I have heard that in a lot of cases, they were driven off the land by people claiming formerly common grazing land. (I can’t back that up, so correct me if I am wrong) While I think that protectionism is almost always a bad thing, we cannot just romanticize the abuses any more than ITR Champion can romanticize a bucolic lifestyle. That said, I don’t know that it is possible to end these abuses without achieving a level of prosperity first. Protectionism certainly won’t do it.
Thanks,
Rob
Good thing I never said nor implied they did. Since you bizarrely think the only way to get people’s opinions in other countries is “journalists and researchers”, however, I thought I’d share. You could just visit one and ask them if you’d like. It’s possible someone will tell you they preferred unemployment to their current job that sucks so much in your eyes, but I’m going to guess they won’t.
At least then Westerners would get to see the poverty people are actually in, and might feel bad about helping keep them in it.
Can you explain why America’s laws should set the standard for the rest of the world? Because in some respects, like Kyoto, America is the one who has decided it is in their interest to not play fair with the rest because of the cost. Is this not unfair competition?
You are the one who does not care. Economists are telling us and some of us know anyway that protectionism and trade restrictions make things worse for everybody. You just will not accept the evidence. You choose to ignore it. You have been given plenty of evidence and actual examples of how free trade benefits all sides but you choose to ignore it. You would rather a poor Chinese worker have no job than what YOU consider a bad job. The Chinese beg to differ. And I have been traveling to China every year for the last 11 years so I have seen it first hand. People want those jobs because it is better than the alternative. And if you feel so bad about them having to do those jobs why don’t you vote for allowing more of them into the USA? Because you do not really care about their wellbeing but about your own. That’s why. Let us sy it as it is and take the mask off.
I don’t know enough about China’s specific situation to comment intelligently about it.
I’m distrustful of most any protectionist policies. I think some other posters have summed up the situation well: the benefits are immediate and obvious, while the costs are obscure and hard to measure. But the simple fact is that regardless of measurement difficulties, the short-time costs are extremely high and the long-term costs can be staggering.
But hey, I’m a practical sort. If it can be convincingly argued that temporary protectionist measures should be instituted, I’m willing to listen. I don’t know enough about China to argue one way or another about their specific situation, but for a US example, I supported the bridge loans to the American auto industry, and I support an overnight “financial restructuring” bill to be passed by Congress (let’s not call it the b-word, even though that’s what it is). Why? Because if the credit markets weren’t frozen, the automakers would’ve been able to get these loans from the private sector. It’s the overall financial collapse that’s putting extra pressure on the situation, and that justifies a government bailout, and special bankru- I mean, special financial restructuring rules, which could speed their return to viability. But if the automakers need more money from the government in, say, five years time after the economy and our financial system recover, then I’d rethink my position.
But this crisis is a special circumstance. Most of the time, the stated reasons for industrial protection are just a smokescreen to obfuscate the real issues so that inefficient industries can be propped up to benefit the few over the many. In the end, I think it’s possible to justify temporary protections in extremely rare cases, but the burden of proof is on the people who want it, and that burden of proof should be high.
I am not sure we are using the same definition. I am referring to the specific doctrine of comparative advantage as a means to achieve maximum production through specialization in a product or narrowly related products best suited for the abundance and circumstances of a country. A global market of specialized producers seems to doom some countries while enriching others. Trade should increase national wealth and protect national strength. Trade shouldn’t weaken a nation.
I agree that free trade is the most efficient and beneficial. However, there is an argument to be made that the conditions set by the global market are not efficient or stable. There has been a never ending stream of debt crises since the 70s. Floating exchange rates and speculators cause instability. Supply-side defines free markets as efficient, predictable, and correct. If a market is inefficient, it isn’t a free market. The global market is clearly not efficient, predictable, or correct.
The collapse of our financial institutions is strong evidence that capital markets are not regulated. Reregulation to liberate banks from New Deal policies, loopholes, and disregard for the regulation that does exist by the very institutions intended to protect the public enabled financial institutions and Wall Street to do whatever they want. The failure of rating agencies, accounting firms, law firms and the federal government to protect the public from financial devastation is public abandonment.
Perhaps I’m not getting my points across. First, I do not believe that people are lining up by the thousands at every sweatshop to get those wonderful sweatshop jobs. I do not accept a couple bits of anonymous internet testimony as proof of unanimous happiness among billions of third-world laborers. I do not believe that the common experiences at sweatshops, which include inhuman hours and conditions, beating and other forms of torture, force abortions, and other horrible things, are actually viewed as “a dream” by the people who experience them. I think that some people in rich countries believe it because it makes them feel good. Consider three questions:
The first question I already asked and no one answered. The people in some third-world countries have voted against globalization. Why did they do so, if being exploited by wealthy companies was such a wonderful experience?
