Wednesday, July 27, 2016

The Worst Aspect of TPP That Gets Nearly No Attention

Sadly among the worst aspects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership TPP (and also the TTIP) is the promotion of the copyright cartel's agenda along with very bad patent policy. Almost no one with political power is even talking about these huge problems with it.

I support free trade. I don't support the politically motivated trade agreements that impose the USA political donors' wishes on citizens of the USA and other countries.

The point that I most agree with, that those with power who are opposing the TPP mention, is the ludicrous abdication of national rights expressed in the trade deals (allowing companies to sue countries, say for enforcing their reasonable patent rules that the company doesn't like and has bought differing rules from the USA political parties).

It is true that we have to work together, and in doing so we need to reach agreements between countries that require making compromises. The TPP just has many horrible provisions paid for by USA political donors that are being imposed on other countries (and those countries are being paid to give the USA donors the favors via promises of USA military protection, access to USA markets etc.). It is a bad deal for nearly everyone. But the favors create a few huge winners that can pay to grease the wheels to buy passage in the USA (and elsewhere).

We need free trade that removes barriers to trade not that gives payoffs to USA political donors. Along with removing barriers a few conditions are justified but they should be kept as small as possible (things like no child labor, no slave labor, environmental requirements, safety requirements on exported material, etc.).

Related: Money Is Corrupting Our Political Process - Why Copyright Extension is a Very Bad Idea - We Need to be More Capitalist and Less Cronyist - I Can Spy on You, But You Can't Spy on Me