Quotulatiousness

June 27, 2012

It was abusive, but it wasn’t bullying

Filed under: Media, Randomness, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:54

On the sp!ked website, Nancy McDermott analyzes the “bus monitor bullying” video and the reaction to the situation:

By now, millions of people across the world have viewed ‘Making the Bus Monitor Cry’. For those of you who haven’t, it is a video of a slew of vile, verbal abuse against 68-year-old Karen Klein, a bus monitor from Greece, New York, from four 13-year-old boys. It is hard to know what is more shocking: the methodical cruelty with which the children ply their insults; or the grandmother’s inability to respond effectively to the humiliating onslaught.

Childish cruelty is allegedly old news, but, recorded and broadcast across the world, it is still jarring. Not only is the video footage completely at odds with the way we usually like to regard children — as innocents in need of protection — but their willingness and, more disturbingly, their success at targeting an adult is unsettling.

Yet, in reality, the video tells us less about the nature of children and more about the erosion of adult authority in American society. When adults are too timid to enforce basic standards of behaviour in public, and when other adults (in this case, the bus driver) are willing to stand by and tolerate bad behaviour aimed at a fellow adult, it’s no wonder children run wild. The depths of this problem are nowhere more apparent than in the confused reaction to the bus-monitor incident.

[. . .]

It is easy to forget in an age when so many adults find it hard to keep children under control that adults are inherently more powerful than children. Adults bear both rights and responsibilities for making and acting on their own decisions. Children, in contrast, have no real autonomy. To the extent that they have any limited independence, it is entirely conditional on the adults in their lives. And rightly so: children lack both the experience and the maturity to be held legally or morally accountable for their actions. Although we all hope children will learn to behave responsibly, we should be under no illusions as to their capacity to assume responsibility in the same way that adults do.

[. . .]

The seventh graders who taunted Klein did not do it because they lacked empathy or awareness of bullying, or because they were overcome by a claustrophobic mob mentality, or because they are worse than children anywhere else. They behaved the way they did because none of the people or institutions responsible for guiding them in their journey to adulthood set or enforced clear standards of behaviour. It is a pattern that repeats across America, not just in this little corner of New York state. The sad truth is that unless we wake up and recognise this phenomenon for what it is, and start letting children know where they stand, behaviour like that on the bus will continue.

(more…)

The “JesusPhone” turns five

Filed under: Media, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:32

At The Register, Tony Smith looks back on five years of Apple’s iPhone phenomenon:

The iPhone first went on sale five years ago this week and it has already clocked up more than $150 billion in revenues — more than the annual GDP of Hungary — for Apple.

More than 250 million iPhones have been sold since 29 June 2007, the day over-the-counter sales began in the US, almost six months after its January 2007 launch.

That’s just the hardware, of course. Apple takes a 30 per cent cut of the purchase price of ever app downloaded through the iTunes App Store, and with well over 30 billion apps downloaded since the app shop went online on 10 July 2008.

[. . .]

The original iPhone, lest we forget, was a 2G device with GSM/Edge data connectivity. Its 16 bundled apps — it couldn’t run third-party native software, only JavaScript-coded “web apps” in its browser — ran on a 400MHz Samsung ARM11-based S3C6400 CPU and were presented on a 3.5in, 320 x 480 display.

There was no external storage — there still isn’t — and the battery was tightly integrated into the casing — it still is. It has a 2Mp camera and 4-16GB of on-board Flash storage.

But the iPhone introduced the world to smooth touchscreen operation, its capacitive panel outclassing the less sensitive resistive screens commonplace at the time. Likewise, it introduced roll, pitch and yaw detecting accelerometers, now found on every smartphone. Likewise Wi-Fi.

Questions on the Elliot Lake rescue efforts

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:22

Whether it was just a badly phrased moment in a press conference or not, Toronto’s Heavy Urban Search and Rescue team has not done itself any public relations favours in the aftermath to the partial collapse of the Algo Centre Mall in Elliot Lake:

The story of the collapsed mall in Elliot Lake, where the rescue mission is back on after being suspended on Monday because officials deemed the building too “unsafe,” has so far deviated from romantic tales of heroism and rescue, spiralling instead into talk of delays, strict mandates and “limited resources.”