Why do the third-world countries that contain sweatshops have to oppress their workers? In China, there’s heavy censorship so that any criticism of the system can be silenced. Mass demonstrations are outlawed, activists are jailed, unions are broken up, often with violence. If the workers love the sweatshops so much, why is all this necessary?
Why do American companies that use sweatshop labor cover it up? Wal-mart, K-Mart, Limited, Nike… All the companies that use these practices try to convince us that they don’t. If sweatshop labor is so wonderful, why not just bring some laborers over to explain how wonderful it is? That way these companies would get excellent publicity for all the wonderful things they’re doing in China and Bangladesh and Vietnam.
My second point is one of morals. If I find a starving man, is it morally right to exploit him any way I like as long as I give him a tiny bit of money? Hilaire Belloc once said:
Plainly sweatshop workers do not freely choose to work in sweatshops. They do so because the global capitalist system has waged war on local economies and successfully destroyed many of them. Now, having achieved that, big companies are taking unfair advantage of the situation that they themselves created.
Or consider, as a last bit of food for thought, that the same basic argument was used to defend slavery. There’s a famous pamphlet from the 1830’s that compares sketches of “The Negro in his home country”, who is naked, filthy, and starving, with “The Negro in America”, well fed, dressed, and civilized. The point being that the slave owners also believed they were doing a tremendous favor for the people they were exploiting, just as modern CEO’s do. Was the argument valid then? If not, why is it valid now?
Yes I can. It happened in the opposite way of what you described. People did not leave the land freely, they were removed by force. This was process that actually began much earlier, in the 16th century, but accelerated rapidly through the 18th century as the wealthy landowners snatched up property and forced the peasants off the land. Lacking any other option, the peasants migrated to the cities, where they formed a large group of unemployed who were ripe for exploitation. Of course it took a bit of violence to break up the unions and social justice movements, but soon the manufacturers had a large labor force that would work in subhuman conditions for pitiful wages because they had no choice.
(It should go without saying that the same basic story that unfolded in England then has unfolded in many third-world countries during the 20th century.)
So you are saying you just believe what you want to believe and disregard all evidence to the contrary. You have been given examples and evidence but you choose to ignore it. You will not provide any support for your assertions, only repeat your view of the world. Well, Ok then, I guess it is time to stop wasting our time with you because this is going nowhere.
This has happened only in your imagination. So far the evidence from your side, in this thread, comes chiefly from the one book that the the original post puts so much stock in. We’ve also seen several books arguing the opposite position, that unrestricted free trade is harmful. Why, exactly, does your one book overrule all the others? Why am I obligated to believe those economists on one side and ignore those on the other side? Please explain.
When did I not vote for allowing more of them into the USA? Don’t be shy, now. If you make such a claim, you must surely be able to back it up with actual facts. List the exact occasion on which I refused to vote this way.
To praise the New York Times for being unbiased is silly. Let’s look at another source: Reason Magazine, about as pro-globalization as you can get. In a 1993 article on Sweatshop labor, they reported that workers in these places, working for American companies, are often “underpaid or cheated out of promised wages, subjected to unhealthy working conditions, physically and sexually abused, and denied basic rights.” Are you honestly denying that this is the case?
Specifically, the reason is that most farmers were forced off their land, either by physical force or by deliberate government action that made small-scale farming impossible.
The defenders of corporate capitalism are wedded to the idea that in their system, everybody gets to choose freely and nobody is forced around. People get to choose when and how they work and what they buy. This is a fiction. In reality, corporations are no stranger to coercion and they never have been. Some of hired thugs to get what they want directly, others have leveraged the power of the government. Rarely, if ever, has any large and powerful company refrained from using force when it had the chance.
You say that people have left farming because they chose to leave farming. Really? How does that explain the Mansholt Plan? In 1968 the EC (forerunner to the EU) set a formal policy for agriculture among the member nations. The basis of this policy was that small, family-owned farms did not fit with the type of economic planning that the bigwigs wanted to have. Hence it would be necessary to eliminate small farms by government action and recombine them into large, corporate-owned farms. Modern, pro-globalization economists won’t mention things like that because it doesn’t fit in with their narrative.
Every pro-globalization economist I have read despises farm subsidies as damaging the opportunities faced by third world countries as well as the inefficiencies in the country that is doing it. Who says it’s great?
cite please. Small businesses are not always inefficient, in some cases due to lacking the administration and bureaucracy overheads that a large business has they can be equally competitive. In many countries small businesses below a certain size have exemptions from some regulations or taxes as well (in NSW Australia you don’t pay payroll tax beneath a certain size for example).
