[Freedom]

The noble feat of Nike
Globalisation — otherwise known as ‘ruthless international capitalism’ — is enriching the world’s poor, says Johan Norberg

Nike. It means victory. It also means a type of expensive gym shoe. In the minds of the anti-globalisation movement, it stands for both at once. Nike stands for the victory of a Western footwear company over the poor and dispossessed. Spongy, smelly, hungered after by kids across the world, Nike is the symbol of the unacceptable triumph of global capital.

A Nike is a shoe that simultaneously kicks people out of jobs in the West, and tramples on the poor in the Third World. Sold for 100 times more than the wages of the peons who make them, Nike shoes are hate-objects more potent, in the eyes of the protesters at this week’s G8 riots, than McDonald’s hamburgers. If you want to be trendy these days, you don’t wear Nikes; you boycott them.

So I was interested to hear someone not only praising Nike sweatshops, but also claiming that Nike is an example of a good and responsible business. That someone was the ruling Communist party of Vietnam.

Today Nike has almost four times more workers in Vietnam than in the United States. I travelled to Ho Chi Minh to examine the effects of multinational corporations on poor countries. Nike being the most notorious multinational villain, and Vietnam being a dictatorship with a documented lack of free speech, the operation is supposed to be a classic of conscience-free capitalist oppression.

In truth the work does look tough, and the conditions grim, if we compare Vietnamese factories with what we have back home. But that’s not the comparison these workers make. They compare the work at Nike with the way they lived before, or the way their parents or neighbours still work. And the facts are revealing. The average pay at a Nike factory close to Ho Chi Minh is $54 a month, almost three times the minimum wage for a state-owned enterprise.

Ten years ago, when Nike was established in Vietnam, the workers had to walk to the factories, often for many miles. After three years on Nike wages, they could afford bicycles. Another three years later, they could afford scooters, so they all take the scooters to work (and if you go there, beware; they haven’t really decided on which side of the road to drive). Today, the first workers can afford to buy a car.

But when I talk to a young Vietnamese woman, Tsi-Chi, at the factory, it is not the wages she is most happy about. Sure, she makes five times more than she did, she earns more than her husband, and she can now afford to build an extension to her house. But the most important thing, she says, is that she doesn’t have to work outdoors on a farm any more. For me, a Swede with only three months of summer, this sounds bizarre. Surely working conditions under the blue sky must be superior to those in a sweatshop? But then I am naively Eurocentric. Farming means 10 to 14 hours a day in the burning sun or the intensive rain, in rice fields with water up to your ankles and insects in your face. Even a Swede would prefer working nine to five in a clean, air-conditioned factory.

Furthermore, the Nike job comes with a regular wage, with free or subsidised meals, free medical services and training and education. The most persistent demand Nike hears from the workers is for an expansion of the factories so that their relatives can be offered a job as well.

These facts make Nike sound more like Santa Claus than Scrooge. But corporations such as Nike don’t bring these benefits and wages because they are generous. It is not altruism that is at work here; it is globalisation. With their investments in poor countries, multinationals bring new machinery, better technology, new management skills and production ideas, a larger market and the education of their workers. That is exactly what raises productivity. And if you increase productivity — the amount a worker can produce — you can also increase his wage.

Nike is not the accidental good guy. On average, multinationals in the least developed countries pay twice as much as domestic companies in the same line of business. If you get to work for an American multinational in a low-income country, you get eight times the average income. If this is exploitation, then the problem in our world is that the poor countries aren’t sufficiently exploited.

The effect on local business is profound: ‘Before I visit some foreign factory, especially like Nike, we have a question. Why do the foreign factories here work well and produce much more?’ That was what Mr Kiet, the owner of a local shoe factory who visited Nike to learn how he could be just as successful at attracting workers, told me: ‘And I recognise that productivity does not only come from machinery but also from satisfaction of the worker. So for the future factory we should concentrate on our working conditions.’

If I was an antiglobalist, I would stop complaining about Nike’s bad wages. If there is a problem, it is that the wages are too high, so that they are almost luring doctors and teachers away from their important jobs.

But — happily — I don’t think even that is a realistic threat. With growing productivity it will also be possible to invest in education and healthcare for Vietnam. Since 1990, when the Vietnamese communists began to liberalise the economy, exports of coffee, rice, clothes and footwear have surged, the economy has doubled, and poverty has been halved. Nike and Coca-Cola triumphed where American bombs failed. They have made Vietnam capitalist.

I asked the young Nike worker Tsi-Chi what her hopes were for her son’s future. A generation ago, she would have had to put him to work on the farm from an early age. But Tsi-Chi told me she wants to give him a good education, so that he can become a doctor. That’s one of the most impressive developments since Vietnam’s economy was opened up. In ten years 2.2 million children have gone from child labour to education. It would be extremely interesting to hear an antiglobalist explain to Tsi-Chi why it is important for Westerners to boycott Nike, so that she loses her job, and has to go back into farming, and has to send her son to work.

The European Left used to listen to the Vietnamese communists when they brought only misery and starvation to their population. Shouldn’t they listen to the Vietnamese now, when they have found a way to improve people’s lives? The party officials have been convinced by Nike that ruthless multinational capitalists are better than the state at providing workers with high wages and a good and healthy workplace. How long will it take for our own anticapitalists to learn that lesson?

[CasX]

Can you please post a link to this article?

[Truth-a-naut]

So Union Carbide wasn't really *that* bad?
They brought jobs, new technology?

That’s one of the most impressive developments since Vietnam’s economy was opened up. In ten years 2.2 million children have gone from child labour to education. It would be extremely interesting to hear an antiglobalist explain to Tsi-Chi why it is important for Westerners to boycott Nike, so that she loses her job, and has to go back into farming, and has to send her son to work.

