Was "free trade" originally just an excuse for European

Also cheap foreign labor

>>332474
The idea?
No.
The implementation?
Definitely. And colonial exploitation wasn't free trade in the slightest.

>>332596
No true Scotsman?

>>332604
The Scottsman fallacy doesn't make a random black drunk guy that claims to be Scottish a Scottsman when he is obviously not.

>>332596
Are you trying defending free trade? Because I can't see anything fundamentally good about it. These days it sounds just like a tool for the rich to get richer marketed as a crazy moral ideal.

>>332641
> all of economics is wrong! Voluntary exchanges leave people poorer!

>>332666
That's not what I said at all.

Free Trade is often toted as an asymptote that we should approach as closely as possible to because that purportedly will give us an ideal society. I'm not sold on that idea and there is an obvious possible ulterior motive driving people to claim that free trade is always the best course of action.

>>332474
Trade liberalization is a consequence of the Great Depression. Towards the ends of WWII the Allies decided that tariff barriers should be reduced or removed in order to prevent further depressions.

>>332689

Actually, it is, as long as you accept the underlying principle that voluntary exchanges will generally increase net wealth.

>Free Trade is often toted as an asymptote that we should approach as closely as possible to because that purportedly will give us an ideal society.

Well, if you're an economic reductionist, yes. Even without that level of pseudoscience though, the underlying point is a good one: by reducing the number of barriers that extend across trade, you will increase wealth overall. And while it probably won't be evenly distributed, overall increases of wealth are generally considered good things.

File: 34542423.jpg (12KB, 300x168px) Image search: [Google]

12KB, 300x168px

>>332666
Devil trips defending free trade

>pic related

>>332641
>Because I can't see anything fundamentally good about it.
>Non-coercive exchange of goods for mutual benefit is bad

I don't know how you people get dressed in the morning.

>>332666
you're not fooling anybody satan

on a serious note
the state's intention through free trade was to create a economical darwinist system where only the most rational and efficient companies could expand. More resources and new disciplinary techniques always meant more power for the state. Assimilation of efficient techniques for its bureaucracy, emerging middle class and richer upper class growing the fiscal resources...

>>332705
But without such barriers countries would be more subject to unscrupulous market manipulations. The countries with the larger shares of the global marketplace would be able to use economics to pursue selfish goals by simple policy changes that wouldn't really conflict with the concept of free trade. You could go so far as to claim that the government shouldn't even be allowed to affect the economy in any way, shape, or form but I would say that is going much too far.

True international free trade would require a level of trust that seems unlikely.

>>332740
There is such a thing as economic coercion. It's not like free trade would turn everyone into a saint.

You have to way the pros and cons between letting the invisible hand do its magic or taking reigns.