Actual translation: because of the behavior of U.S. government, E.U. government(s) will make it hard for E.U. citizens to trade with U.S. citizens.
So normal people get spied on and bullied by one government, then because of that their life is made even more complicated by some other government. Great outcome!
When people will realize that the problem is always in the governments themselves as a concept, not in any particular issues? It's totally okay to be an atheist today, but we need just one extra little step to be anarchists and it's so, so, so complicated. While belief in a magical all-powerful and caring government is no different than a belief in deity.
> When people will realize that the problem is always in the governments themselves as a concept, not in any particular issues? It's totally okay to be an atheist today, but we need just one extra little step to be anarchists and it's so, so, so complicated. While belief in a magical all-powerful and caring government is no different than a belief in deity.
People "believe in" government not because they love it or think it is perfect, they do it because they believe the alternative is something like the Hobbsian state of nature. Given the way anarchists tend to describe an end goal that either looks like government by a different name (boring!) or something completely out of keeping with human nature, people won't "realize" what you want them to anytime soon.
Or maybe they will! Write a good, convincing anarchist manifesto. When it doesn't convince anybody, talk yourself into believing it's humanity that is flawed, not your manifesto.
This is more a implementation issue of democracy in some countries. Look at the Danish democracy, we have many parties and both currently and historically we rarely have one party governments. It is not uncommon that three or more parties are forming governments. This helps make sure that there is never one entity that decides or hides things from the public.
> When people will realize that the problem is always in the governments themselves
Though I agree with your broader thrust, I'm deeply suspicious of any use of "never" or "always" in the context of complex systems.
> While belief in a magical all-powerful and caring government is no different than a belief in deity.
Belief, for better or worse, is a fundamental component of human social behavior. For instance, I challenge you to construct a monetary system that does not at least partially involve belief. (See also: http://www.meltingasphalt.com/religion-is-not-about-beliefs/ )
Rather than tilting at the windmill of belief, I'd rather we started believing in better things: naturalism over spiritualism, human rights over state power, decentralized currencies over fiat currencies, etc.
Free trade agreements bring more than just benefits.
A nation/country is a bit like an ecosystem or a company, with its own interests, internal culture, customs, and market. Opening that market up to another country requires trust. If that trust is violated because one party is spying on the others internal negotiations, it makes sense to delay or cancel trade agreements.
You would not want everything you say in boardmeetings to be immediately passed on to competing startups/companies...
Also, trade-agreements do more than bring universal benefits. They also kill off companies due to increased competition. And given that Europe has quite different (labour) regulations, can even lead to unfair competition.
So please stop that anarchist BS about governments being bad, and them ONLY making peoples lives more complicated. Yes I know there are bad governments, but please speak for yourself instead of generalizing. In Western-Europe most people are pretty happy with their governments, because - quess why - these governments do a pretty good job most of the time...
"because of the behavior of U.S. government, E.U. government(s) will make it hard for E.U. citizens to trade with U.S. citizens."
Yes, thats correct - you should not trade with enemies, with somebody who is in war with you. US citizens have elected their government who had declared EU to be US enemy.
> When people will realize that the problem is always in the governments themselves as a concept, not in any particular issues?
Maybe because most people can see, that while governments are not perfect, they are a net benefit?
I pay some sum of money into a pot, and in return someone comes and takes away my rubbish every week, and gets rid of it some correct way that I don't have to worry about (and that is incidentally also not the cheapest way). When I go to the shop to buy milk, I don't have to worry that its been watered down, or that its not really the same brand as on the label, because some authority has taken care of that for me already. There must be dozens of more examples of things that are beneficial for everyone, and are just never ever going to get accomplished any other way, apart from some central authority using money from a common fund.
There is an in-between between no government and an all-powerful one: a government that solely exists to secure the rights of its citizens.
"to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,..."
It is of my opinion that power corrupts, and that's why you shouldn't trade your rights away in return for a promise of fixing problems, but there is some disagreement on this point.
