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Communist China To Own Canada

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jinu

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You keep bring up irrelevant analogies. Israel's economy was not heavily dependent on trade with the Arabs; China's economy IS heavily dependent on trade with the US.

And you seem unwilling or unable to provide a single example of a government that changed its policies as a result of being embargoed.

Anyway, suspending trade is justifiable purely on the moral gounds that we should not be cooperating with our enemies. (Anybody who points ICBMs at us and makes veiled threats to use them is an enemy.)

I sell goods made in China. I have met the owner of the factory that manufactures them. He is not a communist. He is not pointing missiles at me. He is not my enemy.

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You keep bring up irrelevant analogies. Israel's economy was not heavily dependent on trade with the Arabs; China's economy IS heavily dependent on trade with the US.

And might I add, vice versa. Just last year the US imported about $158 billion of goods from China alone--that's 12.5% of a whopping $1.26 trillion of imports--and it's still growing! Keep in mind that much of these imports are cheap consumers goods whose embargo would affect most adversely the middle to low income households.

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As for the 1 child rule, they don't punish anyone beyond the taxes that are taken from everyone. They just do not provide education money for additional children.

Check your premises.

A couple fined $94,000 for one-child rule lapse in China

The pair were among nine couples who were fined social fostering fees for their extra children...Punishment for having more than one child can include having the power to the offending couple's house or to the houses of relatives being cut off...
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I sell goods made in China.  I have met the owner of the factory that manufactures them. He is not a communist.  He is not pointing missiles at me.  He is not my enemy.

Wow, id expect a better argument from you. The governemnt that is taking tax money from him is COMMUNIST AND IS POINTING MISSLES AT YOU, and hes is indirectly supporting your enemy. It doesnt matter if he wants to be your enemy or not.

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And might I add, vice versa.  Just last year the US imported about $158 billion of goods from China alone--that's 12.5% of a whopping $1.26 trillion of imports--and it's still growing!  Keep in mind that much of these imports are cheap consumers goods whose embargo would affect most adversely the middle to low income households.

Is this board full of pragmatist ot is it just me?

Well, if china launches a nuclear missles at the US or wages a "dirty war"(like it has said it would) against the US it would also affect "middle to low income households".

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Wow, id expect a better argument from you. The governemnt that is taking tax money from him is COMMUNIST AND IS POINTING MISSLES AT YOU, and hes is indirectly supporting your enemy. It doesnt matter if he wants to be your enemy or not.

The government that takes nearly half my income and gives me a burgeoning police state in return is my enemy.

By the way, why do you need the government to do your work for you? Don't like Chinese goods? Don't buy 'em. Don't want your neighbors buying from China? Try persuasion for a change.

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I think it should be a personal decision. I don't want my government telling me who I can and can't buy stuff from, period. Tariffs are a way of doing that and any objectivist will be against those. Now personally I think Chinese made products are garbage and I go out of my way not to buy or sell them. Also I think many companies are foolish to set up factories there. They have nationalized stuff once before UNDER THE SAME GOVERNMENT and therefore are not to be trusted. You will notice that they "opened" up the economy once they ran out of money for state projects. Maybe when they feel they have enough money they will "close" them back and nationalize everything again. Hey stupid Americans, thanks for all the factories! The USSR did this for years. Thats how Stalin got all his factories. US companies built them for him. There are other places to get cheap labor if that is the point. Places that have not nationalized in the past and that don't have world domination on the mind.

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By the way, why do you need the government to do your work for you?  Don't like Chinese goods?  Don't buy 'em.  Don't want your neighbors buying from China?  Try persuasion for a change.

Yeah, i guess the wise thing to do during WWII would be to convince people not to sell or give information to the Nazis. And the right thing to do during th cold war would have been to convince Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to PLEASE stop giving secrets to the soviets.

No, i think its just better to put them in jail for treason for supporting a threat to the lives of americans.

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I've noticed that many Libertarians seem to have no problem dealing with China, despite the fact that its goverment has no respect for individual rights and massively abuses its monopoly on force. This makes sense to me, as they probably see the various CCP factions competing in corruption and interpret this as some sort of "competing governments" utopia. Yet they get very upset if the U.S. government makes one percent as much of an error in government.

Very odd and telling.

