Re: neomercantilism, trade

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxx>]

> ((((((((
>
> CB: I don't recall saying "risks are never *taken* - passive third
person". My idea is that the bourgeoisie are like active subjects (
1st persons) in avoidng risks as much as possible when it comes to
their wealth and getting more of it. Does saying that the bourgeoisie
do everything they can to avoid risk rather than as claimed in their
mythology seeking out and taking risk mean that they are 100 %
successful in avoiding risk ?  The main thing  they do with respect to
risk is to try to avoid it, even if they are not always successful.

=========
Didn't mean to imply you stated that "risks are never *taken*. I was
just calling attention to the way[s] narrativies are formed that avoid
reference to agency and the idea of creation; in order to allocate,
some things first have to be created and in a world characterized by
uncertainty, risk is created all the time even against the wishes of
those who create it. The statistics on business failures should be
adequate proof that risk is all too real. Trying to halt the inflation
of rsik to a systemic level, as in the case of LTCM, and the whole
moral hazard issue is a friggin' mess. But if risk didn't exist, moral
hazard could not be a problem.



> A measure of a monopolist is success in commanding avoidance of risk
mechanisms. Monopolists rule today.
>
> So the justification of exorbitant compensation to the rich for
taking more economic risk is daft, a Big Lie in the rationale of the
economic system today.
>

=============
The first sentence is problematic. What we're seeing are oligopolies
trying to stabilize market shares to avoid outbreaks of 'cutthroat
competition'. Informal market sharing arrangements and dispute
mitigation are gonna be the order of the day for a while at WTO. The
case law looks more like a scorecard of big players trying to resolve
problems that leave each party worse off than anything else; risk
reduction or displacement, again. The 'South's' agenda is pretty much
on the back burner. Seattle was partly about trying to call attention
to the need to halt that enormous economic crime.


> The risk is almost as illusory as the risk the house takes in big
casinoes. There isn't much of a turnover in the personnel who control
the predominate wealth of the globe.

===========
 The risk is as real as the power to displace it. I don't deny for a
second the power to displace risk, but that's an ex post
issue/problem. It does not eradicate ex ante uncertainty and
indeterminacy. Yes, in the absence of omniscience corps would like
omnipotence ex ante and if given the choice they'd prefer the latter.
But in the economic world and in the wider universe, neither can
exist.


>
> I agree with what you said in the post I commented on
>
> "It is tax exemption for corporations
> that is being implemented by the WTO along with risk *displacement*.
A
> massive interference in the market in order to stabilize a few score
> oligopolies. "
>
>
> Shay's rebellion, and what about the Boston Tea Party , the
anarchist , merchantilist ,tax rebellion. No taxation without
representation and all that.

=============
Well, lot's of people would prefer no taxation at all, but that's just
a version of the 'nirvana fallacy'. The corps' just want to lower
their tax bills and their strategic grabbing of the high ground of
international law before anyone else has them in the driver's seat
until that old adage of 'workers of all countries unite' starts to
sound more and more credible to more people. Helping each other to
understand the way tariffs were formed as a problem of nation-state
formation and how the modern version of the power to tax emerged out
of manorialism/feudalism and their systems of predatory rule can make
the story more interesting to people. It's not a coincidence that one
of the first to ruthlessly attack Adam Smith's arguments for
comparative advantage was an American lawyer, Daniel Raymond.

With the exception of it's monopoly on violence, a state's power to
tax does more to constitute the boundary of a country from
international political space than any other activity. Indeed, the two
are inseparable as folks like Tilly, Levi and others have shown. If we
hold to the hot potato theory of risk and taxation, the policy choice
of tariffs makes total sense for 'emerging' or 'weak', or as they're
known in the IR lit., 'quasi-states'; irrespective of the 'efficiency
gains' that would come from a tariff free world.


Ian