Government is the one institution that pays lip service to and can be influenced directly by the populace it's supposed to be accountable to. Obviously, in practice it serves the will of those already in power.
As someone who doesn't want to jump ship from the system we have now to anarchy immediately, I believe that even more corrupt power structures would take governments place without first eradicating the existing power structures and influence of the accumulation of capital has on global society.
To transition now, where the power and resources are in the hands of a slim margin of people, would usher in an era of neo-feudalism. Some would argue we are already at that point, so why destabilise the only organisation with power that exists, in theory, for the people?
It deeply saddens me that a tiny tiny percentage of the population can really fuck up the lives of everyone - financially, socially, politically, religiously.
The real problem is in how we set up the governments. We give to much power to a few people.
What we really need to do is let people vote on individual issues. Want to go to war that will affect everyone and will cost trillions? Let's have a vote.
Frankly, I can't see a single good reason for this trade agreement, and a lot of good reasons against, starting with that I (and all other Europeans) don't want GM food, hormone beef and chlorinated chicken in my plate any day soon.
Trade openness is one of the strongest predictor of peace [1] (also see: Better Angels of our Nature [2]).
Free trade would also be an economic boon to Europe and the U.S. A study by the Bertelsmann Foundation together with the Munich-based Center for Economic Studies found that "if the United States and the European Union are able to come together on a far-reaching free trade agreement, Germany would be one of the greatest beneficiaries. Fully 181,000 new jobs could be expected and per-capita income would spike by 4.68 percent." GDP/capita could rise "by 13.4 percent in the US and by 9.7 percent in the UK. More than a million new jobs would result in America. That number would be 400,000 in Britain." [3]
The benefits of free trade are one of the points economists have found consensus on.
I don't normally downvote comments I read here, but c'mon man. First of all, your comment was off-topic. Second of all, at least with the GM food, yours is a knee-jerk reaction unsupported by science. GM food has the potential to save billions (with a B) of lives, starting with Golden Rice.
AFAIK we have laws against this kind of food in EU, but the free trade agreement will give us e.g. Apple, Microsoft, Dell and other products without having to pay a high fee every time it goes through customs. Same goes for European products being sold in the US. It is expected to lead to BNP growth of around 1% in the EU region.
I'm going to freely speculate here, but this seems obvious enough to any observer of international relations just to come out with it. Let's just call this story the way it is.
EU governments have been in bed with the US for decades with spying. Yes, they've postured and done a bunch of things to make themselves look good -- Google had better watch their step -- but at the end of the day the EU is as guilty as any other country. If you don't understand that, you should read up more. Intel is traded freely among EU states and the U.S. What the EU states don't get from spying on their own folks, the U.S. provides them. And let's not even get into the "special" relationship that the majority English-speaking nations have with each other.
Now that they're in a PR corner over the Snowden revelations, of course, it's time for a lot of invective, investigations, and all sorts of spectacles. None of which will dig out the truth. But it will be awfully exciting, and I'm sure my good friends across the pond will hang on every bit of new data.
But there's no Snowden over there, so there's no huge revelation, and all the players have no motivation to start coming clean, so a full understanding of just what the various EU intelligence services are doing in regards to privacy is about as likely as scientists discovering the moon is made of bleu cheese.
And for good reason. What's often overlooked in this discussion, and I rant about the security state as much as anybody else, is that some of this is absolutely necessary and proper for a free society to prosper. It's a question of limits, and of degrees of intrusion. It's not a black and white issue. The way forward isn't to tear it all down, it's to have a public investigation that sets some hard limits for what is and isn't acceptable to the populace.
> It's a question of limits, and of degrees of intrusion.
Great point. Honestly, my biggest issue with this is the secret nature of the FISA court and the near 100% approval for warrants.
You NEED to have watchdogs for the watchers. You can't simply have massive ABC orgs having all of this information unchecked like it is now.
The cat is out of the bag however. We can't simply stop using our technology, the question is like what you said: regulation and discussion of how to use this technology.
