Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
Are you in favor of the TPP?
Yes
No
N/A without more data
View Results
 
  • Locked thread
Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012
So when do we, the people about to be hosed over, get to see the contents of the deal?

Even if you're one of the rubes who believe we can't comment on the deal or consider the leaked draft until the deal is made publically available, you must admit that its a huge red flag that they're touting this as an enormous global victory while dodging questions regarding anything in the deal or the leaked draft.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Nintendo Kid posted:

Why do you think it's going to gently caress you over? Also it's mandated to be released to the public about a month before it can be voted on in the US. No idea whether other countries have similar timelines.

Because nothing in the leaked draft is of value to the common citizen, and many additions are actively harmful. Until a version contrary to the draft available to us is publically readable this is the draft people in this thread intend to base their opinions on.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Nintendo Kid posted:

Nothing in the "leaked draft" was verified at all ever, and it might as well be the protocols of the elders of zion for all we know.

How often has Wikileaks revealed false leaks?

Why should we blindly hope that a secretive deal we know little about is good?

Would you be for TPP if a republican president had orchestrated it?

What is the damage from basing our resistance off of our current knowledge about the deal? What about if we wait until a month before the vote to start campaigning against it?

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Kalman posted:

Well, given that public info says that the leaked draft is totally wrong as to at least the provision which has had a bunch of public info today (biologicals exclusivity), the answers are:

Frequently on this topic.
We shouldn't, but we also shouldn't assume it's bad.
Depends on what it winds up containing but probably.
You look like an idiot resisting things that aren't in it, or you could look like someone whose campaign is factually based instead of based on pathetic fear.

By frequently you mean "so far once with regards to a provision that had been renegotiated, but is still pretty bad in the overall scheme of the bill"?

Why should we assume that a bill with the stated goal of removing regulation and tariffs which protect domestic workers from a global race to the bottom is good, irregardless of any other known provisions, is good?

That question was specifically directed at fishmech.

So the worst consequences of campaigning now is that you might look silly if everything in the draft has been renegotiated into puppies and rainbows. Meanwhile the worst consequence of waiting until the last month is that you are massively behind in a PR race against an abysmal bill, but I guess you get to maintain your potential personal dignity?

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

quote:

Pretty often? They consider their role primarily to put up leaks as fast as possible, and not to do too much investigation on veracity themselves.

As a whole, would you say wikileaks is unreliable and cant be trusted? Have you held this stance on other wikileaks involved leaks?

quote:

The treaty will be available to the public about a month before it's voted here. That's plenty long enough.

Except that's a very insignificant amount of time compared to the time that will be spent declaring the mystery bill a historic moment in-the-making.

Nintendo Kid posted:

Last I checked, the main goal was "make trading with China less appealing/necessary" which has a ton to do with why it's wildly popular in Vietnam.

And how do you make trading with china (country with terrible work protections and rock-bottom unskilled labor wages) less appealing than its neighbors? if IP enforcement, a corporate court, and the removal of regulation and tariffs that allow domestic goods to compete are not likely to be a part of the deal, what will be in the agreement to achieve this goal? Keep in mind that your response should make sense with regards to official statements of those involved in the deal, who boast about how the agreement liberalizes trade and "removes red tape".

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

computer parts posted:

And yet it keeps getting brought up.

Explaining why trade deals work like this doesn't justify it. The people deserve to know what their temporarily elected representatives are shoving into a bill that wont be up for renewal debate for 25 years. Especially when everyone in this thread (and this forum) will agree that politicians tend to be biased towards the elite due to the lobbyist system.

Appealing to law is absurd when the law is insufficient or dysfunctional in the face of current problems. This has been a central belief in multiple progressive movements and protests. I'd argue that half of the people in this thread have used this point in defense of victims of police brutality, but are unwilling to apply it to a scenario as grand and abstract as free trade, especially when the person pushing it has a (D) next to their name.