I thought education in Vietnam was practically free. Its like that in many socialist nations. Or at least was.

[Freedom]

It can be found on http://www.spectator.co.uk in the July 7 edition. Look through the back issues section.

[Comrade Ogilvy]

Take it from one who has worked on several foreign direct investments in Vietnam. The article is full of B.S.

First of all Nike is only complying to regulations on minimum wages. However, they have clearly violated the same regulations some years back!

Second of all Nike has isolated itself in an export-processing zone and links to the local business environment is practically none existing. So tell me what spill-overs are going to benefit Vietnamese businesses?

In my views the author just took the Nike story at face value. I doubt he has any experience with the economic development of the least developed economies. He is clearly blind to the more typical problems.

[Freedom]

Numerous studies show liberalising economies is helping the worlds poor and is eliviating poverty.

At about the same time a hodgepodge of protesters descended on Washington, D.C. last month to protest capitalism, globalization and free trade, the United Nations and the Institute for International Studies released a triad of studies declaring that humanity is, for the most part, in the best condition it’s ever been.

World poverty is down. And the reasons for all of this are, to the protesters’ chagrin, none other than capitalism, globalization, and free trade.

The first study is the 2002 edition of the United Nations’ annual "Human Development Report." The report informs us that as of 2002, 140 of the world’s 200 countries -- 70 percent -- now hold multi-party elections. Eighty-two countries representing 57 percent of the human population are fully democratic, the highest percentage in human history. After a century in which totalitarianism -- Nazism, fascism and communism -- killed more than 170 million people, a clear move toward universal political freedom is afoot.

The numbers on world economics are good, too. World poverty fell more than 20 percent between 1990 and 1999, a decade of aggressive globalization. The number of world Internet users is expected to double by 2005 to one billion. In those regions of the world most sympathetic to liberal reform, the news is even better. In ten years, poverty halved in in East Asia and the Pacific regions.

Since 1990, 800 million people have gained new access to improved water supplies, and 750 million to improved sanitation. In the last 30 years, infant mortality rates have dropped from 96 deaths per 1,000 live births to just 56.

A study from the Institute for International Studies boasts even more good news. The author of that study, Surjit S. Bhalla, employed accounting statistics based on individual incomes instead of national incomes, which allowed him to more accurately measure wealth and poverty rates. Bhalla concludes that the world poverty rate has declined even more dramatically than the U.N. reports, from 44 percent in 1980 to just 13 percent in 2000. Bhalla attributes the decline to progress in China and India, the two most populous nations in the world, and two nations that have made significant moves toward more economic freedom in the last 20 years.

But not all the news is good. Huge swaths of humanity still fester in abject poverty. Not surprisingly, the regions witnessing the most poverty also happen to house those cultures and regimes most averse to markets and capitalism -- sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab world.

Twenty countries in sub-Saharan Africa are poorer now than they were in 1990. Another 23 are, astoundingly, poorer than they were in 1975. Three hundred million people in the region now live in extreme poverty. Sub-Saharan Africa also scores lower on the "freedom index" than any region on the planet.

A third study, conducted by a group of Arab scholars and also released by the U.N., draws similar conclusions about the Arab world. It offers a scathing indictment of Arab culture’s self-imposed isolation from international markets and of its oppression of political and economic freedom. The report points out that over the last 20 years, the Arab world has produced the second lowest per-capita growth rates in income in the world. Total productivity in the Arab world actually declined between 1960 and 2000, a period that saw the rise of militant Islam and, paradoxically, unprecedented economic growth almost everywhere else.

The last half-century has seen an Arab world increasingly hostile to capitalism, particularly to property rights and trade. Consequently, the last half-century has also seen an Arab world lapsing further and further behind the rest of humanity. Arab industrial labor output was at 32 percent of North American output in 1960. By 1990, it had fallen to just 19 percent.

The Atlantic Monthly points out that since the ninth century, the Arab world has translated only about 100,000 books into Arabic. That’s equal to the number of books the nation of Spain translates in one year. Consequently, the Arab world is suffering a "brain drain," as its most promising minds migrate to societies more conducive to learning. Arab scholars have left in droves to pursue academic freedom in other countries. An astounding 51 percent of Arab adolescents told U.N. researchers they wanted to emigrate.

These studies, taken together, paint a telling picture of the state of humanity, and of what steps we can take to make it even better. When countries embrace free markets, trade, and political freedom, they thrive. Incomes grow. Lifespans lengthen. Social maladies mend. When nations isolate themselves from international markets, when they deny citizens free elections, free press, and property, they falter. Incomes wane. Disease and famine swell. Strife looms. Communist and isolated North Korea, for example, has lost 10 percent of its population -- two million people -- to famine since 1995. And that’s in an allegedly "developed" country.

Anti-globalization protesters can rail all they like against the evils of capitalism, international markets and Western Civilization. But the numbers are unmistakable. Wealth is the only remedy for poverty, and capitalism is the only real way to create wealth.

Links to the mentions studies and websites(in order of mention)

http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2002/en/
http://207.238.152.36/publications/publ ... pub_id=348
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/ ... ources.htm
http://www.undp.org/rbas/ahdr

Several years ago, I was invited to deliver a lecture in Porto Alegre, a beautiful city in southern Brazil. Before my lecture, I did a bit of window-shopping and visited a couple of computer supply stores. Everything in the store sold for two and three times the prices for the same items in the United States -- computers, printer cartridges, fax machines, cables, etc.