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well China has done a good job at declaring it by themselves,if i were the president i would decide that,since nobody else in the goverment has the guts.

Well, the current president has not declared them an enemy or a country that is off limits for trade. In any case, if the federal government can order a U.S. citizen not to trade with China, would it not have the authority to force people in Pakistan, Japan, Australia, Russia and India not to trade with China? And what do you suppose the Chinese leaders would do with their military when that happened? "When goods cannot cross borders, armies will."

Or are you actually suggestion that its impossible for anybody to place any judgement on china and say that they are an enemy of any freedom loving person?

No, in fact I think you should stop trading with China immediately. Right this instant. And get your friends and neighbors to stop too.

Yeah, i guess the wise thing to do during WWII would be to convince people not to sell or give information to the Nazis. And the right thing to do during th cold war would have been to convince Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to  PLEASE stop giving secrets to the soviets.

No, i think its just better to put them in jail for treason for supporting a threat to the lives of americans.

U.S. policy in World War II was to give funds coerced from taxpayers to "good" mass murderers so that they could fight the bad mass murderers.

If you think that free trade is the equivalent of giving away the plans of secret weappons, then you are obviously confused about the subject.

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I've noticed that many Libertarians seem to have no problem dealing with China, despite the fact that its goverment has no respect for individual rights and massively abuses its monopoly on force. This makes sense to me, as they probably see the various CCP factions competing in corruption and interpret this as some sort of "competing governments" utopia. Yet they get very upset if the U.S. government makes one percent as much of an error in government.

Very odd and telling.

I've noticed that some conservatives and Objectivists spend more time worrying about what foreign governmentd are doing to their subjects than what the U.S. government is doing to us. I guess altruism is a difficult habit to put aside.

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I've noticed that some conservatives and Objectivists spend more time worrying about what foreign governmentd are doing to their subjects than what the U.S. government is doing to us.  I guess altruism is a difficult habit to put aside.

Well,i can say the same thing, you dont seem to care what foreign governments can do to american citizens.

Well, the current president has not declared them an enemy or a country that is off limits for trade. In any case, if the federal government can order a U.S. citizen not to trade with China, would it not have the authority to force people in Pakistan, Japan, Australia, Russia and India not to trade with China? And what do you suppose the Chinese leaders would do with their military when that happened? "When goods cannot cross borders, armies will."
Actually no president has declared them an enemy state because none of them have the guts, for godsake they havent even treated Iran as an enemy in the war on terror, they dont have the guts to do anything really.

If japan or australia think its in their interests to trade with china then thasts their mistake.

And like I said, ask Taiwan what they think about "When goods cannot cross borders, armies will.", i think china wants to cross borders nomatter what. And another thing, armies dont have to cross borders for a "dirty war".

No, in fact I think you should stop trading with China immediately. Right this instant. And get your friends and neighbors to stop too.

WOO, you almost sound like a dictator, thanks for the orders, Im telling YOU...NEIGHBOR.

If you think that free trade is the equivalent of giving away the plans of secret weappons, then you are obviously confused about the subject.

what do you mean, whats the fundamental difference between voluntarily giving info and goods and services to an enemy?

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The government that takes nearly half my income and gives me a burgeoning police state in return is my enemy.

If the government is "by the people and for the people", and you're one of the people, then calling this government the enemy makes you your own enemy, not to mention the rest of the people. The point being, a political solution to this government going wrong can only come after there is a change in the culture.

By the way, why do you need the government to do your work for you?  Don't like Chinese goods?  Don't buy 'em.  Don't want your neighbors buying from China?  Try persuasion for a change.

Products produced by slave labor have an unfair - illegal, actually - price advantage over products produced in freedom. These products are being fraudulently offered as "legitimate", and government officials are looking the other way and failing to stop this fraud. Protecting us from fraud is the "government's work".

If it were possible to organize a widespread boycott of Chinese goods, it would also be possible to get the people to demand that the government enforce the anti-slavery laws.

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I figured I'd answer some of Charlottes question that went unanswered.