Transparency is good. Secrecy is bad.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Nintendo Kid posted:

Hey, since this didn't get through your skull the first 50 times let's try for a 51st time: THE ENTIRE TEXT WILL BE PUBLIC IN ADVANCE OF ANY VOTING ON THE BILL, AT LEAST 30 DAYS PRIOR. And THERE WAS NO BENEFIT TO PUTTING OUT THE VARIOUS OFFERS AND COUNTEROFFERS GOING ON FOR THE PAST 7 YEARS OF NEGOTIATION, BECAUSE THERE WAS NO GUARANTEE ANYTHING WOULD STAY IN FROM ONE DAY TO THE NEXT.

You really need to remember that, formal negotiation started in February 2008 with Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Singapore and the United States. Others joined in over the next 7 years.

Cool, then report that X country is pushing for Y amendment, like we do with Congress. If a proposal will spark outrage then maybe its worthy of sparking outrage, so long as countries proposing and accepting the amendment are made clear. We don't live in a world where communications technology stopped at the telegraph.

30 days is still a pittance of time to establish opposition when global leaders are touting TPP as an important and historic deal that will be remembered for generations. Right now.

The people should be allowed to see what their temporary representives are negotiating and hyping for.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012
Moving this post here so that a diff thread doesn't continue to be derailed:

Neurolimal posted:

It's a document that has seen arguments from both partisan sides, neither of which have denied the legitimacy of the draft. This is an immense difference from a faked PP video that has been pointed out as fake from multiple official sources and esteemed figures. Nobody but forum posters have denied the legitimacy of the draft.

What reason would there be for people who have been able to see the real document to simultaneously rail against the fake draft and support the details of the dake draft without ever calling into question whether or not the draft is fake?


This would make more sense if aspects found questionable by local tycoons weren't publically protestes and renegotiated.

And it still would not justify its opacity. "It would be too hard and messy, maaan" is no excuse for avoiding transparency.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Nintendo Kid posted:

But we don't do that with Congress? It's also not about sparking outrage or not.

30 days is more than enough time if there's anything actually bad going on, chief. If the "bad thing" is so arcane and minor that you need more than a month to get people convinced it's bad, it's not actually a bad enough thing to be a problem.

They are allowed to see that. When it's finished. Not during the 7 prior years when there wasn't even a consistent number of countries participating. Because what's finished is what's actually going to be voted on, not the status of the agreement 2.5 years prior before Chile made request #420

It would be more than enough time, provided the media could be trusted to report on the bill in an objective manner. As this is not the case it is a very good thing that we have presidential candidates and a strong protest movement opposing the bill now.

If the day-to-day negotiations of a trade deal are so insignificant, then there is no reason to oppose say, a website that updates with the current agreed-upon details of the bill alongside changes and proposals made by the members of the deal.

You brought up in another thread that this is impractical because the members shouldn't be "expected to argue against billions of people". But this is disingenuous; the only people the members would be arguing against would be the people they have been chosen to represent. This is a good thing.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Nintendo Kid posted:

The general public is too untrained to understand the consequences of arcane and rapidly changing trade law. That is why there is no value to having billions of people involved in the negotiations before they've reached a final point: the point where it can actually be ratified, and where the complexity has been lowered because there will be no changes: that text is final and all there is is no say yes or no to the whole thing.

You are acting like what's being advocated is a billion-person vote, when all that is being suggested is transparency in the details of a bill before it is hyped for a year. If a representative is pushing for a proposal or accepting a proposal that the represented disagree with then the represented deserve to be allowed to know about it so that they may pressure their representative otherwise. This only becomes more important with the introduction of Fast Track, which outright removes the ability of the represented to pressure the tepresentative into removing aspects of what may otherwise be an acceptable bill.

If you are correct that 30 days is enough time to motivate the represented into pressuring the representative, then it is entirely beneficial in a post-fast track landscape for both the negotiators and the represented; transparency allows minor and major questionable aspects to be presented to the public and be altered before the entirety of what may otherwise be a good bill is killed by it.

