Forget the DU created issues. How does Hillary not have an opinion on TPP?

[JDPriestly]

126. I agree that the reason we, the US do not compete well or work together well with the international

trade community, is that we do not have the social infrastructure and safety net to respond and retool to the lost jobs and the changes that globalization requires.

But I have a more serious objection to global trade.

The corporate form of business organization is useful. It encourages efficient investment, allowing capital to flow into useful purposes and be used well to develop new products and services for the benefit of our society.

But corporations are not organized democratically. Corporations are autocratic, dictatorial institutions by nature. They are specifically and clearly organized in order to limit the social responsibility, even the potential indebtedness in case of failure of the corporation to its creditors. They can be useful means of development for democratic societies as long as the corporations are regulated by and answer to the democratic will as expressed in government. But corporations are by definition, by organization, by law, structures that avoid or limit responsibility.

In addition, human beings are limited by nationality (dual nationality, maybe even triple nationality is possible but people are still limited by national affiliation and their geographical location) while corporations today are often multinational.

Thus individual human beings who are limited and defined by geographical and national limits and who form governments, hopefully in a democratic fashion are now living in a world in which corporations, irresponsible (by design), undemocratic (by definition) and in need of regulation are organized as multinationals, huge multinationals with large amounts of capital and an irresistible drive to dominate, to compete, to govern selfishly and recklessly, irresponsibly and to get what the corporation wants in spite of the needs of people and nations.

And these corporations, which could and do serve an essential role in our society, are because of and via our trade agreements overwhelming our democratic institutions and replacing them with the autocratic, dictatorial institutions of corporations.

And that i view as an insurmountable drawback to the trade agreements and the ISDS courts.

Corporations are not perhaps intentionally conspiring to take over the world via these trade agreements. But that will be the result of the trade agreements.

I do not think that it is possible to have international regulation of these huge corporations that is compatible with democracy and the local law-making, local rule, local government that is necessary if democratic institutions are to thrive.

China, a Communist dictatorship, has found a way to deal compatibly with the corporate investment model. But it is still not a democracy. It is a nation ruled by one party, the Communist Party. interestingly although not surprisingly because of its huge population, it is the biggest exporting nation in the world.

It is proof that international trade is no impediment to dictatorship.

The US, a democracy for well over 200 years, on the other hand has a large trade deficit, has seen its steel sector, and other industrial sectors such as furniture production, etc. nearly shut down. We are unable to compete.

The corporate model is a dictatorship. If we value democracy, we need to protect it at all costs, even by entering into one-on-one trade agreements with other countries rather than these multi-national trade agreements through which the corporations, which are not limited by geographical location or national affiliation, outmaneuver us and destroy us and our democratic ways of life.

I note that even Germany which, with its amazingly effective training and retraining system (I've lived there and know it well) which its wonderfully efficient and skilled labor force, with its long tradition of labor guilds and now unions and good relationships between employers and employees, is under pressure from corporations that want to force it to accept nuclear power that it does not want.

So, I oppose these corporate-dominated, sociopath, supernationa, undemocratic trade deals including but not limited to the TPP.