The New Silk Road Shows Loss of National Sovereignty Not Necessary for Trade

One of the tenants of localism is that nations should never enter into trade agreements in which compliance is adjudicated by some trans-national body. Lateral trade agreements, preferably bi-lateral, are the only type of agreement a national government should be constitutionally permitted to enter into in a localist society. That is to say, only agreements where each participant is a partner who determines for themselves when to enter or leave, and how to administer, said agreements.

The ruling class in the west have been pushing the idea that the inevitable way forward economically is to create supra-national trade zones which give binding authority to some sort of commission to adjudicate disputes as to when one nation or the other is abiding by its terms. This turns self-government into a farce, since any laws your legislature makes which run afoul of this un-elected commission of foreigners can be ruled null and void. This is not a condition which can honestly be called freedom.

There is a competing model though. It is one which is compatible with the ideas of localism, and thus true-self government and freedom. It has taken shape in the new Silk Road. It came together as a network, not a hierarchy. Every nations is participating in a voluntary manner to do something which benefits all of them- without the need for an extra-national body to enforce corporate rule. This Forbes article described it like this....

"There was no clear power structure, no defining architecture, no overarching legal regime. It wasn’t a trade pact, it wasn’t a treaty organization, and it wasn’t a customs zone. It was basically a loosely adjoined, multifaceted array of bilateral and multilateral partnerships interlinking the EU, the Eurasian Economic Union, Eastern Europe, the lower Caucasus states, Iran, and ASEAN with China that would be held together by a newly enhanced transportation and energy grid. It was just a network...." 

It is just a network. But a network is all you need if it is truly in the best interests of each participant in the network. The compulsory aspects of what is often today dishonestly called a "free trade zone" are only needed if pushback from the population of one or more participant nations can be expected. The way the west is conducting international trade is creeping toward global corporations hijacking national governments and using treaties as an end-run around self-government.

Don't let them tell you that such agreements are "necessary" or "inevitable". Another model has spontaneously emerged in the New Silk Road. Its not a new model either. It is simply the way trade has always happened until corporations got so big that they realized they could capture entire governments and pushed a contrived model of trade as part of that plan.

If you are opposed to corporate governance, then you should support the ideas in localism that would prevent it.