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Holes in my bucket! Feudalism and Child Labor?
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What? How is that a strawman argument? I'm just pointing out that one sentence out of that UNICEF Report is being bandied about as gospel, but a whole raft of proposals contained in it are being ignored completely, presumably because they don't fit the ideologically defined point that people are going to make, irrespective of what anyone else says.
Which is actually an admission it was a strawman. You admit that you quoted it to tackle an idealogy, when the topic of the discussion wasn't that idealogy but rather the best way to deal with child labour.0 -
KyussBishop wrote: »Cheers; yes to be honest, I think economic equality, more than growth, is the important factor here.
I am reminded of this speech of Margeret Thatcher:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okHGCz6xxiw0 -
^^ You'll need to explain what you mean there; no audio here at the moment, and the transcript isn't very useful.
Copy-paste; helping define 'Child Labour':What is child labour?
It is time to define terms. The phrase ‘child labour’ conjures up a particular image: we see children chained to looms in dark mills and sweatshops, as if in a long and nightmarish line running from Lancashire in the 1830s right through to the South Asia of the 1990s.
In reality, children do a variety of work in widely divergent conditions. This work takes place along a contin-uum. At one end of the continuum, the work is beneficial, promoting or en-hancing a child’s physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development without interfering with schooling, recreation and rest.
At the other end, it is palpably de-structive or exploitative. There are vast areas of activity between these two poles, including work that need not impact negatively on the child’s development.
At the most destructive end, no one would publicly argue that exploiting children as prostitutes is acceptable in any circumstances. The same can be said about ‘bonded child labour’, the term widely used for the virtual en- slavement of children to repay debts incurred by their parents or grandpar-ents. This also applies to industries notorious for the dire health and safety hazards they present: for exam-ple, the charcoal furnaces in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, or the glass-bangle factories of Firozabad in India.
Hazardous work is simply intolerable for all children. But to treat all work by children as equally unacceptable is to confuse and trivialize the issue and to make it more difficult to end the abuses. This is why it is important to distinguish between beneficial and intolerable work and to recognize that much child labour falls into a grey area between these two extremes.
A decade ago, UNICEF deter-mined that child labour is exploitative if it involves:
full-time work at too early an age;
too many hours spent working;
work that exerts undue physical, social or psychological stress;
work and life on the streets in bad conditions;
inadequate pay;
too much responsibility;
work that hampers access to education;
work that undermines children’s dignity and self-esteem, such as slav-ery or bonded labour and sexual exploitation;
work that is detrimental to full so-cial and psychological development.
The impact of work on a child’s development is the key to determining when such work becomes a problem.
Work that is harmless to adults can be extremely harmful to children.
Among the aspects of a child’s devel-opment that can be endangered by work are:
physical development — including overall health, coordination, strength, vision and hearing;
cognitive development — includ-ing literacy, numeracy and the acqui-sition of knowledge necessary to normal life;
emotional development — includ-ing adequate self-esteem, family attachment, feelings of love and ac-ceptance;
social and moral development —including a sense of group identity, the ability to cooperate with others and the capacity to distinguish right from wrong.
The physical harm is, of course, the easiest to see. Carrying heavy loads or sitting for long periods in un-natural positions can permanently dis-able growing bodies. Hard physical labour over a period of years can stunt children’s physical stature by up to 30 per cent of their biological potential, as they expend stores of stamina that should last into adulthood.
Children are also vulnerable psy-chologically: they can suffer devastat-ing psychological damage from being in an environment in which they are demeaned or oppressed. Self-esteem is as important for children as it is for adults.
Education is one of the keys that will unlock the prison cell of haz-ardous labour in which so many chil- dren are confined. It is almost impos-sible to overemphasize this point.
Education helps a child develop cognitively, emotionally and socially, and it is an area often gravely jeopar- dized by child labour. Work can inter- fere with education in the following ways:
it frequently absorbs so much time that school attendance is impossible;
it often leaves children so ex-hausted that they lack the energy to attend school or cannot study effec- tively when in class;
some occupations, especially sea-sonal agricultural work, cause chil-dren to miss too many days of class even though they are enrolled in school;
the social environment of work sometimes undermines the value chil-dren place on education, something to which street children are particularly vulnerable;
children mistreated in the work-place may be so traumatized that they cannot concentrate on school work or are rejected by teachers as disruptive.
I'll shortly be afk the rest of the day.0 -
Eliot Rosewater wrote: »Which is actually an admission it was a strawman. You admit that you quoted it to tackle an idealogy, when the topic of the discussion wasn't that idealogy but rather the best way to deal with child labour.
Nae way, pal.
I quoted it because it's what UNICEF proposed, in 1997, to do about child labour.
I felt the need to highlight it because a colourful, selective quote from that same report, contained in the the OP, cogged from wikipedia, it would appear.
And, while I'm at it, it's worth adding the "what happened next" to that quote:Out of this unhappy situation and after two years of difficult negotiations, a formal Memorandum of Understanding was signed in July 1995 by the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), and the UNICEF and ILO offices in Bangladesh. The resulting programme was to be funded by these three organizations. BGMEA alone has committed about $1 million towards the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding.
Under the terms of the agreement, four key provisions were formulated:
• the removal of all under-age workers — those below 14 — within a period of four months;
• no further hiring of under-age children;
• the placement of those children removed from the garment factories in appropriate educational programmes with a monthly stipend;
• the offer of the children’s jobs to qualified adult family members.
The Memorandum of Understanding explicitly directed factory owners, in the best interests of these children, not to dismiss any child workers until a factory survey was completed and alternative arrangements could be made for the freed children.
In order to determine the extent of the educational and other rehabilitation
facilities needed, a survey of all BGMEA members’ factories was undertaken
jointly by the three signatories in cooperation with the Government of Bangladesh. The survey of 1,821 factories found that half employed child labour, a total of 10,500 children. Forty per cent of the children were between
the ages of 10 and 12, and half had no education.
With financial support from UNICEF, two NGOs — Gono Shahjjo Shangstha and the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) — have been attempting to find places in schools for these children. As of October 1996, 135 new schoolrooms were operational and more than 4,000 children were enrolled. The children are receiving primary health care, skills development training and a monthly cash stipend to compensate for their lost wages. In addition, personal bank accounts and credit facilities for their families are being set up.
The jury is still out on the long-term effectiveness of the Memorandum of Understanding. One key issue, for example, is whether setting up special schools for erstwhile child workers and providing a package of incentives such
as monthly stipends, health care and skills development is a sustainable model that could be applied elsewhere and on a larger scale. Nevertheless, the events and insights that led up to the Memorandum must inform the approach of all those seeking to eliminate hazardous child labour.
The world owes child workers a meaningful alternative if they are not to suffer from some of the very measures designed to help them.
Don't think there's a basis in this story for saying that the introduction of Child Labor Deterrence Act was a counterproductive move.0 -
KyussBishop wrote: »Oh no, not a cop out in any way; a lot of the time that problems exposed by the current economic crisis are put forward though, there is often that selective argument "but it wasn't a true free market".