In a dinner conversation with friends from Venezuela, I was told that it was cheaper to make a call from Caracas to Maracaibo, roughly 400 miles away, by using a credit card to call a telephone number in New York that would route the call through to Maracaibo. In the case of Brazil, the ordinary citizen was being ripped off through tariff restrictions written to protect local suppliers from competition. In the case of Venezuela, it was the state telephone monopoly that was ripping off the ordinary citizen. [The same goes for the Bahamas!--Editor.]

Prompted by these and similar observations, I felt compelled to comment to my lecture audience in Porto Alegre that the stifling economic measures imposed on Brazilian citizens couldn't happen by random; it must be design. There had to be a government office in Brasilia, the capital, whose members met at least once a week to figure out ways to deliberately make the country poorer.

Hernando de Soto, in his "The Mystery of Capital," documents government-created barriers to upward mobility in poor countries. Clark S. Judge reported on de Soto's findings in "Cultural Power," printed in the December 2001 issue of Policy Review. It takes 168 steps and 13 to 25 years to gain a formal title to urban property in the Philippines; 77 steps and 6 to 14 years to do the same in the desert lands in Egypt; and 111 steps and 19 years in Haiti. If you wanted to open a one-worker garment shop legally in Lima, Peru, it would take you 289 days, working 6 hours a day, to obtain the business license.

One result of these government restrictions is the development of a large, illegal underground economy, or what's sometimes called the "informal sector." In Venezuela, over 50 percent of the workforce is employed in the underground economy. In Brazil, 60 percent of new rental housing is in the underground economy. In Egypt, 92 percent of urban dwellers and 83 percent of rural dwellers live in homes without clear legal title.

This large informal sector is good news in the sense that people are going out and earning an honest, albeit an illegal, living and consumers are being provided with valuable goods and services. Those goods and services come at a stifling cost, however. The very fact that people are engaged in illegal activity makes them subject to bribes and extortion by government officials. It makes it all but impossible for them to obtain insurance and hence increases the overall risk of capital formation.

The fact that people go to such lengths to earn a living, in the face of oppressive government regulations, proves something that I've always
said: If left to their own devices, people's natural tendency is to truck and barter, and become capitalists. Hernando de Soto estimates that the informal sector real-estate market alone in the Third World and former communist countries has a value of at least $9.3 trillion, or "very nearly as much as the value of all the companies listed on the main stock exchange of the world's 20 most developed countries."

Once again, it's that same old tune: Governments are not only the enemy of personal liberty but economic prosperity, as well.

Two reporters relay this anecdote from Thailand:


One of the half-dozen men and women sitting on a bench eating was a sinewy, bare-chested laborer in his late 30's named Mongkol Latlakorn. It was a hot, lazy day, and so we started chatting idly about the food and, eventually, our families. Mongkol mentioned that his daughter, Darin, was 15, and his voice softened as he spoke of her. She was beautiful and smart, and her father's hopes rested on her.

"Is she in school?" we asked.

"Oh, no," Mongkol said, his eyes sparkling with amusement. "She's working in a factory in Bangkok. She's making clothing for export to America." He explained that she was paid $2 a day for a nine-hour shift, six days a week.

"It's dangerous work," Mongkol added. "Twice the needles went right through her hands. But the managers bandaged up her hands, and both times she got better again and went back to work."

"How terrible," we murmured sympathetically.

So begins Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's article on sweatshops for the New York Times a few years ago. The two had lived off and on in Asia for 14 years, and were researching their upcoming book on emerging Asian economies, Thunder From the East. Like most westerners, Kristof and WuDunn arrived in Asia horrified by the sweatshop conditions they'd heard about and witnessed. Like most westerners - accustomed to 40-max hour workweeks, sick leave, and vacation - the two were outraged at the way western companies exploited third world labor. But read on:

Mongkol looked up, puzzled. "It's good pay," he said. "I hope she can keep that job. There's all this talk about factories closing now, and she said there are rumors that her factory might close. I hope that doesn't happen. I don't know what she would do then."

Mongkol's story illustrates how, by the time they wrote their book, Kristof and WuDunn had significantly upgraded their opinion of sweatshops. While regrettable, they concluded, sweatshops are a crucial and necessary step in most economies' evolution to prosperity.


Bans and Boycotts

Kristoff and WuDunn are right, of course. And efforts to ban, boycott, or otherwise shut down third world factories bring nothing but harm to the people they employ. Removing the best of a handful of bad options doesn't benefit the poor at all. It hurts them. And sometimes it kills them. Examples abound:

In the early 1990s, the United States Congress considered the "Child Labor Deterrence Act," which would have taken punitive action against companies benefiting from child labor. The Act never passed, but the public debate it triggered put enormous pressure on a number of multinational corporations with assets in the U.S. One German garment maker laid off 50,000 child workers in Bangladesh. The British charity organization Oxfam later conducted a study that found that thousands of those laid-off children later became prostitutes, turned to crime, or starved to death.

The United Nations organization UNICEF reports that an international boycott of the Nepalese carpet industry in the mid-1990s caused several plants to shut down; thousands of Nepalese girls later entered the sex trade.

In 1995, a consortium of anti-sweatshop groups threw the spotlight on football (soccer) stitching plants in Pakistan. In response, Nike and Reebok shut down their plants in Pakistan, and several other companies followed suit. The result: tens of thousands of unemployed Pakistanis. Mean income in Pakistan fell by 20%. According to University of Colorado economist Keith E. Maskus, studies later showed a large proportion of those laid off ended up in crime, begging, or working as prostitutes. (Masksus source: The Race to the Top: The Real Story of Globalization, by Tomas Larsson.)

