International trade of goods and services
Nations need to ensure a sustained way of life for its citizens. However – not all the needs of citizens are available from within their own sovereign territory. Examples of such critical needs include access to renewable and non-renewable energy, various forms of food, medicines and even water. It is the scarcity of such needs that give them value.
Not all necessary trade needs are important to the sustainability of life. However – they can be very important for the industrial complex of the nation. These include special components, modern technologies, access to information and certain minerals. These trade items become necessary for the nation’s wellbeing and its sustainability on the global market arena.
It can be understood if it is argued that a transition to Solidarism would endanger the supply of needed resources to the manufacturing resources. However – such fears would be unfounded. Even though the trade balance would be fundamentally changed – there would still be enough imbalance to provide an alternative form of viably equal trade between developed and lesser developed countries. Furthermore, in the modern globalised market, the withholding of such resources would affect all parties, developed or not.
There would still be challenges that need to be overcome regarding international trade. Today, the rich rely on cheap products and services from lower developed countries. This balance of trade dependency would change – as the monetary flow in exchange for cheap labour would no longer be a viable form of equal trade. However, it is important to understand that not all trade depending upon cheap labour would be affected – it is also very important to keep in mind that the cheap manual labour being used is a representation of the cheapest means of production – which should not be confused with the only means of production.
It is also worth mentioning at this stage, that most of the money that is available from a consumer is not the individual sale of an item. A large company or corporation is not viable if it only sells an item to each consumer only once. It is in the secondary market and the need to replace a product, creating an additional need that provides for the greatest profit.
It is the monopoly of knowledge on means of efficient management of resources that has kept the undeveloped nations in dependency of the developed nations. So too has the monopoly on research development by large corporations kept their position against any potential competitors. This efficiency of management has provided for an expansion of the vast knowledge base within research and development, engineering, social planning, etc. A person from the developed nations may easily forget themselves in the comfort of modern society. But in many areas of the undeveloped world, there are still problems regarding clean water, access to energy and medicine.
Trade has one more element to it. Commodity. Commodity is value. Developed nations have a huge commodity, not only in monetary access, but also in knowledge. This commodity is also of trade value on the international scene. Other commodities are access to minerals and metals, storage sites for hazardous waste in rock basins, access to renewable energy sources such as sunlight, wind wave and geothermal energy sources. A solidaristic society will still require international trade treaties. The technological advancements made by the developed nations go far beyond the technologies themselves and reach far into the corporate industry and knowledge transition. Not even leaving the monetary system for a Solidaristic system would change the balance of powers that be.
If politicians are provided the opportunity to put aside monetary funding as a necessity and instead look upon our world as a place where we can make real change, it would be possible to act immediately on environmental issues, all peoples could be provided with clean water and access to food, the sick could be treated, and poverty be eradicated.
