Tags for this video have been changed from 'The Daily Show, Tax, Fox, MSBNC, NEWS, exxon' to 'The Daily Show, Tax, Fox, MSBNC, NEWS, exxon, thats tariffic' - edited by calvados

We need to rethink our economy. The population is getting bigger, while at the same time employment is being lost to automation, 3rd world labor exploitation and corporate consolidation. It seems to me that this is a problem that can't be solved by a booming economy alone.

I'm not sure what could be done to halt this process, perhaps huge tariffs on corporations that use non-American labor, or limits on the size and power of corporations. I don't know. I'd love to hear ideas on this.

>> ^Psychologic:

I can see why the Tea Partiers dislike Paul... his speeches must confuse the hell out of them.
Free Market = Good
Corporations = Bad
Corporations -> part of the Free Market
More Regulation = Larger Government
Less Regulation = Stronger Corporations?
Medicare/Social Security = Bad?
It's much simpler to think that corporations are the victims of big government and that the budget can be cut significantly without touching entitlement programs.


You and several people in this thread seem terribly confused about his viewpoint, so maybe a libertarian like myself can help you. The "free market" is a term tossed around a lot. What we mean is essentially mutually agreeable trade between producers and the right to make contracts. We believe in courts to adjudicate disputes, penalize and deter fraud, enforce (not interpret) the constitution, etc.

The key oversight for most Dems I talk to is that they want to police/regulate effects rather than eliminate the policy that is producing those effects. I despise "goosing" laws that attempt to reward/induce one legal behavior over another legal behavior, indiscriminately, across an entire populace. I also despise laws that offload one party's risk onto another. Most of the time, I think they're created by well-meaning people who think goosing the populace is their job only to have their goosing backfire. Even if they recognize it was their fault after the fact, a politician will always say the problem is not what they did, but what they didn't also do.

The best analogy I can think of is some cops throwing a bunch of candy on the street, then using the subsequent accidents to justify full-time crossing guards at every intersection. Those are unproductive jobs which can only exist at the expense of private ones. A libertarian sees that the ROOT problem is the policy of throwing the candy in the street, not the accidents it begets. Without a central bank price fixing interest rates well below where the market would have had them, the true risk of borrowing would have been realized, and demand which fueled creative lending wouldn't have existed. Banks naturally do not want to loan money unless they believe they are going to be paid pack, but the GSEs called Fannie May and Freddie Mac were buying and standing behind subprime loans on a massive scale from the commercial banks originating them. The whole concept behind those GSEs is based on the socialist policy that home ownership is more American than renting. That needing a downpayment and good credit before an institution will lend is discriminatory to poorer people. Which is just ridiculous, because that's prudent lending.

And what do they do after the whole thing? Another goosing. Bailing out the failed banks with money from everyone, including their small competitors who were looking to replace them. When you penalize good behavior and reward bad behavior, you create a self-fulfilling loop. I see people who voted for the heavily lobbied, popular, liar candidates and they are POed at CEOs of TARP recipients giving themselves huge golden parachutes. What did they think was going to happen when you gave these idiots MORE money? They are compounding the mistake, over and over and over again.

If you understand Paul's perspective, then you believe that most of our problems, our debt, our military empire, our recurring speculative bubbles, is not from a lack of government intervention, but too much of it in key places. No domestic currency is allowed to compete with the dollar, interest rates aren't set by the market, banks get blanket federal insurance on deposits so they don't have to compete on safety of those deposits. We have subsidies, a concept that presumes a politician spending someone else's production is more effective than the producer himself. We have different tariffs for different industries. It's not that companies are innately bad, it's that we have failed to create a constitution that could not be subverted by rogue judges. You can't be influenced into exercising a power you don't have. Once a judge interprets something to say "yeah, you can do that so as long as you say it's for the general welfare," then the government becomes a conduit for corporate welfare that it wasn't beforehand. People don't understand how powerful the government is. They literally have the power to take money from you by force. It's a necessary evil that they have that ability. That is why it is so god damned important to define and restrict its functions so that groups or businesses don't use it as a conduit to gain an unfair advantage, tapping into involuntary appropriations in what is supposed to be a free/voluntary marketplace.

