Haggling and US Foreign Policy

As I've mentioned before, I hate dealing with vendors in Kolkata because I don't like haggling, and even when I do haggle I pretty much know that I'm still paying a steep "white tax." I don't like the idea that the market is usually willing to deal at one price, but they discriminate against me and force me up to a much higher price.

Then I got thinking about US foreign policy with developing nations. In most cases we impose tariffs and/or other trade barriers on them. The result of this is that although the American market is willing to pay a certain price for the goods they are selling to us, we are only paying them a fraction of that price. That's a bit of a simplification, but it is true that if we removed tariffs they would be able to sell us more and get more money per unit from us than they currently do.

So yeah, basically I realized that I'm getting pissed off about getting ripped off when I can easily afford the prices, and those prices are still lower than what I would pay in America. Yet at the same time I am part of a country that does exactly the same thing to huge groups of people that at best are barely scraping by. To sum it up, here are the differences:

• I can afford to be ripped off, they can't.
• I'm getting ripped off face to face, we distance ourselves from those we take advantage of.
• I have some power to haggle if I want to, they don't.
• I'm selfish and care more about myself than multitudes of starving people.

In short, I need a change of heart, and so do the policy makers in America.