> V.Kemp wrote:

> Defectors? That's the mechanism by which your short-sighted plans would counteract the motivation of billions of dollars in additional profits? Sounds sound.

Pardon my sarcasm. Really? That's the solution we can rely on? That's the check against fraud? That's it? And for this, you're willing to sacrifice trillions of dollars worth of cost of living for, potentially, billions of people? Are you trolling? Because that sounds absurd.

It's what first attracted people to worrying about Iranian nuclear weapons, the Holocaust, Chinese treatment of prisoners, Soviet nuclear capabilities...

The World Trade Organization conducts its own independent investigations.  Remember, my defector argument only functioned as a way to raise a concern.  It's not enough evidence to warrant a sanction, but it could be probable cause to justify investigations of the issue in question (remember... not cooperating with the WTO means other countries get to place sanctions on you... that's a strong incentive against anyone).

Remember the profit motives are on both sides of the equation on investigations.  If Walmart, for example, decided to buy products in violation of an environmental regulation, it would be in Target's interest to screw Walmart over by highlighting the legal violation.

> "Nobody would pass this idea" means that it's 100% ineffective and accomplishes absolutely nothing. Coupled with the fact that it does/would hurt people, this makes it 0% good, 100% bad, and obviously a really stupid decision.

Nope.  If nobody passes the idea, it doesn't hurt anyone because it didn't pass. 

Besides, "nobody would pass the idea" is only a status quo analysis.  If, for example, it was proven to 100% accuracy that global warming was real, the formula for determining what people would be willing to pass is extremely different.  If people weren't willing to accept short term harm to achieve long term gain, most nations would never engage in military conflict.  It's just a question of letting the circumstances under which the society exists change.

Actually, though, "passing" this would not need to really occur.  The #1 flaw in my argument in this debate (in that if someone pointed it out from the start, I'd really have little grounds to argue with them) is that, in reality, no treaty would need to be passed.  If the US wanted to establish an international standard on carbon emissions, it would only need to establish a domestic standard, then apply environmental regulations on any imports with equivalent standards.  So foreign businesses would either adopt the environmental standard or reduce their business with the US.  Considering the vast portion of global trade is with a few centers of economic power (the US, EU, Japan, and China), policies adopted in those nations would mean, in effect, that other nations would be forced to adopt the policies or they would lose significant market share.  That's not to say the little nations wouldn't have some possible markets for products.  India could have factories meant to provide goods to foreign countries, adhering to environmental standards in said countries, while at the same time having polluting industries for domestic products.

Not to mention that this whole argument leaves politics into a form of academic redundancy.  If that was an accepted argument, any sort of change which bettered society would be thrown out as "well, that wouldn't happen, people who don't like the policy, corrupt people, etc., wouldn't do it."  In fact, the evidence would indicate that, for any policy change, the empirical evidence (the fact that said policy has not been taken) would favor the policy's rejection.  Thus, this argument is empirically invalid because real change does actually occur in politics, for better or worse.