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To me this whole TTIP feels like the US trying to bundle and export their most profitable corporate lobbying results through the corrupt and payed-for US politi
by Maarten88 11y ago
To me this whole TTIP feels like the US trying to bundle and export their most profitable corporate lobbying results through the corrupt and payed-for US politicians to the EU. Secret negotiations, state-investor dispute, all of this seems organized to help big corporations screw consumers further.
I simply hope the whole thing fails, I really don't see the benefit to me.
- mercurial 11y agoI'm sure the EU corporations are doing their share of lobbying, but I agree that all these trade agreements seem to be tailored for Big Business at the expense of consumers.
- pizza234 11y agoThis is a completely different level than lobbying, this is effectively corporative control. You enforce labeling of "inconvenient" ingredients on food? That hurts Mamacorp, you're going to be sued. You ban pesticides? Mamacorp is going to sue you. You prevent smoking? Mamacorp is going to sue you. You block eternal copyright? Well, you got the rap. The thing I find terrifying is that virtually any form of social progress can be interpreted as damage to some company's profit. TTIP is corporatocracy at its finest.
- Brakenshire 11y agoYes, there's no need to make the US the bad guy. The key point is the way in which a treaty like this puts a whole class of what would once have been domestic legislation beyond the reach of democratic decision-making. Both in the treaties themselves, and their transnational private courts.
- _yosefk 11y agoCan't a democratic decision be made to get out of the treaty? Also - international obligations in general, by their nature, restrict democratic or any other kind of sovereign decision-making. Decisions such as waging war, defaulting on debt, etc. which are often made by sovereigns illustrate that restrictions on sovereigns aren't necessarily bad. (Not saying that TTIP is a good thing, just that I'm a bit baffled by the framing of the problems with it as a conflict between democracy and corporations or such. I'm even more baffled by the framing of defaulting on sovereign debt as a "democratic right" - again, regardless of the fact that a country's citizens might have gotten a raw deal because a corrupt government issued debt it shouldn't have, say, because it was bribed and needed liquidity to buy something useless/overpriced from whoever bribed it, etc.)
- Brakenshire 11y agoThat is an extremely limited form of democracy, to only be able to decide on a huge swathe of legislation with just a yes or a no. And on top of that, when something like this is tied in with the trade deals, it would be impossible to reverse it because of the potential for an economic shock and destabilization of the financial system. If a government came in that wanted to shift the balance - for instance on this issue, of human health, quality of life, and the environment on the one hand, and agricultural productivity on the other - previously they would be able to change the law. Under TTIP, they have to renege on the trade deals covering, what, a third of the economy. That is to all practical purposes impossible. You might as well have written the law into the constitution. That doesn't mean I'm against all international treaties, but usually those cover issues which are inherently international. TTIP represents the movement of large swathes of what would once have been domestic legislation into international treaties, and the mechanisms which would have been appropriate for, say, an international convention on cross-border child abduction, are not appropriate for deciding whether or not a country is allowed to ban activities which are dangerous to the health of its citizens, within its own borders.
- contravariant 11y agoIs there even a sharp divide between EU and US corporations anymore? I get the impression that the really large ones operate in both, and those tend to be the ones that will profit most from such an agreement.
- rorykoehler 11y agoWe're not consumers we're people. Please stop calling people consumers as if the only value we bring is the consumption of mass produced goods.
- speeder 11y agoIn the current monetary system that is unfortunately true. Note that I am not blaming "capitalism" but the current monetary system (that is based on debt). Consumption is necessary for most countries in the world right now to keep them going, as soon consumption stops, the countries fail. (also you can get into stagflations, that are terrible: ever-increasing prices, including food and rent, while income an jobs are declining, this is happening right now in Brazil... 5 days ago I went to buy cheese, and it is 3 times the price of 5 years ago! And I am unemployed, as is all people that went to college with me 5 years ago!)