A spokesman for Toronto’s Heavy Urban Search and Rescue team, Bill Neadles, said on Tuesday the group was still in its “infancy” — that aside from winning some industry competitions and running mock rescues, HUSAR, as it is known, had only participated in one operation: a gas explosion in 2003. He said when he initially told residents on Monday the team had “reached the end of its mandate” he did not mean they were abandoning the operation, he “just didn’t want to lead anybody to believe I was going to come back with a silver claw and walk on water.”

[. . .]

In Elliot Lake, no one has been spirited away alive, at least not yet. One person is thought dead and a dozen are feared missing. At least one is believed to have made a noise amid the rubble on Monday morning.

“One of the things that gives rescue a sort of romance is the idea that you go in and you get the job done … and that’s one of the reasons this Northern Ontario mall story is so 21st century,” said Bob Thompson, a pop culture expert at New York’s Syracuse University. “Here we’ve got this potentially romantic rescue story, and what do we see? Good ol’ fashioned bureaucracy.”

When most Canadians think of rescue, they do not think of government inner-workings: a Ministry of Labour structural engineer suspending a search; provincial officials having to explicitly give the Toronto team the authority to go back in; a premier intervening to make that happen.

“If you had put 100 miners in there, they would have been out by Saturday,” said Greg Dillavough, a retired miner who once worked in mine rescue in the Northwest Territories and Ontario. “You don’t walk away from a site when someone’s alive.”

John Kay on the evils of rent-seeking

Filed under: Economics, Germany, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:08

Broadly speaking, wealth can be accumulated in two distinctly different ways. It can be earned through hard work, innovation, and competition, or it can be extracted from the public by use of coercive methods, corruption, and misappropriation:

Whatever the true extent of the Mubarak family fortune, it stands in stark contrast to the lot of most Egyptians. Gross domestic product per capita in Egypt is a mere $2,500. In western Europe and North America GDP per capita is about $40,000, yet the capacities of Egypt’s intellectual and entrepreneurial elite are the rival of any state in the world.

The real damage imposed by men such as Mr Mubarak is not the money they might have stolen. The tragedy is that the system that enables them to steal it destroys opportunities for others to generate wealth — not only for themselves but for the whole population.

The price of requiring a potential Mark Zuckerberg or Mr Gates to pay a $100 bribe to each of 10 officials before he can establish his new business is not the $1,000 creamed off by corrupt bureaucrats. It is the far greater one of lost businesses that never came into being because the licensing process that makes such corruption possible was not navigated. In the meantime, people who might be successful entrepreneurs choose instead to seek political power. If business is endlessly frustrating and politics endlessly rewarding, the career choice for able and enterprising people is obvious.

Institutions are the key influence on economic prosperity — West Germany did not outperform East Germany because of its excellent monetary policies. And, as Daron Acemoglou and James Robinson point out in their book, Why Nations Fail, a critical feature of successful economic institutions is that they limit the scope for what these authors call “extractive activity” — others have described it as predation or rent-seeking — which appropriates the wealth created by other people.

California primed to make bad decision for “good” reasons

Filed under: Environment, Food, Government, Health, Science, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:05

California’s already bad economic situation could be made even worse by mandating that genetically modified foods be labelled to call attention to themselves:

The American Medical Association resolved this week that “there is no scientific justification for special labeling of bioengineered foods.”

The association has long-held that nothing about the process of recombinant DNA makes genetically engineered (GE) crop plants inherently more dangerous to the environment or to human health than the traditional crop plants that have been deliberately but slowly bred for human purposes for millennia. It is a view shared by the National Academy of Sciences, the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N., the European Commission, and countless other national science academies and non-governmental organizations.

And yet Californians will consider on their November ballots a law that mandates cigarette-like labeling of food derived from GE plants. Proponents claim to promote opportunities for consumers to make informed choices about the foods they eat. But to build support for the measure, they have played on consumer fears about a promising technology that is nevertheless prone to “Frankenfoods” demagoguery. If successful, they may well imperil the ability of Californians, and consumers around the world, to choose a technology that scientists contend could end hunger and malnutrition, lift hundreds of millions from poverty, and reduce the environmental impact of feeding an evermore populous world.

