NationStates Jolt Archive

The Republic of Youteria has summited the following proposal:

Economic Act of 2008

A resolution to reduce barriers to free trade and commerce.


Category: Free Trade


Strength: Strong


Proposed by: Youteria

Description: The United Nations:

Considering;
i)That free trade has proved to have very significant effects in the growth of small economies and large ones as well;
ii)That the furtherment of it would help most of the poor people in non-developed countries;
iii)That the current situation could be enhanced by the work of a UN commission in charge of designing new economical policies;

Hereby:

1)ESTABLISHES the Free Trade and Economic Research and Loan Unit (FTERLU), that shall be in charge of the design of new policies for the growth of the UN´s members economies.

2)COMISSIONS the FTERLU to:
Design new economic models and policies that will render the current one obsolete and will help the world develop new conceptions of economic grow.
Advice the UN´s member nations in the best ways to handle their economies, in order to achieve a sustainable development.
Loan money to the different nations to help them capitalize its resources and expand their economies.


Voting Ends: Sun Mar 23 2008


We believe that the creation of such a research unit could be useful for the entire UN community, specially for those countries with weak economies. The FTERLU´s advices won´t be mandatory, but its new policies and investigations can be very useful to whichever country wants to use them. Even more, the loan capacity of the FTERLU would be useful to any nation with budget difficulties. We are open to comments on this matter, and will hear the critics the fellow UN nations may have towards our proposal with the respect each of them deserves. May God save Youteria.

Jonius Ponesus Agrippa, UN Ambassador.

We thank the honoured ambassador for drawing this submission to our attention. Perhaps we could have better advised him had he put a draft before us instead of a notionally finished product. As it is, all we can say is that we don't think this will serve the ambassador's intended purpose with any great facility.

Let us take the proposal piece by piece:

Economic Act of 2008
Category: Free Trade
Strength: Strong
While we, being no fans of free trade as a concept, are by no means experts in the field, we don't think that this proposal remotely deserves a labelling of "Strong". We will come back to this with reasoning later.

Description: The United Nations:

Considering;
i)That free trade has proved to have very significant effects in the growth of small economies and large ones as well;
ii)That the furtherment of it would help most of the poor people in non-developed countries;
We have no doubt that free trade has had extremely significant effects on the growth of small economies, but we are yet to see any evidence of those effects being positive. From this point on, the proposal is highly unlikely to receive our support, so please take the following in the spirit of drafting comments for your resubmission.

iii)That the current situation could be enhanced by the work of a UN commission in charge of designing new economical policies;
"economical" -> "economic"

We were somewhat under the impression that the UN Economics Prize was intended to encourage this end. If the honoured ambassador is telling us otherwise, we would be happy to see that pointless piece of self-aggrandisement repealed.

Hereby:

1)ESTABLISHES the Free Trade and Economic Research and Loan Unit (FTERLU), that shall be in charge of the design of new policies for the growth of the UN´s members economies.
"that shall be" -> "to be"
"the UN's members economies" -> "the UN's members' economies"

The unit's name is unlovely, unmemorable, and unclear. Perhaps something more focused on describing the committee's work rather than using buzzwords would be better?

2)COMISSIONS the FTERLU to:
Design new economic models and policies that will render the current one obsolete and will help the world develop new conceptions of economic grow.
"current one" -> "current ones", unless the honoured ambassador honestly believes that all nations currently adhere to but a single model and policy, in which case he is due for a rude awakening should he ever visit Yelda.

"economic grow" -> "economic growth"

"COMISSIONS" -> "COMMISSIONS" -- we fear the most commonly used spelling aid aside from a good dictionary pays no heed to words in capitals, leading the unsuspecting into problems like this.

We have a mild categorisation issue here, which can probably be safely ignored. There is an implicit assumption that the splendid new clothes -- sorry, policies -- will be Free Trade in nature, but no such directive is given to the FTERLU. Should the unit conclude that (say) targetted tariffs or Fair Trade systems are the way to go, the proposal will have wandered somewhat away from its nominal category. (OOC: but that's not going to have a lot of game effect, is it?)

Advice the UN´s member nations in the best ways to handle their economies, in order to achieve a sustainable development.
"Advice" -> "Advise"

We suspect that 'sustainable' means different things to us, ambassador, for our immediate thought was to wonder how environmental issues might be thought to be part of this issue. Perhaps the next draft could be explicit about it being 'economically' or 'financially sustainable'?

Loan money to the different nations to help them capitalize its resources and expand their economies.
"its" -> "their".

Where does this loan money come from? Not the UN, surely; we are reasonably certain that the pickle barrel set at the entrance for donations does not contain sufficient funds to make a noticeable difference to event the smallest nation herein, particularly not after the amount of reglazing that has been required in this chamber in the past year.

To return to our argument about strength, let us total up what this resolutions does. It creates new economic policies that no one is obliged to implement, offers advice that no one is obliged to listen to, and grants loans with money that doesn't exist. To us, that's Weak. We suppose that the avidly commerce-based could make an argument that it is Significant, but by no stretch of the imagination can it possibly be called Strong. We strongly (sorry) advise the honoured ambassador to downrate the proposal's strength when he resubmits it.

The free trade question is one that defies a simple answer. Trade proposals are an uphill battle in the United Nations, and realizing that we commend the delegation from Gobbannium for their efforts in that arena. That being said, we question the wisdom in appointing a United Nations committee to rewrite the world's economic formulae.

Given the vast differences in member economies and the principles that guide them, including economic policy among the organization's responsibilities is asking for an enormous degree of bureaucratic bloat. We would instead advise creating a commission that assists individual nations upon request. This would maintain the original goal of providing policy assistance to nations without their own think tanks, while decreasing the financial and staffing requirements of such a commission.

We think this basically a good idea. The UN lacks an authorised economic policy agency and there are undoubtedly nations that would seek advice: I'm sure my own would, in certain policy areas, do so.

Two initial suggestions:
- the UN Free Trade Commission, created by Resolution #130, "Global Food Distribution Act", and used by several subsequent resolutions, is a trade arbitration board, but you could consider expanding its powers to that described by this proposal, to save on bureaucracy;
- I would avoid praising free trade while talking about objective economic advice: it lends the proposal a (wholly unjustified) appearance of impartiality.

-- Samantha Benson
Congressional Liaison, Department of UN Affairs
Quintessence of Dust, Delegate of Wysteria