International commerce - pre class post

The readings for this week kind of argue a point that I agree with.  International commerce conducted on the internet has effectively made sovereign states and impermeable borders obsolete.  We've entered into a period in our history where commerce can take place in cyberspace - which raises the interesting point on who would be the regulatory body for this type of commerce and who would be able to tax it?  Is it the country where the product is bought or the country that it was sold?  If it's not a physical item but instead software or support, how is that quantified?  I'm sure we remember the days of Amazon being tax-free (days that personally, I miss) but it seems as though governments are catching up to the idea of taxing and regulating goods that are bought, sold and shipped online.  However, other transactions that never leave cyberspace (software and music downloads, for example) are more difficult to quantify, control and tax.

States can seem to hold on to their political sovereignty, but economically the world is too intertwined to support autonomy.  International companies operate in their own set of rules and only so many laws can be made to try to regulate trade when it comes to things like networks between companies.  In fact, it seems as though these companies have realized what the governments are slowly coming to a realization of - international cooperation is beneficial to all and autonomy never really existed in the first place.  I found it very interesting to find out that pre-1914, the world economy was vastly interconnected and growing at a fast rate.  Two world wars and a cold war / arms race really threw things out of wack!  Now we're in such an interesting, interconnected world that we want so much to believe is totally different from any other period of history.  The thing is, we're still people - the gadgets and societal structures may have changed but governments at every level still exist.  In the Kobrin reading he mentioned about medieval times and different feudal leaders that the people were answerable to.  The same thing exists today - the local, state and national governmental agencies and police forces all can enforce their will upon the people.  So what really changes?  Perhaps just the ways in which information is shared, the speed with which transactions take place and the new marketplace which exists only online.  It will be fascinating to see how governmental agencies eventually catch up.

My final thought was one that I had a few weeks ago in light of the coming election:  Do politics drive the economy or does the economy drive politics?