June 26, 2012

The “Draft Andrew Coyne” movement

Filed under: Cancon, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:49

I’ve met Andrew Coyne. We had a pleasant chat about political matters a few years ago (although I was one of dozens of Toronto-area bloggers he talked with that night: I doubt he remembers me). I often agree with his writings (and even when I don’t, he’s usually quotable). But how would he fare as a candidate for the Liberal leadership? Abacus ran the numbers:

Nationally, most Canadians told us they didn’t know enough about Mr. Coyne to say whether they had a favourable or unfavourable impression of him. Sixty-four percent were not sure of their opinion while 15% said they had a favourable impression while 21% had an unfavourable impression. Unfortunately for Mr. Coyne, the percentage of respondents who had “very unfavourable” was higher than those who had a “very favourable” impression of him (9% very unfavourable vs. 3% very favourable).

Nonetheless, there are “pockets” of Coynemania out there.

  • Men are slightly more likely to have a favourable impression of him than women (men 18% favourable, women 12% – women were also much more likely to be unsure).
  • There was no significant age difference although older Canadians (no surprisingly) were more likely to be aware of Mr. Coyne.
  • Regionally, he is more popular in Manitoba and Saskatchewan (25% favourable) than in other regions of the country. He is a tough sell in Quebec where his favourable rating is a mere 8%.
  • Considering his occupation and the audience likely to read and watch him, it is no surprise that respondents with a university degree were most aware and favourable to Mr. Coyne. 24% of those with a bachelor’s degree and 29% of those with a post-graduate degree had a favourable impression of the National Post columnist.
  • He is also more likely to be viewed favourably by those who live in urban communities (urban 18% favourable, suburban 13% favourable, rural 12% favourable).
  • Mr. Coyne is also viewed more favourable by those who own stocks, bonds, or mutual funds: 20% favourable vs. 10% among those who don’t own those kinds of investments.
  • Finally, there isn’t a significant partisan difference. Those who voted Liberal in 2011 are only slightly more likely to view him positively than NDP and CPC voters but the differences are marginal. He is a post-partisan candidate!

I don’t know if he’s actually interested in a political career, but he’d at least be a different kind of candidate than the Liberals have had in decades. I’ve never voted Liberal in my life, but I could imagine voting for a Liberal if Andrew Coyne was the Liberal leader. He appears to actually believe in smaller government and free markets — which is why he’d never be able to run as a Conservative. He’s on the record as being almost libertarian in his views on individual rights (especially on Nanny State issues) — which is why he couldn’t run as a New Democrat.

It’s not clear whether there are any members of today’s Liberal Party of Canada who could cope with a classical liberal as leader. But it would create a viable third choice in federal politics: that’s worth a lot in my books.

Update: There’s a Twitter hashtag for the movement: #coyne4lpc, and Jesse Helmer points out that there’s a Facebook group, too:

Update, the second: Apparently Andrew Coyne is getting into the swing of being a big-time politician, having already fired his first campaign manager:

Poland’s uneasy WW2 history

Filed under: Books, Europe, Germany, History, Media, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:39

Poles are being told unwelcome things about the country’s experiences under Nazi rule. The most recent upheavals have been triggered by the publication of a new book by Jan T. Gross:

Its title, Golden Harvest, stems from a cover photograph that purportedly shows Polish peasants who have been digging through remains of victims killed at Treblinka, where 800,000 Jews were gassed and cremated, to find gold or valuable stones neglected by the Nazis.

From there, Mr. Gross narrates events beyond the barbed wire of Nazi death camps. He describes Poles hunting Jews down, extorting money from them, massacring them, and profiting by taking over their jobs and property. Some 3.3 million Jews lived in Poland before the war began, and about 90 percent had perished by its end.

“There was a sense of satisfaction that was quite widespread that they are being eliminated from Polish economic and social life,” Mr. Gross says in a phone interview from Kraków, where he is teaching a summer course for Princeton students. “When given the opportunity, a large number of Poles participated in victimization of Jews.”

[. . .]

The white-haired, New York-based writer, 64, enjoys a level of notoriety in his native country that lacks any analogue among American historians. When word gets out that he is publishing a new book, anxiety spreads about what dirty laundry he will expose this time. His writing gets discussed on prime-time TV.

Mr. Gross “polarizes public opinion probably more than anyone else outside of the political world,” says Jan Grabowski, a Holocaust historian who splits his time between the University of Ottawa and Poland.

His books have struck such a nerve because they cut against the national narrative that Poland is exclusively a victim of history, not a victimizer.

