
The Corporate-Friendly World of the T.P.P - walterbell
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-corporate-friendly-world-of-the-t-p-p
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mimo84
Giving to a private company the ability to effectively sue a government is the
worst idea ever. Imagine a world with no regulations because there are
damaging the business. Welcome to a world where you need a mortgage if you are
sick because there are royalties to be paid to the pharmaceutical companies.
One example is already happening: Phillip Morris Honk Kong is suing the
Australian government because the laws to discourage people from smoking are
damaging their business (here is the link:
[https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/29064155/tobacco-
giant-s...](https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/29064155/tobacco-giant-sues-
australia/) ). This was going on before the TPP even it is not active yet.

~~~
rwmj
It's not "the worst idea". It's designed to stop countries commandeering or
nationalizing assets that a company owns. (Search for "venezuela
expropriations" for some recent cases). For that limited purpose it's fine.

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melloclello
Call me socialist but I actually kinda like the idea that my country can just
nationalise whatever if we just so feel like it. Sure, it would ruin our
reputation, but I like to think sovereignty means something, right?

I tell you what, if I was PM of my country and, say, a foreign company
discovered a significant oil field within our territory, I would want to
nationalise the _shit_ out of it, reputation be damned.

~~~
_yosefk
Why should sovereignty mean that you can disregard the rights of foreigners
any more than owning a home should result in a right to take a guest's wallet
at gunpoint? Whether or not either of these situations is morally desirable, I
don't see how they would be sustainable, as in, why would everybody else put
up with you?

To take your example, if my country nationalizes an oil field found and owned
by your country's citizens (assuming that my country originally tricked them
into searching for oil by promising it'd be theirs to some extent or other
when they find it - otherwise why would they search for it in the first
place?), why would your country stop at "tarnishing my country's reputation"
when it could apply force, ranging from economic sanctions to an actual war?

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michaelt
Sovereignty means having the power to make or change any law.

And our elected leaders should have that power so that bad laws can be fixed.

Imagine if, in pre-civil-war America a lot of British investors had invested
in cotton plantations whose profitability depended on slavery. Should Lincoln
have said "gee, I guess my hands are tied, banning slavery would be bad for
our foreign investors" and done nothing?

You might argue that in the past we had bad laws, but we don't have bad laws
any more and all our laws are perfect. But the fact we still employ
legislators rather implies we think we might need some legislating done.

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_yosefk
Sovereignty means that you have a monopoly on using force within your borders.
When you infringe on the interests of foreigners, the foreign sovereign might
have objections, and I don't understand how this fact is inconsistent with
your sovereignty.

Whether your infringement upon the foreigners' interest is good or bad is an
entirely separate question, all I'm saying is that sovereignty does not grant
you the ability to automatically get away with it and I don't understand why
this word became so fashionable in this context recently (a similar example is
defaulting on sovereign debt.)

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mtgx
There is a protest in Washington against TPP, TTIP and TISA on November 14-18.
Spread the word:

[http://www.flushthetpp.org/call-to-action-against-global-
cor...](http://www.flushthetpp.org/call-to-action-against-global-corporate-
domination/)

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resonate
The power this gives corporations to sue governments over even the slightest
inconvenience caused to them by regulation is absolutely disgusting. Corporate
lawyers have already used previous trade agreements to set some seriously
despicable precedents.

There are tons of deplorable examples of what they've done already and it will
only get worse if the T.P.P. passes. Some seriously tragic outcomes that have
already been caused by Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS) are recapped
here:
[http://www.isdscorporateattacks.org/](http://www.isdscorporateattacks.org/)

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PythonicAlpha
The global trend is, that governments in all nations loose more and more of
their former power and (partially) dump it to international corporations which
hold the real power in their hands.

There is an older documentation, that is still valid with the name "The
Corporation" which shows, how corporations have used the US constitution and
decades of lobbying and court cases to gain more and more power. So today, the
corporations are difficult to held liable for things they do (in many cases
they come away with small fees that don't even cover the harm they caused),
but enjoy many of the rights which where meant for real citizen.

This documentation comes to the conclusion, that many corporations behave like
psychopaths, because when a corporation has to decide, (for example) to keep
the environment clean or make more profits, the corporation rule is, to go for
the money and forget about the rest.

Anybody should watch this. Either on DVD, or I also spotted it on worlds
favorite video site.

With international treaties like that, the power of international corporations
is hardened and it gets more and more difficult to reverse this global trend.
With all their lawyers and lobbyists, the corporations are bound to win over
the democracies -- what dictators did not manage to.

This trend is undermining democracies and human rights, because corporations
are not democratic and have only one rule to obey: The profit rule.

So finally, we are all governed by money and nothing else.

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heroh
Full video is available on YT, highly recommended:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4ou9rOssPg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4ou9rOssPg)

