Many people are surprised when I tell them I’m all for free trade. But only if it’s for real. None of this, I support free trade if my sock makers are protected nonsense. U.S. agricultural and steel subsidies are the biggest hypocrisies … I don’t know how they/we get away with it. I’m into free trade the way Thomas Friedman is (I can’t believe he didn’t write about CAFTA in today’s column), but even more so. If goods cross borders without restriction than workers should be able to as well. And those workers, no matter what their citizenship, should be completely allowed to organize, paid a minimum wage, and be given access to reasonable worker’s compensation and health care.

But don’t come whining to me about how your programming job just went to India or your manufacturing job is now in China ’cause I’ll either tell you to move to India or China or learn how to do something else. Which is exactly where the government can come in and do something good. The NY Times had a great editorial the other day saying some local government (I think it was in Virginia) was spending tons of money lobbying representatives to vote no on CAFTA as well as spending money on subsidizing the manufacturing and steel industries. But those are two areas where Virginia can no longer compete and that tax payer money, like the editorial said, should be used on training programs and adult ed classes to teach local citizens how to do something else which is in demand. Like porn. Ok, just joking.

But it really seems pretty incredible to me that well educated people still claim to be “against globalization.” Why not just claim to be against the earth’s rotation? Seriously, world getting smaller, get used to it. If you’ve got a product … let’s say a tennis ball … and someone starts making that tennis ball better and cheaper than you do, there is nothing noble or “liberal” about screaming, ‘no, not fair, I don’t want people to be allowed to buy their tennis balls.’ Now, if their tennis balls are so cheap because they pay their workers 10 cents an hour, then yeah, that’s bullshit and workers really need to start unionizing. And if governments try to impede those workers’ efforts to unionize, we need to speak out against it.

But the idea of isolated and protected economies is just plain silly and I don’t understand why so many liberals – with whom I agree on so many issues – are in favor of it.

Specifically, CAFTA is good news for Central America. [side note: I do feel a little weird writing things like this now that I'm covering Latin America for Global Voices because I feel like people are gonna think my own opinions influence what posts I choose to cover/translate over there ... couldn't be further from the truth though ... and besides, I always like to know where journalists stand on issues that they report so I'm not gonna keep my big mouth shut] A lot of people think about industries in Central America as small, family owned, and independent. This is often true in the “neighborhood business sector” (AKA auto-empleo) like corner shops and your local tortilleria, but when it comes to large sized companies (there aren’t medium sized companies) it’s pure monopoly and corruption. Unlike the U.S., in Central America you can find plenty of big business against free trade pacts (like Mexican gazillionaire Carlos Slim) because they will lose the protected privilege they’ve bought from federal and local politicians through campaign donations. So introducing competition – even from abroad – is a good thing. Cause really, why in the hell are Central Americans paying $1500 for a low end laptop when we can get it for less than half that?

Speaking of Slim, there’s a good example of bad Neoliberal policy. When Salinas privatized the former state telecommunications monopoly, TelMex, he sold the entire thing to one person – now the wealthiest private monopoly holder in all of Latin America. That was a big mistake – rather than encouraging competition and innovation, TelMex has become a notorious evil corporation which lobbies politicians to not allow competitors into the market. (word is, though I never experienced it, TelMex cut access to Skype which threatened its outrageous international call fees) It shoulda been auctioned off piece-meal to various regions of the country like AT&T was after the famous Bells split up.

Yesterday I wrote a post for Global Voices on TeleSur. Chickity check yourself before you wreck yourself. (amazing what 90′s rap lyrics were able to get away with). Much more impressive is what Neha and Nevin have been up to. It’s pretty exciting how fast the project is taking off.