The fact that the US was secretly accessing Swift bank data did not come to light until 2006.
The deal gives the US access to bulk data from Swift, a firm that handles millions of bank transactions daily.
A German Liberal MEP, Alexander Alvaro, said the deal "will ensure that terrorist financing can be traced back to its sources, but it will not affect day-to-day bank transfers of EU citizens".
And the leader of the UK Conservative MEPs, Timothy Kirkhope, said it "sends the right signals about our resolve in fighting terrorism and our commitment to remaining a strong partner of the United States".
How can two companies negotiate when one knows every detail of the other, but not vice versa. One will always take everything 'left on the table' from the negotiation, and the other will just scrape along until a bump in the road, where they'll have no fat left to survive and will go bankrupt.
The US needs to show that there are proper checks and balances on their information collection, that the data only leaves company servers when a judge signs off that there's reasonable suspicion of a crime, and that anyone subpoenaed gets automatically notified after some reasonable period of time.
The US was screwed by signing NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the USA and Mexico beginning in 1994).
A bit of history: From c. 1950-1980, unions had a monopoly on labor supply in many industries. This allowed them to charge monopoly pricing, so employees gained a greater share of the wealth generated by their businesses.
With the opening of US borders to foreign trade (NAFTA was a part of this trend, but I mark its beginning with President Nixon's visit to China), elimination of most tariffs, and lower worldwide shipping costs due to improved logistics and technology, manufacturing became fungible between countries. So manufacturers largely relocated to other countries like China or Mexico with lower wages and laxer regulations.
I grew up in a manufacturing-heavy area that was economically devastated by these changes, and only now, decades later, is starting to recover. So I was exposed to the anti-free-trade position quite a bit, and I'm familiar with all its arguments; they sound convincing. And free trade's results look awfully poor.
So can anyone explain to me the incentives of free trade agreements from the US's point of view? Or if there aren't any, the political or strategic reasons they've gotten signed regardless of their drawbacks?
The answer is simple. Imagine how successful your manufacturing union would be if it had a monopoly on manufacturing labor within your state. Now imagine how successful it would be if your employer couldn't sell the products you manufactured to anyone outside your state.
Free trade gives American companies access to markets to sell their products, and it gives citizens (and not just those lucky enough to be in a union), access to products that would normally be more expensive if they were forced to buy from a monopoly (either on labor or on capital).
That argument is strong enough that 87.5% (in other words, a supermajority of economists on both the right and left) would abolish trade restrictions altogether if they had their way.
http://ew-econ.typepad.fr/articleAEAsurvey.pdf
If there is sufficient economic competition then free-trade agreements have limited economic impact, however the non-economic benefits are numerous. I'm not going to debate the legitimacy of 'monopoly pricing' and unions because that debate will degenerate quickly.
In addition to elimination of tariffs, import quotas, and preferential sourcing of goods and services, FTAs enforce/encourage open-border policies that enable the free movement of people between different jurisdictions. FTAs are a step towards greater integration with other nations.
I have a theory. I think that posts like this get upvoted because some people now use HN as their only news source and think that if world news does not make the front page, they will miss something vital. I promis, this is the last time this year I am going to complain about political posts being on the front page. I also promise to spend more time flagging this crap in the New section. At this point I would rather see a discussion of whether glass flows.
1. Either the EU members did not want this trade agreement from the start, or they will use this as leverage to get a better deal, or something extra.
2. The various EU member countries knew full well what was going on. And have their own spying operations and networks in place.
3. The various EU member countries would do the same type of spying as the U.S. does - if they could.
The idea that the U.S. should just "play fair" is so naive that it's self-destructive. Because no one "play's fair" in this world-wide, complicated, and high-risk/high-reward game. This is how the economical and geo-political game is.
And this is why these leaks are so damaging to the U.S. and its citizens. It exposes the truth, for the sake of the truth, and does nothing else. Because for that something else to happen, whatever it is, it has to happen on a global scale, and since countries are in a natural state of competition for resources and benefits, it can't, and the game remains the same...
