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Politics : Libertarian Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sidney Reilly who wrote (6204)	9/13/2007 9:57:20 AM
From: Wildstar	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13056

They were managing before the corporations got there. Were they? If they were, why would they go work for the corporation when it sets up shop? Why wouldn't they stay at the jobs they had? You say that the corporation now gives them the choice of "work or starve". If they were managing before the corporation got there, then why is starving the alternative to working for the corporation?

To: Sidney Reilly who wrote (6204)	9/13/2007 12:30:33 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 13056

They were managing before the corporations got there. They where but not as well. No one is asserting they would just all die if they didn't have foreign investment and trade, but they would suffer. Working a 12 year old 12-14 hours a day for a few dollars doesn't bother this crowd. Even if thats true (and I don't think it is nearly as completely true as you assert it to be) the purely local companies (locally owned and only serving the local market) care even less. Also as odd as it sounds that job might be beneficial to the 12 year old because the alternatives are even worse. Generally American and European owned companies won't hire 12 year olds (even if you think they are 100% out for their own self interest with no care for anyone or anything else, they do care about the possibility of bad publicity), but their local suppliers sometimes do. OTOH that job with the supplier probably is better than working 16 hours a day for even less for a purely local company, and also is often better than working long hard days on bad farm land with no certainty of even making "a few dollars". But of course we don't want the people of these countries to be trapped in such jobs (esp. at 12 years old or younger) even if they are better than the alternatives. But what can get them out of those jobs and in to better ones (or hopefully in the case of the very young workers in to schools)? The economic and social development of the country. Its happened in many nations including the US. In the US young children used to routinely work long hours for meager pay. Now where beyond that. More recently countries like South Korea moved away from reliance on cheap unskilled labor, and became more wealthy and advanced. It tends to happen faster now than in the past, probably because countries newer to development can lean from the previous ones and trade with them. Now it might take a generation or two under the right circumstances instead of multiple generations or even centuries. The last think we would want to do is short circuit this development. Refusing to invest in poor countries or trade with them would greatly slow this development and cause many millions of people to suffer the type of existence that you complain about rather then move out of it as the people in other nations have before them.