Sorry have to say free market of any sort creates corruption. Kaw is actually a perfect example of that. Everyone trying to one up the next person. It's human nature and why communism fails. A great ideology economically. Add humans to that and it's a failed idea. And in today's society corruption will always show up at every level. Competitive prices just make it far more likely.
There's unique ways that we can reduce birth rates. I'm not talking specifically of 1-child policies. The number 1 way to do this is to educate as many women as we can. In the most highly educated countries, birth rates are low. Therefore, if we educate all women (men too) in the world as much as we can, then birth rates should plummet so that the net population of the world decreases. The number 2 way to do this would be to give free condoms and birth control and other forms of birth control to as many people as we can. If China and India were to enact these simple birth control policies, we could see their birth rates fall WITHOUT democratic freedoms being eliminated (such as China's old 1-child policy). This in turn will lower family poverty rates and improve education levels as education will become more affordable. An added benefit of more educated people is that older educated people can continue to work office jobs long after their retirement age, even part time, because office work and creativity aren't very physically demanding. I know of 80-year old professors working part-time who just come into class, lecture for an hour, mark some papers, then go home. It makes the problem of pensions and a smaller workforce less taxing.
Frog was talking about red meat. That red meat is only available due to the farming industry being heavily subsidized. This farm industry also feeds third world nations, that allows population growth. Welfare. If people only have the resources available to them they have to plan ahead. This makes reproducing a more risky prospect. Educated people already realize this right? The more education the less people reproduce. The problem is people aren't becoming more educated, just more fluent in technology 3 year olds can use.
Now that's where education needs to be improved. And that's actually a false argument with the birth rates. More successful population pockets have lower birth rates. So educate more and the birth rates will drop across the board. And what do you do with all the people when you stop the welfare? You are literally saying kill millions through starvation and oppression. Deny them the means to survive. And what exactly. How do you feed a town with 75% unemployment due to economic collapse? How do you compensate for those families affected by steal prices in another country being so cheap the companies at home collapse unable to compete? Do they go from useful members of society to worthless overnight because of what happened in another nation. Unable to claim welfare? Even when they have paid tax their entire working lives ? You cannot cut the welfare. It is not a viable option. Ever.
Communism is amazing on paper because it gives opportunity to 100% of the population. 100% of smart kids will be able to get properly educated and take on high-skill jobs such as engineering. It's the best way to utilize the potential of the workforce when looked at from this perspective. Capitalism doesn't really allow that because you end up with lots of people not being able to pursue a higher education because of more basic needs. The goal of the past 100 years for developed nations has been to create a state in which people are given the opportunity to meet their potential in terms of education and skills and live good lives, while also preserving democracy and rewarding those who work hard. That is where social liberalism comes in. You take the best of socialism and you implement it into the capitalist system. This was the era from around 1880-1970 in US history (excluding maybe the 1920's). At first the question was about worker's rights and wealth inequality. In 1936 Keyne's published his book on Keynesian economics, which the USA followed from the 40's up until the mid-70's
This stuff is basic free market principles. Helping poor people doesn't have to be state sponsored "welfare", but rather voluntary charity. Under current conditions we use coercion to extract the funds to support the welfare system. Go with out paying your taxes for example. They will forcibly take take those funds. That is coercion and not part of free market principles. I conceded to the fact that is an extreme example in the current economic climate.
The other aspect is that all nations should strive to be totally self supportive and self sustaining. Government contracts going to national firms. Of we don't know how to do it as well as another nation. Send people to learn from them. Farming resources focused on home produce. Not grown goodness knows where. Tax paid in the nation of purchase. Costa here is a prime example of tax evasion. If a product is sold here the tax should be paid here. All nations should buy locally manufactured. How many of us are forced to buy made in china ( for example ) ? Heck my phone was made there. Now I am certain it could have been made here. And I'm sure it would have cost more short term. But longterm? With mass employment and made at home products. Even if it means licensing products to be made in each nation. Every nation supporting themselves as much as physically possible for all but the rarest of ventures. But the simple fact is. It won't happen. More chance of ww3
U speak of protectionism n any economist worth a hill of beans will tell u that creates higher unemployment. Education n the creation of real higher paying jobs is needed to have a healthy middle class. Developing nations r lacking middle class growth n leaves the door open for corruption.
