Comment Re:In other news... (Score 4, Insightful) 473
I agree that in the short term, globalization drops prices and thereby increases the standard of living... however, in the long term the labor force moves inexorably toward the area of least resistance... the lowest wages, the worst conditions, the least regulations. The idea is that unfettered capitalism will find a balance on its own, and in a way it will... maximizing profit by minimizing expensess... including the standard of living of those in its employee.
In other words, when people locally can't find work because it's legal for someone else to do it for seven cents an hour in another country under sweat-shop conditions, that $49 DVD player is even more out of reach to them than it was a few years ago when it was $299 and they were making 20K.
Still, the original speaker was talking about labor practices, not quotas and terrifs. I believe these 'solutions' may be too heavy-handed... by cutting out the opportunity for domestic companies to exploit cheap labor, they will find themselves at a large disadvantage to international companies who can. Either way, the rich westernized nations will lose because their standard of living is simply too far above the rest of the world to maintain without complete isolationism if these practices are allowed to continue.
Perhaps there is no way to keep a line in the sand between the haves and have-nots of today on an international scale. Still, this mass-employment of slave labor and sweat shop workers doesn't seem to bode well for the eventual average global standard of living that will emerge. I would argue that it would be in the international community's best interest to ban, not globalization, but these these practices of exploitation. Cheap labor is great for CEOs who want to squeeze a few more bucks out of their companies and make their investors happy at the same time, but it will only serve to internationally reduce the value of human labor itself.
In other words, when people locally can't find work because it's legal for someone else to do it for seven cents an hour in another country under sweat-shop conditions, that $49 DVD player is even more out of reach to them than it was a few years ago when it was $299 and they were making 20K.
Still, the original speaker was talking about labor practices, not quotas and terrifs. I believe these 'solutions' may be too heavy-handed... by cutting out the opportunity for domestic companies to exploit cheap labor, they will find themselves at a large disadvantage to international companies who can. Either way, the rich westernized nations will lose because their standard of living is simply too far above the rest of the world to maintain without complete isolationism if these practices are allowed to continue.
Perhaps there is no way to keep a line in the sand between the haves and have-nots of today on an international scale. Still, this mass-employment of slave labor and sweat shop workers doesn't seem to bode well for the eventual average global standard of living that will emerge. I would argue that it would be in the international community's best interest to ban, not globalization, but these these practices of exploitation. Cheap labor is great for CEOs who want to squeeze a few more bucks out of their companies and make their investors happy at the same time, but it will only serve to internationally reduce the value of human labor itself.