Choggie's Christmas Wish-list:

http://www.choggie.org/
http://www.choggie.com/
http://www.choggie.gov/

Closest evolutionary relative *also known as a cunner-

Also rumored to have been an un-inlisted (General Studies paper does not qualify for UCAS Tariff points) British/French Legionnaire

and then there's THIS Urban Legend (see definition #4) in his own mind piece of internet knuckle-dragging trash, too fucking cowardly and douche-like to come back for another helping of "Shut the fuck up", who left this little tribute to his/her own pathetic and petty attempt at poking a prehistoric monolith. The truly pathetic factoid about this last one is that it was most assuredly some, how you saaaay.... asshat douchebag-left-in-an-orifice, Clondike bar from inside one's trousers?
Yeah, that's the cunt who wins an no-expense spared, vacation for one to "Back The Fuck At Ya!", chintz!

Choggies' anything if not your average asshole.

Again, you move the target as soon as I hit it. You asked for examples of consumers bringing down corporations by wallet voting; I gave you 11. You said it wasn't possible ("a ridiculous notion") and this is 11 ways in which you are wrong. "Corporate abuse" had nothing to do with the stated question so I don't see how you can use it to disregard my point. Nowhere did I claim that these companies were put out of business because they were abusive, though I believe that was a major factor in the fall of DIVX.

The point was only that the customers have the power because the customers have the dollars. I said right up front that consumers rarely ever do organize against corporations because they're lazy and complacent. They should strongarm abusive companies because, in most cases, once there's a critical mass, the company has no choice but to bend to their will or go out of business. Unless, of course, they've bought enough power from the government to get a handout.

GM can't compete in their market because nobody wants their shit products. The government imposes tariffs on imports to help American car companies compete and they still can't. Now, having completely failed as a company, the government hands them millions of dollars of our money. The people, through their actions, have stated that they want GM to go away and the government has not only intervened to prevent what the people want from happening, but they've done it at our expense. Tell me again how government is people power.

What you say about Walmart is dead on. A lot of people do care about Walmart's practices and effect on the surrounding area, but most of them don't care enough to spend more money. Walmart's business plan will eventually catch up to them, though, because you can't stay in business by bankrupting all your customers and employees. It may take 50 years, but at some point they'll have to clean up or dry up.

What I was trying to say about local power concentration was that corporations would need to buy their power from a lot more people. As it is now, they just need to fund the campaign of a few large politicians to get favor. It would be a lot more complicated if the power was distributed. Yes, they could buy any one local politician for a lot less than they can buy the president, but they would need to do it to hundreds of them to acquire the same power.

I see the susceptibility in the reverse of what you do. Why would a corporation want to control a small town, in general? I doubt they'd even bother targeting them. Major cities are the only places where it would be worth trying. That's a weakness in what I'm proposing, I admit.

I've only come to have any interest in politics in the last few years. I'm not sure that's even an accurate statement, because I hate politics. I do want to make a difference in my area but I'm not entirely sure what I can do. Running for office is not for me. I've worked with a lot of the local politicians as I used to be a LAN tech at the local government center. Some of them are nice to talk to, a couple even seem to be decent people, but none of them are doing anything good for the area. The experience I have with the legislators, the district attorney's office, local judges and so on, leaves me all but convinced that government is not the way to bring positive change to my community.

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday

>> ^Psychologic:
Would slander laws be included under government censorship of free speech?
Would laws prohibiting intercourse in public places be considered a law regarding sex between consenting adults?


Yes. Though, I think it was aimed more towards gay marriage, hard to say. It also doesn't really draw a difference between levels of government. I scored 100% assuming it was all federal.

Also, your ideals there seem a bit distant from history Jigga

^1. Why weren't any dot-coms bailed out back in the day? Because they didn't have powerful lobbies. Corporate welfare encourages corporate interference in government, as some have called it, a corpocracy. Where the rich write the laws for their benefit at the cost of every other competing business. It also encourages coercion and collusion in government against the good of the people. Why do Americans pay twice as much as the rest of the world for sugar? Because sugar lobbies have successfully "protected" themselves from compeating in the world market, at the tune of 6 billion a year. There is no logical limit to bailing out one company vs another either. It is completely arbitrary. To contine with the original idea of the dot-coms, we are doing fine again even without the bail out that didn't happen. You don't need free money to make things work, in fact, it was the easy free money that make the dot-com bubble in the first place...easy money is bad money usually.

