TEAMHumanity

Do countries trade fairly or just to control and dominate the international markets?

The Reality:

Some countries preach their ideal of free and open trade, but in practice that is simply not the way countries or governments work. They like the idea as long as it does not affect 'their own markets or economy'. If it does, they often just bend the rules or blatently break them to please themselves. They introduce trade tariffs on their competitors products or heavily subsidise their own products so that they can offer them very cheaply on the international market and eliminate any competition in the process.

As trade is based on competitive economic practices, it falls prey to the failures of this system. It encourages countries and companies to gang up and strike deals with one another, to eliminate their competition. Inevitably in such a system, the larger country's and economy's win. They are able to maintain their dominant positions in the world through sheer financial power and often exploit smaller countries and economies for their own gain. This exploitation takes many forms, with cheap labour being one of the most common. It has also become a fairly common practice for some larger countries to encourage fractional divides and social imbalance in smaller countries, thus weakening them both socially and economically. With the country in financial ruin, the larger countries and corporates are then able to move in and buy everything up on the cheap. This procedure has become a standard practice in past decades. It is similar to an old roman strategy of 'divide and conquer'.

The Psychological issues:

This psychological issues relating to international trade practices are very similar to those that relate to the economic system. They 'encourage' greed, corruption, lies, the exploitation of people, money laundering, back-hander deals, blackmail, etc. They also encourage people to make unintelligent decisions which they would otherwise not make, if financial motives were not involved.

International trade deals are also about maintaining world power and control. They are about maintaining strong economies at the expense of other countries or competitors.

Upon summary, some people might even classify much of this behaviour as 'psychotic'. If not psychotic, then severely lacking in moral character which is pretty much the same thing.

The Wise approach:

International trade has to be aligned to an economic infrastructure of worldwide cooperation. The 'me' attitude has to be transformed into 'we'. The focus has to move away from each country just looking after itself, to all countries working together for the good of all. Is this impossible to achieve? Of course not. Impossible was the idea that man would never fly. When that was achieved, impossible was the idea that we would never set foot on the moon. For every so-called impossibility, there will always a way to make it possible.

There is absolutely NOTHING stopping us from achieving whatever we want. If we choose to 'create a peaceful' world based on international cooperation in trade, science and industry, there is nothing to stop us. All it takes is teamwork!