In solidarity with the toddler Prince Moulay Hassan, thousands of Morrocans underwent circumcisions Thursday. Indian police arrested eighty Hindus involved in a bizarre child-burial ritual in which parents drug and bury their first-born children for a minute or so before unearthing them. Attorneys for a German man who was convicted of manslaughter for killing and eating a man he met on the Internet are appealing his eight-and-a-half year sentence. How do you translate "quit while you're ahead" into German? As the state of Wisconsin debates cat hunting, an Australian lawmaker urges his fellow citizens to bludgeon poisonous toads as he did when he was a child: "We hit them with cricket bats and golf clubs and the like back then." Antarctica, which has survived without an official currency, flag, or even time zones, has its own marathon. As President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva apologized in Senegal for Brazil's role in the African slave trade, the nation he leads continues to play host to vestiges of slavery.

Wow. That story about slavery in Brazil is freaking scarey. Enough to remind me of how great the rule of law is.

Isn't the international "free" market a delusion if the rule of law doesn't cover all international operations? And what about companies that leave the US to become international ... why should we be optimistic about their ability to keep up the conditions of a free market--e.g. consensual and fair treatment of workers--in places without the rule of law?

I think conservatives have to get less complacent about economics and face these issues.

Uhh...isn't that why US companies GO to these countries: To pay their employees lousy wages and get cheap labor without the hassle of environemental regulations, workplace safety issues, etc., etc., etc.,? Their conditions are barely a few steps removed from slavery, in fact one could even fairly call it true "wage slavery".

What the entire nation has to face up to, is that global market conditions do NOT allow us to have the "happy/fantasy land" regulations that make it too expensive for US companies to stay in the US. At some point we'll have to make the decision that it's better for a manufacturing workforce to work at 1/3 of what it USED to get paid than to not work AT ALL.

Of course, even if the manufacturing base COULD pay their workers such low wages, they still couldn't make a profit. Compliance with US Government overhead would still put them out of business. If we don't fix this, we'll starve. Seriously. These are not pretty decisions that have to get made, but the barn door is open and cows are making a run for cheaper pastures.

Homer: you assume that to compete with slave labor abroad we should lower regulations at home... Otherwise these companies will simply go elsewhere -- as though we can't control these companies at all, as though the employment of slave labor conditions abroad by international companies is simply unavoidable. Why? I think instead of lowering just standards here, we should regulate "international" (=gypsy) corporations more. Gypsies? Or pirates, perhaps? These companies want to avoid the laws that ground the free market. We should treat them like pirates who run to international seas for the same reason.

The free market's assumptions simply break down when free labor has to "compete" with slave labor. If we can't keep international companies from employing slave labor, or near slave labor, we should keep them have having access to our markets. This is called "protectionism," but of course protection from unfair (and exploitative/unjust) competition seems OK to me.

You are correct in that I'm assuming all that you attribute to my comments. The conditions you describe ARE unavoidable (at least in today's environment), and your proposal of a new layer of regulatory oversight on US companies would kill any remaining competitive edge the US retains in some sectors.

Those "international corporations" you're referring to are OUR companies (US Companies), and you want to deprive their access to US markets. Just how do you propose to do that? Are we to nationalize US corporations? You can't mean that the solution to our problems is to become more like the Chinese. How far are we going to take these new "controls"? The irony of your suggestion is unsettling.

I simply proposed that a favorable market environment for multiple sectors, manufacturing included, can be created by lowering burdensome regulations that make it impossible to turn a profit on even the highest revenue businesses. (See IBM, who couldn't make a profit on a 10 BILLION dollar PCD business, and was forced to sell it the Chinese)

As I said, these are hard decisions to make, and people thus far are unwilling to make them. But you can't live in "Happy Land" forever...sooner or later, we'll have to realize that we're in a rather cutthroat business environment. If we don't adapt, the world will pass us by.

I didn't suggest "nationalizing" anything. I'm saying that the category of an international corporation is bogus pirate category, and that these SOB's, as a condition to opeate here, should be forced to operate under certain restrictions whether they are US owned or not. Saying that slavery and the international corporations' use of slavery is unavoidable is absurd. Saying that we have to force our companies and our labor to compete "on an even playing field" with slavery and corporations who are complicit in it, is absurd.

I say: there is no even playing field here. Your solution: OK, let's lower our standards so it makes the field level... Lower how far? To slavery itself? *At some point* we will have to make the "hard decision" to stop these pirate homeless gypsy unaccountable corporations from forcing our standards down.

