Legal/Government

Lessig on farm subsidies

Larry Lessig suggests that smaller countries who are put at odds due to US farm subsidies should blackmail the US into dropping the farm subsidies:

A block of powerful developing nations should first take a page from the US Copyright Act of 1790 and enact national laws that explicitly protect their own rights only. It would not protect foreigners. Second, these nations should add a provision that would relax this exemption to the extent that developed nations really opened their borders. If we reduce, for example, the subsidy to agribusiness by 10 percent, then they would permit 10 percent of our copyrights to be enforced (say, copyrights from the period 1923 to 1931). Reduce the subsidy by another 10 percent, then another 10 percent could be enforced. And so on.

I doubt that would work. The countries that are most affected by US farm subsidies are also likely to receive foreign aid from the US. One step towards blackmailing the US and the US would cut off the foreign aid. Remember how the threatened to cut off military aid to countries that support the international war crimes court in Den Haag?

These countries would not risk loosing the US support and possibly being on the bad side of the US. Generally, taking on the US in any sort of effective manner requires something as drastic as terrorism. Sad, but that's how I see it.

Posted by Mayhem at December 29, 2003 11:44 AM