In 2000 the BBC did an expose on sweatshop factories in Cambodia with ties to both Nike and the Gap. The BBC uncovered unsavory working conditions, and found several examples of children under 15 years of age working 12 or more hour shifts. After the BBC expose aired, both Nike and the Gap pulled out of Cambodia under public pressure. Cambodia lost $10 million in contracts, and hundreds of Cambodians lost their jobs.

How Free Trade Beats Sweatshops

In truth, every prosperous country on the planet today went through an industrial period heavily reliant on sweatshop labor. The United States, Britain, France, Sweden and others all rode to modernity on the backs of child laborers. The choice was simple: kids worked, or they went hungry. It wasn't a terribly rosy set of choices, but at least the choice was available. Anti-globalization activists are doing their damndest to make sure choice isn't available to those living in today's fledgling economies.

Critics counter that unlike in the early 20th century, western companies today are wealthy enough to pay "living" wages, to establish comfortable working conditions, and to protect third world environments. They may be right.

But then, what advantage would there be to investing in the developing world in the first place? Cheap labor is the only chit the third world has to lure much-needed western investment. Take it away, and there's no reason for western corporations to incur the costs of putting up factories, shipping, security and the bevy of other expenses that come with maintaining plants overseas.

One of free trade's chief critics admits as much. In the introduction his book The Race to the Bottom, anti-globalization icon Alan Tonelson writes the following, in reference to the World Trade Organization:

Most of the organization's third world members-or at least their governments-opposed including any labor rights and environmental protections in trade agreements. They viewed low wages and lax pollution control laws as major assets they could offer to international investors-prime lures for job-creating factories and the capital they so desperately needed for other development-related purposes. Indeed, they observed, most rich countries ignored the environment and limited workers' power (to put it kindly) early in their economic histories. Why should today's developing countries be held to higher standards?

Tonelson, of course, was on his way to making another point. But he inadvertently revealed an inconsistency that will always plague the legitimacy of anti-globalist logic: boycotts, "fair trade" regulations and public pressure do nothing to punish the corporations who benefit from sweatshops. They punish only third world laborers and, to a lesser extent, western consumers.

The best way to lessen the plight of sweatshop workers is more free trade, not less. If workers make 75 cents per day in factory A - the only plant in town - the best thing that could happen to them would be for a second factory to open up. If Factory B pays less than 75 cents, it won't attract any workers. If it offers exactly 75 cents, it might attract a few workers who couldn't get jobs at factory A. If it pays more than 75 cents, however, it might attract the best and brightest from factory A. Factory A then must decide whether to up its wages, or look for new labor - which means more jobs.

The alternative: force factory A to pay artificially high wages. That negates the advantage factory A had by investing in a developing country in the first place. Factory A packs up and returns to the U.S. Factory B never happens, because factory B's parent company sees no advantage (see: cheap labor) in investing in the developing country. Factory A's workers' wages go from 75 cents per day to nothing.

Instead of two factories paying twice as many workers higher wages, enabling them to inch their way out of poverty, a community is left with no factories, no jobs, and no hope.

Sweatshop Success: Some Examples

Recent history teems with examples of how sweatshop labor has helped poor economies leap to prosperity. And given the interconnectivity and technology available in the current world economy - and that there's lots of western wealth to help them along - they can make the leap in a fraction of the time it took the west.

Kristoff and WuDunn note, for example, that it took Britain 58 years to double per capita GDP after its industrial revolution. China - home to millions of sweatshop workers - doubles its per capita GDP every ten years. In the sweatshop-dotted southern providence of Dongguan, wages have increased fivefold in just the last few years. "A private housing market has appeared," Kristof and WuDunn write, "and video arcades and computer schools have opened to cater to workers with rising incomes….a hint of a middle class has appeared."

If China's provinces were separate countries, the two authors write, the 20 fastest growing economies from 1978 to 1995 would all have been Chinese.

Swedish economist Johan Norberg writes in his book In Defense of Global Capitalism that where it took Sweden 80 years to reach modernity, it has taken Taiwan and Hong Kong just 25. He predicts that all of South and East Asia will be prosperous enough to ban child labor entirely by 2010.

But that's just it. A country must be able to afford to ban child labor before child labor is pulled out from under it. Otherwise, without work, the children there beg, or starve, or die of malaria, or diarrhea.

China, Taiwan, Hong Kong - all accepted sweatshop labor as an unsavory stepping stone to prosperity.


Good Intentions and the Road to Poverty

Contrast those nations to the countries that have traditionally been "spared" sweatshops: the results are striking.

India, for example, has long resisted allowing itself to be "exploited" by foreign investment. It was one of the last major countries in the world to be introduced to Coca-Cola. Consequently, India festered in abject poverty for decades. India has only opened its markets to the west in the latter part of the last century and, as Norberg writes, its economy immediately showed signs of life. India's percentage of child laborers in the workforce has fallen from 35% to just 12%.

The economist and syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell describes how anti-sweatshop sentiments in the 1950s hindered progress in West Africa:

Half a century ago, public opinion in Britain caused British firms in colonial West Africa to pay higher wages than local economic conditions would have warranted. Net result? Vastly more job applicants than jobs.

Not only did great numbers of frustrated Africans not get jobs. They did not get the work experience that would have allowed them to upgrade their skills and become more valuable and higher-paid workers later on.

Today, of course, western and sub-Saharan Africa are among the most destitute regions on earth. Per capita GDP there is actually lower today than it was in the 1960s.

But even within that desolation, there flicker feint glimmers of hope. Norberg writes that a few countries - Botswana, Ghana, and most notably Uganda - have liberalized their trade policies in recent years and have already seen double-digit decreases in poverty rates. One wonders what might have happened if well-intentioned public opinion in 1950s Britain could have stomached the short-term discomfort of early industrialization in Africa for the long term benefits of modernized economies. Today's Africa may have been much, much different.

