Free is the next best thing

Fair trade indeed! And who controls this fair trade? The rich countries? The WTO? Or worst of all, the HPVE*? I'll go into the whole reason why I immensly dislike the United Nations (HPVE) in further posts.

There are of course other reasons for the problems in Africa, such as people like Robert Mugabe, the "President" of Zimbabwe. I do agree of course with the sentiment that the land should be owned by Zimbabweans, but he has chosen the worst way to remedy the problem. The white people knew how to run a farm, and they hired black people to do the job. Robert simply took away the white people and filled the farms up with his soldiers. Soldiers not exactly being experts on how to run farms.

Sorry, off topic. I'll reserve that for later. Anyway those problems are unresolvable by foreign countries, or indeed any kind of trade agreement. But in other countries such as Tanzania, Buhtan, Afghanistan, et cetera, they have the ability to produce things really cheaply compared to the United States, France or Germany. Whereas in the above countries, labour costs a heap.

My reasoning is that with labour being so cheap in Africa (back to the Africa-France thing) and people in France having lots of money, it would make more sense for French manufacturers to build factories in Africa, and hire heaps of cheap labour, and sell the goods back to the rich French people (and other rich people around the world). If their was free trade (and real free trade, as in "easy to set up a business anywhere"), the French would have to make the Africans rich first, then start selling stuff to them. But destroy the African jobs, and they don't have any money to buy your goods.

Of course, it is not very common for companies to act in their own interest. Shareholders are a stupid and fickle lot. They seem to care about "long term investments", but when a company does something, they (the shareholders) always only think of the short term implications. So it would not be a rare thing for a company to ruin an economy by trying to milk as much money from it as possible. However, it would be in a companies best interests to help improve the economies of the countries where its products are sold.

After all, it is in everyones best interests to care about the best interests of others. Of course, if the whole world did that, we'd all be happy, hard-working, well rewarded, healthy and crime-free. But forget it, short of some kind of magic elexir, that is never going to happen. Human beings just aren't capable (think communism). Communism as an ideal should work perfectly, but it just doesn't work. Greedy people always end up at the top of the government, overturning the ideals (but keeping with the communist name) to make themselves better off than the general population.

Democracy works because we are not perfect. Communism could only work if we were all perfect. But if that were the case Anarchy would work also. In fact, even a bad government is better than Anarchy (usually).

So, how does all of this fit in with my idea of free trade? Well. When any barriers are being set up, they are always going to be as much in the favour of the richer countries. Fair trade is impossible to enforce, free trade is the next best thing. Besides, with access to the rich market in France, a really good African entrepeneur could actually set up a vibrant business. If French companies were better able to invest in African business, the Africans may eventually be able to invest in Europe.

Also, I mean completely free trade. I.e. people in Africa can easily get a job in France (even as a labourer). With the money, a wise man would be able to set up a business in Africa on a French minimum wage. If he can make it grow, he could attract investors from France, which would feed more money into the pipeline.

With free trade, and free tourism, French people would be more likely to go on holiday in Africa. More businesses would have to be set up to cater for them. Think Restaurants, Cafes, Motels, Hotels, all sucking up French money, and hiring local African workers. So my opinion still remains firmly with the following paragraph:

In the short term, free trade benefits the poorer countries, and gives negative benefit to richer countries. In the long term, free trade would strongly benefit all countries.

* Do not confuse High Priest Vulture Elite (UN) with the Hewlett Packard VE (HP VE). The acronym clash is merely a coincidence. I think. After all, I did not coin the term.

yaddyyaddyyada free trade etc.etc.