- calibraxis 11y agoPlus, we're producers too. Corporations try to make us feel grateful to be allowed to be producers, lest we stay depressed at home as unemployed. Not to mention defining out of existence all the uncompensated labor people do... (And of course, they have their thumb on the macroeconomic scales which result in this curious phenomenon of "unemployment". Pretty sick, irrational societies.)
- nraynaud 11y agoActually, treaties are always negotiated in secret. The only openly negotiated one (the EU constitution) was massively rejected afterwards.
- jgreen10 11y agoand then quietly renamed Treaty of Lisbon and ratified.
- ginko 11y agoThe EU constitution would have been an entirely different thing. It would have made the EU a lot more democratic, adding a directly elected president, for instance.
- Brakenshire 11y agoThe EU now has a directly elected President in all but name, through the Spitzenkandidaten system. Legally, its supposed to be a joint decision of the Council and the Parliament, but when Cameron tried to object to Juncker, it seemed to be pretty clear that the new expectation is that the Council rubber-stamps Parliament's decision, and Parliament will support the party receiving the largest number of votes.
- yxhuvud 11y agoAll but name? How the heck is some guy that I never got an option to vote for in any way whatsoever directly elected? You might as well claim that the Council is directly elected, and not the total lack of accountability to citizens that it actually is.
- ginko 11y agoYou indirectly voted in the EP election. Well, I hope you did. Otherwise you don't have any right to complain.
- deepnet 11y agoThat is literally the definition of a fascict dictatorship. This is what Adam Smith warned us against. I think you have hit the nail on the head. Governments around the world have capitulated to this. This seems like the financial wing of the whole spyocracy.
- joelthelion 11y ago> That is literally the definition of a fascict dictatorship. No, it's not.
- nhebb 11y agoYou should read George Orwell's piece "What is Fascism?" [1]. It's a short essay worth the read before you're tempted to point the finger and call someone or something fascist. [1] http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc
- calibraxis 11y agoI think we all have experience of fascism. It's not a magic thing; currently it's (unfortunately) a very common mode of human organization. "Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level -- there's little bargaining, a little give and take, but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward." — http://www.spunk.org/texts/quotes/sp000096.txt http://www.spunk.org/texts/quotes/sp000096.txt (I am not trying to make a pedantic point about who is/isn't acting fascist. Just wanting to say we've very much internalized ideologies which we use as epithets.)
- atmosx 11y agoIf the EU exists with it's current form in 5 years, we can re-discuss the TTIP, but generally speaking I think it will not matter what the 'EU' agreement was, if the EU gets dissolved ... and from where it appears like if they're trying really hard to dissolve it (even if the state otherwise).
- akhatri_aus 11y agoI'm not as cynical, but they did say this 5 years ago too. There are many people happy with it contrary to what is usually on the daily news spread.
- atmosx 11y agoIt's just that I see a strong anti-EU trend developing throughout Europe, at least that's the feeling that I'm getting. Time will tell, I guess. The thing is political integration is going back instead of forward and the financial crisis turned the whole project obsolete IMHO.
- akhatri_aus 11y agoThere's both there's an anti EU trend but don't mistake this to think there is no-one for it. There are lots of good things they've done. The whole 'euro' currency thing that gets the attention is just a small part of the system.
- mplscoder 11y agoPop quiz: who says the text of the TPP must remain secret? Under what authority? Members of Congress are scuttling around like weasels, claiming they can’t disclose what’s in this far-reaching, 12-nation trade treaty. They can go into a sealed room and read a draft, but they can’t copy pages, and they can’t tell the public what they just read. Why not? If there is a US law forbidding disclosure, name the law. Can you recall anything in the Constitution that establishes secret treaties? Is there a prior treaty that states the text of all treaties can be hidden from the people? I see no authority anywhere that justifies withholding the text of the TPP. --WORLD AFFAIRS BRIEF
- tomelders 11y agoI'm not an expert on these issues, but I haved heard mention of the Singapore treaty and that it already provides investment protection. Can anyone explain why these protections are deemed no longer suitable?