That is, we can stop the spying, but no one else will. We can stop the exploitation, but no one else will. Doing so will just cause us to drop down to the lowest rank in this game, while everyone else runs to grab what's left on the table.
Must we continue to carry water for U.S. political factions by discussing this manufactured pseudo-news? How about we get back to the real story of the IRS election rigging that the administration desperately wants to be forgotten. Or the insane war in Syria where they are backing Al Qaeda and their nasty friends.
No, we have to keep chewing over these planted stories about how we are shocked, shocked to find spying going on at the NSA. This week we are to believe that France, Germany, and Britain are poor helpless waifs who are going to pick up their alms bowls and go back to their orphanage because mean ole Unca Sam was sneaky.
Echelon bait: nuclear, cosmic ray backscatter, intrusion countermeasure.
[+] [-] oleganza|12 years ago|reply
So normal people get spied on and bullied by one government, then because of that their life is made even more complicated by some other government. Great outcome!
When people will realize that the problem is always in the governments themselves as a concept, not in any particular issues? It's totally okay to be an atheist today, but we need just one extra little step to be anarchists and it's so, so, so complicated. While belief in a magical all-powerful and caring government is no different than a belief in deity.
[+] [-] justin66|12 years ago|reply
People "believe in" government not because they love it or think it is perfect, they do it because they believe the alternative is something like the Hobbsian state of nature. Given the way anarchists tend to describe an end goal that either looks like government by a different name (boring!) or something completely out of keeping with human nature, people won't "realize" what you want them to anytime soon.
Or maybe they will! Write a good, convincing anarchist manifesto. When it doesn't convince anybody, talk yourself into believing it's humanity that is flawed, not your manifesto.
[+] [-] oellegaard|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lukifer|12 years ago|reply
Though I agree with your broader thrust, I'm deeply suspicious of any use of "never" or "always" in the context of complex systems.
> While belief in a magical all-powerful and caring government is no different than a belief in deity.
Belief, for better or worse, is a fundamental component of human social behavior. For instance, I challenge you to construct a monetary system that does not at least partially involve belief. (See also: http://www.meltingasphalt.com/religion-is-not-about-beliefs/ )
Rather than tilting at the windmill of belief, I'd rather we started believing in better things: naturalism over spiritualism, human rights over state power, decentralized currencies over fiat currencies, etc.
[+] [-] wybo|12 years ago|reply
A nation/country is a bit like an ecosystem or a company, with its own interests, internal culture, customs, and market. Opening that market up to another country requires trust. If that trust is violated because one party is spying on the others internal negotiations, it makes sense to delay or cancel trade agreements.
You would not want everything you say in boardmeetings to be immediately passed on to competing startups/companies...
Also, trade-agreements do more than bring universal benefits. They also kill off companies due to increased competition. And given that Europe has quite different (labour) regulations, can even lead to unfair competition.
So please stop that anarchist BS about governments being bad, and them ONLY making peoples lives more complicated. Yes I know there are bad governments, but please speak for yourself instead of generalizing. In Western-Europe most people are pretty happy with their governments, because - quess why - these governments do a pretty good job most of the time...
[+] [-] atirip|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] njr123|12 years ago|reply
Maybe because most people can see, that while governments are not perfect, they are a net benefit?
I pay some sum of money into a pot, and in return someone comes and takes away my rubbish every week, and gets rid of it some correct way that I don't have to worry about (and that is incidentally also not the cheapest way). When I go to the shop to buy milk, I don't have to worry that its been watered down, or that its not really the same brand as on the label, because some authority has taken care of that for me already. There must be dozens of more examples of things that are beneficial for everyone, and are just never ever going to get accomplished any other way, apart from some central authority using money from a common fund.
[+] [-] asperous|12 years ago|reply
"to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,..."
