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The party of liberty? I have been a bit more tolerant than my Samizdatista comrades about the populist postures adopted by nice Mr Cameron. And being a Conservative Party member, it is me that has to be tolerant, after all. A certain sainted editor has been consistent in urging people not to vote for a long, long time, so a Tory leader really need not care what Perry thinks…
But this has brought me up short. OK, it is speculative bluster about what might be considered by a working party. But how are the ‘liberal values’, that Cameron has made so much of, served by forced labour?
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Guy, surely not still a member of the Conservative Party? I too once used to share that badge of courage, but I really do think it might be time for you to let it go. Just to help persuade you, you might want to read a piece I wrote about Mr Cameron, on AngloAustria:
The Rise of the Chocolate Orange Inspectors
This year’s essential New Year resolution has to be: I must leave the Tory Party
After Cameron’s recent pronouncements, I’m sure it will be an easy resolution to observe.
This worries me far more than his pronouncements on the NHS because people don’t care about this stuff – i.e. he can pretty much say what he likes.
It looks like his instincts are inherently statist.
At this time, I am hoping for an early general election where DC fails to make headway against Brown so Nick Herbert can take over. 5 years of Brown won’t be nice but then Jim Callaghan did far more to point Britain in the right direction than Ted Heath ever did.
Translation for the non politically-minded;
This idea shows Cameron’s true self. Shortly after he unveiled it before the Party Conference, he dined with a group of regional newspaper political editors. They concluded that he was a complete lightweight, because he was unable to answer even the most basic idea about his policy: will it be compulsory?
Now, it tells us more about him. He’d earlier claimed that he entered politics to set people free and not to tell people what to do (fortunately WH Smiths isn’t a person). Yet his willingness to empress people into his grand scheme shows thos to be a lie. Contrary to his line about trustung people, he does no such thing. He’s a patrician and thinks he knows best and should tell us all what to do.
I should perhaps at this point mention Nick Herbert is no relation, but it is because the Tory party is seething with social liberals like him–and indeed, heretofore, Mr Cameron–that it really has seemed quite worthy of support of late…
That is quite apart from the “something must be done about Head Boy fascism” that had me rejoining in 2004 after more than a decade of total political paralysis.
Up until now I had always wondered how a free people could vote something like the NAZI party into office, voting away their freedoms and rights in the full knowledge of what they were doing.
Now though? I am watching the destruction of all those liberal values which made Britain so different, and it is happening with the full support of the electorate. They don’t care.
‘The People’ really don’t care.
Guy, there’s only two things you can do to combat politicians. Firstly, that’s to shut them physically out of your life as much as possible. So slam the door in their faces when you see them at election time, stop sending them membership money or buying their raffle tickets, avoid as much tax as you possibly can to cut their financial legs off, and do everything else you can to stop their emotion-bonding tricks from entrapping people into voting for them. Don’t work for them, don’t help them get elected, and whatever you do, and I’m sure you’ll have been asked, don’t ever become one yourself! If you must vote, then Monster Raving Loony party is the only acceptable box to cross. The second thing is to keep promoting the ideas of liberty and the lack of a need for politicians at every opportunity. We will only be rid of politicians when enough people in this country come round to the idea that they are simply unnecessary, and when the only people who volunteer for this odious ratlike activity are such obvious halfwits, that the entire political process collapses around their ears and the Monster Raving Loony party get enough MPs to form a government. I’m afraid you can’t use politicians to get rid of politicians. It doesn’t matter what colour rosette they wear, you only encourage the whole stinking lot of them.
It sounds as tho’ he is more inclined to ‘national socialism’, than ‘liberal socialism’…
This is Cameron conscription designed to “civilise” the binge drinking classes – Chav and Dave Conservatism!
Chris, is it that people don’t care or are they simply left with no options?
If you want to be against the EU, none of the 3 main parties can be voted for. If you are against high taxes none of the 3 main parties can be voted for. If we want to see a strong military maintained none of the 3 main parties can be voted for. Same regards immigration controls and almost eveything else.
Voting for other parties, for example UKIP which I voted for, is a bit of a wasted vote, with the perverse effect of spliting the anti-EU vote and allowing the crazy pro-EU Lib Dems a greater chance.
Our democracy doesn’t work.
Totally OT but watching Charlie Kennedy on the BEEB right now admitting to having a Drink Problem. F*ck me!
Who knew?
Wee Charlie’s Drink Problem: he can’t get enough of it?
If Charles Kennedy admits he had a drink problem, then personally I admire his honesty, actually. Many a fine politician (Churchill) liked a tipple or three. At least Kennedy, however erratically, has tried to hold the line on civil liberties against the assaults of Blair and a fairly supine Tory Party.