Of course, this matters less for the negotiators when someone both believes that 30 days vs. A year is not enough time, and the bill is not otherwise good for the represented.

quote:

We've already seen the idiocy arising from people seeing unverified and highly fragmentary supposed "leaks", such as yourself.

It is not idiotic to preempt awful legislation based on uncontroversial evidence of said awful legislation. The fact that so much awful negatives have been found based on fragments does not make the case for TPP better.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Kalman posted:

Like what?

Neurolimal posted:

Liberalizes global trade (the benefits of which workers rarely see), putting more foreign goods on par with domestic goods (which is a bad thing when one country has vastly worse wage laws and worker protections than the domestic one), replaces functional tariffs and regulation with "disciplines", strengthens IP law which harms the generic medication industry, employment-granting industries in countries such as India based off of reverse-engineering patented vital products (IP law itself seeing very little benefit for the worker), establishes a corporate court which operates outside the jurisdiction of any country in the deal, and makes any future fight for workers rights significantly more difficult as a result of having a global pool of scabs.

Most of this is based off the leaked draft. Partisan shitheads looking to feel good about voting D, hillary-partisans looking to shoot down a blatant and important distinction between the candidates, and general neoliberal scum insist that literally everything in the draft has been changed and is no longer worthy of debate. They base this off of "things change!" and "theres no way these countries wouldn't protect us workers, right?"

Those people are imbeciles.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012
Also, here's the opinion of a highly esteemed, uncontroversially respected organization:

TEAYCHES posted:

its a really really good deal

"Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym MSF, and other health rights advocacy groups say that millions of people with HIV, hepatitis C, Ebola and other diseases will be affected by provisions in the deal that the groups say will make it harder for companies to develop drugs based on previously available research, and will lengthen patent protections. MSF issued a statement calling the deal the “worst trade agreement for access to medicines in developing countries” in history."

I'm sure they're also just overreacting.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Nintendo Kid posted:

Hey, I get that you don't think too well, but there is no value to the negotiation in having everyone able to pore through reams of legalese that won't even be valid within a week.

If it's all just pointless legalese that most people wont read, where is the harm in publishing it anyways in the name of transparency?

quote:

Also the legislature being able to reject random segments of the deal while accepting the rest makes it impossible to meaningfully negotiate, because anything promised can be taken away by the legislature, dude. So frankly, the only reason to be against "fast track" is colossal ignorance of what a treaty even is.

If allowing congress to influence the deal makes it impossible to negotiate the seal, then perhaps A) the qualms of the represented should be considered before the compromise is made concrete, through transparency, or B) the deal is inherently terrible for the represented without the promise of <compromise> that in turn fucks over another nations' represented more than you.

If a compromise is objectionable then it should be objected to when there is still time to object, instead of waiting for its permanent role in the pouson pull.

quote:

There has been no uncontroversial evidence, what aren't you getting here? You seem like if I submitted a leak to wikileaks tomorrow claiming your mom was involved in espionage, you'd believe it.

If this were done then I, someone with decades of experience with her, would call into question the veracity of those claims if they were to affect her life. Nobody with an interest in TPP has argued against the legitimacy of the draft.


quote:

That is opinion not facts, and since it's based on the completely unverified and fragmentary leaks from years ago, yes, it's overreacting.

How often does MSF partake in political overreactions based on unverified information?

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Kalman posted:

In this case? Every statement they've made about the TPP.

So they do not typically involve themselves in political issues or trade deals? But they, experts in their fields and assisting developing nations, have found cause to denounce TPP now, after its finalization and long after the release of the leaked draft?

Why should a mystery bill deserve more faith in its beneficial nature than faith that MSF, an incredibly professional and noble organization, has done their homework on the subject?

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012
Here's another good post that elaborates well on aspects of the deal I've brought up, and another global organization of medical professionals denouncing the deal:

Jewel Repetition posted:

Okay, let's actually get into this.

https://wikileaks.org/tpp-investment/TPP-Investment-Chapter-Analysis.pdf
Because of the rules to "help investors," a shitload of regulatory powers would be removed from countries dealing with transnational corporations. The language also implies that countries can be sued for doing anything that would reduce company profits, such as the time the French company Veolia sued Egypt for increasing its minimum wage.

