The TPP monster has 5,544 pages. A real free trade agreement would have 1.

The TPP monster has 5,544 pages. A real free trade agreement would have 1. By Joanne Nova.

The TPP monster has 5,544 pages. A real free trade agreement would have 1

Lately the “Five Star Free Market” label is just a fake seal of approval for something Unfree.

Just as carbon trading has nothing to do with a free market, so it is with monster free trade deals like the TPP. The free market meme won the intellectual debate of the 20th Century, but now its good name gets used and abused to sell the idea it defeated —  bigger-government.

A real free market deal has only one page and a bunch of signatures. But it takes a lot of pages to list all the unfree parts and to spell it out in sub-sub-clauses that hurt or help thousands of businesses around the world.

Who gets the sweetest deal out of the complexity — the card carrying networkers — those who schmooze up to the right minister or bureaucrat? Or the people who compete on price or quality alone would win in a real free market? …

Monster Documents have to stop. The TPP is a hundred pound weapon. There is no single citizen in the West alive today that even knows what the law is that they are supposed to obey — they don’t know if they are breaking the law without paying a lawyer, and often the lawyers are just giving it their best damn guess anyway.

Trump announced yesterday in his YouTube that he would be ditching the TPP, which effectively kills it.