Making The World's Poor Buy Rich Man's Toys

[Jccarlton]

Forcing the poor to buy rich man's toys:
http://www.thebigquestions.com/2010/02/10/worked-up/

We can afford luxuries like clean air and water. We were lucky enough to use the inventiveness and creativity, coupled to free markets and a firm rule of law to be able to produce a quantum leap civilization. The Progressives not only want to deny us further growth, they also want to keep the rest of world's poor in poverty.

[Jccarlton]

Forcing the poor to buy rich man's toys:
http://www.thebigquestions.com/2010/02/10/worked-up/

We can afford luxuries like clean air and water. We were lucky enough to use the inventiveness and creativity, coupled to free markets and a firm rule of law to be able to produce a quantum leap civilization. The Progressives not only want to deny us further growth, they also want to keep the rest of world's poor in poverty.

Oops, I forgot to include the link to the original quote that got me worked up:
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2007/06/quo ... o-buy.html
Closing sweatshops and forcing Western labor and environmental standards down poor people's throats in the third world does nothing to elevate them out of poverty. Instead, it forces poor people to buy a lot of rich man's toys, like clean air, clean water, and leisure time. If clean air and leisure time don't strike you as extravagant luxuries, that's because Americans - even the poorest of us - are so rich these days that we've forgotten what true poverty is like. But chances are your great-great-grandparents could have told you what it's like: when you're truly poor, you can't afford things like clean air. Nobody in 1870 America worried about the environment.

~Economist Steven Landsburg, from the chapter "Children At Work" in his book "More Sex is Safer Sex"
Actually even in 1870 the US was better off than anywhere else. Because of the open land labor costs were kept high, which forced business owners to try to get as much productivity as possible and created a very competitive market for labor. And people did worry about things like manure in cities. But there was no "save the planet" philosophy.

[MirariNefas]

Some "save the planet" stuff is okay by me. Once an ecosystem is gone, it ain't coming back, and if future generations want it to play around with for ecotourism or bioprospecting, that's a real shame. But yeah, forcing the poor to pay for what I want, or what their great grandchildren might want if, you know, the poor ever find a way to pass on enough wealth to their great grandchildren, isn't especially fair.

So we should just work to abolish laws that prevent foreign investment, and allow rich foreigners to purchase their ecosystems and buy off the polluting industries. One day when the middle-class locals, enriched by that money into a prosperous society, think that rainforests or whatnot are important, well, the rich guys can sell it back to them. Ideally.

[MSimon]

Progressives against progress.

[MirariNefas]

Progressives are protectionists? Didn't know. I guess it is a fairly democrat thing.

[Skipjack]

Well...
This really depends.
You know one of the reasons why the US economy has problems now is, because a lot of products that used to be made in the US and sold to other countries, are now made in other countries (by children and others working under horrible conditions) and imported (sold) to the US.
One reason for this is that the higher environmental and savety standards in the US make production more expensive than in countries like these and the shareholders in their shortsightedness want more profit now(!). I mean who cares what will happen many years down the road, right?
Well all that resulted in the US economy getting unbalanced. You have to export more value (goods, know how, etc) than you import. If you dont do that, you will end up having issues. With most of the US production going abroad, you have a problem.
Of course those workers that used to work in production also are a problem. They now have to work in less well paid jobs in the service industry. That lowered they ability to consume. So noone is now there to buy the more cheaply produced goods that the shareholders were so eagerly expecting to make them more money.
Thirdly, most products manufactured by little children, are of inferior quality. I used to be wearing Levi's jeans for decades. Ever since the production moved to China, they are crap. These will have been the last pair of Levi's I will have bought. I am currently looking for competing products (I want buttons instead of zippers). I might try Diesel.
Anyway this is just one example. Another is Chevy. Noone wants those crappy cars. They suck! They are chinese garbage! They are cheap, but they are not even worth the cheap suckage that they are!

So you ended up with cheaply produced goods that noone wants to buy anymore. Producing in 3rd world countries cost you more than it gained you.

[jmc]

So your speaking out in support of child labour now!!!! Jesus Christ you really take rightwing dogma to its logical conclusion.

Give one token child whose work wasn't all that bad and out of work an interview and bobs your uncle all child labour is O.K.!

The idea of applying the laws of supply and demand to children who are all to often forced to go out and work by their parents is insane. Children aren't free agents, they are dependents on their parents and therefore will never be entirely free so the normal laws of supply and demand don't apply. Their wages are all to often taaken by their parents in anycase.

How about child prostitution? Many people on this forum seem to support adult prostitution and child labour, so it doesn't seem that large a leap of intuition to think that maybe a few people here think child prostitution is O.K. aswell.



I suppose every child will go out and mow the lawn for pocket money and wash the dishes or sell lemonade or some such thing, so maybe some child labour in moderation (say no more 3 hours a day in jobs that don't pose long term health risks) would be all right, but if children don't get education then their opportunities later in life will be limited, something they will not even be aware of at a young age.