Fair comment Johnathan.
I always love the anecdote about “A tipple or three Churchill” bumping into Lady Astor in the Lobby of the House of Commons late at night and She roaring at him, “Winston you’re drunk!”
“Yes madam I am drunk and you are ugly! But in the morning I will be sober, and you will still be ugly!”
Charlies trouble was, being a liberal/democrat, he was befuddled from boyhood.
Yeah, fair comments if it weren’t for the fact that he was forced into making the statement and has been consistently lying for the last 2 years. There is also a strong chance that the 2 months figure is a bit of an exageration.
Don’t get me wrong, I have never met a drink I didn’t like, or a drunk for that matter, just not keen on liars. Especially the elected type.
Maybe its better to be the ‘party of libertarian values’ than, in Mr Kennedy’s case, the ‘party of liquid values’.
As for his ‘honesty’ how about admitting that he’s had an “alcohol problem” (can’t call himself an ‘alcoholic’ I note) for at least 4 years, not the 18 months he claims? Folk I know at the BBC were saying back during 2001 that you don’t interview Charles Kennedy after 2.00pm when he’s in his cups – not unless you really wanted to end up with completely unusable material.
Kennedy should stop giving us sobstory press conferences about his personal distress, and then call for a leadership contest. He should make a clean resignation to spend ‘more time with his family’ (not the Johnny Walker family) and start attending AlcAnon meetings – that way he might salvage some of his fast dwindling supply of integrity and public credibility.
Sorry for the undue cynicism but this sort of ‘heart on my sleeve’ crap from British politicos is really getting far too much.
I just spoke to a mate of mine in the press who said during the election campaign being with Kennedy was like one wrong booze cruise…he got the info from several of the cameramen/women covering the L-Ds battle bus.
P.S.
As Prolix mentions on his blog, I wonder if there’s any link between Charlie giving up Mr Walker’s Finest Electric Soup 2 months ago and the sudden demise of Unwins at around the same time?
I think we should be told …
As Mark Steyn points out in his current column, (I linked thru “Best of the Web”), the tired dronings of this or that politico will have no effect on what’s really going to happen.
“fortunately WH Smiths isn’t a person”
A corporation is not a person but nor is it a separate being. A corporation is a legal fiction that may act on behalf of the shareholders but has no interests of its own. When we talk about taking regulating or taxing corporations we really mean we are taking freedom and wealth from the individuals that corporations represent.
You know it’s funny but, a propos Perry de Havilland’s two previous posts on the new Tory party, I was myself going to post the following:
“I would like to know whether any of the Cameronophiles posting here have a limit beyond which they could not back Dave’s lurch to the Left?
If it’s about being ‘credible’ in order to gain power, running left to govern right as Mike put it, at what point would Leftie Cameronian pre-election commitments be just that step too far?
Take an example.
The Labour PM, whoever it is, says: the needs of the ‘poor’ and ‘public services’ are now such that we need to confiscate all private pensions and all private hospitals. That part of the public thereby losing, to be morally blackmailed, as usual, into shutting up. That part of the public ostensibly being given something it doesn’t already have thereby selling its votes.
Cameron, not to be outdone, says, ‘Whoa, boys, we feel the poor’s pain even more. So, we’re gonna sequester all privately-held shares to shore up the coffers, raise income tax to 60 per cent and make everyone work for free in a hospital or school for one month in the year.
Of course Labour would then up the ante and of course it would win because this is a game it will always win.
But on the analysis of the Cameronophiles, not only should the Tories nonetheless keep playing this game, but they will somehow or other become electable in the process.
And let’s say they do. They win an election, committed to 70 per cent income tax, the nationalisation of banks, savings, shares and conscription for national service in the NHS or similar […add further Leftie ideals here].
Precisely what is gained by their victory? The lack of a Labour commitment to 80 per cent taxation and nationalisation of everything?
Is there not something to be said for allowing the socialists their head of steam, with its inevitable ruination, even if means staying out of power, so that a credible alternative is offered. Or is power the only goal, come what may?”
And now I see the link in Guy Herbert’s post and I am lost for words.
I think I may retain my membership of the Conservative Party for the time being, just to see if the slogan at the next party conference is:
“Arbeit Macht Frei”
I have been a member of the Conservative party since 1980 and I have voted and campaigned in every election.
So perhaps I can not be dismissed like Perry (although, as you know Guy, a person’s arguments should be examined – they should not just be dismissed because he has not been involved in politics himself).
It is not just the return to a civilian form of national service, it is many things.
