Kort Explores conundrums of the human condition

The relative amount of effort put into distracting the public's attention away from an issue is often a fair indication of how important it is for citizens to be aware of that issue. It's beginning to appear that our government and the mainstream media put an exceptional amount of effort into distracting public attention away from what was going on inside the recent World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle.

As usual, the mainstream media contained a flood of highly selective coverage with little substance, coverage that was exhaustive only in its relentless claims of presenting an "in depth report of what's happening in Seattle". Major news segments and articles compliantly parroted the official line that sought to marginalize and condemn those protesting the WTO. The protesters were portrayed as either confused fringe elements, sociopathic vandals, or old fashioned labor union heavies selfishly trying to hold back the dawning of a glorious new era of global prosperity in order to preserve their personal power and perks.

Contrary to the mainstream media's dismissal of the protesters as confused crazies and troublemakers, it turns out that many of those in Seattle were there because they weren't intimidated or fooled by all the smoke and mirrors behind which the WTO hides its true nature. Many of the protesters were entirely rational individuals protesting what they recognized as a serious threat to their fundamental rights and liberties as freemen.

It's taken decades for the truth to start leaking out about previous confrontations between citizens and their government that were concealed from the public by the mainstream media. But this time many of those taking a stand for individual liberty had access to the Internet. As a result, even as events were unfolding in Seattle, the net was buzzing with first hand accounts by citizens who experienced a far different reality than was being reported in the mainstream media.

While the paramilitary forces of the state shot, beat, and gassed peaceful American citizens exercising their constitutional rights, the mainstream media focused on a few staged displays of public disorder and criminal property destruction by a tiny number of provocateurs that the police seemed determined to avoid arresting. While the sovereignty of the United States and the fundamental rights and freedoms of American citizens were being surrendered to the WTO, the mainstream media coverage focused on how terrible it was that American citizens still had the right to openly protest the actions of their government.

The WTO is being promoted under the banner of free trade. It's claimed that only a global government with the power to nullify protectionist national laws that get in the way of global commerce, can create free trade. The distractions in Seattle were skillfully managed to keep the public from considering whether the WTO is actually the free trade champion it claims to be, or yet another false facade hiding exactly the opposite agenda. As a result there has been almost no public recognition that the powers, political structure, and mandate of the WTO practically guarantee that the organization will become a major threat to free markets, free enterprise, and the free individual.

Consider that the broad expansions of Federal power and intrusiveness we've seen during the last century have been largely leveraged off the mandate to regulate interstate trade. The authors of our Constitution intended for the Federal government to regulate interstate trade as a way to facilitate trade - to standardize weights and measures, and to have only limited power to remove artificial obstacles to free trade between the sovereign states.

Does the Federal Government today facilitate or inhibit free trade? There are very few aspects of even intrastate trade that today are not subject to some form of federal taxation, regulation, licensing, standards, restrictions or outright prohibition. The official motives behind many Federal manipulations of the marketplace - such as banning non-dolphin safe tuna - have significant public support. But regardless of whether you agree with the official motives or not, all of these manipulations are artificially created barriers to free trade created by exactly the organization originally created to remove barriers to free trade.

Do the majority of Federal regulations contribute to a more level, fair, and free marketplace? Or do they instead create artificial advantages for those with the political power to lobby the Federal regulators? Do the increasingly aggressive government manipulations of the marketplace serve the interests of the small businesses which provide 80% of the jobs in America, or the political agendas of those with deep enough pockets to buy the favor of unprincipled politicians?

As bureaucracies grow, the volume of regulations they impose as a means of demonstrating their power also tend to grow. Just keeping up with the flow of new regulations out of the alphabet soup of Federal regulatory agencies is more than most small businesses can deal with, and creates an unfair artificial advantage for larger less efficient and innovative companies.

Imagine the difficulties facing the small businesses that are the real heart of our economy when the WTO adds yet another layer of irrational politically driven market manipulations between producers and their customers. Do we really want our jobs to be subject to the politics, influence peddling, special interest lobbying, and just plain corruption going on behind closed doors on the other side of the world? Would any of those who risked everything to create our great nation approve of our participation in the WTO?

Free trade is only served by removing barriers between producers and consumers. This includes recognizing the full costs of products, and ensuring that the true cost of production is contained in the price of products - including such commonly externalized costs as societal disruptions, environmental pollution and degradation, etc., as well as intangible costs such as consumer moral, social, and technical issues.

Only the informed and aware consumer, making purchasing decisions based on his own value system, is able to accommodate intangible factors into his purchasing decisions, and accurately regulate the market success of competing products. The structure of the WTO ensures that it will be far more responsive to well funded political agendas and the influence of multinational corporations with deep pockets, than to the perceived values and interests of individual consumers. The WTO has already demonstrated that it will "regulate" the global marketplace by imposing its agenda on consumers, not by facilitating their individual informed and aware purchasing decisions.

The WTO will create a global state that is effectively isolated from any meaningful responsibility to the American electorate. The political structure of this new global power structure will by its very nature effectively eliminate the already minimized political power of the individual American by diluting their votes with those of the billions of citizens of the other member nations. The political power of individual freemen will become so diluted by those long accustomed to tyranny and servitude that the global state will be able to safely pursue policies and risk generating levels of outrage among American citizens that would be political suicide for domestic politicians.

I'm convinced that organizations like the WTO are a veiled attempt to infringe on the rights and freedoms of American citizens in ways that would not be possible through state and federal governments that are still at least partly constrained by their Constitutions and voters.

The WTO is not a means of creating a global free market. The very nature of the WTO will drive its bureaucracy to seek ever greater control and power - just like every other bureaucracy. Just like our expansionist Federal government, once its power base is established, the WTO will seek to leverage its control over global commerce into ever more intrusive control over the citizens of the world. The difference is that the secretive closed door operations of the WTO are not constrained by the checks and balances that still partly protect the rights and freedoms of individuals at the state and national levels.