The Debate Goes On…

In the end, it's perfectly natural and acceptable for comfortable western consumers to feel unsettled about sweatshops overseas. Modest public pressure on companies might even help to lessen the burden borne by third world economies in transition. But boycotting sweatshops - or lobbying for laws at home that enforce "living wages" overseas - rob developing countries of their competitive advantage over western markets.

Third world governments welcome sweatshops. Most third world laborers welcome them, too. History has shown that they're important for the maturation of developing economies. Western consumers win cheaper goods. It seems the only losers here are anti-globalization activists and organized labor groups unable to compete with cheaper workforces overseas. On balance, the clear winners in the sweatshop debate seem clear.

[Skullers]

1). i'll ignore the parts of this that are obvious capitalist propaganda
2). i would support the development of capitalism where it opposes the more reactionary systems and builds up the productive forces
3). you say that "sweatshops" create jobs and are a necessary stage for the development of capitalism in these countries... that sounds fine, except these companies are not owned by the bourgeoisie in theose countries, they will not build their economy for them but only prepare them to be a tool that preforms a single task in the global division of labour... yes, jobs are created but the wealth leaks outside their borders, into the wallets of foreign bourgeoisie. instead of building up their own economy, they become entirely dependant on demand for their labour power by the global market...

[Freedom]

1) Dont listen to anything Skullers says as it is obviously anti capitalist propghanda

3). you say that "sweatshops" create jobs and are a necessary stage for the development of capitalism in these countries... that sounds fine, except these companies are not owned by the bourgeoisie in theose countries, they will not build their economy for them but only prepare them to be a tool that preforms a single task in the global division of labour... yes, jobs are created but the wealth leaks outside their borders, into the wallets of foreign bourgeoisie. instead of building up their own economy, they become entirely dependant on demand for their labour power by the global market...

Business's create jobs, jobs create money, money used to buy things in local markets gradually the affects of poverty are eliviated from the ground up. This is not to say there cant, hasnt and wont be mistakes made by governments and the IMF in the future.

Ireland has had huge investment from American and foreign companies at the height of its economic boom in the 1990s(Celtic Tiger...bah stupid name, more like the Celtic Sheep) people who were jobless or just out of university had chances to work in Ireland that they hadnt previously had, therefore the educated workforce largely stayed in Ireland for the first time in a long time( http://www.iol.ie/~atb/celticisle/boom.html ) Also its notable that Irelands highly regulated minimum wage system has forced companies away from Ireland and onto countries with developing economies. Business friendly is the way to be. Ireland thanks mainly to free trade is no longer a country of government subsidised farmers and with high emigration, its an industrial-technology-market and Tourist economy.

I thought education in Vietnam was practically free. Its like that in many socialist nations. Or at least was.

Education is free in Ireland...we only pay for the books, clothes, regular trips away, meals and what have you, education is never free, also we make up for our "free services" with higher taxes, so nothing is ever free.

What happens in poor countries is that people need tha extra money and cannot afford to send there children to school, as they need there help scraping by on subsistance farming, but people get to work shorter hours for higher wages in Nike "Sweatshops" so they work their and eventually they can send there kids to school.

The only threat to Africa, is the EUs and Americas non Capitalistic Agricultural protectionism, not Free Trade itself.

[Freedom]

Here is another article on Free Trade and its benefits.

May Day will once again be celebrated by left-wing and environmentalist protestors united by a single emotion: a virulent hatred of capitalism, especially global capitalism. Why the hatred?


The advantage of a global economy based on free trade and capitalism is so obvious and so enormous that it is difficult to conceive of anyone opposing it. The benefit is based on the law of comparative advantage: every country becomes more prosperous the more it invests in producing and exporting what it does best (in terms of quality, cost, uniqueness, etc.), and importing goods and services that other countries can produce more efficiently. For example, let us say that Nigerian companies can produce T-shirts for $1 a piece whereas U.S. companies can only produce them for $5 a piece. Under free trade, Americans will buy their T-shirts from Nigeria. This division of labor benefits people in both countries. Nigerians will have more money to buy food, clothing and housing. Americans will spend less on T-shirts and have more money to buy cell phones and SUVs, and the investment capital formerly spent on T-shirts will be put to more productive uses, say in the area of technology or drug research. Multiply this by millions of products and hundreds of countries and over time the benefits run into the trillions of dollars.

How, then, do we reconcile the incredible benefits of global capitalism with the anti-globalization movement? The protestors make three claims repeatedly. First, they argue that multinational corporations are becoming too powerful and threaten the sovereignty of smaller nations. This is absurd on the face of it. Governments have the power of physical coercion (the gun); corporations do not; they have only the dollar--they function through voluntary trade.

Second, anti-globalists claim that multinational companies exploit workers in poor countries by paying lower wages than they would pay in their home countries. Well, what is the alternative? It is: no wages! The comparative advantage of poorer countries is precisely that their wages are low, thus reducing the costs of production. If multinational corporations had to pay the same wages as in their home countries, they would not bother to invest in poorer countries at all and millions of people would lose their livelihoods.

Third, it is claimed that multinational corporations destroy the environments of smaller, poorer countries. Note that if 19th-century America had been subjected to the environmental legislation that now pervades most Western countries, we ourselves would still be a third-world country. Most of the industries that made the United States a world economic power--the steel, automobile, chemicals and electrical industries--would never have been able to develop. By what right do we deprive poor, destitute people in other countries from trying to create prosperity in the same way that we did, which is the only way possible?

