As my original post was directed at the topic of the thread and singled out no one, I find your continual protestations most curious.
If the post was not directed at you then why answer? Do you have any information that my assertions are incorrect?
I’m not a knee-jerk capitalism apologist, but I take exception to those who would cast the world’s ills at capitalism’s feet. There are many legitimate reasons to critisize capitalism without flogging some ridiculous canard that it is responsible for terrorism.
Gadarene,
Thanks for the link I enjoyed the article and find it spot on.
Gardner: so if capitalism is not responsible for terrorism, mind taking a stab at what you think is?
(And I’m interested in those legitimate reasons, and not necessarily as fodder for debate. I’m not much for either dogmatic neo-liberalism or anti-capitalism… it’s the mushy middle that interests me.)
I think human nature as it relates to the group/tribe/nation is responsible.
Ultimately terrorism is a military response that avoids direct military conflict and is usually conducted against non-military populations. It can be by a stronger force attempting to subdue the population (Nazis in Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe, Rome in Palestine, etc.) or it can be by a weaker foe as a means to discourage a stronger one.
Terrorism is simply conflict that by our relatively modern definitions breaks the “rules.” In historical times it was simply an extention of war and as such was widely practiced.
Gadarene: read the article, liked it, made a lot of points I’d like to but did it much more clearly. One slight problem though…
It was written in 1993. IOW, pre-crash. Speculation on the relative strength or weakness of Asian quasi-protectionist economic strategies has to take that into account. Else Pundit will no doubt have a field day with it.
I think human nature as it relates to the group/tribe/nation is responsible.
Ultimately terrorism is a military response that avoids direct military conflict and is usually conducted against non-military populations. It can be by a stronger force attempting to subdue the population (Nazis in Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe, Rome in Palestine, etc.) or it can be by a weaker foe as a means to discourage a stronger one.
Terrorism is simply conflict that by our relatively modern definitions breaks the “rules.” In historical times it was simply an extention of war and as such was widely practiced.
No doubt. A little time on Lexis–which I’ll do later, if needed, as now I have to get back to law school outlining–would show a number of articles which point to factors other than protectionism as the reason for the Asian collapse (specifically, if I recall, cronyism and capital flight risk).
One such article–okay, I did a quick search–is from the August 2000 ASEAN Economic Bulletin (does anyone know if this is a partisan organization?), and is entitled, “The Asian Financial Crisis: Hindsight, Insight, Foresight.” The author is Wing Thye Woo.
It’s a comprehensive read; I wish I could link it.
Hey, I don’t mind a little Marxist analysis. Marx was actually a pretty decent observor of 19th century economics. It’s Marxist solutions are pretty whack.
Nah, I think terrorism goes back a long way. It’s always been a way for relatively powerless groups to strike disproportionately at the more powerful. It’s just that until the 20th century, they had to make do with more straightforward forms of murder, what with car bombs and jetliners in scarce supply before now. As for war crimes, the concept probably didn’t exist before the 20th century, but that does not prevent us from discussing earlier acts as war crimes even if they would not have been understood that way at the time.
Oh, I think the historical unions would serve a purpose today, too, if they were still around. Instead the unions have replaced the corporations as the “thing in the way” of laborers. They’re just as big and bulky as corporations, have just as much red tape, and yet they are paid to do this! Much more lucrative than a corporation, IMO (before someone jumps the gun here, I realize that many union representatives aren’t full-time unioners, and that, in fact, it is geared more along political lines than monetary ones).
Yes, I do what my boss tells me to. That is, I think, the essence of being an employee, regardless of whether or not there is a union or whether there is a market system or a socialist system or whether we roll dice to determine how much something costs. If my boss and I disagree I quit working there (regardless of whether I literally quit or he fired me). Luckily I have not gotten myself into such a situation where I need a high-paying job to survive. I could get by on two low-paying jobs just as nicely (without the free time I have, of course). But even if I did find myself in such a position, it isn’t (necessarily) the fault of the business.
Oh, unions are a grand construct that I think are easy to abuse, and which are abused. I think unions are inevitable in a free society (relatively free, of course, before we start that up). As such, the only thing holding back slave-labor shops isn’t capitalism, and isn’t the businesses moving there to take advantage of that slave labor, but the society which permits it in the first place. Apart from that, I even think that “slave labor” is putting a spin on the subject that simply isn’t there.