One of the assumptions of modern free market economics is that all agents know every relevant bit of information required to make every decision they need to make in life, applying that to adults can be a bit dicey at times, applying that assumption to children is nuts!!!

If your arguing that we over-regulate against child labour in the developed world and that the instant a child does a bit of work in the developing world we give a knee jerk response against it there might be some sense in what your saying.

If your saying that child labour should be completely unregulated, that its O.K. to send children out to work 14 hour days for a pittance that their parents take away from them, then we have nothing in common.


Also many of those liberals that you demonise work to set up schools for those children for free. Which is better than those wonderfully non-bigotted rightwing people who might on a good day decide to give those children barely enough to eat in exchange for working a 14 hour shift to make some shoes for them or something.

Agree that ensuring you buy American doesn't help poor children and is counter productive in terms of lifting the poor of this world out of poverty, but with fair trade products maybe you could pay the parents enough in exchange for the work they do so that they don't need to send their children to the sweatshops.

[Skipjack]

Agree that ensuring you buy American doesn't help poor children and is counter productive in terms of lifting the poor of this world out of poverty, but with fair trade products maybe you could pay the parents enough in exchange for the work they do so that they don't need to send their children to the sweatshops.

I agree. But even from a purely economic POV, having children do bad quality work for you to make a few cents more profit, does not pay off. So that way of thinking is wrong on so many levels.

[Josh Cryer]

The first world should have moved to more automation a long time ago. But labor is cheap and the first world hasn't been as innovative as it was in the past.

[Skipjack]

The first world should have moved to more automation a long time ago. But labor is cheap and the first world hasn't been as innovative as it was in the past.

Exactly. This is the problem. But then why invent a more efficient machine, if slavery is so much cheaper (and child labour in 3rd world countries is as close to slavery as it gets, only that it is not in YOUR own country).

[MirariNefas]

It's a mixed bag. People in third world countries, even kids, need jobs, and if they're cheaper than machines, this allows us to give them jobs (read, distribute wealth) while maximizing economic output and generating value for consumers at the same time. In that light, it's idyllic and a driver for world development.

On the other hand, conditions may exist to perpetuate these relationships. Some third world countries have laws against collective bargaining and that sort of thing. When a factory worker gets to choose unhealthy or unpleasant conditions, that's one thing. When they are coerced or duped, that's a different thing.

The West makes laws protecting workers because theoretically it's part of our value system and important to us. We can afford it, and yes, we can do all kinds of kickass automation. When we import goods from countries that don't follow these laws/principles, we undermine ourselves. Do we think workers have certain rights or not? Right now we're doing what's politically expedient rather than what's idealogically consistent.

[Diogenes]

The first world should have moved to more automation a long time ago. But labor is cheap and the first world hasn't been as innovative as it was in the past.

Exactly. This is the problem. But then why invent a more efficient machine, if slavery is so much cheaper (and child labour in 3rd world countries is as close to slavery as it gets, only that it is not in YOUR own country).

Everybody's in favor of slavery. No one wants to admit it though. Everyone knows it's wrong, but they just can't bring themselves to forgo the benefits of slavery.

[MirariNefas]

I can't let go of the benefits either, though I wouldn't say I'm in favor of it. Automation, cheap energy, and enough education to use both should be the goal for the entire world.

[Skipjack]

this allows us to give them jobs (read, distribute wealth)

This sounds a lot like a "trickle down" system way of thinking, which is flawed. Or let me rephrase it. By itself allone does not work. You have to have other factors in your economy. Just trickling wealth down from the rich to the poor does not work. It is very easy to see why, if you think it through.

The biggest problem with outsourcing production to low income countries is that your own country looses value, unless you have enough know how to trade for the value of the imported goods (which is less and less the case). A value imbalance will result in a deficit. And as we all know, the US has the highest deficit of all...

[Betruger]

The first world should have moved to more automation a long time ago. But labor is cheap and the first world hasn't been as innovative as it was in the past.

Exactly. This is the problem. But then why invent a more efficient machine, if slavery is so much cheaper (and child labour in 3rd world countries is as close to slavery as it gets, only that it is not in YOUR own country).

Everybody's in favor of slavery. No one wants to admit it though. Everyone knows it's wrong, but they just can't bring themselves to forgo the benefits of slavery.

BS.

It's fine to argue semi-platonics like the fact that 1) sweat shops are necessary, or 2) that the critical nuance is between buying some product of a sweatshop employee that's working of his own free will VS one that's coerced, but 2) there's no way to tell what was made by who when you're in a KMart isle, and so 1) the only nearly sure enough bet to make is to push for maximum technological progress to passively lift those sweatshoppers' living standard.
Which in my semi lucid POV is convenient because it's one less dollar going to e.g. China. Whose population includes lots of innocent poor people, but whose regime is crap. So, in the aim that only those nations that most make technology progress for the least proportional humane transgressions get any $$$, that's a dollar better spent.