All of these objections to global capitalism are just rationalizations. The giveaway, and the clue to the real motive of today's left and their hangers-on, is that all their protests are against--they are anti-capitalism, anti-free trade, anti-using the environment for man's benefit--but they are not for anything. In the first third of the 20th century, most leftists were idealists--they stood for and fought for an imagined, industrialized utopia--Communism (or Socialism). The left's vision was man as a selfless slave of the state, and the state as the omniscient manager of the economy. However, instead of prosperity, happiness and freedom, Communism and Socialism produced nothing but poverty, misery and terror (witness Soviet Russia, North Korea and Cuba, among others). Their system had to fail, because it was based on a lie. You cannot create freedom and happiness by destroying individual rights; and you cannot create prosperity by negating the mind and evading the laws of economics.

Furious over the fact that their envisioned utopia has collapsed in ruins, the leftists now seek only destruction. They want to annihilate the system that has produced the very prosperity, happiness and freedom that their system could not produce. That system is capitalism, the system of true social justice where people are free to produce and keep what they earn.

The fact that free trade is now becoming truly global is one of the most important achievements in the history of mankind. If, in the end, it wins out over statism, global capitalism will bring about the greatest degree of prosperity and the greatest period of peaceful cooperation in world history.

We should scornfully ignore the nihilist protestors--they have nothing positive to offer. We should not only allow global capitalism; we should welcome it and foster it in every way possible. It is time to rephrase Karl Marx: Workers of the world unite for global capitalism; you have nothing to lose but your poverty.

Fair Trade= The Great Satan

And Another...

A woman I know was born with three kidneys—and in poverty. Meanwhile, there was undoubtedly some wealthy person who was desperate for a kidney. Both could obviously have been made much better off by the transfer of one kidney at a suitably high price. However, such a mutually beneficial transaction would have provoked outrage among intellectuals, politicians, and others in the business of being outraged. These delicate souls need not worry. No such transaction took place. Instead, this lady spent decades struggling to make ends meet, and with an extra kidney that did nothing for her, except make her go to the bathroom more often than most other people. Any wealthy person with malfunctioning kidneys who could have made it worth her while to give up her extra kidney just suffered from the lack of that kidney and may even have died because of it. But this spared the moral sensitivities of third parties.

While this situation is rare, the mindset it illustrates is all too common and applies in all sorts of very different situations. For some people, finding some misfortune appalling leads them to object to the adjustments that can be made to reduce that misfortune. They hate to think anyone has to resort to that.

Pawnshop owners, for example, are looked down on for "taking advantage" of the poor by providing what they most need—money—in exchange for some of their meager assets. Once, as a young man in dire straits, I was able to eat only because I could pawn my one suit. But some might have called this "exploitation."

It is likewise considered to be exploitation to pay low-skill workers what their productivity is worth, rather than what third-party observers would like to see them paid. Again, the initial misfortune of these workers leads many observers to object to the means of mitigating that misfortune by accepting lower wages in order to have a job at all.

One of the currently fashionable crusades on college campuses across the country is against "sweatshops" in the Third World. If college students or others want to supplement the earnings of Third World workers, they can reach into their own pockets and take out some money to send them. But that is neither as cheap nor as satisfying as denouncing other people for not paying them more.

Let's go back to square one. Why are some people paid more than others? Because their work is more valuable to employers. Employers don't pay you what you "need" but what your productivity will justify.

Do we wish that the poor had the skills that would make them more in demand and therefore cause them to have higher pay? Of course. But railing against reality is not helping anybody, whether we are talking about third kidneys or the Third World.

It is irresponsible self-indulgence to advocate specific policies without considering the specific consequences of those policies. Nor need we speculate about what those consequences are likely to be. Both history and economics tell us.

Wages imposed above the level set by supply and demand call forth more job applicants, while employers hire fewer workers when labor is made artificially more costly.

Machinery may be substituted for labor or higher-skilled workers may be substituted for those with lower skills, now that the latter are prevented from offsetting their lower skills by accepting correspondingly lower pay.

None of this is new. Half a century ago, public opinion in Britain caused British firms in colonial West Africa to pay higher wages than local economic conditions would have warranted. Net result? Vastly more job applicants than jobs.

Not only did great numbers of frustrated Africans not get jobs. They did not get the work experience that would have allowed them to upgrade their skills and become more valuable and higher-paid workers later on.

Most of these Africans were very poor people who could have used all the skills and experience they could have gotten, in order to raise their standard of living. But they were denied this opportunity by people in Britain who thought they were doing them a favor by pressuring companies in Africa to pay higher wage rates.

Today, American students are having a great time picketing stores and feeling superior to those who are providing jobs that Third World workers are eager to have. Denying unfortunate people opportunities and feeling good about it has long been a hallmark of the morally self-anointed.

[Skullers]

enough of these... they all say the same things, only with different words

Second, anti-globalists claim that multinational companies exploit workers in poor countries by paying lower wages than they would pay in their home countries. Well, what is the alternative?

the alternative is for these poor countries is to build their own economy instead of being entirely dependant on the demand for their labour power by the global market

Third, it is claimed that multinational corporations destroy the environments of smaller, poorer countries. Note that if 19th-century America had been subjected to the environmental legislation that now pervades most Western countries, we ourselves would still be a third-world country. Most of the industries that made the United States a world economic power--the steel, automobile, chemicals and electrical industries--would never have been able to develop. By what right do we deprive poor, destitute people in other countries from trying to create prosperity

the difference is that now it's not helping the poor countries develop their productive forces, all that does is drain their natural resources for the profit of foreign bourgeoisie... was this all led by their own national bourgeoisie, for the development of their own capitalist productive forces, that would be fine

the same way that we did, which is the only way possible?

