Kofi Annan Pushes for Economic Fairness Over Regulation

[MikDonsen]

Its not that you need more regulation,

As he said you need the rules already in place to be enforced. The rich countries are super hypocrits.

They change the rules every 5-10 years when it favours them.

Food subsidies, while promoting fair trade, is total unfairness. USA wants it both ways and they get it both ways. besides they got all the power.

It's like if it were a race. Americans would always have it on there land. They'd change the rules when it suits them and always tote fair play.

[Mastikator]

Fairer rules? Equality? You can't have equal outcomes if you have equal starts. Punishing one for being competent is not fair. Bailing out someone else for being incompetent is not fair either.

I thought regulation was about security, making sure consumers don't get poisoned, workers don't get exploited and shareholders don't get robbed. Regulation is at least capable of doing this. Fairness is on the other hand something you can't dictate by legislation, it has to be done case by case.

[eirefrance]

"You can't have equal outcomes if you have equal starts". Thats an odd thing to say. There hasn't been an 'equal' start in the history of time. Its kind of like saying "You can't make feta cheese if you milk a unicorn".

[Mastikator]

True. But imagine for a second that there is a group of religious people advocating that we should only make feta cheese from unicorn milk.

Since they will never accept that there are no unicorns you'll have to try different tactics. In the slim hope that this will make them less motivated to try to take my feta cheese.

See what I'm trying to say?

[eirefrance]

Yeah, imagine if people were saying that unicorn milk was the greatest milk ever, and they bent over backwards to genetically mutate existing animals into unicorns, creating hideous beasts in the process and destroying milk producing animals as a result, so that all milk is now gross. And when people complain about the now ruined milk, the Unicornmilkers say

"well, theres never been a truly free market...I mean, a unicorn, so you can't say unicorn milk is gross".

[Mastikator]

And technically, they'd be right. You can't blame the unicorn because it didn't exist.

[Mastikator]

Also, for the record, lots of people have said that true socialism never existed either. So nyah.

[eirefrance]

And, therefore, that is a legitimate reason to continue to pursue true communism (I think you mean communism, not socialism) no matter what the consequences are? I don't care what anyone's ideology tells them the world should be like, I care what it IS like. And all utopian pursuits, be they libertarian or religious or communal, don't work. Simple as that. The real world doesn't care what your philiosophy says it should do.

[Mastikator]

I agree.

[eirefrance]

Awesome. Lets have coffee sometime.

[ndyt]

You are going to level the playingfield when it comes to food because it would be STUPID for the USA to become dependent on food imports - people would starve if something happened to the ability to import food. Thus, each country must support its own food industry as a strategic reserve.

[artformeandyou]

Didn't this guy steal money and take bribes? Who is he to talk about fairness?

[eirefrance]

Where did you get that from? Steal money and take bribes? From who and for what?

[artformeandyou]

Just Google " Kofi Annan Bribe or corruption"

Annan is a joke. He is like the rich priest or pastor pretending like they know what it's like to be poor. We need less regulation, and this guy breaks regulation anyway, so what a hypocrite.

[eirefrance]

Hmmm, I did Google it, and like Mastikator, I found nothing really, just suggestive reports from less than objective organizations. And most of those didn't even say he took bribes, but that he said France and Russia didn't take them. One article even said an accounting firm had cleared him of any wrongdoing. Are you sure you're thinking objectively on this subject?

[Mastikator]

I am also a little bit curious. I looked at his wikipedia page and it made no mention of this.

Then I googled it and only foxnews and the heritage foundation supported the claim, whereas a larger number of other sources opposed the claim.

With foxnews on probribe side I am a bit hesitant to believe it, given their past of lies.

[blackiron60]

You cannot have a "level playing field" under capitalism. Unfair economic systems cannot be made fair, regardless of how much you regulate them.

[AimiriZ]

What? What did you just say captain Kuchki? What do you mean?

[truthadvocate]

The market serves consumers best all over the world when government stop intervening, stops regulating. He says "Subsidies distort the market" than he asks for more public policy involvement. Governments don't protect you. governments protect themselves at your expense.

[Kashrlyyk]

@truthadvocate Bullshit. Banks stopped serving the consumers and started serving themselves because of not enough regulation leading to the financial crisis. What you want was exactly what Bush did in his time (less regulation) and the result was a disaster.

[mrx0066600]

agreed, having no regulation is what started this mess. I would find it deplorable to have these selfish people not being regulated.

[truthadvocate]

"having no regulation" Banking & healthcare are the most highly regulated industries in the world.

[truthadvocate]

You know only a tiny fraction of the story. Banks have been committing large scale crimes ever since the government started backing up their reserves. The housing bubble occurred because government seized control over money, removed the gold standard, created massive inflation by lowering interest rates & printing money, passed laws & bought up bad loans to force banks & make it profitable to give loans to people that couldn't pay them back. Learn from men who predicted it long ago. misesDOTorg

[Causa10bserver]

I find it amazing that tomatoes from Italy that were grown by a farmer, driven to the cannery by a driver, canned by a laborer, and further transported by others who each make more money in a year than any 20 Africans, could be cheaper than those of a farmer a few miles from the store. I also wonder how the US can be blamed for a world financial crisis nearly a decade old when we were only dragged into it less than two years ago by our own local socialists. Kofi is just another looter.

[chainzdown2dadik]

farm subsidies offset the cost of production to the farmers meaning that they can charge significantly lower prices than non subsidized food producers. this is sold to people as "helping out for the little guy" but since the money comes from the "little guy's" income as taxes anyway it only benefits the corporate farms that can now eradicate non-politically connected competition at the taxpayers financial, and because of the cutting corners methods they tend to use, dietary expense.

[Dochirin]

I can't believe that someone who was caught red handed profiting from the Oil-for-food program and who was involved in so many corruption scandals now talks about "economic fairness".

[alexmigda]

hey, guys. Let's all just be fair, ok? That'll work...

NOT

[paritoshmehta123]

the issue does not involve the amount of power to the state, the issue is that governments spend taxpayers money to help the farmers in america to an extent that african farmers cant do buisness in their own backyard.

[return135]

what is economic fairness? what is fair? this sounds like a bull shit command and control solution to give more power to the state.