But the current economic crisis didn't occur in a free market. The current system is far more comparable to a socialist banking system than a free market one. The government has a monopoly on the provision of money and centrally plans interest rates, savers have no incentive to seek out safe banks as their savings are guaranteed by the government, the only way the financial system could be considered a free market is the fact that banks are privately owned but even then they are the most heavily regulated sector of the economy and, in America a third of their profits go to the Government (although in Ireland it is only 12.5%) and of the gains investors make and dividends they receive they must pony up more cash to the Government. Then to top it all off, the banks know that if they f*ck up they get bailed out, so there is no incentive to play it safe. To claim that that is a free market displays a serious detachment from reality and quite frankly I don't see how it is possible to have a rational debate with somebody who believes we have a free market in banking.Do you think any economic regulation is required to mitigate harmful market bubbles? Or to prevent (rather than to deter or punish after the fact) fraud or mismanagement by banks or people in other areas of the financial market?
I believe that market bubbles are the result of an artificial increase in the money supply, which is almost always a result of government interference in the supply of money. So therefore I don't see a need for government regulation in that regard.
I've said it before that fraud is the equivalent of theft and as a result, doesn't need any special rules regarding it.
The market punishes mismanagement by forcing badly run companies out of business.In general, what's your view on economic regulation? (as that seems to be the big sticking point for a lot of problems in Libertarianism)
In general I believe that economic regulation does more harm than good. I think that in most cases where one might deem regulation necessary, the market will tend to work pretty well without it.Well I'm still learning a lot about economics at the moment, and gaining a better understanding of stuff, but I think regulation to enforce near-complete transparency in the markets would be a good idea.
A public record of every transaction made, and much of the internal workings of banks, would give an extremely useful data set for detecting and preventing fraud.
Mandatory credit risk checks before giving out loans, and making it illegal to reclassify risk on loans, perhaps splitting the banking market into full-reserve banks and more risky investment banks (or at least, some way of giving customers control on how much risk their money is placed in).
I'm still learning a lot of basic stuff when it comes to economics (primarily surrounding economic crisis), but these are some things that re-occur to me, off the top of my head. Benway I think could provide a lot of better examples, through his knowledge of problems from the economic crisis.
Indeed these would all be valuable pieces of information to have and services to provide. It costs money to provide these pieces of information and services though, so we then must ask whether the costs justify the benefits? We also need to ask will the markets provide these services and pieces of information without being forced to? There is also no need to provide these services and pieces of information if there aren't any real problems in the marketplace without them.Ya I agree; there's nothing wrong with them having some advantage, so long as it's ethical (and before the definition of ethical gets called into question, I'm primarily talking about child labour, which almost all countries agree is wrong).
I totally agree that child labour is wrong and most libertarians do also. The problem here is what are the alternatives? At the moment the alternatives to working in a sweatshop are generally working on a farm, a life of crime, child prostitution or death. I think we can both agree that working in a sweatshop is better than the other four options.
What many in the first world then propose is for government funded education for these children. That is a great idea but it has many problems. There is an opportunity cost to attaining that education. The time spent in school is time not spent working. This means less income resulting in starvation for the family which means that the child must leave school and go working anyway. The solution then is for a mandatory global minimum wage so that the adults can earn enough money to provide food for the family as the children get an education. The problem with this is that it will lead to these countries losing their comparative advantage in textile manufacturing and companies start replacing third world workers with machines and first world engineers. The solution then is for welfare instead of minimum wages but this results in dependency and slower economic growth due to increased economic inefficiencies due to government involvement in the economy, so in the long run they are much worse off than if they had just been left alone. The solution then is for first world countries to provide the welfare but that just results in the same thing happening again.
After all that I'm going to make what is probably my most controversial point. Providing an education to these children just is not worth it. Exactly what benefit is a child going to reap from receiving this education? Economic growth is a long arduous process. By the time these economies have developed to the point were reading and writing skills are of use, these people will probably be unable to take these jobs as they will be too old. Lets be fair, agriculture and textile manufacturing do not require an education and these will be just about the only jobs available for the foreseeable future. Then as these children enter their 40's they get jobs making toys or assembling other consumer goods which, yet again, don't require much of an education. So in the end we've wasted a huge amount of money and everyone is much worse off as a result.0 -
It is increased production that increases wages and phases out child labor, not government legislation. All it takes is the most basic of critical thinking to understand this.
You have it arse backwards. It is government legislation that increases wages and phases out child labor.
Government legislation phased out child labour in many countries about a hundred years ago, and we had the same outcry from some quarters then as now, who saw this level of government action to mitigate social evils as interfering with "market forces" and thus being antithetical to the operations of a free market.
Government legislation established minimum wages and conditions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_welfare_reforms
OP is historically faulty.0 -
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Channel Zero wrote: »You have it arse backwards. It is government legislation that increases wages and phases out child labor.
Government legislation phased out child labour in many countries about a hundred years ago, and we had the same outcry from some quarters then as now, who saw this level of government action to mitigate social evils as interfering with "market forces" and thus being antithetical to the operations of a free market.
Government legislation established minimum wages and conditions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_welfare_reforms
OP is historically faulty.
Tbh, given the choice between your theory of what increases wages and the theory that every single economist on the planet propounds I'm going to side with the economists on this one.0 -
Eliot Rosewater wrote: »This post had been deleted.
What, still pushing revanchist trickle down economics in 2012? That ship has long sailed, I'm afraid.The issue of equity, in particular, often got short shrift. Is a society in which the vast majority of its citizens are becoming worse off –but in which a few at the top are doing so well that average incomes are rising—better off than one in which the vast majority are doing better? While there may be disagreements—and those at the very top may well stress that average income is the appropriate measure—the possibility that increases in GDP may not benefit most individuals means that we cannot simply ignore issues of distribution. Some economists argued that distribution concerns could be ignored because they believed in trickle down economics— somehow everybody would benefit; a rising tide would lift all boats. But the evidence against trickle down economics is now overwhelming, at least in the sense that an increase in average incomes is not sufficient to raise the incomes of the poor for quite prolonged periods. Some economists argued that distribution concerns could and should be ignored, because such concerns
were outside the province of economics; economists should focus on efficiency and growth alone.
Distribution was a matter for politics. The fundamental theorems of welfare economics gave economists some comfort, for those results suggested that one could separate out equity and efficiency concerns; any desired distribution of income could be achieved simply by a redistribution of initial endowments. But advances in economic theory (especially related to the economics of information) showed that that was simply not true; lump sum redistributions were not in general feasible, and efficiency and equity were inextricably interlinked. Interestingly, several sources of these interlinkages (e.g. associated with agency problems) had been analyzed in the context of developing countries fifteen years before the formulation of the Washington consensus.
There are other connections. Capital constraints may limit access to education, implying that many individuals’ full potential is never realized. See, e.g. Birdsall, N. [1999] “Education: The People’s Asset” CSED Working Paper No. 5, September. Large inequalities may give rise to social tensions, and are even systematically associated with civil strife. See, e.g. Deininger, K. [2003] “Causes and Consequences of Civil Strife: Micro-Level Evidence from Uganda.” World Bank Working Paper No. 3045, May. Also, civil strife has a very negative effect on growth.
Joe Stiglitz, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisors - The Post Washington Consensus Consensus.Maybe you missed this post earlier in the thread ... but it's clear that many economic historians disagree with the view that government regulations phased out child labor.