Cuba - Castro and the Communist stole billions of $$ of private property from US citizens ( and their own ). The trade embargo isn't necessarily to make them lose power but trading with them would legitimize the theft. Its like you buying your car back from someone who stole it from you. Also the Soviets supported Cuba buy buying all of the Sugar from them. They maintain a very poor standard of living ( 1/3 of Peurto Rico if I remember correctly ). Since the Soviets can't buy sugar anymore Castro has tried to create a Tourism/Prostitution industry to compensate. That and the influx of US $$ from family in the USA keeps the Cuban economy going. The Cuban gov't has also tried to sell stolen assets to the Europeans to raise money much to the dismay of the proper US owners of said property.

Soviet Union - US companies payed for their industrialization and Stalin used his free labor to build a huge army that almost took over Europe. We built his tank factories, gave him airplane technology and nukes and then the Soviets became the biggest threat to the world for over 50 years. They finally imploded on themselves but not after the US economy was dragged into Keynsianism to fight back. A free market ecomomy could not keep up with the Soviets in Military spending I don't think. Especially since US companies unwisely gave them a huge advantage with free factories and technology. So you can say that by trading with Communist Russia and doing exactly what US companies are doing now in China they created the MORE statist gov't in the USA to combat the threat they helped create. We can hope all day that China will see the brilliance of Free Market economies but their actions against Taiwan and that plane incident should clue you in on what they are really thinking.

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If the government is "by the people and for the people", and you're one of the people, then calling this government the enemy makes you your own enemy, not to mention the rest of the people. The point being, a political solution to this government going wrong can only come after there is a change in the culture.

Nope. The government is a creature of the majority, not of all the people. If the majority wants to enact laws that force the productive few to finance the livelihood of the less productive many, they may do so at the drop of a gavel. We can hardly blame the looted rich for the immorality of vote-buying politicians and their clients. Hitler came to power by popular vote. Do we say then the Jews themselves are responsible for the gas chambers and the ovens? This recalls what Ayn Rand said in Atlas Shrugged: “It was like blaming the victim of a hold-up for corrupting the integrity of a thug.”

Products produced by slave labor have an unfair - illegal, actually - price advantage over products produced in freedom.  These products are being fraudulently offered as "legitimate", and government officials are looking the other way and failing to stop this fraud. Protecting us from fraud is the "government's work".

There is no denying that China is run by a criminal gang which practices human rights violations on a massive scale. It is also true the non-state sector has grown significantly since the late seventies and now accounts for nearly three-fourths of industrial output. Based on the comparative histories of Cuba and Eastern Europe, it is easy to see that free trade works better than protectionism and isolation in weakening communist regimes.

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I figured I'd answer some of Charlottes question that went unanswered.

Cuba - Castro and the Communist stole billions of $$ of private property from US citizens ( and their own ). The trade embargo isn't necessarily to make them lose power but trading with them would legitimize the theft. Its like you buying your car back from someone who stole it from you. Also the Soviets supported Cuba buy buying all of the Sugar from them. They maintain a very poor standard of living ( 1/3 of Peurto Rico if I remember correctly ). Since the Soviets can't buy sugar anymore Castro has tried to create a Tourism/Prostitution industry to compensate. That and the influx of US $$ from family in the USA keeps the Cuban economy going. The Cuban gov't has also tried to sell stolen assets to the Europeans to raise money much to the dismay of the proper US owners of said property.

Look, I think that U.S. aid to Stalin in the 1940s was one of the most villainous acts ever taken by our government. And I'm all for restoring wealth to those who were looted by Castro. The problem is that there is no historical argument for using trade barriers to undermine dictators. They just don’t work. In fact, the 40-year embargo has actually helped Castro keep his grip on the Cuban people. Now if it is your position that the U.S. and other free nations should place trade barriers on communist countries, then there would have been no trade with Poland during the Cold War. Yet it was the lowering of trade barriers beginning in the late 196os that gave the Polish people a taste of the West and fueled popular opposition to the communist regime. The countries that have been most isolated by the U.S. are precisely the ones where dictators have managed to retain their power. If trading with a country legitimizes its theft, then we shouldn’t trade with Canada, Britain, Japan or dozens of other countries. After all, they each practice a form of theft called the income tax.

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Nope.  The government is a creature of the majority, not of all the people.

Nope. This is only true of a "democracy", and even then, only indirectly. It's the intellectually active leaders who ultimately create governments, by supporting and dissemating the ideas that are considered "acceptable" - most notibly the ideas about what's acceptable: ethics.

And it's philosophers (philosophers in fact, not necessarily in name) who lead the intellectuals.