For example, Mr C. has even ruled out tax allowances on private health cover (certainly he just said he would never be in favour of moving to an “insurance based system” but the B.B.C. reported him as being against even a tax reduction – and he did not contradict them).
Getting more people out of the N.H.S. would (of course) not be “que jumping” – it would shorten the que for everyone else.
But even such a modest reform has been ruled out by the by the P.R. man Mr C.
The best that can be said of Mr C. is that he has no beliefs (that he will say and do anything in the hopes of attracting votes), for if has beliefs they are bad ones.
The one good thing Mr C. ever said was that he going to pull the Conservative Euro M.Ps out of the E.P.P. – but this has not happened (we are now told it will not happen till next year – if at all) and even this was just gesture politics.
Conservative party members know what they were voting for. As a letter in the Daily Telegraphy pointed out – many voters may support Mr C. over Mr Brown on “ascetic” growds, but there is no real policy reason to do so.
So that was the choice. “We have been out of office for years and years, we must try and anything to get back into office – who cares what policy is as long as a member of the Conservative party is Prime Minister”.
Nor is it a matter of getting a lot of good Conservative M.P.s into Parliament who will control policy (in spite of the leader) – no the new 120 “A list” of compulsory candidates (which will be half male and half female but all useless) will make sure that does not happen.
A political party that does not even trust its members to choose candidates – the candidate list has long been a corrupt scandal and it is now going to get worse.
All of the above was the choice of the great majority of members of the Conservative party – they rejected even the moderate antistatism of David Davis (which sought to make Britian more like the Republic of Ireland where government spending is about 35% of G.D.P. rather than 44%).
People do not care about things like a smaller state says Mr C. – and no doubt he is correct (most people do not tend to value freedom very highly).
The Daily Telegraph said today that it was “dissappoited” with Mr Cameron. – why this is I do not know, after all he made it perfectly clear what sort of person he was during the leadership campaign.
The Daily Telegraph (and ordinary party members) should not pretend that they did not know what sort of man they were getting.
In the past (with leaders like John Major) I could claim that ordinary Conservatives had been let down by the high ups.
But Mr Cameron was elected (and be a large margin) by the ordinary party members.
The only conclusion possible is that most Conservative party members (like most people generally) do not value freedom very highly.
“Oh but he will change in office”.
Will he? Like Mr George Walker Bush forgot about “compassionate” [i.e. ever bigger government] conservativism after he became President?
President Bush has gone alone with the biggest increase in domestic government spending since President Nixon.
At least Nixon had the excuse of a Democratic party controlled Congress – Mr Bush does not have this excuse.
“No child left behind”, the Medicare extention, the failure to veto any spending bill.
The United States sees both parties (Republican and Democrat) working to destroy what is left of civil society.
Mr Cameron will ensure that the Conservative party helps the Labour party and the Liberal Democractic party in this task in the United Kingdom.
They do not intend to destroy civilization or even damage it (after all their own comfortable life depends on civilization), but damage to civilization is the effect of their policy.
Certainly they will oppose each other – but it is faction fighting (who gets to be in No 10) not a matter of principle.
I suppose even a grudging apology is out of the question?
Paul Marks makes some excellent comments as do nearly all contributors to nearly every entry on this blog.
I am an active Tory but, admittedly, only in very recent times due to personal circumstances. I’m 27 so grew up under Lady T and am essentially of that political persuasion.
What I still don’t understand is why people cannot see that DC is reacting to the present political situation in much the same way Blair did. I don’t agree with much of the rhetoric but he doesn’t need to persuade me! It’s the political-lite who have been hood-winked by Blair for the last three elections!
I fear a Conservative government a great deal less than any Labour one (or however it chooses to be called) as we are still more libertarian than them!
The most likely and best case scenario is that Cameron wins the next GE (would Brown make you happier?) and the party will resist implementing much of the BS DC comes out with.
There will inevitably be a resurgence of the Right of the party but the packaging may have been altered.
Kennedy is being fawned over for his ‘courage’ and ‘honesty’ in finally confessing he was a lush a few minutes before ITN was due to do a hatchet job. Just like the immense bravery of Freddie Mercury, admitting he had AIDS hours before his shrivelled cadaver succumbed to it.
For months Kennedy has been lying his head off in public and now his colleagues– half of whom were preparing to knife him– want us to admire him?
Face it, all professional politicians are scumbags. Bugger their spurious labels and ‘differences’, they are all far more like each other than normal people. Their ideas of probity and morality would not last five minutes in a family circle or a team of workmates who relied on each other.