G'day again. Well as I type this, it's night time so perhaps it should be g'night/g'evening;)

So i debating blog u reckon? for debating lots of arguments? lol. ok, but as long as it can also be a blog for spilling shit in: shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, fuck, shit;)

Ok, so fair trade... well what i think is that there are at least two ways of looking at the argument. This argument swings two ways. True, 3rd world countries probably do suffer from richer countries putting tariffs on their imports

But poor countries(under free trade) suffer from rich companies from richer countries importing any goods into their country because this damages the poor localised companies. The rich companies (that imported goods from the rich country) can afford to sell their goods at a cheaper price than the poorer localised companies. Therefore the local consumers choose to buy goods from the company selling the cheaper goods... this is just the behaviour of consumers; they always want the cheaper one. (arrgh stupid consumers, why can't they just buy the most expensive thing;) lol)... Sooooo the consumers keep buying from the rich company and the poorer localised company loses out, and collapses, and, well goes to corporate hell. This means that under free trade, businesses from poorer countries are always struggling against richer overseas businesses and can never prosper meaning that poor countries would always have poor economic growth.

... If France were to remove tarriffs, and stop subsidising French farmers, African food would become much cheaper in France, and money would begin to flow from France into Africa. But also companies from France would move in to Africa (since no company can resist the chance to make profit) and compete against the still growing poor companies from Africa. And would most likely overpower the poorer companies from Africa. And without charging tariffs, Africa is completely defenseless. But a problem lies in that if Africa charged tariffs on France, France would charge tariffs on Africa, and Africa would lose the most because France is richer. France can afford not to trade with Africa, whereas Africa needs all the trading partners it can get.

Under complete free trade, the rich countries will be protected at the expense of the farmers from the poor countries. Therefore some use of tariffs will be required to protect the poor countries, or as i like to call it; we need 'fair' trade!

The arguments for and against free trade are limitless, hense why no one can agree which one is better so that the whole world can switch to the better one!

I think the bottom line is:

- Free trade is good for rich countries
- Fair trade is good for poor countries... and not so good for rich countries.

Free Trade

I think that free trade is a good thing for the entire world.

In third world and developing countries, labour is generally a lot cheaper than in established countries such as the United States and France. This means that it costs less to pay people to plant crops, pick crops, work in factories, and go deep into mineshafts. The goods from these countries are generally a lot cheaper than goods from well established western countries.

At the moment, it is hard for a farm in farm in Africa to sell food into France. Why? Because French put tarriffs on food from Africa (and other places), as well as paying subsidies to farmers in France. This means that it is artificially cheaper for French people to buy French food than to buy food that has been produced at a much lower cost elsewhere. This means that less money goes to Africa than would otherwise.

If France were to remove tarriffs, and stop subsidising French farmers, African food would become much cheaper, and money would begin to flow from France into Africa. In the short term, this means that farmers in France would be out of money (a disadvantage) and that food for consumers is cheaper (an advantage). It means that farmers in Africa make more money and are encouraged to expand their farming operations and therefore employ more people.

So in the short term France would begin to have a trade deficit with Africa (a good thing for Africa, a bad thing for France). However, it means that eventually people in Africa would become a little richer and would start to buy high quality consumer goods from France (Porche, fancy French clothes etc.). So although the farming industry in France would tone down, other industries would eventually pick up as a result.

As Africa became richer from selling all that food, they would have to start paying their workers a higher wage (with so many farms, workers would become harder to find). It would start to become more expensive to produce food, and eventually (50 years?) they would reach an equilibrium with France. So, for instance, Africa buys tomatos from France, and France buys apple from Africa.

That is a scenario that I made up just now. So Sam, pick my argument apart, and present a counter... I'm looking forward to it.

Gidday Mate!

G'day mate indeed.

I have a dream, a dream that reoccurs every night. A dream that I don't want to have anymore.

Seriously though, Sam, I think we should use this blog as a means to have discussions on common topics. And we should have different views (unless we agree of course!), to make this a more balanced blog. So in my next post I will talk about what I think of free trade, and my reasons for those thoughts, and you can do the same. We have a blogline argument so to say.

G'day mate

Kiwi Careers

To Sam, and any other Kiwi's, or foreigners planning on studying in New Zealand that happen to read this post...