The United States is pushing to export Reaganist ideas that all public works are bad by "disciplining" state-owned-enterprises of other countries in the deal. http://www.itsourfuture.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Kelsey-TPP-SOE-paper.pdf

Like I mentioned earlier, it's going to give pharmaceutical industries obscene protections against competition: http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/06/tpp-deal-leaked-pharma-000126 . That's why Doctors for Global Health strongly opposes it. http://www.dghonline.org/news/doctors-global-heatlh-position-statement-trans-pacific-partnership

It's not something any leftist should be supporting.

It's a garbage deal. The onus should be on those pushing the deal to convince otherwise. They have failed to do this.

quote:

Even if you believe that the leaked documents are 100% legit why would you also believe that nothing has changed over the course of years? What were those extra years of negotiations for if the leaked documents are representative of the final agreement?

What reason do we have to believe all the globally disastrous leaked policies have been removed?

Politicians, human beings are even more capable of changing over time. We still judge them based on actions and stated ideals. We dodn't suddenly assume Mitt Romney would become a leftist democrat in office.

Neurolimal fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Oct 6, 2015

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Nintendo Kid posted:

I never said that it was pointless legalese, just that it is legalese and thus very difficult for average people to understand. The harm is: it makes it way harder to negotiate, what part aren't you getting, exactly?

The legalese can be summarized and interpreted by members of the community who then explain the legalese to others. If the interpretation is incorrect or beneficial it would be the representative's job to correct or defend it to their represented.

I dont give a poo poo about how difficult it makes negotiating. I give a poo poo about just and transparent negotiations approved by tbe people of a nation. I put as much weight into streamlining negotiating as I do Rand Paul promising to streamline my tax forms down to one page.

quote:

No, this is completely bullshit. Also, hello, the will of the people will be considered before the deal is complete because the legislatures of nations must vote on it before it goes into place. You keep trying to pretend like being able to vote on it all or nothing doesn't count, which is stupid.

When the people have thirty days to ignore a year of pro-deal hype, interpret the legalese, and convince others of the damage the deal will cause (likely without the assistance of any news organization), then yes. I do believe that the will of the people is being subverted. It may or may not be an i tentional subversion and it may have historical precedent, but I still consider it terrible.

quote:

Compromises on already agreed negotiations are inherently unacceptable, the time for compromises to be made is during the negotiations. If not everyone finally ratifies the agreement, then further negotiations can be done whiel it goes into effect for the other countries.

The point is that the people should know what rights and securities they are compromising on before they are baked into what may be an otherwise positive bill. Reducing this down to legislative "warmer...colder..." in the hopes that the public will be able to generate outrage each time the revised bill comes into vote is absurd.

quote:

There you go again citing completely unverified years ago excerpts as reflective of the actual deal. Stop doing this if you want to be taken seriously in a discussion.

I've yet to see anyone, even people invested in arguing against your pedantry, take you at face value on this. I could just as easily say the same last sentence to you (not that it would do you any good, since you've firmly drilled your head into the sand)

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Fojar38 posted:

So how does one ensure that everyone "gets it" so the will of the people isn't being subverted? Aside from the obvious "once everyone agrees with my position"

In a transparent setup, the questionable amendment would be observed by watchgroups, interpreted into easy to comprehend explanations, and protest/outrage would be channeled through protest groups to influence the representatives. It is up to the representative to decide if the outrage is small enough to ignore or large enough to take notice. If this happens then the representative opposes the amendment or recants it before it earns a permanent place in the deal.

If the amendment is not objectionable by the people then it wont generate enough protest. This has little to do with my beliefs and everything to do with making sure the people are given the time and chance to interpret and judge their representative's actions.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Fojar38 posted:

What about issues that are controversial where there are always going to be not-insignificant groups that might be opposed to such a deal, issues such as, say, trade, where someone always loses?