Why on earth do you dolts keep on fantasising ever more elaborate schemes for smashing one party, elevating another and ensuring that the Westminster capers stagger on into the 21st century? Why not just use the ballot paper for the purpose Nature intended– down below– and withdraw from the whole criminal crack-brained extortionist racket?
That’s what the masses are doing in increasing numbers. Give them some intellectual support. Paralyse the system by denuding it of the legitimacy that comes from minimal participation. Declare independence– never darken the doors of a polling station again. Refuse to pay council tax like those scattered pensioner heroes. Tell the quangoid pedlars of PC to piss off. There are a thousand ways in which we can bugger up the state without risking our necks and make our elected tyrants look ridiculous.
Paul,
So perhaps I can not be dismissed like Perry (although, as you know Guy, a person’s arguments should be examined – they should not just be dismissed because he has not been involved in politics himself).
I wasn’t saying that Perry’s arguments should be dismissed, but that the Tory leader (whoever it may be be) can safely ignore what he thinks.
It is also true, but a different question, that I understand Perry’s point, and sympathise, but don’t agree. Politics is almost always a question of the least worst choice.
As you note, most people do not value freedom very highly. The problem of politics for those of libertarian orientation is how to preserve and nurture freedom despite that fact. In 1990-92 I very much hoped the Tory party would split in power, with a view to a brief, Labour interregnum followed by resurgent post-Thatcher liberalism. My line was much like Perry’s, a sort of contra-Trotskyism: “Let us precipitate a crisis of the statists and bring on the Libertarian revolution!” But the rules of the game have changed, to coin a phrase.
Blair is not Kinnock, and he leads a profoundly different party. New Labour is essentially a totalitarian machine, harnessing the power of illiberal democracy with a consciouslessness that even its friends find baffling. I want to stop it before resistence becomes impossible, and to do that I will get my hands dirty and ally with people whose views on some subjects I find anathema. But I cannot entirely make myself endorse populist thuggery: masquerading as a fascist in order to defeat fascism is beyond me. Hence the original post.
It is clear to me that there are many people (not just politicians) who feel that they are personally separate from their expressed beliefs and who will say what the social situation or convention demands, or what they think will do them the most good, without feeling diminished or violated or that their inner conviction is changed. This seems to me as inexplicable as transsexualism. How can they be so certain of who they are, while they are being someone else? When do I stop being a pig and start being a man?
Julian, far be it from me to disagree with you on this one but I think folk are being a tad harsh (only a tad, mind). How many of the posters here could seriously have the cojones to admit being an alky on live TV?
I certainly think the LibDems could use a better leader, preferably one who actually was a proper liberal. I might even vote for them.
Cameron cannot be trusted – he believes that companies should be allowed to continue to exploit people and nature which he ties in with the concept of “trust” – an example he gave in a recent interview of how this trust works was Nike’s involvement in schools. He sees them as a shining example of so-called compassionate conservatism – it only works if the electorate are ignorant about Nike’s sweatshops abroad and the reality of Nike programmes in our schools. English school kids are being asked to pay £80 to wear Nike sports gear as part of their PE kit in an de-industrialized area where money is tight while in the Asian sweatshops workers are subjected to inhuman working conditions and paid wages that do not meet their living costs.
This is part of what lies behind Cameron’s charm offensive based on “trusting” individuals and corporations.
How sad that this man is representative of middle England.
Not the place to find a sympathetic hearing for that line, Carol.
Most people who write here think those Nike “sweatshops” that pay their workers significantly more for better conditions than would otherwise be available locally are a good thing.
I may regret on aesthetic and cultural grounds that those shoes, whose marketing is founded on fostering associations of know-nothing aggression, are so highly prized by the British poor that they will spend money on them in preference to books, good food or improving entertainment, but the fact that the British poor are so rich in relative terms that they can freely make such bad choices is to be welcomed, surely? Though that many of them repine in taxpayer-provided idleness on incomes much greater than those of the hard-working folk who make their shoes, is certainly discomforting.
Carol, I have to disagree with you. When people throw the “sweatshop” term around, they miss the point that the workers employed in such terrible places are still likely to be earning more than they would otherwise.(Why else work there? What else would those people be doing – studying for MBAs? Hardly).
Yes, their wages are shockingly low by Western standards, but we in the West have benefited from decades of capital accumulation to drive real wages up. They have not. The idea that a worker in Thailand is entitled to the same wage as a worker in Birmingham, regardless of other factors, is daft. By insisting on higher wages for people in Third World nations, we in fact condemn them to lower income.