And you clearly missed this post earlier? Grossly simplistic view that you're pushing - undoubtedly the laws are the result of social conflict, and the gains had already been made, but the law formalises the arrangement. Following the Hayekian model of legislation, as it happens. Don't dream that you can write the rise of organised labour and the rebalancing of relations between labour and capital out of the history books.Ah, the minimum wage ... another controversial concept that many economists see as damaging. When Robert Whaples surveyed Ph.D.-holding members of the American Economic Association, he found (as Harvard professor Greg Mankiw notes on his blog) that 46.8 percent of them believed that the minimum wage should be abolished.
And 53.2% think it should be retained? Killer post, brah.
Many economists recognise the pareto inefficiency of child labour, also Baland and Robinson at Harvard show that increased lifetime earnings through education will more than compensate "greedy parents" sending their children off to work, and even if this does not occur, the labour market effects of removing children from the workforce will be to their benefit. There are many positions, premised on multiple equlibria where parents send their children to work, poverty, failures of the capital markets, social norms, etc - good summary here
Child Labor: Theory, Evidence, and Policy
The findings all favour intervention of some kind, summarised by Brown et al:The central policy lesson of the Ranjan and Basu models is that government intervention is required for only one generation of children. For, once an educated child’s future income is raised above a threshold level, the newly created parent will be able to choose education rather than child labor for the next generation.0 -
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Let me get this straight, your argument is:
(a) Third world children should be glad of their sweatshops; and
(b) The failure of third world governments to intervene so as to vindicate the rights of exploited children is evidence that a minimal state is "optimal"?
Some odd logic here.
No, what is odd is how you got this from my post.Seems like you're also trying to push a revisionist version of the history of organised labour recast as a triumph of the unregulated market? Can't fault you for ambition, at least. This is going to be fun.
The point of my post was to show that organised labor or government legislation is not what raises wages and living standards.
In the OP my quetion was genuine, not rhetorical. I'm not sure how you can hold your position that minimum wage laws are what drive wages without being able to answer the question:
If minimum wage laws are what raises wages and living standards, why not double, triple, quadruple or multiply by a factor of 100 the minimum wage tomorrow?0 -
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It's not so much that regulation is a panacea, it's that unregulated markets will lead to exploitation and ultimately disaster. The "magic of the markets" will not deliver decent living standards, it isn't capable of doing it.
It's interesting, also, in that child labour paper I posted above, that legal intervention was found to be more effective than inducements to re-enter education, despite the fact that the author was clearly favouring the latter course.This post had been deleted.
This is what liberalisation of the capital markets did for us. The minimum wage has very little to do with it - except as a bulwark against employers using the crisis as their excuse to cut wages to a far greater extent than deflation.
You need to have a serious rethink, sonny.
"Liberalization leads to growth": not in itself, it doesn't. In fact, even the IMF admit that capital market liberalisation doesn't necessarily lead to growth, and almost invariably does lead to volatility in the domestic market.
Further, if "liberalization" (the z is important) is the main route to growth, how do you explain the massive growth-rate of the East Asian countries, who "governed the markets" - China retained collective ownership of land, but managed double-digit growth rates.
South Korea, on the other hand, abandoned this approach during the 90s in favour of a more "liberal" regime, and look what happened to them:In short, the severity of the Asia crisis and its timing (the fact that it took place in 1997 and not, say, 1993), can be explained in terms of the conjunction of (a) pre-existing domestic financial fragility, (b) growing excess liquidity in the major industrial countries over the 1990s, in the hands of money managers caring little about long-run fundamentals and seeking high short-term returns wherever they could find them, (c) opening the capital account over the first half of the 1990s, and (d) a surge of momentum-driven private-to-private capital inflows into Asia that were largely unregulated by governments. This line of argument suggests that financial deregulation and unstrategic opening of the capital account was a decisive factor in the built-up to crisis and in the intensity of the subsequent slump. If so, those who pushed for it without constraining their push by the capacity of the financial regulatory apparatus on the ground—Wall Street investment banks, the US Treasury, the IMF, and segments of domestic policy elites--were grossly irresponsible.
Seems like a familiar story. I'm not saying that the likes of China are perfect, mind, far from it, but the evidence does effectively torpedo your "free markets equals growth" theory.It's a given that many components in the computers that the anti-libertarians are using to post were manufactured in so-called "sweatshops" in Asia.
You really couldn't make this up if you tried.
Jesus, you must be really stuck. Lamest of the lame arguments, right here.0 -
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Conversely, some people really believe that to improve domestic living standards, and eradicate Third World child labor, all they have to do is increase sweatshops.
That too is comical.Ireland has instated one of the highest minimum wages in the world, and we see what that has helped to achieve: 14.5 percent unemployment, rampant welfare dependency, emigration, and soaring national debt.
Nothing to do with the libertarianesque deregulated markets and resultant worldwide financial implosion of 2008 at all of course..0 -
The veracity of the doctrine of historicism is central to the success of the sort of economic central planning you are continually proposing. Popper pointed out its flaws in both The Open Society and Its Enemies (which I haven't read) and The Poverty of Historicism, and with that, put another nail in the coffin of the idea of 'planning' society. I'm willing to discuss Popper's sceptical epistemology but I find it very telling indeed that the discussion is framed entirely as if Karl Popper never even existed.Which debate is this? I thought that The Poverty of Historicism very effectively refutes Marx's theory of history, but that's about all it does. It also raises serious question marks over Hayek's approach to spontaneous order and cultural evolution, if I remember correctly, been a quite while since I've read it.
Anyway, my main point was that Kyussbishop's criticism of free-market economics is that it hasn't been empirically tested which is an inaccurate criticism both for the issues with historicism and the fact that we can't quantify the 'unseen' in an economy.
For example, you may propose that we all grab a baseball bat and some molotov cocktails and run down Grafton street smashing windows and burning a few shops as the resultant business being thrown towards builders and glaziers etc presents a measurable benefit to the economy. However, what can't be empirically tested here is what the business proprietors would have spent their capital on -- a new shop or an extra staff member, for example. This is Bastiat's broken window fallacy.
There is a joke about an economist who loses his watch on one side of the street but keeps looking for it on the other side. When someone asks him why he keeps looking on the side of the street he didn't lose it on, he remarks that the light is better over there. I think this sums up my point in a way!0 -
The best I can come up with? There was a lot more in my post, and the one above, feel free.
And, that wasn't an attack, that was a question. From the time I've spent in the developing world, I've always been struck by how small the "middle class" is and how privileged, by comparison to the grinding poverty that defines these countries. To be honest, the term "middle class" is pretty much meaningless.
Some of my best friend are middle-class Africans, they live behind barbed wire and electric fences, with armed private security guards at their gates. Outside their gates there's a whole mass of people living in absolute destitution.
You can have a great life as part of the "middle class" elite, but there's a constant risk of robbery, carjacking, burglary. To be honest, it's always struck me as very consistent with how I'd imagine a libertarian society to look like.
Went back to Kenya for a month last year after a little while away, they've got a boom, massive growth and property bubble going on at the moment - some of my friends are getting very rich indeed, but conditions for the rest of society haven't changed one iota - there's still famine.
A 5% growth rate doesn't mean much if it's all going in to the pocket of a tiny segment of society.
Let's be clear about what I said. I said that "[d]eveloping nations that have embraced free trade are [...] working their way out of poverty". You then mentioned Kenya, which is a massively corrupt country. An economy in which the average person has to pay 16 bribes per month is not a free one.
What do you attribute Brazil and China's rapid growth to?0 -
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Anyway, my main point was that Kyussbishop's criticism of free-market economics is that it hasn't been empirically tested; which is an inaccurate criticism both for the issues with historicism and the fact that we can't quantify the 'unseen' in an economy.
