Posted: Sep 23, 2010 10:27 pm
chairman bill wrote:My preference is for Fair Trade. There is no such thing as a free market, and no free trade.
The problem with the common understanding of free trade is disparity between difference sources of labour. Ie, labour in a country with a minimum wage is more expensive than that in a country with none. The answer isn't, as some libertarians say, to abolished minimum wages and let the market set its own rate, but to set tariffs and other protectionist measures up against countries with an unfair advantage, To allow countries with no worker protection to compete on equal terms is de facto unfree trade.
I admit that capitalism is the best economic system yet devised, but I don't go in for market worship. That way lies the Victorian industrialists & MPs who argued that the most rudimentary worker protection was a dastardly infringement on free trade.