^2. You don't seem to understand exchange rates or trends in labor vs cost when it comes to trade. Either that, or you are purposefully being inflammatory, I can't figure out which. When money goes out of a country and into another, that foreign money becomes more valuable over time. In due course it becomes more costly to buy overseas goods than domestic goods, jobs that fled overseas come back. In my industry, we are seeing that happen right now; all the phone desk jobs went overseas, now jobs are coming back in droves because of the weak dollar. Some would say that because places like japan subsidies things like cars, then we should tariff them so our cars can compete. But, if the government of japan wants to buy every American part of a car, then over time the dollar will become stronger and it will not be cost effective for them to do so for long. Things shift in this model, from country to country until things more of less reach an equilibrium. Protectionism encourages those gaps that you would seek to rectify. Your heart is in the right place my friend, we just need to move your head there as well.

^3. I don't think you understand the circumstances of SS. You are trying to spin it like Bush did the war. First it was about one thing, now another. It was about weapons, now it is about freeing Iraq and terrorism. SS was about the great depression. You had peoples savings wiped out in what was arguably a government caused financial catastrophe (a failure of the fabled fed, lender of last resort who didn't lend as a last resort...oops). Once the mistake had been made, and the bank system collapsed, large portions of savings of American's were wiped out instantly. SS was created to solve this problem. So it is not that people can't and didn't save, but they did and now it is gone. If you want to spin SS, then realize that is what you are doing. But the great depression is over, and so should SS.

^4. Are you saying you don't think organizations like the red cross exist? Are you saying that you can't have a charity that isn't faith based? If that is so, then you are free to make one, like right now...this very instant. It isn't very hard now with the web, you just need gumption to go and do it...and that is the American way (Gumption I mean, not the internet...although...)!

^5. This isn't really an argument. I might as well say not cutting the budget is naive. An argument needs a real predicate, this is just an attack. You would have to show why it is naive. I could talk about why it is good, but that would be giving this non-argument more credit than it is worth.

>> ^L0cky:
I'm curious to know how you would pay for public services without income tax. Has Ron Paul previously given an answer to this?


Yes. Excise tax, user fees and tariffs.

>> ^NetRunner:
What is government doing to keep the concept of corporations in existence that private citizens wouldn't be able to do through contract?

>> ^blankfist:
Corporate power depends greatly on the intervention of government - how often do you see private business (read: small business) receive subsidies and bailouts? Ever heard of Corporate welfare? Yes? Ever heard of private business or free market welfare? No? Hmm.
How about protectionist tariffs? Heard of those? Grants of monopoly privilege? Seizing of private property for corporate use via eminent domain (as in Kelo v. New London)? Shall I go on or can we stop there?

Progressives don't like it when big business get our tax dollars. Usually we argue for things like small business subsidies, regular welfare (ya know, for poor people), anti-trust legislation and enforcement, etc.

We also don't like corporate tax loopholes, capital gains tax cuts, or attempts to eliminate or reduce estate taxes, or the porcine industry-specific tax cut.

We don't like when people are putting their hands in the cookie jar who shouldn't be, we just don't think getting rid of the jar will help fix the problem.

Me: To mildly rephrase dft's question, how does libertarianism defend against private power and influence taking advantage of people's lack of information or knowledge to their own detriment?
blankfist: Hardly "mildly" rephrased. Corporations and private are hugely different. That aside, your point is very valid. Let me ask you this? What has stopped this from happening now? Government is the power in that scenario, and they steal our money and use it to fund war and pay out no bid contracts to very powerful corporations. Your petty watchdog programs aren't working. Government is the power and influence.

I fail to see how detaching power and influence from the constraint of law, or the accountability of a ballot box improves anything.

If you have a suggestion on how to make sure that the people our Constitution and our democracy empower to make decisions regarding when to go to war will always use it wisely, I'm all ears.

And government certainly takes advantage of those who are less educated. Have you read any of the tax codes? Hey, ever heard this one: "Ignorance of the law is no excuse!" Would you dare agree with me that it's impossible to know all the laws, so therefore it's inevitable for you to be ignorant of them? Your government is "taking advantage of people's lack of information of knowledge" and doing so with our money.
Any questions?

Yes, are you nuts?

The tax code is too complex, but the real issue with it is not the complexity, it's the fact that most of that complexity is designed to benefit people with multiple homes, businesses, yachts, and complex investment portfolios.

The free market provides me with tax preparation services, though most of them tell me "you don't own enough for us to do much for you" (though they say it very differently).