For example, you may propose that we all grab a baseball bat and some molotov cocktails and run down Grafton street smashing windows and burning a few shops as the resultant business being thrown towards builders and glaziers etc presents a measurable benefit to the economy.
Is this not an argument against blind faith in a libertarian / neoliberal / Thatcherite / Reganomic system? Fast coming to the conclusion that the terms are synonymous, at this stage?
We deregulated on a piecemeal basis, primarily in the capital markets, and look at where that got us.
I don't think, as above, that the evidence supports the proposition that wholesale "liberalization" will inevitably lead to growth, given Popper's conclusions, isn't it dangerous to suggest "free markets" as a panacea, a one-size-fits-all prescription?
I think it's the neoliberals who are the revolutionaries here, and it seems abundently clear to me that their revolution has failed.0 -
It's not so much that regulation is a panacea, it's that unregulated markets will lead to exploitation and ultimately disaster. The "magic of the markets" will not deliver decent living standards, it isn't capable of doing it.
You continue to repeat this claim but at no point have you shown this to be true. The facts disagree with you here. Why is the West rich and how did it come to be?
For all your waffle and bluster you appear to be massively out of your depth when it comes to the actual economics underpinning the points you're trying to make.
It's all well and good having unions and passing social reforms to divvy up the pie, but you're completely neglecting to acknowledge how the pie came into existence and why it is so big. I'll give you a hint, it's not by massive fiscal intervention, which was the approach you suggested earlier in this thread.0 -
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In simple terms, technological advances and massive untapped potential. By all means, the adoption of limited market approaches helped, but it's not the whole story - it never is.You then mentioned Kenya, which is a massively corrupt country. An economy in which the average person has to pay 16 bribes per month is not a free one.
You don't need to tell me that. Part of the problem with corruption is that police and other institutions pay so poorly. Anyway, I wouldn't have thought libertarians would have had a problem with corruption?
However, they implemented low-tax, small-government, privatisation and fiscal liberalization policies during the mid 00s - I know, because I was working there at the time.
If you look more closely at the index of economic freedom, you'll see that their Government Spending rating is 75.3%, their Fiscal Freedom rating is 77.7% and their Monetary Freedom rating is 79.1%. That's a pretty open financial market, with limited government intervention. They score higher than Ireland, the UK, the US and practically all of the developed countries on Fiscal Freedom - interestingly, Denmark and Sweden come bottom of the pile on that one.You continue to repeat this claim but at no point have you shown this to be true. The facts disagree with you here. Why is the West rich and how did it come to be?
You see, there was this thing called colonisation ...
And your posts seem to be pretty strong on supposition, very weak on verifiable facts. I've backed up my argument, I'd suggest you do the same, rather than pointing to some mysterious "facts" that are beyond the grasp of a poor mortal such as I.For all your waffle and bluster you appear to be massively out of your depth when it comes to the actual economics underpinning the points you're trying to make.
I have posted more evidence to back my points than the rest of you put together - I'm afraid that this attack has no weight whatsoever. Unless you think that my sources are inaccurate, in which case make that point instead demeaning yourself with baseless slurs.it's not by massive fiscal intervention, which was the approach you suggested earlier in this thread.
Are you seriously trying to suggest that the Western economies weren't massively protectionist as they developed? As Foreign Affairs magazine said about Reagan, "the postwar chief executive with the most passionate love of laissez faire, presided over the greatest swing toward protectionism since the 1930s".
And I'm not suggesting that massive fiscal intervention is the best approach, either, the point is that wholesale "liberalization" is not the answer in every single instance. The case for this is irrefutable.This post has been deleted.
If that's the case, why don't you directly address my posts - I note that you've been studiously avoiding doing so - and deal with the substance my arguments? Please do enlighten me, o wise one? I don't see what's emotive in deriving conclusions from cited sources either. In fact, this seem a lot like a stock attack to me.This post has been deleted.
You see on the "information super highway" there are these things called "hyperlinks" that allow you to "download" the "sources" that the poster has helpfully supplied. Getting a bit desperate here.0 -
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You don't need to tell me that. Part of the problem with corruption is that police and other institutions pay so poorly. Anyway, I wouldn't have thought libertarians would have had a problem with corruption?
You thought wrong. I'm unsurprised by your ignorance, however.However, they implemented low-tax, small-government, privatisation and fiscal liberalization policies during the mid 00s - I know, because I was working there at the time.
If you look more closely at the index of economic freedom, you'll see that their Government Spending rating is 75.3%, their Fiscal Freedom rating is 77.7% and their Monetary Freedom rating is 79.1%. That's a pretty open financial market, with limited government intervention. They score higher than Ireland, the UK, the US and practically all of the developed countries on Fiscal Freedom - interestingly, Denmark and Sweden come bottom of the pile on that one.
And yet, as you acknowledge, it is still a massive corrupt country, and therefore its economy is not free. Multinationals are generally put off by that kind of thing.
From the same site Kenya ranks lower than all of the countries you mentioned. Interesting indeed. Also interesting is this ranking which places Kenya in 109th place for the ease of doing business. It should actually be ranked much lower - the only thing that drags it up is the 8th place ranking for accessing credit. Very interesting. I wonder if one of those 16 bribes the average Kenyan pays per month would help there.
Comical stuff.You see, there was this thing called colonisation ...
Lol. It would be hilarious if it weren't so predictable. This is exactly why I accused you of being out of your depth. Exactly where did the likes of Canada and South Korea colonise when they became so prosperous? (And I deliberately chose these two contrasting examples).And your posts seem to be pretty strong on supposition, very weak on verifiable facts. I've backed up my argument, I'd suggest you do the same, rather than pointing to some mysterious "facts" that are beyond the grasp of a poor mortal such as I.
I have posted more evidence to back my points than the rest of you put together - I'm afraid that this attack has no weight whatsoever. Unless you think that my sources are inaccurate, in which case make that point instead demeaning yourself with baseless slurs.
Are you seriously trying to suggest that the Western economies weren't massively protectionist as they developed? As Foreign Affairs magazine said about Reagan, "the postwar chief executive with the most passionate love of laissez faire, presided over the greatest swing toward protectionism since the 1930s".
And I'm not suggesting that massive fiscal intervention is the best approach, either, the point is that wholesale "liberalization" is not the answer in every single instance. The case for this is irrefutable.
You see on the "information super highway" there are these things called "hyperlinks" that allow you to "download" the "sources" that the poster has helpfully supplied. Getting a bit desperate here.
Unlike you I'm trying to stick to the topic. I have neither the interest nor patience to engage with your tangents and obfuscations.
You want to divvy up the pie, fair enough. I get that you're into redistributing wealth. Let's take a step back from that battle line and examine the pie. Where did it come from and how did it get so big? This is a very basic question that you keep ignoring.0 -
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I noticed that too, and laughed.
Also amusing is this ranking. The only thing that drags Kenya's abysmal rating up is "getting credit". I'd say the integrity of Kenya's central bank may bear some relation to its corruption. Just maybe though.
You couldn't make this stuff up.0 -
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So South Korea is a Western country now? Actually, per the book and article, by Prof. Robert Wade, I posted above, the evidence seems to suggest that state driven development spurred Korea's growth, before capital market liberalisation caused a crash in the late 90s.