Also, maybe on average over the whole US population people aren’t willing to “buy local” but some people are, and in some areas those people are the majority. I live in north coast NSW around Byron Bay, there are many many small local businesses and handicrafts and the people that choose to move to this area are the sort of people who do value buying locally even if it’s more expensive, so that creates a local feedback loop that keeps this area alive.
I suppose there are exceptions, though I can’t think of any offhand. I didn’t mean to imply small business is always less efficient, it can of course be as efficient. Sometimes all you need is a very small business. Taxes and bureaucracy are distortions of the market, they don’t count. They could favor small, big, or neither business, depending on the whims of government. As for administration, I don’t see how it could make a large business less efficient than a small one. A certain amount of administration is always necessary, it can either be done by one large company or numerous smaller ones. Chances are, the one can do it better.
I don’t care one iota if people want to buy local. Knock yourself out. I care about people like ITR trying to force their buy local philosophy on everyone, which is what restricting free trade effectively does. Personally I would like to buy the cheapest acceptable goods I can, whether they’re made by my neighbour or some Chinese dude I’ve never heard of. The free market allows us that choice, restricted trade forces us to buy local.
ETA: Specifically, if everyone in a country wants to buy local, that’s fine, the free market will take care of it. The only reason to implement subsidies/tariffs/whatever is to force people who don’t want to buy local to do so. Given that Chinese etc products are so popular, it seems most people prefer to buy cheap than local.
This might be slightly off topic but interesting. China has a diverse and highly competitive consumer market supplied by a large number of small and diverse producers. They are financed by small state controlled banks usually at a loss to give Chinese manufacturers a chance to learn while supplying cheap products for Chinese markets. This keeps cost low for Chinese consumers and limits foreign competition.
Market purism doesn’t translate to the real world of people with social needs or the real world of markets. The U.S. consumer market is characterized by subsidized big box retail, conglomerates, fixed oil prices, corporate banks, collusion, monopolies and oligopolies. The free market doesn’t exist in the U.S.
Not that I think it is untrue, but can you provide a cite for that?
You will get no argument from me that the US enacts measures to protect vested interests. However, I would say the following things are hurting the US consumers (generally, that is, and not with respect to the current financial crisis): monopolies, oligarchies, protectionist tariffs, and corporate welfare in the form of subsidies (this list is not all-inclusive) rather than what you said. I see nothing inherently evil or anti-competitive about corporate banks (not that they never engage in such practices, but it is not inherent), nor do I see that oil prices are fixed (except where they are manipulated by OPEC) and I was unaware that big box retail was subsidized. Are you sure that is the case?
Thanks,
Rob
I didn’t say they were happy, I just said they would rather have a job than not. Furthermore, the Times piece offered evidence that people were willing to pay bribes to get these admittedly horrible jobs and that they were lining up to get them. You say you don’t believe this is true. Why? Sure, you and I who have other options wouldn’t accept the situation, but we might change our tune if our choices were working in a sweat shop and living in a cess pool. I also fail to see how Americans enacting trade barriers against this can improve the situation.
My child votes against broccoli and in favor of cookies. That doesn’t make it a good thing. I am not saying that we should go into these countries and install rulers who will destroy all trade barriers, but I am saying that by enacting protectionist measures, they can shoot themselves in the foot.
That kind of thing was going on before market liberalization in China. Also, can I have a cite regarding government oppression with regards to working conditions in private factories?
They are ugly. But how do you make it better?
Well, I suppose Nike or whoever could boycott these manufacturers, but someone else will either buy their stuff or they will cut production and lay off workers or just go out of business. They could jack up wages, but a competitor could then undercut them because the labor pool is so vast. What did you have in mind?
It is true that rich countries through subsidies and tariffs and other protectionist measures are effectively keeping undeveloped nations in poverty, but there are a lot of nations that lifted themselves out of poverty through trade.
The slaves couldn’t quit.
FWIW,
Rob
I looked for an online source but couldn’t find exactly the same information to cite. The information I used is found in the book: The Predator State, by James Galbraith. If you are not familiar with Galbraith and interested, he has published articles online, many about China.
Big box retail has been on the take for years. Subsidies mitigate risk and undermine competition, and usually the tax revenue from low wage jobs doesn’t cover the cost to tax payers.
http://money.cnn.com/2004/05/24/news/fortune500/walmart_subsidies/
http://www.newrules.org/retail/news_archive.php?browseby=slug&slugid=343
http://www.jsonline.com/news/29302654.html
I am referring to the role that unregulated corporate banks and financial markets have in our economy. The omnipresent stock market. Now, commercial banks and investment banks work together to enrich investors, including themselves, by gaming the market with large sums of bank borrowed money. Sometimes the high risk gamble fails, but the only people actually taking any risk are the tax payers. Everyone else keeps their billions --thanks to our tax funded no risk capitalism.
It is corrupt and dangerous, maybe beyond saving. Trade isn’t our problem.