Ignorance of the law is no excuse, but when's the last time you faced a legal penalty for anything bigger than a traffic violation? For that matter, have you ever gotten a traffic violation for something you didn't know was illegal?

To turn that around, do you understand your credit card agreement? Your cellphone contract? Have you ever received a bill that included a fee you were charged for doing something you didn't realize they could charge a fee for? Should they be able to sell the information you provided them without your consent?

Why isn't the free market stopping that stuff from happening already?

>> ^NetRunner:
What is government doing to keep the concept of corporations in existence that private citizens wouldn't be able to do through contract?

Corporate power depends greatly on the intervention of government - how often do you see private business (read: small business) receive subsidies and bailouts? Ever heard of Corporate welfare? Yes? Ever heard of private business or free market welfare? No? Hmm.

How about protectionist tariffs? Heard of those? Grants of monopoly privilege? Seizing of private property for corporate use via eminent domain (as in Kelo v. New London)? Shall I go on or can we stop there?



To mildly rephrase dft's question, how does libertarianism defend against private power and influence taking advantage of people's lack of information or knowledge to their own detriment?

Hardly "mildly" rephrased. Corporations and private are hugely different. That aside, your point is very valid. Let me ask you this? What has stopped this from happening now? Government is the power in that scenario, and they steal our money and use it to fund war and pay out no bid contracts to very powerful corporations. Your petty watchdog programs aren't working. Government is the power and influence.

And government certainly takes advantage of those who are less educated. Have you read any of the tax codes? Hey, ever heard this one: "Ignorance of the law is no excuse!" Would you dare agree with me that it's impossible to know all the laws, so therefore it's inevitable for you to be ignorant of them? Your government is "taking advantage of people's lack of information of knowledge" and doing so with our money.

Any questions?

We've been over this before. Taxes are not theft when they're voluntary, but involuntary taxes are taken by force and are thus are theft. Income tax is theft. Entry fee for National Parks is not theft.

You made a common sense remark here: "To consume these goods and services without paying for them is itself theft" - That is fair and correct. But, all taxes to pay for those goods and services should be voluntary and in the form of user fees, excise tax and tariffs. For instance, our income tax isn't supposed to pay for roads and highways. Instead we have a user fee in the form of a gasoline tax, and the more you drive, the more you use the roads, therefore the more you pay. It's a system that just makes sense.

In the States, we pay a lot of Federal income tax - a lot. We also pay state income tax, but it's not even close. It's funny because the individual states we live in take a much, much smaller amount of income tax, but they are the places we live. I mean, yes, we live in the nation, but truly you live in the state itself. That's where you spend most of your years, and you use most of the government's "goods and services", right? Why is it that we must pay an uneven amount larger to our Federal government?

Because, the Federal government takes the largest slice so it can spend 56% of it maintaining military hegemony. That's not right.

That's not really my argument against income tax, but it is something most people don't think about. They just see the extremely large and unbalanced Federal income tax as something that is necessary.


In reply to this comment by qualm:
Myth: Taxes are theft.

Fact: Taxes are payments for the public goods and services you consume.

Taxes are part of an agreement that voters make with government, a contract in which citizens agree to exchange their money for the government's goods and services. To consume these goods and services without paying for them is itself theft, and is rightly punished as breach of contract. Some may object that they have not agreed to the contract, but if so, then they must not consume the government's goods and services. Furthermore, contract by majority rule is better than by minority rule, one-person rule or anarchy (which results in kill-or-be-killed). Opponents of taxation under democracy are therefore challenged to find an improvement on democracy.

Okay. First, I'll point out that you still don't have any sources that repeat your own claim that the Democratic-Republican party simply disappeared into thin air, and that there was a clear and clean break between that party and the Democratic Party.

Second, you either didn't understand my explanation of why the Republican party would be different, or well, I guess there is no other real explanation, because you laid out a straw man instead of responding to what I actually said.

Third, your fixation with the logo is unhealthy. Seriously, if we change the logo now to a Fox to mock Fox News, does that mean Bill O'Reilly founded the Democratic party? I'm not being entirely facetious -- if the Democratic-Republican party didn't have a logo before, but during the Jackson presidency they adopted it to spite the people calling him Jackass, does that make him the founder of the Democratic-Republican party? I think it makes him a Jackass, but that's not what we're talking about.