As for Canada, you see there were these people some like to call "natives", who had lots of land, but no formal system of land tenure. Jesus, this is weak.Sounds like a bastion of libertarianism, all right.
Who's saying it is?
But you're not saying that the figures I cited were inaccurate, are you? There was a fair degree of liberalization in certain sectors of the economy, by these indices, and the country scores relatively highly in terms of "small government".
What I was saying is that they've had fairly consistent 5% growth rates for the past few years, 8.2% in the financial sector for 2011, higher again before the political violence in 2007, but that the growth is basically all going in to the pockets of a small segment of society. Corruption is part of the problem, for definite, but it's not the whole story.
Exploitative and child labour is rampant in Kenya, which I would attribute to the country's gross inequality. It is most definitively not a route out of poverty.
How do I know? I've visited flower farms in Naivasha, met with the child workers, and seen their working and living conditions. Even in times of famine, Kenya is a massive exporter of fruit, veg and flowers - check the label on your mangetout the next time you're in Tesco.
The point: economic growth, in and of itself, is not sufficient to make a real difference to peoples' lives, and to put an end to poverty. It's grossly simplistic to reduce a complex reality to one blunt indicator.You want to divvy up the pie, fair enough. I get that you're into redistributing wealth. Let's take a step back from that battle line and examine the pie. Where did it come from and how did it get so big? This is a very basic question that you keep ignoring.
So the answer is growth, obviously. Would have thought that was self-evident.
However, growth as a means to an end, and on a sustainable basis, rather than growth as an end in itself. Plus, it's by no means clear for me that small government and unregulated markets are the best way to achieve this, especially given the obvious weaknesses of these approaches, as evidenced by the various financial crises and crashes, and it most certainly isn't the only way of achieving massive growth.0 -
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Well, if that is the case, you'd be much better advised to explain these nuances rather than trying to shout people down.
And, from what I understand, libertarians want pretty much unrestricted freedom, particularly in the economic sphere, yes? So, when my Kenyan airline's booking agent tacitly looked for a couple of hundred shillings "tip" to fit me on to a flight to Lamu, where previously there had been "no space", and I paid, that was a contract freely entered in to? Or how would it be objectionable on a principled basis from a libertarian angle? Serious question.This post had been deleted.
I have never suggested that Kenya is any way libertarian, I do think that liberalisation in certain sectors has helped to fuel growth, but I also think that this growth is unsustainable, would be surprised if there's not a crash there in the next five years, although Chinese support might stave this off, and that it hasn't benefited the common people in the slightest.
There's a property boom going on at the moment, last time I was over, I spent most of my time listening to my friends' stories of their new-found property "wealth", turning down their offers of property investment opportunities, and advising them that it would be a bad idea to over-commit. Now, take a look at this again:Government Spending rating is 75.3%, their Fiscal Freedom rating is 77.7% and their Monetary Freedom rating is 79.1%.
If you're saying that imperfect liberalisation or piecemeal liberalisation is worse than none at all, than maybe you might have a point. But certain areas of the market are significantly more open than they were when I was living there a few years back, the evidence is plain to see, together with the fact of near double-digit growth in the financial services sector.
In any event, equality, as I see it, is the main problem in Kenya - to reduce the political difficulties to tribalism is, again, grossly simplistic, trust me on that.
Anecdotally, it seems to me that the property rights of land-grabbers there are pretty secure - granted, the property rights of slum dwellers and "squatters" are non-existent. The latter are often people whose lands have been sold, or otherwise appropriated, out from under them.
How could a libertarian system address this? One of my biggest objections is that there doesn't seem to be any capacity within the ideology for dealing with unequal power relations, or material inequality.0 -
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Not getting in to nitpicking here, but I've put my points with evidence, and there has been no substantive reply other than unsustainable claims about a "lack of empirical evidence" or ad hominem attacks. I do not shout down, I put my point with evidence.This post had been deleted.
Not an upgrade, to be allowed to buy a ticket on to a flight that I still had to pay full price for. This is the reality of day-to-day corruption.
Trust me, I know all about grand corruption as well. Some of these schemes, like Goldenberg involved the exploitation of regulations, while others, like Anglo Leasing, corruption of the procurement process. You wouldn't believe the half of it ... but it's not just a government problem, the private sector are equally complicit.Yet another uninformed claim.
And when is the last time you've been to Kenya? Undoubtedly, the country does seem to be on the up to an extent, but there are serious question marks over the sustainability of the economic growth seen in the past decade or so, and there's still famine, there are still a million people living in abject poverty in Kibera (interestingly, the govenment put the figure at 170,000, this most assuredly is not true), and many millions more around the country. In terms of a substantive improvement in the past five years or so, I'm not really seeing it, nor are my Kenyan friends, many of whom are development professionals. They themselves, however, are doing nicely.
Think about it - for such a corrupt country, do you really trust the figures furnished by the Government to the IMF? And I'm not sure how accurately "poverty" can be measured.Protecting private property rights is at the very root of libertarian philosophy (with the distinguishing feature that libertarians are opposed to all incursions against private property whether they come from private or state actors, while statists generally turn a blind eye to government aggression).
That's the point - how can there be redistribution, which is necessary, especially in a country like Kenya, when the right to property is absolute. There's an argument that property = freedom in the libertarian scheme, because it's only on your own property that you can be absolutely free from interference - those without property will have to subject themselves to wage labour, whether they like it or not.This post had been deleted.
Listen, I made a post here, similar to the sketch in the above paragraph, and specifically asked for people to clarify if I was in error:benway wrote:Denying less powerful sectors of society these rights, in the name of unrestricted rights for others, allowing exploitation in the name of freedom, is a huge difficulty with the general "libertarian" theory of rights, as I see them ... any errors are my own, and I'm sure you'll all be quick to correct me.
I stand uncorrected.0 -
I never claimed it was a free market, what I said was various western economies of the last 30 years had components of a free market, even if it didn't exist in purest form.Suryavarman wrote:This post had been deleted.
Criticism of Libertarian economics, based on similarities to the economic crisis, usually elicits dismission based on the argument "it wasn't a true free market", even though much of the components of that were in place.
Seems a bit selective and convenient, to say market bubbles are "almost always" caused by government interference. You'll need to back that up with something.Suryavarman wrote:I believe that market bubbles are the result of an artificial increase in the money supply, which is almost always a result of government interference in the supply of money. So therefore I don't see a need for government regulation in that regard.
Also, what are the cases your statements allows, where market bubbles are not caused by government?
So regulations should not exist to try and prevent fraud, just deter and react to it? Are there not plenty of examples of fraud causing significant economic damage?Suryavarman wrote:I've said it before that fraud is the equivalent of theft and as a result, doesn't need any special rules regarding it.
The market punishes mismanagement by forcing badly run companies out of business.
Where do you deem regulation is necessary (or do you think absolutely every bit of regulation should be removed?), and what current regulation would you strip away?Suryavarman wrote:In general I believe that economic regulation does more harm than good. I think that in most cases where one might deem regulation necessary, the market will tend to work pretty well without it.
That's a fair point that it would cost money to provide such information, but the Internet makes the cost of providing this information tiny, and most of the information already passes through electronic systems (and is already recorded electronically), so the costs of making that publicly available would be negligible.Suryavarman wrote:Indeed these would all be valuable pieces of information to have and services to provide. It costs money to provide these pieces of information and services though, so we then must ask whether the costs justify the benefits? We also need to ask will the markets provide these services and pieces of information without being forced to? There is also no need to provide these services and pieces of information if there aren't any real problems in the marketplace without them.
