Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Keeping focus after the WTO

[Bill Rosenberg <w.rosenberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Carrol Cox wrote (and Nathan Newman followed up on):

> Bill Rosenberg wrote:
>
> >  While Nathan's ideas of
> > internationally financed free pharmaceuticals, education and
> > unemployment fund are a necessary start, they (except perhaps for
> > education) still don't provide a permanent answer to the development
> > problem. And what would the democratic structures be like that would
> > be needed to support them?
>
> The question has been has any nation developed with free trade. But
> has any nation developed democratically? I don't think so. (No slave
> holding nation is in any relevant sense a democracy.)
>
> So the question might be, "Is it possible for a nation to escape
> dependency without an authoritarian regime?" Is democracy compatible
> with development?
>

Actually that wasn't the issue of democracy that I had in mind.
Obviously I wasn't clear.  The point I am raising is this. If we
need international transfers to compensate the losers in trade, how
is that administered? Who decides how much each country (or company)
should pay, and how is that enforced? Even if you can imagine
countries like the EU and the US making large transfers
without coercion for some reason of self-interest, some authority
must decide how much. And that being an intensely political question,
people will want a say in it. How is that process made representative
of people in countries big and small; how is it sheltered from
intense corporate lobbying? We find it hard to control our
existing national governments; how could such a body ever be
controlled? To be explicit: it requires some form of world
government. How do we control such a thing?

What I am pointing out is the practicalities of transfers are a long
way off (if ever). Back to the original question of trade: what do
countries who need to develop do in the meantime?

Bill