But really, this all comes down to #1. You said the answers.com page was accurate. Here's some of what you deemed accurate:

Encyclopedia Britannica:

In the 1790s a group of Thomas Jefferson's supporters called themselves "Democratic Republicans" or "Jeffersonian Republicans" to demonstrate their belief in the principle of popular government and their opposition to monarchism. The party adopted its present name in the 1830s, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson.

So, one party, that changed its name.

US History Encylcopedia:

By the end of Madison's presidency and throughout Monroe's two terms, known as the "Era of Good Feeling," the Democratic Republican Party largely abandoned its minimalism and supported tariff, banking, and improvements policies originally supported by its Federalist opponents.

After the retirement of James Monroe, the newly renamed "Democratic" Party came to rally around the candidacy of Andrew Jackson. Jackson steered the party back toward its minimalist origins.

The Law Encyclopedia entry starts with:

The modern Democratic party is the descendant of the Democratic-Republican party, an early-nineteenth-century political organization led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Also known as the Jeffersonians, the Democratic-Republican party began as an antifederalist group, opposed to strong, centralized government. The party was officially established at a national nominating convention in 1832. It dropped the Republican portion of its name in 1840.

They don't all agree about the exact timing of the change, but they say it was a change in name, not a newly founded party.

In the course of searching again today, I found a couple original-source documents:

Thomas Jefferson Randolph (Thomas Jefferson's grandson) said at the 1872 Democratic convention that he'd spent 80 years of his life in the Democratic-Republican party (source), and Inquiry Into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States By Martin Van Buren, where he discusses the topic at excruciating length, but frequently talks about the roots of the Democratic party beginning with Jefferson.

Look, you're just wrong. You can disagree with the history as it's written, but that makes you, not me, the revisionist.

It's okay. I don't blame you for being mad. You don't like the thought that Thomas Jefferson and William Jefferson Clinton were both from the same party. Here's a thought, maybe we should change the logo to a brunette sucking cock, to commemorate the founding of Limbaugh's Clinton's Democrat (as opposed to Democratic) party. The logo change, that's really all it takes to found a new party.

Someone call Hillary and let her know she won the nomination at the Democrat National Convention, where only Michigan and Florida count. Best not show her the new logo though.

Imstellar,

As always you misinterpret data to fit your perceptions.

Real GDP growth has doubled from 1970 to 1990 check BEA, national debt has only increased larger then a fraction of total GDP from 1980 to 1990, with massive debt growth from 1990 to 2000. These levels however are still below levels of World War 2.

Your example really however applies when it comes to the recent so called growth from 1997 to 2007, as real wage increases were nonexistent, so was real stock market growth on the S&P 500. So instead of the economy expanding the US economy has been fueling growth with borrowing. At the same time credit card debt started overtake real wages, with massive increases from 2003Q1.
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/archives/2009/02/the_failure_of_1.html

Your idea that private enterprise can solve these issues is again wrong, given that the Progressive movement brought government intervention to sustain fair markets and competition which lead to break ups of monopolies. Bringing forth agencies like the FDA, FTC and the Interstate Commerce Commission. The Federal Reserve was created to control tariffs and antitrust cases. All these agencies came about in the 1900s and were responses to citizen requests after laissez-faire economics in the 1800s, they also paved the way for the roaring 20s. Before you start complaining about the the government extending the great depression a recent study showed that only 20% of professional economists hold that view, and even then they claim that they Fed should have been the one to instigate change by reducing interest rates and allow credit back in the economy but this is in hindsight with development of Monetary policy in the 50s and 60s.

Furthermore, I never advocated for socialism in the US because it is not going to happen, what I said was socialistic policies, the capitalistic component is not being removed from the US unlike what you seem to believe. Its called a Mixed economy for a reason. There is no pure capitalistic or socialistic economy in the world bar Cuba and some failed states, the closest capitalistic state in the world is actually Singapore.

You keep saying '2%' unemployment.

The unemployment problem is far more severe, but you are underestimating its very nature, the stimulus package was created to save or create 3.5 million jobs, the unemployment figures currently place it at 4.4 million (half of this in the last 4 months) since the start of the recession.

With levels spiking to 8.1 as I mentioned earlier in single month, the highest level since 1983. This strikes at consumer confidence, and further reduces consumption and aggregate demand, not to mention that it means that more foreclosures are coming. Consumption is already taking a hit as confidence plummets and expenditure is being relegated to essentials (however I think the electronics sector will still thrive, especially the video games market, it has been shown to be fairly recession proof unless EA goes crazy and starts to buy up other companies).