Far from preventing Nike from employing people from working in their “sweatshops”, it would be better if competition intensifies, therby driving wages up in the long-run and making eveyone, including Nike workers in the Third World, better off. Look at the history of East Asia after WW2 for the evidence.
I wouldn’t be surprised, Jonathan, if some of them were studying for MBAs, in the evening. There are people everywhere of enormous energy and determination, who given the smallest opportunity will make admirable use of it.
Thanks for those comments – however are we missing the point that the only reason those workers are employed in such abysmal conditions is because they are cheaper and do not enjoy the same protection from labour laws that a potential worker from the de-industrialized centre would enjoy? The drive to find ever cheaper labour costs is not only felt abroad but at home – my point was how can we trust a name like Nike to instil any good in our schools and communities when they are quite happy to ruthlessly exploit workers in periphery countries and how can we trust a man who holds them up as an example of the corporations with a social conscience that should be trusted to get on with doing what they do best?
It seems when Cameron talks about trust – this is not a contract that the tories would carry out with the individual but really with big business. I am sure his words are music to their ears – ooh and I think they would love some of that free New Tory youth labour too!
Carol
“…are we missing the point that the only reason those workers are employed in such abysmal conditions is because they are cheaper and do not enjoy the same protection from labour laws that a potential worker from the de-industrialized centre would enjoy?”
Correct, that is the point. Economists call it competitive advantage. The flip side is, as Margaret Thatcher used to point out, a tendency for we in the West to try and pay ourselves more than we are worth thereby pricing ourselves out of global markets and creating unemployment.
The ‘protection’ you talk about is what makes labour more expensive. So it is ‘protection’ only in the narrowest sense that some workers are shielded from market forces while the unemployment count increases because the economy becomes more sclerotic.
I cannot agree with your use of the word ‘exploit’, either. Nobody forces people in these countries to take jobs from Nike: they take the jobs because it is in their interests so to do. If Nike did not offer them, these people would be unemployed and hence worse off.
I’m not really sure what a periphery country is.
Also, a by-product of expensive labour laws, the ‘protection’ you refer to, is to favour big business, because small business typically cannot afford the human resources and compliance departments and legal bills brought about by this ‘protection’.
In response to Jonathan – well I don’t agree that people working in sweatshops is a sign of progress for those countries in which these sweatshops exist – the alternatives to working in these sweatshops is far worse – these sweatshops are established in countries where abject poverty is the norm and there is a vast reserve of surplus labour.
If a worker is earning less than what they need to meet the costs of living while Nike sell the products they make with vast mark-ups, surely moral outrage is justified?
Also, the gains made by workers in the west in terms of better working conditions and wages were made through struggle – the sweatshop had been virtually eliminated by the 19th century, not through the philanthropy of big business but through struggle.
Similarly, workers elsewhere have to fight to achieve the same rights – however when they do organize for better pay and working conditions in those sweatshops, they are dismissed immediately.
So the benefits of moving production to the periphery is only of benefit to, for example, Nike. There is a hypocrisy inherent in Nike suddenly developing a social conscience and infiltrating UK schools with a mission to address social issues caused by the very poverty their practices gives rise too.
Carol,
If a worker is earning less than what they need to meet the costs of living while Nike sell the products they make with vast mark-ups, surely moral outrage is justified?
No. The mark up Nike can make is not conditioned by the bargain it makes with its workers so much as what its customers are willing to pay. Other brands are manufactured in the same countries in much the same way, but their manufacturers are not as profitable because they don’t command the same premiums. Are they thereby more moral than Nike? It is what your argument implies.
As for the idea that they employ workers at “less than the cost of living”, I suggest you really aren’t thinking about what your words mean. Unless you are suggesting Nike uses debt-bondage–in which case I’d like to see some evidence–it is hard to give them any meaning at all.
Carol, this is poseur ethics.
More to the point, it’s like complaining that the force of gravity applies in an unethical manner to suspension bridge suicides.
There is nothing whatever ‘wrong’ (mostly, it is not a moral question) with workers organising to improve their conditions if they perceive that doing so is in their interests.
Equally there is nothing ‘wrong’ with employers voting with their feet.
What is morally wrong is to skew law- and policy-making to suit the perceived needs or grievances of one group, at the expense of another.
Using the power of law to such ends is feudal, since it determines one’s due in life by the status accorded one by some third party, regardless of merit.
Ned,
(What a delight to have that handle in the context!) I think we are dealing with an orthodox marxian understanding of the world here and the concept of ‘periphery’ is that due to Rosa Luxemburg. A century or more of capitalism having notably failed to immiserate the western working classes to the point of revolution, they were markedly better, not worse, off at the end of the 19th century than at the beginning. (Though, it should be noticed, still poorer in consumption terms than Nike’s “sweatshop” labourers.) So it was necessary to find both an explanation and a new source of contradictions that would precipitate The Revolution.
