Posts by Marcus Neiman
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Simon: But housing in the slums of Jakarta is not comparable to housing in South Auckland in terms of things universally considered good such as running water, electricity, space per person etc... food and diet, I admit are probably trickier issues, but I suspect that the South Aucklander has greater food security.
In any case though, the gouging of the Western consumer does not legitimate what is happening to these people as producers or the treatment of those who are being substituted for them.
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Simon:The fact remains that, despite what you seem to be inferring, South Auckland factory workers have considerably more purchasing power than their Indonesian equivalents doing similar work - they recieve a greater share of value within the business process...
I think that we are in agreement that Western consumers do get gouged routinely - but to focus on consumers solely ignores all the other practices and actors in the processes of the creation and distribution of monetary value, and closes off access to them as issues of politics.
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Indeed Joe, and to which one might add the apparent collapse of WTO Doha Round and the tensions in the European Union project between those wanting primarily a economic union and those wanting a political union as well with common European citizenship, charters of human rights, employment standards, etc.
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And as a footnote, commenting on your remarks on Australian-Indonesian relations - I am not an expert - but I do think that the Indonesian elite finds its southern neighbour very useful as a bogey-man for consumption in the imagination of its masses.
Conversely, most of the time, and not withstanding certain well-known exceptional moments that seem to prove the rule, it also seems that the Australian elite is terrorfied of offending Indonesia, and is very eager to please its northern neighbour.
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Simon:
Obviously any shift in the international economy of this sort would have to take place gradually, but that doesn't mean that rebalancing the terms of international trade can't or shouldn't take place. And bringing Downer into this is a bit of a red herring.
My point about technology transfer refers to production rather than the availabilty of consumer goods.
Do not get me wrong - I also believe that Westerners do have an obligation to provide capital to places like Indonesia to compensate for practices such as the Dutch, as I understand it, syphoning off 20% of the Dutch East Indies' annual GDP during their overlordship.
What has happened though in the current world economy is that the West and Japan have simply subsituted one set of workers for a cheaper set of workers. The contemporary industrialisation and development of a place like Indonesia - to the extent that it arisen from outsourcing - has been directly at the expense of people from the "wrong" parts of South Auckland or Buenos Aires, and increasingly parts of the white collar economy. In advocating $3 a day wages you are directly advocating the strategic use of poor people around the world for the benefit of the owners of Western firms and local elites, and to a lesser extent middle-class Western consumers.
I think we agree that we do not want the tarriff barriers to go back up. What we need is for capital to keep going to Indonesia and for it to be used to enrich working Indonesians, whilst not leading to the strategic impoverishment of vulnerable Westerners, Fijians, Argentinians, etc. This can only be done through the gradual but definite establishment of global employment standards for exporting firms.
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Simon: You know full well the the Indonesian elite earn far more than their official salaries - with those alone they are not educating their kids in the West and buying them the flash cars that upset Debbie Coddington. Further, if the salaries of workers increased this would increase the tax base, which would in turn enable the paying of public officials decent salaries.
Simon and RB: Yes, the locals might be "doing it for themselves" to an extent but 1) this does not absolve us in the West of our ongoing relations with the non-West, and 2) much of this doing it for themselves is predicated on certain Western policies and practices - most notably capital investment, technology transfer, and a lack of tarriffs for these countries exports. It is still incumbent on Westerners to consider whether or terms of engagement might be better/more just than the current terms. Furthermore, as I mention time and again, the most vulnerable Westerners should not be forgotten...
Finally, I might mention the negative effects that this current international trade regime is having on formerly industrialising countries - the Argentinas, South Africas, and Fijis (remember the latter's textile industry?) - who aren't able to accomodate the loss of their industrial sectors to the same extent as richer countries, of the new $3/day competition.
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Yes - International Observer, NZers who stay in NZ are being taken advantage through the vulnerabilities of the NZ economy - i.e. lack of savings, lack of international markets. Apart from brief periods in the 1800s and post WW2, NZ has usually been a poor cousin in its relations with the rest of the West.
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Simon: Sure but I also imagine that most Indonesians would also prefer to earn the $350-$400 a week they would earn if they were paid the going rate in a South Auckland factory instead of the $20 a week they apparently currently earn...
If the workers in these factories were paid Western levels the "turmoil" that would lead to would be 1) less vulnerable Western workers losing their jobs, and 2) an increased proportion of profits staying in-country rather than being repatriated to the West.
Again, I believe it is morally imperative to have Western investment in Indonesia or elsewhere, but this should not be exploitative of the Western and non-Western poor.
Re differential pricing - I that the issue is less that firms price goods differently in different markets, but that rather the cost savings of outsourcing by firms have disproportionately accrued to firms and that Western consumers have been gouged.
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Ben: My comments to Simon apply to you - if you think $3 a day is a fair wage you are more or less racist... These workers are simply not getting the share of profits that their eqivalents in the West would be getting.
In regards to outsourcing being argued as an international development paradigm, there is a wealth of material - even Oxfam a few years ago was talking about it.
And quite frankly your final comment on globalisation is simply naive, deterministic, There-Is-No-Alternative ideology that runs deep in NZ political discourse. Globalisation is and has always been shaped by political action. The global economy went through at least three major configurations during the twentieth century as polities chose the terms on which they engaged with others. I am not arguing for autarky - I am all for capital investment in the non-West - but this process should not used to redistribute wealth to the rich in the West from the middle-class and the poor.
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Simon: I would like to see you live on $3 a day... I am sorry but if your moral community does not extend to income it is difficult to see you than other than a racist and/or an advocate of the ongoing impoverishment of the non-West (I realise these are nasty terms, and I don't use them lightly).
Investment in the non-West today is almost always a redistributionary strategy away from the Western and Japanese poor to the Western and Japanese rich. No amount of sophistry along the lines of providing development through investment to the non-West should cloud this. The rich are not outsourcing because they care about poor non-Westerners - they do this to enrich themselves at the expense of poor people in the West and elsewhere.
By all means Western governments and firms should be providing capital to the industrialisation of the non-West (if for no other reason than to redress the ending of the proto-industrialisation in parts of the non-West during the colonial era) - but this should not be used as smokeshield to redistribute wealth to the rich within the West through the destruction of Western industry and undermining the taxation process.