Political-Economic Alternativs

A CALL FOR A NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS' AGREEMENT ON INVESTMENT that corporations must abide by (NGAI) The major functions of governments are the protection of the people preventing desolation of the earth and ensuring a heritage for the future Therefore, the aims of the proposed National Government's Agreement on Investment are: 1. To ensure that international capital investments are legally bound to work within the guidelines of these aims, so that social justice, land care and national sovereignty cannot be overruledfor the sake of returns to shareholders. 2. To set out obligations and responsibilities of international capital, as well as clarifying the extent of its rights when operating in other countries beyond its source boundaries - The degree of protection of businesses from arbitrary confiscation or financial extortion or unpredicted demands is not unlimited and some guarantees must be there for fair treatment. Contracts entered into - eg: for construction requiring international expertise - must be transparent, public and honoured. Piracy of patents and copyrights must be stopped - as long as these have not been imposed on forms of plant and animal life previously under no restricted ownership. 3. To simplify operations of international commerce, while still allowing separate treaties between countries. 4. To ensure that multinational corporations pay their fair share of taxes in the countries within which they operate, and that financial dealings and speculation are also subject to tax. 5. To prevent international speculations, paper shuffling, futures trading and other financial dealings that profit none except the manipulators, but can cause national meltdowns. Governments together can impose taxation and other restrictions on these activities, so that such dealings can no longer create billionaires who have contributed nothing to earn their wealth. 6. To prevent national governments from seeking to promote the interests of their own corporate businesses in a colonial or imperialist fashion in other countries. No country should be pressured to allow foreign investment or trade in that it does not want. The Conquistadors and Commander Perry are no longer to be model heroes for international commercial relations. 7. To retain the sovereignty of individual nations to determine their own destinies by the democratic decisions of their people. 8. To set the principle that Co-operation has priority over Competition, to ensure that the race is not to destruction. The Agreement is to be revised every five years to ensure usefulness as situations change. The Agreement spells out in general terms which foreign investment benefits a country, and which does not. For example, foreign investment in a country is beneficial if it complements and supplements domestic investment and business, in creating useful and innovative production improves production and distribution to the benefit of workers and consumers in that country creates useful jobs conserves natural resources improves infrastructure and the environment encourages domestic companies to also be innovative and efficient without allowing antisocial commercial, work and environmental practices pays as a minimum the same taxes and charges as domestic companies - in the long-term makes that country more prosperous rather than more debt-ridden. Foreign investment is to be discouraged by the strength of national governments in combination and by legislation of individual countries when it: makes the financial scene more potentially unstable eg: through fortunes made and lost in speculation and paper-shuffling buys land and existing property for speculative investment and so drives up the prices. takes over prosperous domestic firms has controlling interests in the media takes over domestic firms and effectively asset-strips and replaces home production with overseas production ravages the land to extract natural resources and then leaves. replaces self-sustainability or biodiversity by cash crops or monocultures uses unfair practices such as dumping, misleading labelling, ruinous lawsuits, and turning into private property what should be to the benefit of the whole community. uses 'commercial confidentiality' to cloak dealings that should be transparent uses 'commercial confidentiality' in negotiations with government at any level. makes donations to political parties. Donations to any purpose are only acceptable when they are clean from any possibility of swaying political, commercial or educational decisions in their favour. removes the desirability of saving for investment among the people of the host nation. Nation states are to have no obligations to give overseas companies any favoured business privileges. - They may decide to restrict or deny overseas investment in particular areas. - They have the right to give their domestic industries whatever support they wish. - They have the right to give preference to domestic industries in tenders. - They have the right to impose tariffs or other restrictions on importing businesses, it is their own lookout if other countries reciprocate. - They have the right to set performance requirements. - They have the right to nationalise industries and to renationalise privatised industries with due compensation.