"the only way possible" more propaganda

All of these objections to global capitalism are just rationalizations. The giveaway, and the clue to the real motive of today's left and their hangers-on, is that all their protests are against--they are anti-capitalism, anti-free trade, anti-using the environment for man's benefit--but they are not for anything. In the first third of the 20th century, most leftists were idealists--they stood for and fought for an imagined, industrialized utopia-- Communism (or Socialism). The left's vision was man as a selfless slave of the state, and the state as the omniscient manager of the economy. However, instead of prosperity, happiness and freedom, Communism and Socialism produced nothing but poverty, misery and terror (witness Soviet Russia, North Korea and Cuba, among others). Their system had to fail, because it was based on a lie. You cannot create freedom and happiness by destroying individual rights; and you cannot create prosperity by negating the mind and evading the laws of economics.

Furious over the fact that their envisioned utopia has collapsed in ruins, the leftists now seek only destruction. They want to annihilate the system that has produced the very prosperity, happiness and freedom that their system could not produce. That system is capitalism, the system of true social justice where people are free to produce and keep what they earn.

The fact that free trade is now becoming truly global is one of the most important achievements in the history of mankind. If, in the end, it wins out over statism, global capitalism will bring about the greatest degree of prosperity and the greatest period of peaceful cooperation in world history.

We should scornfully ignore the nihilist protestors--they have nothing positive to offer. We should not only allow global capitalism; we should welcome it and foster it in every way possible. It is time to rephrase Karl Marx: Workers of the world unite for global capitalism; you have nothing to lose but your poverty.

this one has more capitalist propaganda than usual... what up?

[Freedom]

enough of these... they all say the same things, only with different words

The title of the thread is "In defense of Globalisation" what the hell do you want me to post? Porn?

the alternative is for these poor countries is to build their own economy instead of being entirely dependant on the demand for their labour power by the global market

That has only not worked for oh... a Century.

the difference is that now it's not helping the poor countries develop their productive forces, all that does is drain their natural resources for the profit of foreign bourgeoisie... was this all led by their own national bourgeoisie, for the development of their own capitalist productive forces, that would be fine

More Marxist twaddle...what up? You really dont understand Capitalism...should i post an topic explaining Capitalism or will you do the research yourself?

more propaganda

The usually Marxist reply...show them a fact they pass it off a propgadha.

[Skullers]

http://www.politicsforum.org/images/flame_warriors/flame_77.php

[Freedom]

http://www.politicsforum.org/images/flame_warriors/flame_77.php

Ahh yes great explaination of all your arguements so far. I offer facts and statistics(and/or provable statements) and you offer blind rhetoric and name calling.

Maybe you should've not entered the debate at all if you are not going to argue a valid point or run blind and scared when someone disagrees with you...

[Skullers]

The title of the thread is "In defence of Globalisation" what the hell do you want me to post? Porn?

posting essentially the same thing 5 times doesn't make it any better...

That has only not worked for oh... a Century.

yes, the way you like it is the only way anything can ever possibly work... the divine truth of the universe

You really dont understand Capitalism...should i post an topic explaining Capitalism or will you do the research yourself?

why don't you post more of these propaganda articles praising imperialism...

The usually Marxist reply...show them a fact they pass it off a propgadha.

yes, the facts like "creating prosperity can only be done the way you did", or "The left's vision was man as a selfless slave of the state, and the state as the omniscient manager of the economy."... oh, THOSE "facts"... i forgot!

[Freedom]

posting essentially the same thing 5 times doesn't make it any better

Seeing as this is my thread and if i find something relevant to the topic i can post it.

yes, the way you like it is the only way anything can ever possibly work... the divine truth of the universe

Okay i will give you some facts.

After WW2 America gave 1trillion in foreign aid to the poorest countries in the world(on top of European countries to etc) and the world got steadily poorer right up until the 1980s.

From 1990 onwards, countries that have liberalised there markets even to a degree have seen extreme poverty drop, employment increase and standards of living go up.

The facts are damning.

Living standards have risen dramatically over the last decades. Per capita private consumption growth in developing countries has averaged about 1.4 percent a year between 1980 and 1990 and 2.4 percent between 1990 and 1999. So millions have left behind the yoke of poverty and despair. But population in the developing world has grown rapidly -- from 2.9 billion people in 1970 to 5.1 billion in 1999 -- and many have been born into poverty.

The proportion of the developing world's population living in extreme economic poverty -- defined as living on less than $1 per day (in 1993 dollars, adjusted to account for differences in purchasing power across countries) -- has fallen from 29 percent in 1990 to 23 percent in 1999.

Substantial improvements in social indicators have accompanied growth in average incomes. Infant mortality rates have fallen from 107 per 1,000 live births in 1970 to 59 in 1999. On average, life expectancy has risen by four months each year since 1970 . Growth in food production has substantially outpaced that of population. Governments report rapid progress in primary school enrollment . Adult literacy has also risen, from 53 percent in 1970 to 74 percent in 1998. And gender disparities have narrowed, with the female-male difference in net enrollment rates decreasing from 11 percent in 1980 to 5 percent in 1997. The developing world today is healthier, wealthier, better fed, and better educated
taken from http://www.worldback.org

If anything needs to happen to affect the worlds poor for the better its more globalisation its less aid, more business and less protectionist policies from Washington and Europe.

why don't you post more of these propaganda articles praising imperialism...