The New Zealand government has a very helpful website with a tool called path finder that aids in helping one decide what career they want, or would be good at, and what they need to do to get their.

I truly recommend giving the above site a look. It is very easy to use.

NB. I gave the title "Our Thoughts" because I liked the "wotithink" of your blog, and gave this the address of "wotwethink" for the same reason. The "or the lack of them" is just the cynical twist that I try to put on everything.

NB2. I really like the way Richard Dean Anderson puts cynicism into almost everthing he says, and I find it very amusing. I aspire to be able to do the same one day.

One day.

Opera

I have now downloaded and installed a really cool web browser called Opera. I needed to print a certain web page that was stuffed up in Internet Explorer, so I tried from Firefox 1.0.6 which was a little better but still pretty unreadable, I then downloaded Firefox 1.5 Beta 1, and it was even worse. So at last I downloaded Opera, and it just worked!

Lack of thoughts - blog title

Form the last post I did, I just thought how that fits in with the blog title really well: Our thoughts OR THE LACK OF THEM!!!

You must have done some thinking ahead when u came up with tht name, Vincent;) lol

A post

I can't think of anything to write but i feel like i need to do a post anyway. So here's a post. Look at it, read it and admire it in all its hasty glory.

To make this post more interesting, i will write a number here which no one has probably ever said before:

98374063971638435692

There we go. That was just some random key stokes on the numbers section of the key board.

Tekau ma tahi

Eleven. Do you get it? Ten and one. Edu ma cation = "learn" and "ing". Moulding English and Maori together, get used to it. Get an edumacation.

Ap(p)artments and edu(ma)cation

Sheit, I need to keep up with the posting here, lol. And maybe I just spelt apartment like "appartment" to look fancy, like u spelt education like "Edumacation"... Education doesn't have an "m" in it;) lol!

And we have to be careful about education and what we learn:

We have to learn to think for ourselves rather than learn what others have already thought about.

What I mean is that when we are reading something, we have to keep in mind the credibility of the source we are learning from.

Quotes

A quote is nothing more than what another person has said or written. A good quote cometh forth from a good person, and good quote can also leak from a malevolent genius. But the ones I like most are from people who have proven their worth, through thoughtful and considerate quotes. Bla.

Anyway, Sir Francis Bacon has a marvellous host of quotes that are definitely worth a read. My favourite quote of his is:

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties. - Sir Francis Bacon

And on to other matters, Shareaza is a an excellent file sharing programme, similar to bittorrent that support the Gnutella 1 & 2 protocols as well as eDonkey. It has no spyware/adware/other annoying crap, and has a very pretty graphical user interface (GUI). I am currently using it to download the latest Stargate episodes.

Edumacation

I had just written a very long and thoughtful post about edumacation, when my computer decided to do another of its informal restarts. I'm not sure if I can be bothered writing the whole thing again so I'll just summarise.

• There are two educational systems in New Zealand
• Schools controlled by left wing Labour supporters and government dictation
• Universities controlled by money
• Schools teach us stuff as if it is 100% fact when it is either
• Known not to be true, or
• Not yet proven to be true, or
• Has the possibility of thought changing over the matter in the future.
• Schools shouldn't just teach us facts, they should teach us how to dissect differing opinions and make up our own mind.
• Schools should show us both evidence and negating evidence of what they teach us.
• In ancient Greece, only the very wealthy sent their children to schools, which were private and not really under government control.
• Students could beat their teachers if they didn't like the way they were being taught.
• In Sparta military schools (not private), students were punished not for doing something wrong, but for the actual act of being caught doing it.

Having summarised in a much less substantial way than in my previous post, I will recline.

NB Sam, apartment has only one 'p'

The Spanish Appartment

Ok, fine, Il admit iv never seen Spanglish, but Spanglish just fits in so well with all the "English" and the "Spanish". Tho the movie i was meaning was the Spanish Appartment.

