Essentially, depending on your definition of exploitation, either ALL workers are being exploited (Karl Marx) which would make the statement meaningless. Or it’s entirely a value judgment, in which case it simply reflects your personal feelings towards American companies. Either they provide jobs for people in third world countries, or their evil.
There is also the problem that the statement fails to say “some” or “all” for either the workers or the companies. So just because some workers are exploited by some companies, doesn’t mean all workers are exploited by all American companies. And the fact that is specifies American companies further suggests that its false, since it fails to make a distinction between foreign and domestic employers.
It has been suggested by other posters that domestic employers in third world countries actually treat their employees worse than foreign countries do.
I’d say that at worst they’re being exploited by Americans at no worse a level than they’d be exploited by their countrymen. Most likely American treatment and compensation are both, on average, better. In an inherently exploitative market, less bad is still preferable, and more importantly it gives the US some clout to peacefully force the country towards modernity and the end of exploitation.
I don’t see how any of this follows at all. You can certainly make a claim that there exist workers exploited by American companies in third world countries. It’s not that hard to imagine (or demonstrate) the existince of a monopsonic employer paying workers less than their marginal product or exercising coercion. So either you have a somewhat unconventional idea of what constitutes exploitation or you are wrong.
There is an enormous literature about this. I must be missing something about your objection to the idea of exploitation here.
How many times do we have to go through this? The value judgment is in which metrics you choose to look at and how you define exploitation. You provided a definition in the other thread, which if I used that definition, would definitely mean that all 3rd world workers are being exploited. It’s your own definition that you provided that leads to that conclusion.
This is a false comparison. Whether or not they provide jobs is a statement of fact. Whether or not they are evil is a value judgment.
This wasn’t my beef with that statement, so I have no response to this. If you wish to argue with my actual contention, then please do so.
Wasn’t suggested by me at all, so I have no response to this. Again, if you want to argue with something I actually stated, please do so.
Even if true that’s irrelevant since they are still being exploited. And I find it implausible that the local people would robotically set up their economy so as to pander to us when we aren’t involved.
:rolleyes: As if we’ve ever done anything but the opposite. Since when have we cared, much less tried? We do everything we can to make sure they’ll never become fairer or less exploitative.
China? India? Japan? Taiwan? South Korea? All of those countries have been nicely modernizing thanks to American pressure and aid.
We may have been a bit nasty in South America and the Middle East, but in both of those cases we’re talking about what politicians and the military did, not what open trade did.
The politicians and military we prop up and arm. The American government is mostly an extension of corporate America, so you can’t ignore what it does in this.
Imagine an inherently unfair work situation such as slavery.
You’ve got one plantation that’s merciless to workers.
A company from the north sees an opportunity, lays off all its workers, moves south, and opens a factory. They procure a bunch of slaves and treat them much better than the nearby plantation. Sure, they beat anyone that refuses to work or tries to escape–that’s how slavery works–but they feed the slaves adequate if unpalatable food, and they don’t rape them indiscriminately.
Are the factory slaves exploited?
I’d say so, and I’d say that the situation is analogous. If you’re providing better conditions than the neighbor is for your workers,that doesn’t preclude the possibility that you’re still exploiting them.
Bad analogy. The slaves have no choice in the matter. Peasant farmers choose to work in factories because they think they can make a better life for themselves. If they don’t, they can back to their villages and resume their peasant life. As long as you are not coercing them into staying in your factory, and as long as you offer them a better life (per their own choice), you’re not exploiting them.
Low productivity countries cannot expect their citizens to receive the same wages and benefits as high productivity countries. Unless you argue for absolute equality of wages and benefits across the globe, it’s always going to be a matter of degree.
Ridiculous. So people who work in sweatshops aren’t being exploited? People who can’t try to form unions without being killed for it aren’t being exploited? Women beaten and abused until they miscarry aren’t being exploited? Farmers forced into cites by the destruction of their farms because American companies want cheap workers aren’t being exploited? People who die in American wars for oil or under the thumb of American sponsored dictators aren’t being exploited?