Mandelstam, allow me to state this more clearly for you. I, an American citizen, am a person that lives rather comfortably by worldwide standards. I cannot afford to spend $140 on a pair of Nike shoes, and I manufacture items which cost at least $22,000 up to $200,000. It is no suprise to me that assemblers might not be able to purchase the end-product. I would think that is common sense, in fact, that there is no guarantee that what an assembler manufactures is also able to be purchased by said assembler. I do not see a damn thing wrong with that, and I simply wonder why you do.
minty
I had no idea you were male. I had no idea you were female, either, but when you said that I was shocked that someone with whom I have debated in the past had a gender unknown to me. Strange. At any rate,
Indeed. I am going off recollection of history here, no actual cites, but I recall that the ancient Greeks, at least some faction of them, used to poison water supplies with dead bodies. I think that would qualify as terrorism in most people’s minds.
Demo,
I never said that all regulation was bad. When there is clear evidence of market failure it is often appopriate. As a matter of fact most market economies have extensive regulation despite the fact that they are plugged into the global economy and there is little evidence that globalization has reduced regulation significantly. So there is little need for a global approach unless the market failure itself is global (like global warming).
Worker safety is for the most part not a public good since the main benefit to the worker himself and perhaps the business. Therefore for the most part the cost of worker safety is internalized by the firm. Would you care to provide empirical evidence for the magnitude of the public good component of worker safety that you allege?
Tiebout’s basic insight was the that localities compete with each other to offer the optimal amount of regulation.If a locality offers less regulation than optimal firms and labourers will move to another locality. It works best for the regions and small countries but in some measure the logic works in the international economy.
If any regulation is efficiency-enhancing there is no reason why the government will forego it because of any “race to the bottom”. First of all the the logic of the race to the bottom applies only if the regulation in question hurts the firm’s profits and it decides to leave. As I have explained repeatedly this is only one case .
Also presumably the social benefits are greater than the loss to the firms. So it should be possible to set up a system of sidepayments so that everyone is better off( that after all is the definition of efficiency-enhancing). The same applies if the benefit is long term through some borrowing.
Finally please give some systematic empirical evidence for the race to the bottom. It’s getting boring to argue continously with your airy-fairy speculation. Most economists who have looked at the issue have found little evidence of a race to the bottom, certainly not enough to justify sweeping global standards.
http://www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/pb/globalization/paper4.htm
This is a nice article from the WB which addresses the issue.
Some discussion of the praciticalities would also be nice.
Most developing countries including the democracies don’t want mandatory labour standards. How are you going to force them to adopt them? Which labour standards exactly do you have in mind which you want to impose on them? How do you know that the costs of these higher labour standards won’t be higher than the benefits which you haven’t even explained properly? If these labour standards are so good why don’t they get together as a group and enforce them. Why does the rich world have to force them to adopt these standards?
Frankly you haven’t even provided the first step of providing a plausible theoretical rationale for global standards let alone the empirical evidence that they are necessary and that they will bring more benefits and costs.
“Terrorism” and “war crimes” (as distinct from war) are possible as seperate definitions only in the presence of internationally codefied behavior standards. Because these standards were not present until recently doesn’t mean that behaviors we would classify as “terrorism” and “war crimes” didn’t occur.
Mandelstam, you have fairly laid out the other side of the debate. IMHO the minimum wage in the US hasn’t destroyed the economy, but it has had some negative impacts. There’s also a big “black market” – that is, workers who evade the minimum wage. There’s no way to know if the US minimum wage law has done any good, because we can’t re-run history without it.
Europe has very high unemployment, caused in part by the many government interferences with the economic system.
Since it’s very difficult for a single country to implement economic controls without doing harm, I’d say it’s impossible to accomplish this feat internationally. Have you ever seen UNESCO at work? Can you imagine an economic system devised with that type of double-talk, dishonesty, and selfishness? As always, YMMV
Oh btw let me spell the sheer lunacy of the 1$ /hour minimum wage that Mandelstam cited. At 2000 hours per year that works to 2000 dollars which is four times the per capita income of India. Is there any need to elaborate the idiocy of enacting a minimum wage which is several times the average income. What does the author believe? That India’s GDP is going to quadruple overnight because of the minimum wage increase to accomodate it?
This underlines the fact that in addition to being clueless about economic theory most leftists are deeply ignorant of the basic facts of the economies they want to impose policies on. The fact is that there are hundreds of millions of people all over the world who would give a limb for a job which pays 50 cents an hour. Sad? Undoubtedly. But nothing is gained by enacting foolish regulations whose main effect is to reduce the demand for labour in those economies and the amount of investment,policies which will in all likelihood impoverish those economies even more.