It is of my opinion that power corrupts, and that's why you shouldn't trade your rights away in return for a promise of fixing problems, but there is some disagreement on this point.
[+] [-] consonants|12 years ago|reply
As someone who doesn't want to jump ship from the system we have now to anarchy immediately, I believe that even more corrupt power structures would take governments place without first eradicating the existing power structures and influence of the accumulation of capital has on global society.
To transition now, where the power and resources are in the hands of a slim margin of people, would usher in an era of neo-feudalism. Some would argue we are already at that point, so why destabilise the only organisation with power that exists, in theory, for the people?
[+] [-] rorrr2|12 years ago|reply
The real problem is in how we set up the governments. We give to much power to a few people.
What we really need to do is let people vote on individual issues. Want to go to war that will affect everyone and will cost trillions? Let's have a vote.
[+] [-] wazoox|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|12 years ago|reply
Free trade would also be an economic boon to Europe and the U.S. A study by the Bertelsmann Foundation together with the Munich-based Center for Economic Studies found that "if the United States and the European Union are able to come together on a far-reaching free trade agreement, Germany would be one of the greatest beneficiaries. Fully 181,000 new jobs could be expected and per-capita income would spike by 4.68 percent." GDP/capita could rise "by 13.4 percent in the US and by 9.7 percent in the UK. More than a million new jobs would result in America. That number would be 400,000 in Britain." [3]
The benefits of free trade are one of the points economists have found consensus on.
[1] http://www.yale.edu/leitner/resources/docs/HORJune09.pdf "Trade Does Promote Peace: New Simultaneous Estimates of the Reciprocal Effects of Trade and Conflict" (Hegre, O'Neal, & Russett, 2009)
[2] http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/014312... The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker
[3] http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/study-on-trans-...
[+] [-] pvnick|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oellegaard|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pasbesoin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kintamanimatt|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kylekramer|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|12 years ago|reply
EU governments have been in bed with the US for decades with spying. Yes, they've postured and done a bunch of things to make themselves look good -- Google had better watch their step -- but at the end of the day the EU is as guilty as any other country. If you don't understand that, you should read up more. Intel is traded freely among EU states and the U.S. What the EU states don't get from spying on their own folks, the U.S. provides them. And let's not even get into the "special" relationship that the majority English-speaking nations have with each other.
Now that they're in a PR corner over the Snowden revelations, of course, it's time for a lot of invective, investigations, and all sorts of spectacles. None of which will dig out the truth. But it will be awfully exciting, and I'm sure my good friends across the pond will hang on every bit of new data.
But there's no Snowden over there, so there's no huge revelation, and all the players have no motivation to start coming clean, so a full understanding of just what the various EU intelligence services are doing in regards to privacy is about as likely as scientists discovering the moon is made of bleu cheese.
And for good reason. What's often overlooked in this discussion, and I rant about the security state as much as anybody else, is that some of this is absolutely necessary and proper for a free society to prosper. It's a question of limits, and of degrees of intrusion. It's not a black and white issue. The way forward isn't to tear it all down, it's to have a public investigation that sets some hard limits for what is and isn't acceptable to the populace.
</rant>
[+] [-] tokenizer|12 years ago|reply
Great point. Honestly, my biggest issue with this is the secret nature of the FISA court and the near 100% approval for warrants.
You NEED to have watchdogs for the watchers. You can't simply have massive ABC orgs having all of this information unchecked like it is now.
The cat is out of the bag however. We can't simply stop using our technology, the question is like what you said: regulation and discussion of how to use this technology.
[+] [-] Create|12 years ago|reply
The fact that the US was secretly accessing Swift bank data did not come to light until 2006.
The deal gives the US access to bulk data from Swift, a firm that handles millions of bank transactions daily.
A German Liberal MEP, Alexander Alvaro, said the deal "will ensure that terrorist financing can be traced back to its sources, but it will not affect day-to-day bank transfers of EU citizens".
