This may sound like a dumb question, but how do international signings work now? One of your scouts finds a 16 year old kid in some Venezuelan village and you sign him to a deal and he's in your organization?
This would seem to greatly benefit teams like the Yankees and Dodgers who have more money to send more scouts to more places.
Just like the draft, MLB puts the team in order from worst record to best (based on the previous season). Each "slot" is then assigned a value. The aggregate of your allotted spending assignments is then treated as your soft cap, with draft-like penalties for overspending, including taxed money and loss of ability to sign players for a certain price in future years.
Players signed for under a certain amount do not count towards your "cap". The system was supposed to prevent teams from just going out and buying up all the talent, but the Cubs/Rangers last year blew through the caps to take a huge chunk of talent at the expense of participating in expensive signings this year. The Yankees have gone one step further, spending almost $30 MM for this J2 period.
Now that teams are essentially ignoring the caps, and more info is coming out on players reaching under the table agreements with organizations well in advance of their eligibility, it seems to be a certainty that there will be an international draft in some form by 2016, maybe 2015.