Obviously they can’t expect the same wages in a country where the cost of living is far lower. But they can certainly expect the same rights, such as the right to not have to work 18 hour shifts with no breaks, the right to complain without being fired, the right to unions, the right to maternity leave, the right to safe working conditions, etc.
Exploitation is not just a matter of coercion. Do you think Crassus exploited people, or just provided a valuable service for profit? After all, those people chose to sell him their property at “fire-sale” prices. .
I think it’s an excellent analogy. Suppose those slaves were allowed choose where they wanted to be slaves? Most of them would choose the place with slightly better working conditions.
Picking the lesser of two evils doesn’t mean what you pick isn’t evil.
I wonder if there was no sweatshop if the workers would have anywhere to work? What would they be doing otherwise? Frankly, a horrible job can be better than no job if the option is starving.
I know in Yemen we pay our national employees (90+% of the workforce) about 40 times the average national wage, but then I work for an oil company and we’re evil.
Who is destroying farms to force people into the cities so that they have to work in factories? Do they spray agent orange to kill the farms? How is this done?
American sponsored dictators? So, these dictators, apparently they follow some sort of job description that says they have to persecute their civilian population? Any reason they can choose to not persecute their people, of which they are usually a member of in case your forgot, as long as they still bow to their political master, ie Obama.
I guess we need to agree on what constitutes “exploitation”. But all the things you mention above are simply matters of degrees. You say they have the right to not have to work 18 hour shifts. What is the maximum shift, then, and how do we objectively determine what that is? 17 Hours? 16 hours? 10 hours? No matter what number you pick, someone is going to object.
Safe working conditions? Well, that sounds nice. Exactly how safe does the work environment have to be?
Since you have unfairly disqualified Marxist interpretations because they don’t fit your world view, the question becomes a little unfair…
How about a Leninist viewpoint then? Not only are these workers always exploited, like all workers under capitalism, but they are super-exploited. The political and social system of the host country permits them to be paid under their cost of reproduction, with the excess surplus value permitting workers in developed countries to be less exploited, allowing the development, such as in the UK in the 19th and early 20th centuries, of a labour aristocracy and thus retarding the development of the class consciousness necessary for socialist revolution.
I think we can all agree that both situations involving slavery are evil. You need to establish when a voluntary, non-slave working environment is evil, in a similar way to slavery, for the analogy to make sense.
I’ll certainly agree that if a company with a corrupt government to coerce its citizens to work for them, then that can be called a form of coercion. But as long as there is “reasonable” choice involved, then it isn’t. What “reasonable”? Well, I guess that’s the rub.
Working for more money under better conditions, because someone has to do the work. Just as as always happens when better working conditions are pushed through somewhere, and the predicted doom fails to materialize.
No, they just send in troops to burn buildings, orchards and crops at the behest of American companies; various places in the Third World we have under our thumb.
If they want to keep being propped by America, yes. We’ve always promoted tyranny and brutality all over the world, in the name of our own profit.
Are you under the impression I like Obama? He’s just another right wing corporatist. Marginally better than the Republicans but hardly admirable.
“Exploited” is one of those loaded words. It implies that the action is bad, but is it? If I buy someone’s house from them for less than they paid for it, but at market value, am I “exploiting” that person’s financial position? Of course. Does that mean I’m obligated to pay him what he paid for it? What is my obligation? As long as I’m not responsible for the drop in value of his house, then I don’t think I have any obligation beyond what my own conscience tells me to do.
So, let’s take that analogy to the third world. If I collude with my government to ruin another country financially and impoverish its citizens, then swoop in with a nice new factory paying rock bottom wages, then that’s a bad form of exploitation. If I arrive on the scene with clean hands, then I’m just offering the folks an opportunity that they can either take or leave.