And the leader of the UK Conservative MEPs, Timothy Kirkhope, said it "sends the right signals about our resolve in fighting terrorism and our commitment to remaining a strong partner of the United States".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10552630
[+] [-] coopdog|12 years ago|reply
The US needs to show that there are proper checks and balances on their information collection, that the data only leaves company servers when a judge signs off that there's reasonable suspicion of a crime, and that anyone subpoenaed gets automatically notified after some reasonable period of time.
[+] [-] mtgx|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kintamanimatt|12 years ago|reply
Governments that get busted doing shady shit don't rehabilitate themselves, they just learn to hide it better.
[+] [-] jpdoctor|12 years ago|reply
And the irony would be that the US needed foreign gov'ts to accomplish what its own citizens could not do.
[+] [-] cinquemb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csense|12 years ago|reply
The US was screwed by signing NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the USA and Mexico beginning in 1994).
A bit of history: From c. 1950-1980, unions had a monopoly on labor supply in many industries. This allowed them to charge monopoly pricing, so employees gained a greater share of the wealth generated by their businesses.
With the opening of US borders to foreign trade (NAFTA was a part of this trend, but I mark its beginning with President Nixon's visit to China), elimination of most tariffs, and lower worldwide shipping costs due to improved logistics and technology, manufacturing became fungible between countries. So manufacturers largely relocated to other countries like China or Mexico with lower wages and laxer regulations.
I grew up in a manufacturing-heavy area that was economically devastated by these changes, and only now, decades later, is starting to recover. So I was exposed to the anti-free-trade position quite a bit, and I'm familiar with all its arguments; they sound convincing. And free trade's results look awfully poor.
So can anyone explain to me the incentives of free trade agreements from the US's point of view? Or if there aren't any, the political or strategic reasons they've gotten signed regardless of their drawbacks?
[+] [-] saosebastiao|12 years ago|reply
Free trade gives American companies access to markets to sell their products, and it gives citizens (and not just those lucky enough to be in a union), access to products that would normally be more expensive if they were forced to buy from a monopoly (either on labor or on capital).
That argument is strong enough that 87.5% (in other words, a supermajority of economists on both the right and left) would abolish trade restrictions altogether if they had their way. http://ew-econ.typepad.fr/articleAEAsurvey.pdf
[+] [-] ihsw|12 years ago|reply
In addition to elimination of tariffs, import quotas, and preferential sourcing of goods and services, FTAs enforce/encourage open-border policies that enable the free movement of people between different jurisdictions. FTAs are a step towards greater integration with other nations.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] IgorPartola|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] powertower|12 years ago|reply
1. Either the EU members did not want this trade agreement from the start, or they will use this as leverage to get a better deal, or something extra.
2. The various EU member countries knew full well what was going on. And have their own spying operations and networks in place.
3. The various EU member countries would do the same type of spying as the U.S. does - if they could.
The idea that the U.S. should just "play fair" is so naive that it's self-destructive. Because no one "play's fair" in this world-wide, complicated, and high-risk/high-reward game. This is how the economical and geo-political game is.
And this is why these leaks are so damaging to the U.S. and its citizens. It exposes the truth, for the sake of the truth, and does nothing else. Because for that something else to happen, whatever it is, it has to happen on a global scale, and since countries are in a natural state of competition for resources and benefits, it can't, and the game remains the same...
That is, we can stop the spying, but no one else will. We can stop the exploitation, but no one else will. Doing so will just cause us to drop down to the lowest rank in this game, while everyone else runs to grab what's left on the table.
[+] [-] embolism|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] smegel|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Daniel_Newby|12 years ago|reply
No, we have to keep chewing over these planted stories about how we are shocked, shocked to find spying going on at the NSA. This week we are to believe that France, Germany, and Britain are poor helpless waifs who are going to pick up their alms bowls and go back to their orphanage because mean ole Unca Sam was sneaky.
Echelon bait: nuclear, cosmic ray backscatter, intrusion countermeasure.
[+] [-] aqme28|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theleethaxor|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]