Then the negotiated deal doesn't go through, because an enormous portion of the public that the representative has chosen not to ignore opposes it.

If the people opposes liberalizing free trade, then free trade should stay regulated.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Fojar38 posted:

Congratulations you've successfully created a system where literally nothing happens ever.

If the people choose to never behead themselves to amuse stockholders, then that is their choice and it should be respected.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Nintendo Kid posted:

This already happens in the actual system, once the deal is negotiated and in a votable form. Why do you oppose this? What's the benefit gained by ending it earlier?

I oppose the current setup because special interests with enormous influence are allowed to hype bills not even seen by the public a year in advance, while groups dedicated to our civil rights are given one month to interpret, coordinate, explain, and motivate the public into opposition. The benefit to making the bill transparent is that watchgroups dedicated to our rights get a more level playing field.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Fojar38 posted:

I hope you apply this same logic to keeping Jim Crow around because lots of people opposed removing it.

If such an enormous group of citizens were to oppose the global End Racism And Also Lower The Minimum Wage Bill that representatives had to take notice, then sure.

My opinion on the operation of secretive trade deals between elite interests has little to do with our domestic government proccess.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Fojar38 posted:

There was such a massive group of citizens opposing the civil rights act that it altered the political trajectory of the USA for the next 50 years and counting.

It sounds to me like you're cherrypicking what circumstances your proposed system would be applicable to so that opposition is only empowered on a specific issue that you oppose.

Yes, and then a larger, more energized group protested both peacefully and violently, until the representatives had no choice but to take note. You see in our domestic government representatives are influenced by their constitutents and vote accordingly. It is a flawed system, but it has its successes. Shutting out the constitutents until the last month where they must pick through legalese to find what the bill really does, is not the same.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Nintendo Kid posted:

The "civil rights groups" are also allowed to "hype" all the bad things they'll think the deal will have, dude. In fact them and ignorant people like you are already doing it. There's also the minor matter that there hasn't been a "year of hyping up the TPP in advance" you nutball.

Yes, and that is where debate sparks. In this case it's due to the secrecy of the bill and willfull ignorance of partisans.

The bill is not yet up to be read and it is already being hyped. It was also being defended months prior as well. The people defending the bill are the only ones allowed to see the bill. That is a problem for democracy and the will of the people.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Nintendo Kid posted:

The constituents aren't shut out, you people are already protesting it without any knowledge of it. Is that not enough?

The only reason that it is being protested now is the fact that a patriotic whistleblower risked his wellbeing to reveal its existence. We'd have nothing in place to protest it if that hadn't happened.

quote:

Hey genius, most of the people "defending" the bill haven't been able to see it, pretty much just high level diplomats and heads of state and government are allowed to see it.

And I'm sure none of them are influenced by or speak to elite interests. I mean, this is the government we're talking about! They clearly are focusing on IP rights out of sympathy for impoverished stockholders.

quote:

This is not a problem for democracy. There is plenty of time to be opposed to it. You are already opposed to it, after all.

Because the secrecy was broken months in advance.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Nintendo Kid posted:

That's not a thing that happened. You would have been free to protest without the unverified leak regardless.

Except there wouldn't yet be a protest because nobody would know what the hell is in it beyond "Obama is making a deal, China doesn't like it". The leak gave watchgroups time to prepare and protest.

quote:

But this is an interesting tack you're taking: you're basically saying it's a-ok to not have transparency so long as someone whips up a supposed leak out of a few paragraphs with no verification. Thus proving it's ok for the negotiations to be secret. Nice!

This is so hilariously close to gibberish that I'm really interested in whats going on in your head right now. The leak made us aware of the deal and its contents as of the draft, outside of its provisions (whuch are godawful) the fact that the people of all these nations are closed out from a deal selling off enormous rights and protections is still an enormous concern. The leak was good for allowing watchgroups to read, interpret, explain, and protest its contents well in advance. The secrecy that is still ongoing is still bad.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012
Another crosspost, Leftist Heartthrob Elizabeth Warren's opinion on the corporate court provision of TPP:

TEAYCHES posted:

im referring to what elizabeth warren wrote about in this article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...c9a9_story.html

"Agreeing to ISDS in this enormous new treaty would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty.

