One also has to consider: a factory job is comparatively more stable than peasant farming. Farming is almost inherently a dangerous task, without guarantee of success. Generally, an industrialized life beats an agrarian life at both extremes of economic status. I suspect the reason that most people take the factory jobs is partly due to this fact.
For the most part, industrialization of a country does seem to follow the first part of Marx’s pattern. As has been noted before, they don’t seem to really hit the latter stages. This really indicates that he was a fairly good judge of history, while being as average as the rest of us at predicting the future. My awful perception of recent history in this case: The third world’s workers have been somewhat exploited by the first world. Since the workers are usually marginally better off, and the employer makes a profit, everyone involved goes along with it. Historically, the workers eventually organize into unions. Unions are really just a business for the management of labor. How good they are depends on how far-sighed, honest and flexible their leadership is. I’m not necessarily a maverick, so I am going to predict that future developments in the third world will follow this pattern, and if they are not beset by charlatans in their leadership, the workers will eventually be less exploited in these countries through organization.
At which point, companies will start looking for places that they can get things at an even cheaper rate. I remember a quote from an IT worker in India who found that his job was going to Romania. It was effectively, “Is there a place where they will do this job for free?” I imagine the Romanians were as happy to get the job as the Indian guy was. I don’t know of a solution for this slope. We will at least know we have hit the bottom when they are setting up factories in Antarctica and shipping people there because of the lax labor laws. On second thought, there’s always space.
Other than to avoid companies that are the most famous abusers, is there much I can do about this that would be effective? I don’t think so, not personally.
My wife’s employer has started establishing software development farms in the Ukraine. They’ve found that American employees are way to expensive, and software development is just too easy a skill now. The Ukraines are happy to have the work, but in a few years they’ll be more expensive than someone where else and off go the jobs. This patter matches perfectly with their choices of production facilities. They used to be in the US, then moved to Puerto Rico, now they’re moving to southern Mexico. They have zero incentive to pay more for labour than absolutely necessary.
I made the same comment in a recent thread about slavery, as long as it’s allowed, there is zero incentive for a company to not use it–regardless of whether or not they realize it’s immoral/wrong/exploitation.
I’m not an expert, but I’d agree with this part. I get the impression that companies from developed economies try harder to ensure labor rights are being respected.
And obviously the US is the worse off for losing it?
Puerto Rico’s problem seems to be that as companies moved in, everyone particularly talented, once they made some money, decided to use their ability to move to the mainland US to move to the mainland US. With no one particularly talented on the island, mainland firms had to bring in people from the mainland, meaning that the money didn’t flow to the locals. Ultimately, all this tells us is that trying to encourage industry to come to your locale doesn’t work to improve things if your locale is a backwaters hole with a cheap ticket to somewhere better. That’s not really pertinent to the discussion at hand so long as emigration is limited.
China is becoming modernized due to the reforms of Deng Xiaoping. Japan became modernized before the US was a superpower. Taiwan and South Korea became modernized due to their export economies. I seriously doubt the US played a huge role in India’s recent economic growth.
And as far as military or politicians abusing people, one of the motivations of that was fear that open trade would be shut down. When a nation started to nationalize its resources, our funding would go to right wing movements in those nations.
So your contention is that the initial capital and the target that these countries rely upon is not the modernized nations of the world, like the US? The exports do not go to the US or other modern nations?
The plight of the American worker is clear. Wages and working conditions will drop steadily. I don’t know what the bottom is but it is on its way down. Unions have been destroyed. The ones that are left are capitulating with management on gutting benefits and cutting wages. There are few jobs that are safe. That is why construction jobs, service jobs and medical jobs are being pushed. The future is there.
IT is being ruined now. Engineering can be done cheaper abroad.l At this point it can’t be done better, but eventually it will. They will develop skills and technology before we will. We will become obsolete.
We are the market that drives world economies. That too is fading. China exports to lots of places. Eventually our hammer will be gone. We will have no way to pressure them.
But on the bright side, the ownership class will amass unheard of fortunes. They will have world power on a new scale.
Exploiting workers benefits owners and investors. It might be passed on to upper management. Workers will be like they were in 1900s.
FWIW I wasn’t really targeting American companies with my comments, though given the thread we’re in it is reasonable to have assumed so.
The definition I had learned might fall into Emacsknight’s problem of being overly broad. Taking advantage of a people’s poverty in order to pay them less than they would otherwise be paid would pretty much apply to anyone giving them a job, even at the going rate or above. It only becomes immoral imo when the standards get too low (yes, that’s subjective.) or when the money companies make off of the exploitation becomes a disincentive to easing the oppression.