Just to go on a tangent while we're talking economics: One thing I would like to see is government intervention in the automation of jobs. Subsidize the tech industry. Fund tech research. Replace all the simple jobs with research. Make college free for everyone going into the IT industry. If we can robots working the worst jobs out there (such as that boring fry-cook job or trucker job) then we can focus human resources on better things. If this type of thing were to pass, we could increase productivity by such an amount that a 6-hour workday could be passed. We have the capacity to replace 25% of workers with robots within the next 2 decades. Robots would not only be more productive, but also it would create even more IT jobs for people. People would be less stressed, have more free time to work on themselves, have more time to educate themselves, and overall be happier. Just an idea I have. If we got rid of oil subsidies and replaced them with tech subsidies, we'd see a lot more productivity and job growth. Problems with this? Massive unemployment. Similar to what happened in Rome with slaves. Slave owners made crap loads of money but the working class didn't as they couldn't find much work.
All you need to do for that example is look at the car industry. Pick any company with high volume, then go back 50 years. Look at human labour numbers. Then look at 20 years ago and today. Robots = mass unemployment. The best interview I ever saw was a saucepan manufacturer. The owner said he could quadruple output with robots. He could lay off most of his workforce, and be far more wealthy. He refused to because robots don't have families to support. He had a fantastic attitude and his staff were very loyal. Robots for dangerous or safety precision required jobs yes. For mass production. I would personally favour large work forces any day. Shared jobs and shorter working weeks with a living minimum wage as a standard. Legislated pricing on essential goods. Ie milk and bread. People were not put on earth to slave for someone else until the day they die. No point to life if you don't have a chance to live it as well. 5 weeks minimum vacation a year as well.
Chaos, the problem with protectionism is that overall, in global terms, it is inefficient. The reason why economies crumble under international sanctions is because they don't have markets in which to sell to. So, for example, China has a crapload of uneducated poor people who will work in factories for a low wage. We buy cheap manufactured goods from China because of this. But, because China has so many people, they need to import things such as natural resources and food, which as a Canadian, I am happy to sell. If we did not trade with China, then we would not have cheap manufactured goods, and China would not have sweet Canadian maple syrup. If we implemented protectionism, it would cost more for Canada to acquire manufactured goods, while Canada would not be able to take advantage of its extra natural resources. At the same time, China would have no external market to sell its manufactured goods, little natural resources to produce those goods, and also it's people would not be able to work because of this, nor would they get to eat Canadian red meat or maple syrup, because agriculture in China is insufficient to produce meat. In short, protectionism is bad for both sides. However, when compared to things such as TPP, protectionism can be seen as good, because corporations immigrate from country to country based on which one has the least worker rights, so that they can maximize profits without regard to the quality of human life. In this sense, TPP would encourage as few worker rights as possible as the corporations will move to the country with less rights than everyone else.
Developing nations need more secondary n tertiary industries to create more higher paying jobs internally. Value added products keep the jobs in country n its citizens benefit. Education n investment r the key for nations. Simply producing raw resources for export literally is exporting higher wage jobs out of country.
The automotive industry received corporate welfare. They were deemed to big to fail and now they still produce fossil fuel guzzling machinery.
@ Nathan Container traffic back to China goes back highly empty. China wants energy n raw resources n uses cheaper labour. Pollution is horrible n further increases their trade advantages.
Chaos about that manufacturer... There's a good story about this from the 90's. It is viewed as one of the worst business decisions ever made. There once was a company named Polaroid which developed (I think) digital film technology (if not this, then it was something else). However, when it was developed, the company found that the new technology would make their old products obsolete. They owned the majority of the market, so they'd be hit the hardest by the technology's implementation. So they continued making the crap old technology because it could make more profit in the short run. However, in a couple years, a rival of theirs developed the same technology and released it. Soon, everyone switched to that technology because it was more efficient. By the time Polaroid wanted to implement it, they had already become obsolete. I really don't care if workers are going to become unemployed. We can invent new jobs. Just like how horseshoe manufacturers went out of business when the car was invented, new industries popped up for car production. It will improve the quality of life overall. We'll just have to raise corporate taxes so that inequality doesn't get out of control with one person having so much production capacity.
Not quite so gas guzzling here ( unless vw Achem ) but more hybrids coming out and hydrogen soon hopefully. More teaching better tech sooner. More with the ability to problem solve and more answers to come through. With IT more is possible each day. Better designs, medical modelling and many others. Some kid I. A class room now will change the world. But yes it's slower growth from that industry than anyone would have hoped. Blame the oil industry as well as the car companies though. Etc. corruption and human factor again.