China’s aircraft carrier moves closer to operational status

Filed under: China, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:13

And update from Strategy Page on the Chinese aircraft carrier Shi Lang:

China’s first aircraft carrier, the Shi Lang (formerly the Russian Varyag), recently went to sea for the eighth time since it began sea trials last August. The latest trip is to last 13 days. The previous longest trip was last November 28, when the Shi Lang went out for 12 days. The first trip (last August 11) was for three days, most subsequent ones were for 9-11 days. So far, the Shi Lang has been at sea for ten weeks. All preparations have been made for flight operations, which have not taken place yet.

The Shi Lang has apparently performed well during these extended sea trials. Three months ago some aircraft were spotted on the flight deck. This was probably to make sure aircraft could be moved around the deck, and down to the hanger deck, without any problems. Last year China confirmed that the Shi Lang will primarily be a training carrier. The Chinese Navy is supposed to take possession of the Shi Lang later this year. The Chinese apparently plan to station up to 24 jet fighters and 26 helicopters on the Shi Lang.

[. . .]

China is believed to be building the first of several locally designed aircraft carriers but little is known of this project. The only official announcements have alluded to the need for two or three aircraft carriers, in addition to the Shi Lang. Construction of such large ships has not yet been seen in any shipyard.

Earlier posts on the Chinese carrier program are here.

Sacrificing relations with your top trading partner for domestic political reasons

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:59

In Foreign Affairs, Derek H. Burney and Fen Osler Hampson outline the sad state of the trading relationship between Canada and the United States:

Permitting the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline should have been an easy diplomatic and economic decision for U.S. President Barack Obama. The completed project would have shipped more than 700,000 barrels a day of Albertan oil to refineries in the Gulf Coast, generated tens of thousands of jobs for U.S. workers, and met the needs of refineries in Texas that are desperately seeking oil from Canada, a more reliable supplier than Venezuela or countries in the Middle East. The project posed little risk to the landscape it traversed. But instead of acting on economic logic, the Obama administration caved to environmental activists in November 2011, postponing until 2013 the decision on whether to allow the pipeline.

Obama’s choice marked a triumph of campaign posturing over pragmatism and diplomacy, and it brought U.S.-Canadian relations to their lowest point in decades. It was hardly the first time that the administration has fumbled issues with Ottawa. Although relations have been civil, they have rarely been productive. Whether on trade, the environment, or Canada’s shared contribution in places such as Afghanistan, time and again the United States has jilted its northern neighbor. If the pattern of neglect continues, Ottawa will get less interested in cooperating with Washington. Already, Canada has reacted by turning elsewhere — namely, toward Asia — for more reliable economic partners.

[. . .]

In Afghanistan, Canada is now rapidly scaling back its substantial commitment to the military mission, thanks to the United States’ increasingly erratic, if not embarrassing, direction. Canada has spent billions on the war and lost over 150 soldiers, proportionately more than any other ally, but has received no tangible dividend for its support on bilateral or multilateral issues of concern to it. Canada also participated in NATO’s mission in Libya — where a Canadian, Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard, commanded military operations. Canada has no tangible interests of any kind in Afghanistan or Libya. Its participation in those countries, proportionately larger than any other ally, was intended primarily to strengthen the partnership with the United States on the theory that solid multilateral commitments would engender more productive bilateral relations. That proved not to be the case.

Update: Matt Gurney wonders if the palpable lack of reaction by Canadians to the laundry list of “slights” might possibly indicate that Canada is finally “growing up”:

You can’t say the essay is wrong. From Keystone XL to Buy America provisions in the stimulus packages developed by Congress, the U.S. has found occasion over the last few years to irritate Canada. But notably absent has been the kind of heated Canadian rhetoric you’d hear as recently as the Paul Martin era during the softwood lumber dispute. Nor does the Canadian public seem to be demonstrating much of the reflexive anti-Americanism that has always been a strange part of our national character.

We’ve long insisted that the U.S. treat us as a separate and sovereign country, and yet react with wounded outrage when they treat us as a separate country. Go figure. But given that Burney and his co-author are right, and America has repeatedly slighted Canada … and if we can agree that Canadians don’t seem particularly freaked out about it … good Lord, could it be that Canadians are, gulp, growing up?

Railway engineering, 1947 style

Filed under: Britain, History, Railways, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:03

London, Midland & Scottish Railway documentary that shows the relaying of St. Pancras Junction with prefabricated trackwork, along with the associated changes to the signalling system.

What struck me while watching this was the ages of most of the track crew: I’d have expected them to be a bunch of teens-to-early 20’s guys, but there are a lot of old gaffers still doing the heavy lifting here. Oh, and of course the work clothes: caps, hats, jackets, and braces. Not a hard hat or much in the way of obvious safety gear in sight. They may or may not have been better men in those days, but they earned their aches and pains honestly.