This is a bit of regulation that would need to be forced on markets, yes (they would provide it now already, if they didn't need to be forced to); some fraud is always inevitable in any market, so this information would be invaluable for helping to expose that.
Well, I've already covered that in my posts; it's not a one-step process, you can't just put a blanket-ban on it and that's it. The UNICEF report comprehensively outlines how to eradicate child labour better than any of us could really, and they are pretty much the world-leading experts on the issue.Suryavarman wrote:I totally agree that child labour is wrong and most libertarians do also. The problem here is what are the alternatives?
You're not actually blaming all that on the minimum wage now are you? Bit disingenuous to imply that really, can we try to remain a bit more honest in our arguments?Permabear wrote:This post has been deleted.
That is a cop-out, you don't need to understand every step of the process to determine that a particular result is correlated with a specific action, and to make inferences from that.Valmont wrote:Anyway, my main point was that Kyussbishop's criticism of free-market economics is that it hasn't been empirically tested which is an inaccurate criticism both for the issues with historicism and the fact that we can't quantify the 'unseen' in an economy.
If you base your economic plans on theory alone, that is absolute insanity; you need to research past economies and use empirical methods to discern how particular aspects of your planned economy fared in the past, and how they are likely to fare in the future.
The burden of proof is on you to show it will work, and if you base your arguments on theory instead of empirical evidence based on past economies, your are promoting ideology not fact. Simple as.Permabear wrote:This post has been deleted.
There is ample evidence of deregulation leading to instability in economies; while people love to point to "cheap credit" as the sole cause of the current economic crisis, they ignore completely how the deregulated markets went crazy with that and the part they played in the massive economic damage.
Attack the arguments, not the posters; this is exactly the kind of dismissal of peoples posts which sent the last few threads down into repeating ideological arguments. If you're going to throw around accusations, back them up (with quotes preferably) or hold them back, and address the arguments.Permabear wrote:In short, the entire argument appears to rest on little more than illogical, emotive bluster.
It should not be so hard to have discussions on this topic, without these pointless unsubstantiated jabs and generalizations about other posters. All it does is drag down what could otherwise be a decent discussion.
To those promoting deregulation: Do you see any damage coming from that? Lay out what exact damage you see happening, and if you say "the market will sort that out" back it up with evidence (from past events/economies, not from theory).
Pretty much all of us who are critical or skeptical of Libertarianism acknowledge the faults with the state and regulation, but you never see any acknowledgement of the potential faults of Libertarian economics or the free market; it is untouchable apparently.
So lets have a bit more of a skeptical look at things (take a devils advocate role for a bit), point out the actual problems in the system you advocate implementing, and how to mitigate those problems.0 -
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What, interrogating the evidence? Feel free to do the same with any sources I post. I think you've already been doing it with regard to the Economic Freedom Index, you don't see me complaining.This post had been deleted.
Poa sana bwana. If we're honest with ourselves, I think we both know that economics, in particular is not an objective science - there's a great deal of political and ideological bias. Maybe I'm just the suspicious type, but I rarely take any report at face value - it's always worth checking. Plus, having read, and prepared my share of reports for the GoK, I would take any of their figures with an additional shovel-load of salt.
I freely admit that my personal experience is obviously a dubious source, but at the same time, I have lived there for an extended period, working in the development sector, at a time when Washington Consensus approaches were in the ascendancy ... before the Chinese arrived on the scene in earnest.This post had been deleted.
It most certainly is relevant - you accused me of making "uninformed claims", the irony is that you're probably taking such strident positions on the basis of a scan through a single document.This post had been deleted.
I've been quite consistent - some of my friends are now Ksh millionaires on the back of the property boom, at least in theory, and they're living the high life, there's a lot of activity in the construction sector, including massive Chinese infrastructure projects, so it obviously appears that the country is on the up.
On the other hand, they tell me, and I saw myself, that conditions for the poorest sector of society, roughly half the country, haven't improved in the slightest. It's the unevenness of development that's the problem, both in terms of social classes, and regions.
That is actually consistent with the IMF figures, btw. I would say that the 7.8m internet users is the most telling statistic from that, out of a country of 40m, these are the ones who are really benefiting. Safaricom has made cheap mobile phones commonplace as well - less than $10 - but still it's only half the population that have them.
They've had substantial growth for a decade, resulting in, at best, 8% of the population no longer being classed as living poverty, with 42% remaining. This doesn't take in to account the precariousness of the position for a much larger section of the population, for whom losing their jobs would mean overnight destitution.This post had been deleted.
Wage labour is great, so long as people can earn enough, after subsistence, to actually acquire property and to start to find their own way in life. Can we rely on the market to do this? Especially in circumstances where losing one's job means certain destitution?
I don't believe so, which is why I believe the minimum wage is necessary - I don't for a second believe that any company would pay more than the absolute minimum required to keep their employees turning up in the morning - it's the only rational course, with the current corporate arrangements.
Mainly, the point is that in a country as grossly unequal as Kenya, but anywhere, really, a wholesale leveling of the playing field would be hugely beneficial for the economy. In fact, I'd be fully in favour of a laissez faire system, if everyone started out from a position of relative equality. I'm with Adam Smith on this one:Adam Smith wrote:The establishment of perfect justice, of perfect liberty, and of perfect equality is the very simple secret which most effectually secures the highest degree of prosperity to all the three classes.
But I don't see how libertarian approaches, as I understand them, could legitimately go about achieving this.0 -
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After a decade of 5% growth +? Yes, I am. The poverty line is $1 per day, it's a pretty modest achievement.
Even taking those figures at face value - again, from my experience, I wouldn't - that doesn't include the vast mass of people who are on the brink, nor does it take into account how unevenly the growth has been spread.
And let's not forget the massive role that NGOs and foreign aid play, in addition to the economic growth, I absolutely would expect better. There's still famine.This post had been deleted.
I got paid £2.50 an hour as a waiter in Pizza Hut, Rathmines, in 1998, while I was in college.This post had been deleted.
Well, having actually lived as one of the smarter, hard-working, talented, creative people ... who happened to be born into massive material advantage to 90% of the country's population, and accordingly was better educated, traveled, etc. ... earning many, many times the national average wage, but paying modest taxes, a grossly unequal society doesn't work for anyone, on any level.
It's all well and good living like a minor prince, but when you have to have armed guards, barbed wire, electric fences, when you can't walk around on your own after dark, or even during the day, because you're a target, when your friends are routinely carjacked and mugged - thankfully avoided that myself - when you get mobbed by prostitutes whenever you're out, because they see you as a walking wallet ... then you start to think that you'd happily give away some of your money for a better quality of life, rather than feeling like you're under siege.
Actually, that I think of it, some of the destitute street husslers in Nairobi were pretty smart, hard-working, talented and creative people. First day in the city centre, this guy came up to me, asked me where I was from, I said Ireland, he said, "Trinity College, I have a scholarship to go there, I just need money for flights". I was so taken aback that I gave him a few shillings, apparently he has a big university for most European cities. Same guy seemed to find me any time I was in the city, always had a different story, always convincing. Eventually I said, "you don't remember me, do you" ... "ah, you all look the same".
