Is free-trade fair? Why or why not?
In today’s world, the discipline of international economy deals mostly with fair distribution of collective income. At this point, we should clarify concepts and terms and make specific and clear definitions of those. For instance, what does exactly the word fair mean to you? On the other hand, there are several approaches to this collective goods problem. We should emphasize them in the most accurate way, and then decide whether free trade goes hand-in-hand with fair trade. As far as I could judge all of the things I know about this issue, I can simply say that freedom of trade does not bring about fairness to trade, and also for the society as a whole.
To begin with, we should clarify concepts about this issue. For example, is fairness distributing the collective income to all the society regardless of their contribution to the production? Or, does it mean that we can talk about fairness only if we distribute the income to whom really worth it? In my opinion, to judge people’s real contribution to the production is not easy. In this existing so-called free trade system, the poor can not reach to the production means. For most cases, one is born in poverty and dies with that. One is born with prosperity and lives with that. Thus, I think the former question above holding the definition of fairness seems more accurate.
The ongoing efforts to liberalize trade seem insufficient. We are talking about NAFTA, Customs Union and the like, but even in those organizations there are restrictions to trade. EU’s common market works for the EU exclusive members, and NAFTA’s free trade works for only the members of it. These kind of organizations also admit that they remove “most of the barriers to trade”, but not all of them. Laissez-faire advocates put their thoughts straight: International trade without the interference of tariffs, subsidies, and price controls is by far the most efficient way of matching global supply to demand while...