H/T to Roger Henry for the link, who pointed out “This will get your pulses racing. Also makes you realize that working on the railroad was for real men. Mechanisation has come a looong way since then.”.

June 25, 2012

QotD: Working with the PQ

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Humour, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:44

For some reason it is being treated as news that the Prime Minister said he would work with a Parti Quebecois government in the unfortunate circumstance of a PQ victory.

What else was he supposed to say? The PQ has held power several times since Rene Levesque’s first victory in 1976. It’s a democratic country, and provinces can elect whoever they want. Ottawa doesn’t have a choice whether it wants to work with the victor or not. Harper worked with Danny Williams — well, he tried, anyway — when the Newfoundland caudillo declared himself the supreme power of El Rocko Independanto and waged a personal war against his Canadian oppressors. Pauline Marois, the PQ leader (at least until the next revolt) can’t be half as annoying as Danny was.

Kelly McParland, “Why is it news that Stephen Harper would recognize a PQ government?”, National Post, 2012-06-25

No innovation can survive the bureaucratic process

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:44

A story that won’t surprise anyone who has ever worked in a large bureaucracy is still eye opening — even Scott Adams’ Dilbert characters have it easier to get their suggestions implemented:

It was the summer of 2010, and the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) was about to launch the Employee Innovation Program — kind of like the employee suggestion drop box by the water cooler.

Except, nothing like it at all, as TBS employee Anna Bevilacqua was about to discover.

[. . .]

The employees who answered the call for creativity had to follow several rules, including: An employee could not make a suggestion without his or her boss’ approval; and proposals that might lead to a change in TBS policy would be rejected.

Managers tracked the proposals using a spreadsheet that noted the date and exact time a proposal was received, whether an individual or team of workers made the submission and the date it was received by a committee of three TBS managers.

The program designed to cut waste was taking shape. A bloated, forbidding shape.

[. . .]

Four managers formed a “Sub-Committee for Initial Triage” to conduct a “pre-screening” of the proposals. The selection process would be guided by a flow chart with text inside parallelograms and rectangles connected by arrows.

[. . .]

Bevilacqua needed to complete an “implementation framework” document. If she failed to “clearly define objectives, benefits, deliverables, exclusions, assumptions, responsibilities, estimated costs and timelines,” if her plan did not identify possible “slippage in target dates,” if it did not use a “risk log” or a “risk mapping approach,” it could die in Phase Two.

She and the other applicants were warned: “A wrong plan is worse than having no plan at all.”

[. . .]

The vetting and revising and perfecting continued. Each surviving proposal was screened by the Treasury Board’s chief information officer, deputy chief financial officer and chief financial officer.

[. . .]

The months of meetings, memos and emails confirmed her idea was a no-brainer. Her plan would be put into action.

A congratulatory note was vetted by three people before it was sent to her.

Then, the extensive trail of TBS paper — nearly 550 pages obtained by the Star through Access to Information legislation — ends in late 2010.

The employee who suggested this had already retired before the suggestion was implemented — and it was implemented outside the suggestion program anyway. The final line of the article sums it up perfectly: “Not one employee has received a cash award.”

H/T to Andrew Coyne:

https://twitter.com/acoyne/statuses/217238022482169857

The rot began at the top: Britain’s rotten state

Filed under: Britain, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:06

David Conway reviews The Rotten State of Britain by Eamonn Butler:

In fourteen pithy, well-documented chapters, Butler guides the reader through the maze of political, economic and social changes to which New Labour subjected Britain during their period in office. After noting that ‘the rot starts from the top’, Butler summarize the main political changes the country was made to undergo so:

‘From Magna Carta in 1215, our rights and liberties have been built up over the centuries. Trial by jury, habeas corpus, the presumption of innocence — all these and more grew up to restrain our leaders and prevent them from harassing us. Yet within a decade almost all these protections have been diluted or discarded. Our leaders are no longer restrained by the rule of law at all [22]…The Prime Minister and colleagues in Downing Street decide what is good for us and then it’s nodded through Parliament. It’s hardly democracy: it’s a centralist autocracy.’ [31]

One by one, Butler explains how each of the country’s traditional constitutional restraints on uncurbed executive power was deliberately weakened, if not altogether discarded, by New Labor in pursuit of their master political project which was, having come to equate the national good with that of their own party, to perpetuate their hegemony indefinitely. Their first step was to effect a massive centralization of power in the hands of the Prime Minister and a small clique of unelected advisors that led to a systematic downgrading of Parliament, the Cabinet and civil service.