Ms Luxemburg neatly fixed that by coming up with a satisfying theory of imperialism used in one variation or another by an awful lot of the anti-globalist movement, even if they don’t think of themselves as Marxists. A neat summary (thanks to Philip Kozel) is:
Of course you eventually run out of periphery in this theory and capitalism collapses as a result of exhaustion of lebensraum. You can see how some version of this account is attractive to Greens of various types too.
Guy, thank you. I am suitably impressed.
I should perhaps add that I had rather intuited the meaning of Carol’s usage of the phrase ‘periphery country’ (although I had no idea about the Rosa Luxemburg (sic?)) theory.
My question to Carol was to that extent faux naif: I was staggered by the condescension inherent in the expression and wanted to see how Carol would react.
Carol, my apologies for treating you as a metaphorical lab rat. All that is exposed is my ignorance.
That is not what my argument is saying at all. I am pointing out the moral hypocrisy of Cameron using Nike to demonstrate how compassionate conservatism works – or maybe it’s not hypocritical – when Nike embrace the worst aspects of capitalism – unburdened by social costs and unregulated by anything other than its own corporate ethics – plainly, Nike’s practices are devoid of a social conscience. It is precisely because of these things that corporations cannot be left to tinker in the education system and if Cameron believes that putting Nike baseball caps on the heads of a few kids in British schools is an example of “compassionate conservatism” at work, or how, if left to their own devices the corporations would choose to operate, i.e. putting baseball caps on some kids while getting kids in the third world to sew “no child labour was used in the manufacturing of this product” labels onto products, then Cameron’s understanding needs to be enlarged.
Carol, there aren’t many people on this site willing to defend David Cameron against anything.
His proposal to dragoon children into work in the ‘public services’ is distasteful to us all. His use of a large corporation for the task is, um, corporatist ie. an unholy alliance between government and business.
Not many takers for that here, either.
Other points:
Conservatism is inherently compassionate and I will smack in the mush anyone who disagrees.
The ‘education system’ is a form of child labour; children are prepped to play a full role in the, coughs, national economy like good little Stakhanovites.
If businesses want people trained to work there, they can pay for it themselves, directly.
‘Social conscience’ – a moral posturing argument-stopper, a meaning-free zone of superficially benign sentiments to justify using the force of law (ie. the force of arms) to impose your will on others.
Jonathan,
Harsh I might be about Charlie’s Little Problem but let’s face it the man only confessed to ‘having an alcohol problem’ (he has still to admit that he is an alcoholic, which I gather is the first big step on the road to recovery) when 1) ITV informed him that they were going to run with the story of his habitual drunkeness, and 2) when 11 members of his own party were ready to table a no confidence motion against him. Given this background to the story it was a case of ‘jump or be pushed’ for Charles Kennedy I’m afraid.
Since Paxman’s interview with him in 2002, which was really a truly unpleasant thing to have done on air to the man, I gather that Kennedy has very much tried to keep both the media and his own backstabbers at bay on the issue of his alcohol problem – no mean feat one might presume. He does have a number of things going for him – he enjoys tremendous support from within the ranks of the 70,000-ish party faithful, certainly enough that if he put the issue of his personal problems to a leadership vote he should easily win it. He has also regularly managed to rise above the vicious in-fighting that the Parliamentary LibDems are prone to, and that is no more plain to see than in today’s papers where a number of his own backbenchers are urging him to resign.
Of course in this age of soundbites, spin, and “transparent honesty” it would not surprise me to hear of either Tony Blair or David Cameron calling a press conference to announce their sudden addiction to some nonsensical imaginary vice – if only for the purpose of garnering more coverage away from Kennedy or gaining more of the sympathy vote.
Kennedy’s dead meat, well marinaded. Next scumbag, please step forward.
You’ve got to be Scotch, or at least have a Scotch surname. Nobody else is allowed to run an electable party. Ming the Merciless, your hour has come at last.
Carole – I didn’t like the first sentence in one of your posts above: “… however, are we missing the point?” Are you rather condescending? You are absolutely certain that you are not missing the point, after all.
How many countries like Indonesia have you visited? What do you think those people lucky enough to be employed by Nike, manufacturers of footballs and T-shirts would be doing if not working in a Western factory? Not a sweatshop, by the way. They have electric fans. Do keep up.