Anyway, this is aside from the economic benefits of greater equality, as Adam Smith recognised. Don't let your self-esteem blind you, try a Rawlsian "original position" every once in a while.0 -
Yesterday Kyussbishop hadn't heard of Karl Popper's book The Poverty of Historicism; today the whole thing is a 'cop-out'. No more arguing with speed-readers for me this week!0
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Please tone it down a bit posters. Play the ball, not the man. Avoid personal digs when refuting someone else's position.0 -
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Hyperbole it is not, it is a rather common occurrence in highly unequal societies that those with money must live behind castle walls with armed security. In fact, my guess is if your latest flavour of libertarianism was wrought on our society it wouldn't be long before it was happening here. Already you have gated communities in the US with 24.7 security, one of the most unequal societies in the western world. It doesn't take much of a leap of imagination to see it get worse.0 -
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Right, well say that then, instead of implying the whole problem is down to that, and exaggerating the supposed effects of it.Permabear wrote:This post had been deleted.
If you propose an economic plan you have to back up that it will work with evidence, and that you can overcome all the problems presented, based on past experience and evidence, not on theory.Permabear wrote:
No, sorry, if posters such as you and benway wade into threads with loud claims about how libertarianism will result in "exploitation" and "disaster," the burden of proof is on you.KyussBishop wrote:The burden of proof is on you to show it will work....
For the sake of a simpler discussion, please outline the economic plan you would implement, including any minimal regulations, the setup of a central bank (if any) etc..
The more detail the better, as then specific problems with that system can be presented, and people could provide explanations (based on evidence not theory) of how those problems could be resolved.
Much of the savings and loan crisis in the US was contributed to by deregulation.Permabear wrote:
Can you present some, please?KyussBishop wrote:There is ample evidence of deregulation leading to instability in economies...
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in the US repealed many regulations that had been in place since the 1930's, which is widely regarded as having had a significant effect on the current financial crisis.
It repealed restrictions separating commercial/investment banks, insurance companies and other financial firms, which in the past had been shown to create conflicts of interest when combined.
The Commodity Futures Modernization Act deregulated the trade of specific kinds of derivatives sold in off-exchange markets, reducing transparency and leading to inflated risks; this is regarded as a contributor to the current economic crisis. This act also put in place a regulatory hole which Enron and AIG exploited.
I'd appreciate if you don't put words in my mouth, thanks; have I ignored the role of the government in the crisis? No.Permabear wrote:
So governments threw fuel on the fire, and your reaction is to blame the fire. That makes sound sense, all right.KyussBishop wrote:while people love to point to "cheap credit" as the sole cause of the current economic crisis, they ignore completely how the deregulated markets went crazy with that and the part they played in the massive economic damage
That's a pretty clear example of twisting statements into an ideological "Us vs Them" argument, whilst avoiding engaging in any real argument with the substance of what was said.
I'll admit I'm finding it difficult to see the relevance of historicism to my arguments; while I see how arguments against historicism would preclude developing a complete economic model based on past events, I don't see why it would preclude being able to use past events to empirically support components of proposed economic theories (or to empirically present problems with them).Valmont wrote:Yesterday Kyussbishop hadn't heard of Karl Popper's book The Poverty of Historicism; today the whole thing is a 'cop-out'. No more arguing with speed-readers for me this week!
You'll need to clarify your argument more; it seems like your pointing out of the problems with historicism actually undermines the ability of Libertarian supporters to claim their economic models will work (as opposed to might work), without precluding the ability to examine specific isolated aspects of economic models based on past events.0 -
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As if issues are never dragged "off-topic" by some in virtually every thread started here in politics...:rolleyes:
This is a thread based on a faulty premise. (that increased production apparently solely increases wages and phases out child labour)
I'm afraid it's just another case of Libertarians claiming victories of natural technological and market development as vindication of their own fundamentalist biases.
It goes on to imply/attack "anti-Libertarians" as supposedly being ignorant and/or dishonest.
And finally, laughably, selectively quotes avowed opposers of what we're talking about to try and back up the OP.0 -
Well in fairness, the thread is about child labour and economics, particularly the effects of economics on reducing child labour.This post had been deleted.
People seem to be advocating an economic system based on Libertarian principals, for combating child poverty, so it seems reasonable to ask for a full outline of such an economic system.
By all means though, avoid my questions like usual.0 -
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Not hyperbole, I'm afraid. Your typical Westlands, Nairobi abode combines mock-tudor elegance with a ten foot wall, topped by electric fences and/or barbed wire, probably an alsatian and two or three askaris behind the wall. Surprised they didn't go for a moat while they were at it. You stay classy, Westlands. I probably would have spent longer living there if it hadn't been for that - it felt like living in a war zone.
My digressive anecdotes had a point - don't discount the power of phenomenological explanations, there's more to Nietzche than the übermensch, you know. Firstly, as above, there are material benefits to everyone living in a more equal society, on any number of levels - a grossly unequal society just isn't a pleasant place, even if you're one of the lucky few, sorry the creative and hardworking few.
Secondly, and related, you can't assume that people's material position in society is somehow a function of their personal merit, at least not in any society I've ever encountered. Slumdog Don Draper could have been Senior Vice President for Sales and Marketing if he'd had the breaks, the guy was good.
This brings us back to one key issue, inequality, and whether a libertarian society would have any internally consistent mechanism to address this?the statistics are indisputable on that front, as much as you seem to want to carp and qualify and hedge.
The statistics are very much disputable, they were produced by the Government of Kenya, the IMF did the analysis, as I see it. This is the same Government of Kenya who claim that only 175,000 live in Kibera slums, when the lowest independent estimate is twice that, and most NGOs put the population at around a million.This post had been deleted.
The whole point of wage labour is that it should be sufficiently remunerative to acquire property and from there self determination, right? You're going to be a long time saving to set up your own business on €4.50 an hour.
This was about standard for those kinds of jobs at the time, even with the nascent boom, and it illustrates why we need a minimum wage. There can't be exceptions for "part time" jobs, even in a time of full employment, although it'll be a while before we see that again, because any such loophole is prone to exploitation.
Ok, so getting back to the OP, I find it very interesting that the Child Labor Deterrence Act and Bangladeshi sweatshop workers seem to be something of a cause célèbre for the pro globalization lobby - this Cato review is very relevant, in terms of the present discussion, and highlights the plight of the laid-off workers. But the story doesn't end there.
Firstly, the act was repeatedly introduced at Congress, but in fact never passed, although Sen. Harkin seems to have been constantly active on the issue.
The tabling in 1992 did lead to a major change in the Dhaka garment trade, though. While child labour was illegal under Bangladeshi law, and the terms are more strict than the ILO Conventions, it was a widespread practice. Explosive growth in the industry, almost exclusively export-based, had led to explosive growth in the number of child workers, probably around 50,000, although the Bangladeshi government's estimate was as high as 100,000.
Around the same time, NBC showed a documentary on Wal-Mart's supply chain, highlighting the use of child labour by manufacturers, represented by the politically powerful Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, and public pressure led Wal-Mart to undertake that they would force the BGMEA to eradicate the practice.At this point, however, the garment manufacturers were already contemplating to clean up low-age workers from their factories’ and according to Rosaline Costa, a Bangladeshi human rights activist—as many as 5,000 children had already been dismissed in December 1992. This ‘cleaning up’, however, did not involve the provision of educational alternatives or any substitute income for the children, and this became an important concern as the debate continued
Following this, Wal Mart, the US Government, UNICEF, the ILO, an Asian-American Trade Union, and a couple of local NGOs entered in to negotiations with BGMEA, which continued as the bill was tabled again in 1994, at which point the BGMEA conceded, with the threat of sanctions under the Act looming, and gave an undertaking to stop using child labour by that October, and to provide schooling for them, but no substantive action was forthcoming.