If rich countries want to increase aid to poor countries, ie. actually pay for the things they want to see, that’s admirable and like I said I strongly support more international aid for things like primary schools and health clinics.
Sadly ,like I said,most of the leftist prescriptions are about the easy way out of just trying to impose regulations on poor people whose cost will in all likelihood be payed for largely by the poor themselves. The real agenda isn’t helping poor people but protecting labourers in rich countries.
I certainly agree that a global minimum wage is a bad idea. Nevertheless, your India example isn’t a very good one. $2000 might be four times India’s per capita income, but that’s deceptive in that “per capita” refers to the entire population of India, not just the workers. This is just a guess, but if you drop everyone who doesn’t earn an income, I suspect that $2000 figure is at least in the ballpark, if still high.
Actually, my WAG would be that the workforce is a fair ways less than half of India’s population. Its population demographics are such that a huge percentage of the people are not of working age, and my sense is that most of India’s still not all that progressive when it comes to women in the workforce.
Don’t forget that many children have to work and that many poor women have to work as well. Also the proportion of retirees is much smaller. So 50% wouldn’t be surprising at all.
This site says there were 282.4 million Indians employed in the public and private sectors in 1997, including 46.3 million women. That’s with a total population around 900 million, IIRC.
Again, I agree with your basic point, I’m just quibbling with the specific example. There are many countries with economies much worse off than India, and a $1/hr. minimum wage would be an absolute disaster to those economies.
Hmm OK. Though I suspect there are many more in the informal sector who don’t get counted.
In any case according to Mandelstam’s figures the average wage in the manufacturing sector is 50 cents in China so the proposal seeks to double the average there which would be roughly equivalent to a 30 dollar minimum wage in the US.
minty: true, but Mandel’s point that a minimum wage (if it exists) should depend on the economy in question is one that would seem obvious to anybody trying to set up such a scheme. Keep in mind that the point is “a living wage”, and not any particular dollar point. I’d imagine that as working Indians are not dying off left and right there is a comparative living wage much, much lower than what you’d see in North America. I don’t think anybody would honestly argue that a minimum wage doesn’t have an effect on unemployment: the question for policymakers is whether they consider it worth it. As there isn’t a western country without either a minimum wage or economists warning about the consequences of that minimum wage, it’s pretty obvious that western governments are willing to make that tradeoff. The question then becomes rather simple: would they still able to make those decisions under an international free trade regime? If not, what does that mean to national sovereignty?
Pundit: I’ll assume that Tiebout didn’t forget about the alternate situation- that a locality offering more regulation than optimal will drive business away. I’ll gladly grant that this makes sense. I’m rather uncomfortable with how one determines “optimal” levels of regulation, though. In any case, it seems that my arguments have managed to step into the already-existing debate over the idea of the “race to the bottom”. Makes the whole thing a bit easier. Makes citing online sources a little rougher, though, as journal articles aren’t usually available online for free linking. What are the rules here for citing offline sources? Good? Bad?
In any case, I read your source. It’s not exactly a sweeping indictment of the notion of a race to the bottom except the concept of such a race being due to environmentalism alone. Even then, however, there are caveats:
This sounds awfully similar to the tradeoff between minimum wages and unemployment I mentioned above. The question, again, is whether small countries can make these value judgements.
And it also reflects my point about subsidized costs:
Any Canadian would be able to explain in great detail how subsidized exploitation of natural resources by international corporations fishing in international waters played merry hell with the cod stocks and impoverished entire provinces. Or, for that matter, the Salmon controversy in British Columbia.
I’ll agree with one thing you said Pundit. I actually think you called it when you were talking with Minty when you said you’d support “more international aid for things like primary schools and health clinics”. That “things like” there is a big question, but anything that improves the situation in the third world is a positive step. I do not support “free trade zones”, “Maquiladoras”, or any attempt by third world states and corporations to subsidize the cost of producing goods by concentrating the negative effects in one area and on one group. I don’t buy that these workers made an informed choice to work there, either, as they are often ill-equipped to make that decision due to a lack of education and unable to engage in collective bargaining. As schools will both allow people to intelligently make these decisions and clinics will ensure that they are healthy enough to make those decisions, I support it wholeheartedly.
(Was the baiting of “leftists” really necessary, though?)
A little time on Lexis–which I’ll do later, if needed, as now I have to get back to law school outlining–would show a number of articles which point to factors other than protectionism as the reason for the Asian collapse (specifically, if I recall, cronyism and capital flight risk).