I will tell you, because, unlike you, I have seen them. Unskilled and uneducated, they would be picking through garbage dumps looking for things like used lighters to sell for a penny. They would be hauling heavy goods on their backs, like donkeys. They would be thin and hungry. They would be (illegally) chopping down timber. (Surely you wouldn’t approve of that? I mean, the rain forests, and all?)
Getting a job in a Western factory is like dying and going to heaven. Ceiling fans. There’s often a canteen selling cheap and nourishing food; sometimes their lunch is free.
The gnawing, soul-destroying anxiety of not knowing whether they will be able to afford food next week, or catch up on the rent to their landlord is instantly gone with a regular, dependable income. They don’t need to take their children out of school and send them scavenging. Those children will probably go on to university, or at least stay in school through their 16th or 17th year.
I have absolutely no idea what Cameron, or anyone else, means by “compassionate conservatism” but I’m pretty certain I don’t approve. The government has no business being “compassionate” or having any other emotion attributed to it.
In addition, you note that Nike et all “exploit people and nature”. So? Do you know of instances where these workers were press-ganged into the factories and forced to work under threat of the whip? They are there because they want the benefits accruing from their willingness to turn up on time and do the work assigned. You could say they are exploiting the employers by getting money out of them.
Similarly coal miners and people drilling for oil are also, if you care to define it as such “exploiting nature”. So bloody what?
You will not find many defenders of the dire Boy Cameron on this blog.
Some good points there, COI, and well-expressed if you will permit me to say so. However I think you mistake Carol’s tone of voice.
His proposal to dragoon children into work in the ‘public services’ is distasteful to us all. His use of a large corporation for the task is, um, corporatist ie. an unholy alliance between government and business.
As neat a description of Facism as you will find anywhere…
Edward Lud – thank you, sir, but how do you define Carol’s tone of voice? All I heard was an eerie echo from the creaking Internationale crowd.
Oh, you know, tone of voice, from reading emails endlessly … you get a sense of it, no?
I may of course be wrong about said t. of v. and I don’t dispute the eerie echo from Internationale bit, but I had the impression of someone – Carol, are you still there? – not trying to launch a smash and grab raid so much as to understand a different point of view.
It may have come across as condescending, and perhaps it was, but my feeling on balance was not.
But then I’ve just reread something I wrote earlier and I did accuse her myself of condescension.
Note to Lud: put a sock in it.
Scotch is the drink, Scots or Scottish are the people. An easy mistake to make, given the constant references to Mr Kennedy’s favourite tipple over the past 24 hours.
Lud, you did apologise though, and you are right about me trying to understand a different p.o.v. I was interested in primarily your opinions – it’s been interesting but I can’t devote any more time to this today. Later.
To Guy, debt bondage is used in quite a few Asian sweatshops and I’m thinking of the Mariana Islands in particular.
ICarol, Look at how Hong Kong has boomed since the War. The arguments you are using to bash Nike could easily be applied to the same sort of businesses that operated in HK and yet the average standard of living for Hong Kong folk is vastly greater than what is on the mainland. Had the Nikes of this world been saddled with costly labour regulations, that process would have been held back. A classic case of unintended consequences.
By all means bash Cameron but let’s bash him for the right reason.
A lot of this bashing of corporations using “cheap” labour is drawn from the old Marxist illusion that there is a single “just price” for everything. There isn’t. Prices are merely the levels at which people agree to make a deal for something.
And as other commenters have pointed out, Nike does not coerce people to work for it.
Good point about Hong Kong, Jonathan, but let us not forget booming, wealthy S Korea, as well. And hyper-rich Singapore.
I seem to remember that earlier in the last century, thousands of workers were employed in the mills in the north of England doing repetitive work, standing for hours on end amid noisy machinery that eventually rendered them hard of hearing. They weren’t rounded up at the point of a gun. They wanted the work.
I cannot understand the professed shock of people like Carol that human beings, given a choice, will choose to be employed in boring jobs for long hours in return for the security of knowing they can support their families and send their children to get an education. What is it about this aspect of being human that upsets the Marxists?
The desire to advance is a prime trait of the human race. Only the Marxists want to put a lid on it on one pretext or another – “exploitation” being an all-time favourite. All progress should be halted immediately in the name of global warming, global poverty, whatever, and Nike should go into foreign countries and kindly make large gifts of money to the natives, just for the hell of it. Because, after all, all those people crouched over sewing machines or whatever, cowering under the whip, would be doing advanced degrees in nuclear medicine.
Carol, you talk about working practices in the West improving through “struggle” (presumably trade union action, legislation, etc). Well up to a point, Lord Copper. The problem is that unless, say, laws limiting work hours are matched by higher productivity, all that happens is an increase in unemployment. I almost get the impression that the critics of firms like Nike would prefer to see Third World peasants do nothing rather than earn something. Where is the morality in that?