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Nope. This is only true of a "democracy", and even then, only indirectly.

So if a majority in the U.S. want the government to, say, limit the sale of certain weapons, or provide guaranteed health care, or break up "monopolies," or provide “free” housing, what's to stop them?

It's the intellectually active leaders who ultimately create governments, by supporting and dissemating the ideas that are considered "acceptable" - most notibly the ideas about what's acceptable: ethics.

And it's philosophers (philosophers in fact, not necessarily in name) who lead the intellectuals.

I don't disagree with this, only with your earlier statement that “If the government is ‘by the people and for the people’, and you're one of the people, then calling this government the enemy makes you your own enemy, not to mention the rest of the people.” This notion makes the victims of an oppressive government morally responsible for the aggressions of the government against them. Sorry, but the government does not rule on my behalf any more than a rapist operates on my behalf.

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One could argue that the Baltic Republics and Poland had a history of freedom going back far enough to help them recover and resist Communism. The Polish were considered the most free people in Europe right up until the Russians and Austro-Hungarians divided them up between themselves. So that example is not so good for me.

Cuba and China have no history of freedom to fall back upon. Cuba was a Spanish colony who were known to be the most Autocratic colonizers of the Americas. It isn't coincidence that none of the original Spanish colonies in the Americas are worth a damn today. They were only an American protectorate for 50 years, and this was partially during the Imperialist era of the late 19th / early 20th century too. So not much time to instill proper republican priciples in the populace.

China is even worse, they had an imperial dictatorship of one kind or the other for thousands of years. They went from that straight to Dictatorship and then to Communism. Thinking that these countries will suddenly embrace Capitalist principles by funding their current way of doing things is poor judgement. I think the best we will see is a Fascist Totalitarian type dictatorship instead of Communist Totalitarian dictatorship. They know nothing else. Trading with thieves encourages thievery. If they want to change their ways then fine but I see no evidence of that happening yet.

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One could argue that the Baltic Republics and Poland had a history of freedom going back far enough to help them recover and resist Communism. The Polish were considered the most free people in Europe right up until the Russians and Austro-Hungarians divided them up between themselves. So that example is not so good for me

.

History is not always destiny. Romania has historically been dominated by the Ottomans, the Czarist Russians, the Germans and the Stalinist Russians. Nicolae Ceausescu was one of the worst tyrants in post-war Europe. When Ceausescu was deposed and executed in 1989, the country was a basket-case. Yet today Romania is making enormous economic strides, has swept former communists out of government and is rapidly moving toward privatization.

Cuba and China have no history of freedom to fall back upon. Cuba was a Spanish colony who were known to be the most Autocratic colonizers of the Americas. It isn't coincidence that none of the original Spanish colonies in the Americas are worth a damn today. They were only an American protectorate for 50 years, and this was partially during the Imperialist era of the late 19th  / early 20th century too. So not much time to instill proper republican priciples in the populace.

So tell us exactly what have trade restrictions done toward instilling “proper republican principles in the populace”?

China is even worse, they had an imperial dictatorship of one kind or the other for thousands of years. They went from that straight to Dictatorship and then to Communism. Thinking that these countries will suddenly embrace Capitalist principles by funding their current way of doing things is poor judgement.

I guess that given their thousand-year cultural/historical background, there’s little chance of capitalism gaining a foothold in Taiwan or Hong Kong or the predominantly Chinese Singapore!

I think the best we will see is a Fascist Totalitarian type dictatorship instead of Communist Totalitarian dictatorship. They know nothing else. Trading with thieves encourages thievery. If they want to change their ways then fine but I see no evidence of that happening yet.

Do we embargo the Fascist Totalitarian types or just the Communist Totalitarian types?

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"So tell us exactly what have trade restrictions done toward instilling “proper republican principles in the populace”?"

Thats not the point. The point is not to arm your enemy willingly. Not to trade with known murderers and thieves. You don't try to convert your sworn enemy after they steal all of your stuff. You defend yourself, you seem to be missing that entirely. <_<

Hong Kong was basically English until very recently but you know that. You just seem to continually ignore facts and context to make your point.

If you'll read one of my earlier posts I'm for the individual deciding who to trade with. Hopefully individuals will make the choice to not trade with people who want to kill them. In your case thats not happening though, obviously. :dough:

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