ISDS would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws — and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers — without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court. Here’s how it would work. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions — and even billions — of dollars in damages.

If that seems shocking, buckle your seat belt. ISDS could lead to gigantic fines, but it wouldn’t employ independent judges. Instead, highly paid corporate lawyers would go back and forth between representing corporations one day and sitting in judgment the next. Maybe that makes sense in an arbitration between two corporations, but not in cases between corporations and governments. If you’re a lawyer looking to maintain or attract high-paying corporate clients, how likely are you to rule against those corporations when it’s your turn in the judge’s seat?"

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Effectronica posted:

There's some really good reasons why the TPP would be favorable to poorer countries, which most people ignore in favor of raw, naive cynicism. Like, are we seriously engaging in the vulgar Marxoteenism where everything is done by Snidely Whiplash and Dick Dastardly for the purposes of loving people over and accumulating wealth?

i see what you're doing and in lovin' it

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Boon posted:

Call it aristocratic or what you will, but I just don't think I or anyone else not in Fight club have a right to be given access to on ongoing international negotiations, especially since the negotiating power is specifically delineated to the executive branch which is decidedly not beholden to public opinion.

Requiring negotiations to be open to public scrutiny is as absurd to me as requiring Department of Defense plans to be open to public scrutiny. Nice in theory, absurd in reality.

This isn't a war, lives are not in jeopardy, revealing what our representatives are pushing for provides far more benefits to the represented than any potential damage that could be done.

Trade is not something that you have to leave to the "big boys" (when they arent gambling on bubbles and endorsing austerity against the advice of economists). It concerns workers as a whole and we deserve to be aware of what is happening to our rights.

Fojar38 posted:

So what sorts of things can the government do in secret since apparently they aren't allowed to negotiate with foreign powers in secret now?

Anything that may jeopardize human lives and otherwise does not concern or affect the representes people; the government is well within its rights to reserve information regarding spies, espionage, double-agents, etc., so long as it is not committed on the represented (in which case the people seserve to know why and how, if not the specifics) and the information is provided once it is no longer crucial and will not harm lives.

asdf32 posted:

Except it's not about the corporation it's about the law. In the case of a corporation suing over a treaty that's a matter of whether the government is following its own agreement or not.

If the U.S. agrees in the TPP to remove tariffs on Japanese cars and then writes a law reinstating them it's in breach of its own prior agreement and Toyota would have grounds to sue (getting reparations for losses if it wins). It's a pretty basic enforcement mechanism actually and one that's been used for decades in other instances.

If the corporate courts only concerned the enforcement of trade law then it would be understandable. The wording used was along the lines of "harm/inhibit growth". This is too vague a purpose to establish a court with jurisdiction over countries for. The lawsuit in Egypt over the grotesque crime of raising the minimum wage is a good example of this.

As well, as Elizabeth Warren elaborated on, the pool of judges and lawyers that will be used in this court are by their nature tainted and biased towards the corporations involved in the system.

asdf32 posted:

Because transparency doesn't benefit people in either case.

You can't plan war publicly and you can't negotiate treaties publicly either withought seriously weakening your position at the least.

Trade is not War. Trade concerns the public. Trade affects the public. Trade deals can compromise the publics' rights. The people deserve to know what will be impacting them.

The only way this line of thought is either A) You genuinely believe the public is unworthy of protecting themselves, and should expect lobbyist-guided officials to handle their wellbeing without public oversight or B) this is indeed a war, on the public, and subject to the laws and methods of war. In which case your defense of the elite's actions clearly displays which side you belong to.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Boon posted:

And you will. Unfortunately, you're not entitled to know what's being done as it's being done and I don't know why you think you are. You want to know, that doesn't mean you have a right to know.

