eg. Excessive use of pesticides, ignoring noxious weeds (a cost saving), use of temporary & often overseas workers. All profits that used to go to local industries (eg hardware stores & other shops) are now sent out from centralised warehouses. To compound the problem, these "free trade" partners now also purchase the land, so even the profits now go overseas. China is now a very large landowner of Australia, and have long term 99yr leases on the ports of Melbourne and Darwin. So, personally, I'm not a fan of anything "free trade".

go on...

Let's use NAFTA as an example. Free trade between the US, Canada, and Mexico should be something you can explain (ELI5) in one or two pages. A lawyer might extend that to 10 to 20 pages to make it formal using legalese. The actual agreement ran over 700 pages and included carve outs for all sorts of things for many different companies and industries. It was a trade agreement. Maybe there were some "free" parts in it too but it did not establish "free trade" in general.

andrepd 6y ago
The world is a complicated messy place. A newspaper webpage has how many hundreds of pages of js code? 700 pages of legalese "source code" for a free trade agreement between ~500 million people doesn't seem that bad.
- vmception 6y ago
  *1.5 billion?
  - cambalache 6y ago
    Nafta
  - wenc 6y ago
    I believe parent is talking about NAFTA (or USMCA) countries. The population covered under the agreement is 493 mil.
- hartator 6y ago
  Or a huge room for corruption.
- wwweston 6y ago
  Wish I could give this 100 upvotes. HN of all places should be a place where people understand that domain models matter, that precisely specifying them for either purposes of automation or legal formalization is going to involve significant descriptive effort, possibly even volume, and even apparently simple things -- from trade and health care down to how the arithmetic you think you're used to -- have a lot of complexity underneath them.
vmception 6y ago
Sounds like something worth reading before the general public understands it :) I haven't been this excited since I read the entire CARES Act

cmroanirgo 6y ago

There is a vast diversity of differences in these countries, from gdp to population density and cost of living. Every time my Australian government has signed "free trade" agreements it has meant massive sector decline in different clusters of industry, ranging from steel production to primary industry (food and veggies). Eg. My family's orchard no longer grows oranges, nor kiwi fruit, nor other exotic fruit due to "free trade". The local supermarket chains (coles and woolworths) both decimated these industries by forcing farmers to suddenly sell at Asian market cost. My whole area used to be renowned for oranges... But there are all but a small handful of tiny orchards now. Because of fruit fly, the other owners, including my family, had to destroy the trees. So, there's no chance of ever returning the property to it's former orchard status. A secondary effect of "free trade" is that the above mentioned supermarkets started buying the land of the farmers they'd driven to the wall, and put in "manager farmers" who do not look after the land near as much as a family owned property does. Eg. Excessive use of pesticides, ignoring noxious weeds (a cost saving), use of temporary & often overseas workers. All profits that used to go to local industries (eg hardware stores & other shops) are now sent out from centralised warehouses. To compound the problem, these "free trade" partners now also purchase the land, so even the profits now go overseas. China is now a very large landowner of Australia, and have long term 99yr leases on the ports of Melbourne and Darwin. So, personally, I'm not a fan of anything "free trade".