From: Waldemar Inghdahl (waldemar.ingdahl@eudoxa.se)
Date: Wed Jun 27 2001 - 17:03:41 MDT
----- Original Message -----
From: Brian D Williams <talon57@well.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2001 8:32 PM
Subject: Re: SOC/ECON: Critique of the anti-globalists
>
> >From: Greg Burch <gregburch@gregburch.net>
>
> >Here's an excellent article that punctures a few of the so-called
> >"facts" upon which the new "anti-globalists" base much of their
> >critique of economic liberty:
>
>
> >http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/highlights/opinions_july_01/i
> >ndex.html
>
> A very interesting article with many good criticisms, yet
> containing plenty of flaws of it's own.
>
> "A corporation has to attract the labor and capital it employs from
> competitive markets"
>
> Nonsense, capital maybe, but corporations almost never miss the
> opportunity to move production/labor to the least competitive
> environments they can find.
Excuse me, why don't we then see corporations flocking to countries as Haiti or Afghanistan?
The wages would low, very low indeed.
Why are they investing in so (relatively) high wage countries as Thailand or Indonesia?
> "Compared to conditions for many casual workers, employment in a
> foreign company is close to paradise"
>
> You have got to be kidding me...
>
> And attempting to redefine exploiting third world labor pools as
> "assisting unsuccessful developing countries" had me spitting water
> through my nose.
The alternative to working in a foreign company plant in Indonesia, isn't to have a workplace in nice US plant.
It is often to work in a plant of an Indonesian company. Nike sure looks like paradise: higher wages (they give you wages, in the first place on a regular basis- WOW!), better environment, a boss that doesn't use the stick as the only method of communication.
But most often the alternative is simply NOTHING!
There is no way they can return to a low intensive farming culture.
One might wonder why some transglobals are so big in developing countries.
Naomi Klein (TM) screams about it.
But the reason is that in order to make business in these countries you got to be big.
That gives you at least some leverage against the corrupt regimes, that may get the idea that today El Presidente needs a new Rolls Royce and thus we will "nationalize" all factories.
As shown by Hernando De Soto in his books "The other path" and "The mystery of capital" the problem is often this, there is no protection for ownership and an immense bureaucracy.
You know, the rich have been globalised for a long, long time.
They don't benefit from the globalisation, we see today (rather they often loose, since many of their riches were made because they were protected from foreign competition).
It is people that previously weren't able to take benefit at all of globalisation that profit most.
The anti- globalists are often the terrified global elite of the 20th century that are very afraid to loose their privileges.
Seattle as the rebellion of the Mandarin class.
Globalisation puts all the eclectically absorbed myths of the 20th century on their head.
Did you know that many of the undeveloped countries have greater welfare providements than the US?
In Uruguay for instance (a country that was one of the top 10 richest in the world and gave foreign aid to Sweden about a century ago) 600 000 senior citizens share 800 000 pensions.
But the problem is that soapbox chanting politicians have given out benefits that are simply not there.
Some Brazilian states are so heavily burdened by pensions for their former employees that they have faced bankrupcy many times.
The real wealth to do so isn't there, and all of these programs are directed to the middle class (as in most welfare states) eschewing the poor.
And it is this middle class that is deadly afraid of globalization, no wonder they vote socialist.
The Ipanema- left of the less developed countries is the one that tries to stop the loosing of privileges by stopping globalisation.
Everything you heard on Barney is wrong
Waldemar ;-)
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