To observers of the Canadian system, this critique sounds hauntingly familiar: change “Downing Street” to “Sussex Drive” and it’s equally valid here. Some of the centralization was already well underway before 2001, but it was accelerated by terrorist attacks and governments’ response to them:

9/11 also served New Labor, Butler argues, as a pretext for making a power-grab in the name of security that turned Britain into ‘a surveillance state’ where ‘freedom exists only in name’. [106] He chillingly observes:

‘Of course, the terrorism threat is real… But in response, we seem to have given our government powers to track us anywhere, stop and search us in the street, arrest us for any imagined offense, imprison us for peaceful protest, hold us without charge for 28 days, extradite us to the United State without evidence, ban us for being members of non-violent organizations that they don’t happen to like, export us to other EU countries to stand trial for things that aren’t a crime here, take and file our DNA samples before we’ve been convicted, charged or even cautioned for any offense — and much more as well. In the name of defending our liberties against terrorism, we seem to have lost them.’ [92-93]

Euro 2012: “I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand.”

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Italy, Soccer — Tags: — Nicholas @ 07:58

I watched yesterday’s game with a deep sense of foreboding … that it just might come down to penalties. Again. Richard Littlejohn obviously felt the same way:

We might have guessed it was always going to come down to penalties. We’ve been here before.

There was a grim inevitability about England’s elimination from Euro 2012 on penalties. And Italy deserved their victory. But that’s not to pretend it still doesn’t hurt.

Every two years, I kid myself I don’t care. Why invest emotional energy in a bunch of footballers? It’s only a game.

When England kicked off against France 10 days ago, I feigned indifference. So what if England lose? Life goes on. World Cups, European Championships, it’s bound to end in tears.

But England didn’t lose. They drew with France, beat Sweden and Ukraine, finished top of their group and qualified for the quarter finals. Suddenly, it mattered. Three more wins and four and a half decades of bitter disappointment and under-achievement would be consigned to history. Football’s coming home.

Against my better judgment and years of experience I discovered I did care after all. As England progressed and last night’s game against Italy approached, the pulse began to quicken, the optimism returned. This time we really could be in with a chance.

To be honest, it was better when England stuck to the script and crashed out of tournaments prematurely, consumed by hubris and an inflated sense of their own abilities. We’re used to being let down. We can handle it. As John Cleese said in the movie Clockwise: ‘I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand.’

H/T to Nick Packwood for the link.

If NAFTA was real free trade “it wouldn’t contain 22 chapters of rules and regulations”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:03

Free trade is the way to go, if you want to benefit the consumer. Producers don’t benefit as much: it increases their competition and means that bad producers are more likely to go out of business. Protectionists always rely on the visible “damage” that free trade does to these bad producers and minimize or completely ignore the (larger) benefits to consumers.

Jesse Kline explains why moving toward freer trade will benefit most Canadians, and the drawbacks will be to those who are least able or least willing to face real competition:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced this week that Canada will join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks, along with he United States, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, Mexico and, we hope, Japan. Some say this will be a historic free trade deal that will extend the NAFTA zone into emerging Asian markets; others believe the United States is using the process to impose its own draconian copyright regime on its trading partners, while protecting key industries, such as auto manufacturers. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

The problem is that the agreement is being negotiated under a veil of heavy secrecy. And if rumours that the negotiated sections of the agreement already contain over 1,000 pages prove to be correct, it is certain that the TPP will not give us anything resembling real free trade. Indeed, the Canadian public has little idea about what we are getting ourselves into, or how much the government knew about what it was agreeing to. Based on a leaked chapter of the agreement, it looks as though we just signed up for an entirely new copyright regime, a mere hours after the government passed its own made-in-Canada solution.

To the government’s credit, it is simultaneously pursuing trade deals with the European Union and China. But in these times of global economic uncertainty, we need to see the benefits of trade sooner, rather than later. Free trade leads to higher standards of living, and benefits society through lower prices and increased variety of consumer goods; it forces domestic industries to be more efficient. Fortunately, there is another way to achieve these benefits: The Canadian government could open our borders to the world by unilaterally removing all our trade barriers.

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