Not only are layoffs large but there is increasing firms that are simply coming out of entire market sectors. The Labor department has stated that Unemployment benefits will not recover lost jobs but more must be spent on actual job retraining to realign the US economy with trend factors over the last 10 years, 4.5 billion is in the stimulus package for job retraining. That is still too low as in current dollars $20 billion a year went to job training in 1979, compared with only $6 billion last year.

This recession will fundamentally rebuild the economy, even with unemployment benefits and a sudden resurgence in consumer confidence there is not enough credit available to allow a short term return to employment. Which again necessitates the large fiscal policies we are seeing enacted.

Education will also play a vital role in this, am an advocate of centralized educational standards. I disagree with educational avenues in the US, which usually require graduates to graduate with massive debt which they repay for several years afterward. Not to mention that systems like the SAT and No Child Left behind have only created a system where children learn more about test taking then actual acquisition of knowledge. But this is another debate entirely which I don't really feel like expanding on right now.

Finally. Again to reiterate what I said about the 'let them fail' ideas with regards to the banking system. The Treasury still has not made up its mind how it will cover the toxic debt, the Fed let Lehman Brothers fail and see what happened, the entire finical sector melted down and dragged several other big firms with it. There is talk of letting Citigroup fail, that is a huge bank, and the actual cross exposure is not clearly relevant if its allowed to fail. It could drag the rest of the financial sector with it. However there is clear rallying right now as Citigroup posted a profit, with markets perking up.

I'm not an anarcho-capitalist. They do not believe in government at all. That's insane.

By the way there are many different factions of Libertarianism, but it's always the more fringe versions like Neolibertarianism, Anarcho-Capitalist and Objectivist that people bring up to make it sound like we're all a bunch of self-centered, pro-Corporate, anti-poor anarchist assholes.

Personally, I'm of the camp that believes in open trade, low elective taxes (user fees, excise taxes, tariffs), a government that protects rights set forth in the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, and a government that does not pass laws to restrict liberty and oppress people. I'm going to start my own faction: The Jeffersonian Libertarian.

^This is not true, NetRunner. If you cut income tax today, the government would have the same revenue it had about ten years ago. We do have other forms of taxation other than income tax, such as tariff, excise taxes, user fees, highway fees.

The real problem is spending. The government needs to spend less. You can argue that we need all these services and projects (e.g., education, law enforcement, roads, military, etc.), but at some point a line has to be drawn on spending for those services and projects. Just because you say we need them shouldn't give the federal government an open and endless check to spend on them, right? We're in a recession and Obama is committing to almost 9 trillion in spending.

[edit] Also, I think it's important to note that Bush, the "conservative Republican", did more than any other president before him to increase the size of government and government spending. I fear Obama will do even more.

In reply to this comment by Farhad2000:
Do you think that eventually a manufacturing base in the US is sustainable in the long run?

I think manufacturing in the U.S. will continue to shrink as a % of GDP, but reach an asymptote at some point. All the R&D creates new things to build, much of which requires technical expertise to do so. Also, for smaller businesses, local production makes sense because they can't justify enough inventory to make the benefit of cheaper labor outweigh the shipping costs. And then there's on-demand production. It's only in its infancy right now, but I think it's going to be big.

I agree that yes you have a significant population in the agricultural business, I just simply disagree with subsidization of this industry by the government.

Totally agree. Agricultural subsidies suck. They actually hurt U.S. farmers too. All this push for corn-based ethanol has screwed cattle ranchers, for instance. It's a mess. It's also one of the most difficult things politically to get rid of. But a lot of third world nations provide subsidies too (often in response to U.S. policy) either directly or in the form of price controls, tariffs, etc. It's a vicious cycle, and the only way it ends is if the developed world (U.S. and EU) takes the lead and starts removing them.

Of course you're right that true and fair globalization (as opposed to exploitation) is the best solution. How much luck have you had convincing your neighbors? I haven't had much.

Almost none. Its a hard topic to explain because it requires a very wide macroeconomic viewpoint instead of a localized view. I mean would say 90% of the people I knew in University on one hand wanted development in the third world but were against the implications that developing the third world would mean a short term loss of certain industries locally. But its going to happen eventually. We can't all be growing bananas.

Yep - everyone is all for economic development, until it means they might have to retrain for a different job. That's human nature. Few people are willing to sacrifice their own comfort (and in some cases a lot more than that) for better times down the road.