I think the way that protectionism works is that if a company wants to manufacture a product overseas then fine, but duties will be levied on it that will provide a disincentive for manufacturing abroad. The argument goes that this hurts the "consumer" that we all want cheap crap and so should be able to get cheap crap even if it undermines our nation's economic security (by devaluing our dollar and making us indebted to and in effect "owned" by foreign interests) and national security (by making us an importer of vital goods and technology).

The libertarian or liberal (classical sort) refuses to countenance measures which would suggest that consumerism is irrational and bad for the nation and so is all for globalism. Conservatives have traditionally been critics of consumerism and materialism as degrading to morality and culture. So the conservative argument against globalism is a moral one as well as an economic and security one.

On domestic regulation/taxation of companies, first, I am not convinced that it is that big of an issue nationwide, that is, taxes and regulations do vary from place to place. Second, examples like WalMart show the extent to which corporations collude with government at the expense of local economies and communities (by manipulating eminent domain and turning a blind eye to illegal immigration). Third, it is a separable issue from protectionism as one can have high tariffs and still reduce the costs of doing business internally. As we stand now regulation is moot since corporations simply threaten to pick up and move overseas to greener pastures.

Your proposal is not really a plan, but more of a rant about exerting some kind of control over US companies that may or may not be US "in name only". Again, what kind of controls do you envision? There is really no way to deter the international operations you object to other than effectively nationalize their companies. Now you can deny that, especially since you've not really put forward a fleshed-out alternative to my suggestion, but it's the fact. (They say denial isn't just a river in Egypt...but is it perhaps a "Sea of Bitterness"?)

Let me tell you what IS absurd. It's absurd that my dry cleaner has to raise her prices, and risk losing customers, because her chemicals "harm the environment". There are countless stories about enviro-regs hurting and putting people out of business, but that's my personal one. It's absurd that the FDA and every other consumer protection group under the sun places restrictions and code statutes on every damn product made in or entering the US "lest we dash our feet upon a rock". OSHA is absurd. ADA is absurd. Gas, and other "sin taxes", that inhibit shipping and stifle trade are absurd. All of these ridiculous regulations that do nothing but make members of the Sierra Club feel good about themselves are absurd. The minimum wage is absurd. And all of the above are killing us, which is totally absurd.

I never argued for an even playing field, it's not possible. In fact, I pointed out that the playing field is cutthroat and survival is difficult. Lowering standards...I think it would benefit us greatly to LOOK at our "standards" to see what they're really based on. Is it more important to spend money on feel-good regulatory policies, or to create an environment where people can work and feed their families. What good is a high minimum wage when there are no employers????

Best wishes to all in "Happy Land".

Seriously Homer. Neither me nor Brian defended the foolish over-regulation of domestic businesses. Some regulation is legitimate. Too much regulation is imprudent. The question is whether "international corporations" should or should not be allowed to operate lawlessly.

Saying that the reason we can't compete with slave-labor abroad is because of over-regulation is delusional. The only kind of deregulation that could make us competitive in that situation is deregulation of slavery.

None of this has to do with nationalizing businesses (no one suggested we make IBM a part of the federal government). IBM would simply not have been sold to China if we had stronger tariffs against them or if we had stiffer rules about "international" (=pirate) companies.

Generally speaking I agree with you Homer about overregulation, those are internal tariffs if you will. Domestic taxes and the cost of following various regulatory laws do make American goods more expensive than they should be. But it is a red herring to suggest that this is the reason why we can't make things as cheaply as they can in third world countries. The main cost is always human, in the form of labor, and it is because other nations can freely exploit their workers that we can't compete.

I think some of your anger at the regulatory expense is due to the fact that you are separating the two issues b/c you are accepting globalism as a foregone conclusion. That is, you are following the economic liberals or free marketeers (in whatever political form they take, neocon, libertarian, neoliberal) in saying that this is just the way the world works. But that is not the case. The way the world works is that nations look out for numero uno, this is exactly whey there is no such thing as a global free market. China and Japan have been pursuing policies for decades which have simply stripped us of our ability to provide for ourselves and they have done this in their own interest.

The EU recently threatened an embargo war with the US if it did not remove certain steel tariffs and Bush meekly backed down and the EU promptly flooded our market with cheap steel. The EU wasn't acting on behalf of the economic good of the world but only of its constituent members. Why can't we do the same?

The answer is probably libido, in that we can't do the same because we Americans are fat and happy and have no problem living under a flood of government and personal debt. But the chickens will come home to roost one day.

I guess I'll just have to leave it at that, as I can't figure out which corporations you're referring to. Operating lawlessly? I think these are just buzz words that you're throwing out, or I guess I'm just not smart enough to know what you're talking about (I'm willing to accept the latter). In any case, if you take your reigning in of the "pirate corporations" to its logical conclusions, it amounts to an addition to my ever growing list of absurdities.