Interesting dream there! I can't remember what I dreamed about last night.

Apparently there's a myth about dreaming whereby if you dream that you hit the ground in ur dream, you die in your sleep...

That's one reason why it may possibly be useful to be able to fly in your dreams lol.

Tenebrous dreaming

This is the word of the day on my google personalised homepage today (also the word of the day at dictionary.com). I kept meaning to use it for something but I kept forgetting the word.

However, all is not lost as I am now writing a blog. Tenebrous is a word that means dark/gloomy, and in my opinion, could be used to describe a great many things, such as the "a great farrago of ideas rattled around the tenebrous depths of our demagogue, Helen Clark's capricous mind.".

That was a (semi?) joke by the way. Anyway, I can also use it to describe the dream I had on Saturday night:...

On Saturday night, I had a mystical dream full of tenebrous spaces, scheming demons, and their hirsute demonic dogs. In the dream, I was in a peaceful place full of peasants being peaceful, with green grass and birds singing cheery birdsong. I somehow managed to venture down a shaft where darkness enshrouded me, and I could see only the murky blackness. An ominous feeling was all around.

Somehow I managed to disrupt something, and I knew that I had to get out of there fast. There was an eerie glow lighting up the area, so I scrambled up the shaft as fast as I could. Jumping and climbing from beam to beam, up ladders, rock faces, and wood. I somehow managed to get out.

I cannot remember the whole thing very well, but later I was with a friend, Jared. We could both fly, and the demons seemed to have a control over most of the world. They were after us and we could not really fight. We could fly, so we did that a lot.

Well, it became a bit frustrating, just running away from them so we began to take chances. Breaking the neck of a sleeping demon dog here, kicking a couple of demons in the face there. We could fly, and thank goodness, they [the demons] could not.

The dream never really ended, but the longer it went, the braver we became in our exploits against the demons. But it also became harder and harder. Anyway, it was a very interesting dream to have.

Spanglish Corrected

Well, Sam, you obviously need to watch Spanglish. It is about a guy (Adam Sandlers) whose wife is really mean to him. Anyway they get a maid, and her daughter as well, who is from Mexico (the wife hires them). Anyway his wife cheats on him, and it looks like he falls in love with the Mexican lady (and vice versa) but nothing happens, and he never cheats on his wife. You end up feeling that he should have gotten together with the nice Mexican, but he is too nice, and stays with his bitchy unfaithful wife.

Spanglish

And no this isn't a movie related to Spanglish either. Although Spanglish is about English and Spanish ppl living in an appartment and not understanding each other, this is about ppl talking English and Spanish on blogs and occasionally not understanding eachother;) (Hey, I just had to carry on the movie theme u put in Vincent) Tho it is strange...

I Google

No, it isn't a movie about how Google becomes intelligent and takes over the world. It is a personalised Google homepage thing. It requires you to have a google account to sign in, and you are better off having a gmail account. So if you want one, just leave your email (or ring me if you know me) and I'll send you an invite.

Well anyway, it keeps a search history and remembers the links you click on. After a while it starts to automatically personalise your results to suit your interest. It has a quote of a day, and you can add various RSS feeds to it. I can even add this blog to it, which allows me to see the last few posts, and I can add virtually anything. Weather is only for the United States though :-(

That's Cool

It's pretty cool that my setting managed to influence your user settings, though that must be a bug. Hey wait a minute! Why has my blogger interface changed to English? I didn't even notice until just now!

The shortest post ever

Yay, I got the shortest post;)

Blah, whatever

Blah, so what. I dnt care! lol

Hey, the language in my other blog has changed to Spanish (stupid Spanish;) and i dnt kno how to change it back! cos i dnt really understand it, and it means I have to use the few remaining brain cells in my head to figure out what the Spanish says!!!

Also:

English rules! French is the second best language after English;)

And Chinese looks like a whole lot of confusing symbols that take too long to draw.

First Post

Yaay! I got first post!!