Who determines entitlement? If the people want to know what their representatives are trading of theirs away and willing to protest this what makes you think "entitlement" acts as a Killing Word against this?


quote:

This seems like an awfully arbitrary line of thinking that you literally just formulated on the spot.

It's an opinion. A stance. I assume from the lack of real retort that you have no direct reason to object to it.


quote:

How does war not concern or affect the public? Because since Vietnam it has literally not impacted you personally? War historically has affected the public more than any other action that the government can take in international affairs and your statement is ridiculous on it's face.

It's a typically temporary effect when it comes to invasion, and since the abolishment of the draft voluntary. Do not feign outrage where it is unnecessary; i believe the people deserve to know who and why their representative's wish to go to war, and have a say in the matter.

quote:

I'd go with some sort of formulation of A where, yes, I deeply believe that the public is unable to look out for it's own best interests. It's why we have laws and regulations on everything from financial markets to how fast you can drive your car and what you can consume while doing it. This is not to say that an individual cannot do so, but the population as a whole is rather fractious and I don't think that's really even an argument.

The people as a whole contains members who can interpret and explain issues requiring skilled knowledge. By nature of being a member of the underclass they have little reason to work against their (the public)'s interests, and no matter how you feel about the publics' intelligence they still deserve to be given as much opportunity to influence their government as possible. You cannot trust upper class citizens, influenced by the elite via an established fourth chamber of bribery, to work in the publics influence behind closed doors.

Those regulations were introduced by representatives elected into their position, and maintained by continuing to elect representatives in favor of keeping the regulation. The majority of the regulation does not consist of binding agreements that last for 25 years and are expected to be presented, interpreted, explained, motivated, popularized, and protested/supported directly from scratch in the span of three months. The proccess is long because it's an outstandingly important decision. It deserves more consideration than your wait at the DMV.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Boon posted:

I would say the law determines entitlement in this regard.

How can you be both progressive and completely bound ideologically by the law? The law is not inherently just, this is the basic for a large array of leftist issues, including police reform.

quote:

This is the part where I think we diverge. I look at our society today and see many members who have the required skilled knowledge to interpret and explain complex problems on various issues but have had no significant impact on the population in a years or decades long span. Our public cannot come to consensus agreement that global warming is a direct threat to the US, what makes you think they're inclined to come to some consensus agreement over a more complex questions with far more variables?

Social and environmental issues will always struggle against generational gaps. Global Warming and envirknmental damage has been universally accepted as truth. Where things falter is discussion on if it will be a problem in the long-term. Elite interests have put forth massive media campaigns to push forth simultaneously that Global Warming is not a concern, and that current methods are already green or productive towards stopping global warming. In spite of this setback half of america is still convinced global warming is a problem.

The progress made so far is a testament to the power of the public and hard-working intellectuals among the public.

quote:

The problem, in my mind, is that what's in the best interest of the United States as a whole in the long-term, is not necessarily in the best interest of it's people in the short-term.

Lobbyist action in the past decade, the banking crisis, the housing bubble, austerity, and the dismantlememt of social security and government healthcare is a strong argument that no, the elites with their fingers in this deal most assuredly do not give an inkling of a poo poo about the long-term good of America and its people.

You're blinding yourself with liberal exceptionalism, stroking your balls while the rich lean over your back and whisper sweet nothings to you. You are a part of the public, and you will not be laughing with the stockholders.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

tekz posted:

The bolded bit confirms something one of the initial drafters of the treaty said in this interview (http://thediplomat.com/2015/10/trans-pacific-partnership-prospects-and-challenges/):

Yeah, but has he seen the final draft????????

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

computer parts posted:

There are no heightened restrictions for anyone in a developed nation.

It's kind of creepy how TPP proponents are only concerned with what impacts the US in the bill. Status update: making the rest of the world as corporate-friendly as america is not a good thing.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012

Kalman posted:

Some of us get paid to understand IP laws in various countries, actually.

as if people needed more reasons to ignore this thread and its proponents, lol

  • Locked thread