Further negotiations followed, again overshadowed by the threat of the Harkin Bill introducing an embargo on products manufactured using child labour. At the end of 1994, the Republicans took the house, and obviously eradicating child labour isn't an idea that much suits them, so the BGMEA walked out of negotiations, only to be dragged back when the Child Labor Coalition, another US NGO organised a boycott:‘trade sanctions are a very blunt instrument, but we were dealing with some very blunt people, and we got their attention.’
Ultimately, they came crawling back in 1995 and a Memorandum of Understanding was finally signed:Under the terms of the agreement, four key provisions were formulated:
• the removal of all under-age workers — those below 14 — within a period of four months;
• no further hiring of under-age children;
• the placement of those children removed from the garment factories in appropriate educational programmes with a monthly stipend;
• the offer of the children’s jobs to qualified adult family members.
The Memorandum of Understanding explicitly directed factory owners, in the best interests of these children, not to dismiss any child workers until a factory survey was completed and alternative arrangements could be made for the freed children.
I'm summarising from this paper, published in International Affairs: Michael E. Nielsen - The politics of corporate responsibility and child labour in the Bangladeshi garment industry
Now, it's open to debate whether the pressure placed on the BGMEA was protectionism in another guise, as to the ethics of interfering in another country's labour relations, and whether it was in fact the Senator, the NBC, Wal Mart or the boycott that forced the agreement. But I think the evidence is clear that child labour is inefficient, and represents just another poverty trap, whether you look at it morally or economically. Certainly, in a globalised world, it seems clear that accountability along the supply chain is a powerful tool - if, as claimed, conditions are better with manufacturers supplying image-conscious corporations like Nike and Apple, it's not much of a stretch to suggest that this kind of pressure has something to do with it.
The argument that labour laws shouldn't be an issue until a country is sufficiently "rich" carries no weight with me, it reminds me of Lenin and Trotsky's view that the Soviet people needed to drive for industrialisation before true socialism could be achieved, one of the single greatest corruptions of the Soviet project.
Labour relations in Bangladesh are still fraught, with mass strikes and repression following the manufacturers' refusal to pay their workers the newly introduced minimum wage - the princely sum of $43 per month - and the torture and murder, last week, of a leading trade unionist. Doesn't look like it's the case that employers happily raise wages according to growth - GDP growth has been at around 5% or more since 2000, inflation over 8% in 3 years out of 4 from 2007-2010.
Obviously, this is inexact, but going by the figures in those articles, $43 per month for 3.2m workers is $1.65bn going directly in to the local economy for an industry worth $16bn per year? They were getting half that, if even - wages below the poverty line - and still the manufacturers held out. Kinda puts some perspective on the "sweatshops lifting people out of poverty" argument, doesn't it? In fact, that looks an awful lot like exploitation to me. I thought people were entitled to enjoy the "fruits of their labours" in the libertarian worldview?
According to our friends at the World Bank (old figures, though):While fewer people lived in extreme poverty, inequality within and across regions gradually increased
No sh!t. Extreme poverty, as opposed to only abject poverty, these days ... only 58% of children are "severely deprived" according to UNICEF.
On the plus side, it seems that, in fact, 5,000 is the true total of children turned out of work, without alternative, rather than 50,000, as claimed, which would have been close to the entire child work force. I think that Nielsen's final paragraph is particularly telling:Finally, while it is certainly important to be attentive to the negative consequences of eliminating child labour (and other problems), the above analysis also pointed to some negative consequences of being so: it may serve to redefine the problem, to narrow the agenda and/or to transfer moral culpability from corporations to critics.
As is that to the Cato piece:In Defense of Globalization will encourage the faithful who believe in economic freedom as a value worth pursuing in and of itself, but also those more pragmatic souls who see it as a necessary if less-than-lovable means to achieve poverty reduction and other worthy social goals. Of all the books defending globalization, Jagdish Bhagwati's may offer the best chance to reach those readers not fatally blinded by anti-market ideology.0 -
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I am well aware of this - as are those who, use the 50,000 child workers cast out in to the streets as a hook to their arguments. It's a snappy point, it's unfortunate that it just isn't true, and that the reality is much more interesting and informative. But the reality can't be compressed in to a sentence. But I'll try, just for you:
1. How do they define a "fair wage"? As noted earlier, wages paid by so-called sweatshops in Asia are often two or three times the national average. How can they claim that being paid two or three times the average wage is "unfair"?
Above the poverty line would be a good place to start - see above.
2. How do they reconcile their opposition to a low-wage economy with the evident benefits that low-wage, export-based economies have reaped in recent decades in the form of economic growth and development?
This is not the case - see above.
3. How do they reconcile their call for unions and ever-more government with the fact that many so-called "sweatshops" are located in extremely statist socialist and communist countries (hardly hotbeds of libertarianism) where economies are so unfree that organized labor is systematically repressed by the power of the state?
Seems that it's not the power of the state, but the power of the manufacturers that's responsible for much of the repression, and Western consumers have the power to force change in these industries, which have repercussions far beyond the micro-context of a particular industrial dispute - see above.
4. What do they propose to do about the approximately 95 percent of child workers who are not employed by Western corporations? These include children working in agriculture, on plantations, as domestic servants, and in indigenous industry, where wages and working conditions are much worse than in the export sector.
Same rules apply, positive changes in the export sector have much broader ramifications in the local economy - see above.
If you want to have a serious debate about globalization, then it's all there for you, but trying to tl;dr your way out of it just seems like a transparent attempt to avoid the fact that all of the points in the "sweatshops lift people out of poverty" mode have been comprehensively refuted.0 -
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What's a cop-out here is your refusal to engage with my detailed post above, taking Bangladesh as a case in point. You were quite happy to take Bangladesh as representative when making the emotive, "poor waifs cast out in to the streets" point, but you're ignoring it now?This post had been deleted.
I got in to the nuances above, which was dismissed as tl;dr. Nuances tend to go that way ... certainly seems that the nuances are inconvenient to those engaged in populist corporate cheerleading, just the same.
I am not "demonising", where have I ever said that Western corporations setting up or outsourcing to developing countries is undesirable in itself? What I am saying is that, in order for this engagement to be the panacea that you you suggest it to be, it must take place under conditions conducive to benefiting the people of these countries, including decent wages, conditions and a ban on child labour. See above.
And having spent a couple of years actually working in development, in the developing world, it's me who can't even grasp the problem?
Plus, I'm apparently myopic, populist and "Marxist"? The last one is a straw-man, if ever I saw one, I take as much from Marx as I do from Hayek, Durkheim, Foucault, Bourdieu, Hart, Nietzche, Adam Smith, etc., etc., etc. Trying to put me in a box isn't helping your argument here. In fact, it smacks of desperation.
Please do yourself a favour and actually read my post, the Nielsen paper above, or preferably both, before commenting further. In fact, preferably have at least a scan through all of my sources and attempt to understand my actual position, rather than what you'd like it to be.0 -
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