Yeah buddy... "imperialism"...thats good...always good for a laugh this imperialism shit

yes, the facts like "creating prosperity can only be done the way you did", or "The left's vision was man as a selfless slave of the state, and the state as the omniscient manager of the economy."... oh, THOSE "facts"... i forgot!

Another littler factoid: I havent done anything

Heres one more: The two major famines in the last twenty years have come in countries with Centralised governments, who came to power spouting Marxist principles, those countries were: Ethopia and Mozambique.

[Skullers]

After WW2 America gave 1trillion in foreign aid to the poorest countries in the world(on top of European countries to etc) and the world got steadily poorer right up until the 1980s.

ok.

From 1990 onwards, countries that have liberalised there markets even to a degree have seen extreme poverty drop, employment increase and standards of living go up.

that's fine... i said that i would support the development of capitalism where it opposes the more reactionary systems and builds up the productive forces

Yeah buddy... "imperialism"...thats good...always good for a laugh this imperialism shit

imperialism - 1) The policy of extending a nation's authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political hegemony over other nations.

The two major famines in the last twenty years have come in countries with Centralised governments, who came to power spouting Marxist principles, those countries were: Ethopia and Mozambique.

much difference between spouting marxist principles and following them

[Freedom]

ok

I'm just showing that Foreign aid hinders growth(i posted a thing about that before) and trade boosts its.

imperialism - 1) The policy of extending a nation's authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political hegemony over other nations

And? Really though i self proclaimed Soviet Apologisers cant exactly complain about Empire building now can they? Also through Free Trade the parents work in the foreign companies and send their kids to school, then the kids are able to have an aducation and set up their own business and you never know...set up economic hegemony over other nations

much difference between spouting marxist principles and following them

Follows that same pattern in every "Socialist Dictatorship", Facists state, Theocratic state or secularist dictatorship in the world. They suck shit until they open up the markets(if that makes sense)

http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/briefs/tbp-010.pdf

[Comrade Ogilvy]

Youre one hell of a fact hound Freedom!

[bach]

Expansionism I believe has been a dangerous practice for empires through history, now lets say globalization is the best thing that has happened since men invented the weel, the poor live better, and the rich even better. My question would be how long can the US continue expanding its economy through corporations?

I mean there has to be a limit to it, as it has been the case for all empires, there would be a moment when the US will not have manufacturing whitin its borders (labor force), and the majority of the population workforce would shifht to managerial positions, resulting in an increasisng awareness of people towards the benefits of power, and therefore it would be a threat to high spheres of power, and the system itself.

Moreover, corporations will start relocating their headquarters in places, like Vietnam, where they are more powerfull than the goverment itself, and where corporate taxes are low, Imena thats what they are doing as of right now. Therefore the US economy would eventually loose capital and investment, becoming weaker, and fianlly destroying itself.

I think globalization in the long run would be more of a threat, than it would be a solution.

[Catria]

Establishing fair and effective labor market and workplace regulations is always a challenging task. But such regulations remain a cornerstone of any decent society. This has been clear from the historical struggles against slave labor onward. The need for such social protections has only increased in our contemporary era of globalization, contrary to the widespread premise that global economic integration should be synonymous with the dismantling of social protections.

SASL [scholars against sweatshop labour]

I really wish conservatives would stop holding up communist failures as justifications for laissez-faire capitalism. As though that's all there is? There is an in-between...neither communism nor unregulated capitalism.

It's true globalisation has brought jobs to the poor in developing countries but would these jobs be lost by raising working standards to a minimum level of decency? Multinationals point out that they pay above the minimum wage relative to the countries they operate in ,but in the worldwide garment industry, most work is subcontracted to other firms by the MNC's and workers are paid by these firms...not the Mutlinationals themselves. These local market wages are extremely low and reports by the International Labor Organization consistently find that serious workplace abuses and violations of workers’ rights are occurring in the industry throughout the world.

The use of sweatshop labour is really a kind of global corporate blackmail...keep labour dirt cheap or it wont be worth our while to manufacture in your countries. It's the same argument used against the "working poor" in America and elsewhere...work for peanuts or don't work at all.

How sustainable and wonderful for the poor is this really? An acceptance and perpetuation of low labour standards by the Multinationals provides a disincentive for those countries which may wish to improve conditions for its workers. And sweatshop labour doesn't just occur in desperate third world countries...it's in the back rooms of affluent Western countries where migrant outworkers work twelve hours a day for a relative pittance. Brand name clothing companies make huge profits off the labour of these [usually women] people.

Anti-globalization protesters can rail all they like against the evils of capitalism, international markets and Western Civilization. But the numbers are unmistakable. Wealth is the only remedy for poverty, and capitalism is the only real way to create wealth.

Maybe, but not laissez-faire capitalism which we have already seen only perpetuates cycles of poverty and throws social justice out the window. [take a look at labour standards of the 19th century]. What we need to ensure true sustainable economies and a fairer spread of that "capitalist created wealth" are effective international labour standards to meet the challenge of globalisation head on.

It is said that cheap labour contributes to low productivity and a squandering of the human resource. Why, it is asked, should an enterprise try to make 'smarter' use of its human resources where it can maintain profit by simply using more (cheap) labour, in an environment which suppresses the cost of labour? Any contribution to an environment which respects and rewards the smart use of labour -- including the contribution at the national level of international labour standards -- helps develop the national human resource, improve the possibility of attracting foreign direct investment, and improve the chances of economic growth. Retention of cheap labour practices maintains the nation in a cycle of poverty which relies on low costs and low productivity for maintaining income.

ILO

*Its worth noting that any improvements made in Nikes offshore business practices where brought to bear only after an international social justice campaigns and mega-publicity. Message being...capitalism rarely acts on its own for the betterment of the people.