International Economic System

Speaking of US and Western power in the international economic system, their goals and methods of so call helping the LEDCs is a lie. What we see today is that poor countries stay poor and the rich countries stays rich. Let’s talk about why these poor countries are poor originally. Internally, the lack of natural resources is one part of the reason, with the lack of natural resources, the countries itself cannot produce it’s own power sources and they are not able to use the natural resources to benefit themselves. Probably the other reasons is poor governance, with poor governance, the citizens will not be able to cooperate with the government. Sometimes the governments focus on benefit him or her instead of the citizens of countries. Talking about natural resources, the geographic disadvantage is one part of important fact, the disadvantage, they may not be able to produce it’s own food and it leads to starvation within the countries. The lack of infrastructures leads to inconvenient within the countries. Sometimes it includes school and other important infrastructures.

        The MEDCs believes that free trade can help the LEDCs to develop. They MEDCs will import in higher tariff, so they would sell clothes in higher prices. The LEDCs citizens will then buy the products that are made in there countries. Speaking of advantages on products, MEDCs has technology and infrastructures that will decrease the cost for making their products and they can produce in large amount. They can sell their product cheaply in the LEDCs. LEDCs citizens will buy the products that are cheap to them, but LEDCs manufacture factory do not have technology to produce in a cheap price. If they lower their prices, the workers will not get enough amount of money to live.

        This leads to loans, if a LEDCs want to borrow money for building infrastructures and build technology in their factories. They will have to borrow the money from World Bank, but the World Bank was control by the MEDCs, if they borrow it, they are force to follow certain rules such as lowering the tariffs. This will make the MEDCs product even cheaper and the LEDCs have the money but it is not able to sell more products. Then the World Bank will ask them to pay their debts or start paying the interest. The LEDCs might took the money that is originally use for building infrastructures to pay those debt but if that is not enough, they will have to borrow more money from other countries. It turns into a cycle and the LEDCs will be more and more in debt.

        Another real example is that in America, some states are able to produce large amount of corns that the Americans cannot even finish, which is why food in America is so cheap. The rest of the food will be sold in other countries in cheaper prices. This will hurt the farmers in those countries. The reason why American famers are able to profit from growing food is because the America pays more money to the famers to continue their business. The US famers will profit even more than what it is suppose to get. That is why the LEDCs are continuing being poor and as they aren’t developed, their population will start increasing.

Maximize the Positive, Minimize the Negative

Now days, the LEDCs countries has trouble developing through trade with MEDCs, but some times trade is the only way they could develop. Why are they still poor? Now we are trying to maximize the positive effects of trade while minimize the negative effects of trade.
There are two types of trade, Free Trade and Fair Trade. By looking at positive effects of each, it seems like a great deal. The benefits of Free Trade, due to the efficiency benefits from comparative advantage, competition, and avoiding trade barriers, producers are able to lower costs of Goods and still make profits. Through trade, the capital and technology will be influence, it became more available in developing states. Overall free trade has been shown to contribute economic growth.
Fair Trade, organized social movement that aims to create more equitable trading conditions to help disadvantaged producers in LEDCs receives great profit for the goods they produce, but the MEDCs will have to pay slightly more for goods. Benefit of Fair Trade, the producers will receive fairer prices and higher returns to pay workers. The promote of sustainable development can promote less energy intensive production and use of renewable resources. Through Fair Trade, the workers working conditions are much better due to the NGOs, NGOs manage to committed to fair labour practices to stop forced labour, and child labour. They also committed to gender equity which men and women can be paid fairly and work at the same job.

I think that in order to keep the positive effects going, is to give more power to the NGOs and on that, assign a representative of the LEDCs workers to make sure that where the money goes and make sure that people are getting the fair amount of income that they suppose to get. Have LEDCs and MEDCs each send a "middle man" to sort out the unfair and make sure each other are not absorbing all the income that suppose to be paid to the workers. Another advice is to promote environment protection, in case one farmer increases it's supply which he or she can lower the price, and that hurts other farmer that does not have much technology and resources to develop enough supply. They can also set a buying range which means each MEDCs can only buy a amount of supply, so that all LEDCs has chance to trade with the MEDCs.

Trade Regimes

Are world trade regimes based more on dominance or reciprocity? I think that both of them has equal status to the world. Although both of them has disadvantage, the dominance trade showed in the documentary "Black Gold". The citizens in Ethiopia produce coffee beans, and it is their major income. The amount they earn on coffee beans decide on the way they live their life. In the video all of them live poorly and children do not go to school. From that we can know that the deal on coffee beans are not good to them. The problem is that their coffee beans was sold in a cheap prize and the "middleman" sells them in a high prize in other countries. The citizens have to agree to the deal because they need to compete with other coffee beans farms. I found that dominance trade apply most on agriculture product. Most agriculture export countries are LEDCs, they can never live a better life because what they earn is so little. At the end of the documentary, some of the coffee farmers change their product into some types of herb that is consider drugs. They said that they are force to change their product because that is what they can earn the most from. Reciprocity trade is one of the better kinds, but it only works when two countries has positive relationships. The European countries, they all work together and they all share the same tariffs on import. The Reciprocity trade is more of a better kind which will help the developing countries develop. Like Taiwan and the USA, USA lower tariffs on imports, so that Taiwan are allow to develop well. All the main reason is to keep Taiwan from going to communism during the Cold War. Overall I think that dominance trade is the most common but not necessarily more than reciprocity. Both trade regimes plays important rules to the society and both has disadvantage that needs to be change.

UN Effectiveness

After World War 2, US and the 50 other countries form the United Nation. The purpose is to prevent from war like World War 2 happen again. The two great power during that time, USA and the Soviet Union, and Soviet Union always try to spread communism and take over Europe and the Cold War between USA and the Soviet Union formed. For example, In 1962, UN secretary general provided valuable assistance as the primary negotiator between Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Also in 2005, the Human Security Report shows that the decline in the number of wars, genocides and human rights abuses since the end of Cold War. We could say that UN is doing it's job at the start of peacekeeping and peacemaking.

Security Council is one of the meeting in United Nation and in the meeting countries talk about preventing countries going to war and solutions to violent actions in some countries. There are five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. They are all nuclear powers. Five of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council has Veto Power. Some people criticise the existent of the Veto Power. A Veto from any of the permanent members can stop any action that the Council may take. Although if the majority of nations agrees to one resolution, the veto power can stop it.  For example, US has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, despite that Israel has never been elected to the Security Council. The five permanent members of the United Nations can veto any resolution that affect it's self-interest.

Gallup released a study on the American perspective of the UN and 66% of American believe that they UN is still necessary, but only 35% of Americans feels that UN was doing a good job of solving the problems they have faced. The reason to the decline in faith in the UN because there are various incidents since 2002 that UN has not really accomplish as much as it could have. The genocide in Darfur and Syria is one of the example. In the end the UNv is a good idea, it still make contribution to the world we live in.

• Website Title: UN News Center
• Article Title: histoire, ONU, Nations Unies, Charte, chronologie
• Publisher: UN
• Date Accessed: November 02, 2014
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  • Publisher: Wikimedia Foundation
  • Date Accessed: November 03, 2014

  • Website Title: Wilson Perkins Allen Opinion Research
  • Article Title: Wilson Perkins Allen Opinion Research
  • Date Accessed: November 03, 2014

  • Website Title: : Is the United Nations effective?
  • Article Title: Barely Politics
  • Date Accessed: November 03, 2014