The reason a British person can be profitably hired to do a 40-hour week in 2006 is because that worker has benefited from decades of accumulated physical and human capital. That is not the case in many Third World countries, at least not yet. And the best way to raise that capital is through, well, capitalism.
Edward Lud – I do not believe that Carol is a seeker after revelations. She has all her facts marshalled, including information about the Marianas, to make her arguments. That she thought she was going to be able to persuade anyone on Samizdata that capitalism is harmful may be a symptom of a sunny, optimistic nature, or a dull, obsessive determination to bludgeon others to her point of view. These people so frequently labour under the delusion that if only they tell us one more “fact” that we mysteriously haven’t encountered before, we will have a wee Marxist epiphany and demand that capitalism be dismantled.
I do not believe Carole came in a spirit of enquiry. She was too well-prepared.
Carol,
Hm, it is news to me that the Marianas are in Asia, but still I looked up the accusations of debt-bondage there. They are plausible and well founded, but seem to relate to illegal immigrants in the hands of the unidentified gangs who imported them, and enslaved sex-workers. That is scarcely Nike’s line of business, so I’m assuming no example of such an accusation against Nike will be forthcoming.
Now readers of my posts and comments will know I’m not particularly an admirer of US particularism and empire (and I note that the only explanation for industrial prostitution in the Marianas is the presence of US military bases), but I have to suspect you are making an unjustified leap when you move from a vague feeling that US corporations are bad because they pay their workers less in countries where the price of labour is lower, to assuming whatever horrors there are anywhere in the world can be blamed not only on US corporations, but on specific.
COI,
I’m perfectly prepared to be persuaded by someone with another point of view who is prepared to make a case. (Though I do draw the line at listening to the proleptic circularities of conspiracy theorists.) I think you are mistaken that this was somehow a daring commando raid by a well-prepared anti-capitalist ninja. It was not even a common troll. Just a failure to grasp how foreign the Samizdata culture is by a casual visitor.
I’d urge Carol to stick around and learn our language, and you to be prepared to regard someone who doesn’t agree with you as a potential friend, rather than a fanatical enemy agent to be exposed and destroyed. Strange customs are invigorating.
I googled Nike+Marianas and couldn’t find any connection, Carol.
And as guy herbert has so abley uncovered the real story of debt bondage in the Marianas (which are in the S Pacific, more specially, the Oceania region), it only remains to add that debt bondage is one of the gruesome things about people smuggling and prostitution rackets and there is evidence that these also operate in Britain.
As guy herbert says, Nike is not in this line of business. Attempting to tar them with the same brush is a typical communist tactic. Weak. Weak. Weak.
guy herbert – No, it didn’t cross my mind that carol is a troll. Nor that she has the displine to commit a commando raid nor the nimbleness of thought necessary for a ninja attack. She had the dull sincerity of the truly committed to stupid ideas. I do not find my friends, or potential friends, among such people.
Thanks for the invitation Guy. I had no idea that I would be dragged into the economics of sweatshop labour when I first posted on Cameron. I initially mentioned Nike in the context of sweatshops, it seems you are only concerned if the workforce in those sweatshops is indebted labour – which is why I mention the Marianna Islands. If I gave the impression that Nike was engaged in this, apologies. I should add that Nike and others have become rather sensitive to the charges that the labourers in these countries are being treated roughly in sweatshops and do perfunctorily question employees on their working conditions. In one sweatshop in India, once the employees broke their silence on the company’s treatment of them, the sub-contractor was dropped which meant that a whole bunch of workers lost their jobs. That is something the sub-contractor will certainly remember when bidding for a lucrative contract next time.
One rather unpersuasive argument justifying the rightness of the sweatshops in this region of the world is that the peasants would be picking garbage, a far worse alternative. So working in a sweatshop is seen as progress, they have ceiling fans after all! I don’t think that working in conditions that are inhuman or starving is much of a choice! It helps to highlight why those who do take up employment in these sweatshops do so. Hobsons choice. Work or starve and underpins, in my mind, what is wrong with capitalism.
COI, I consider myself fortunate not to count you as one of my friends too, you must light up your social scene like a wet firework. No doubt we will cross swords again in this rather strange and wondrous place.
You’re right COI—she’s a shill.
Oh, I’m sick of being The Chocolate Orange Inspector. It is wearing thin as a joke.
Interesting how the left predictably comes up with gratuitous insults rather than rational arguments.
Carol writes: I had no idea that I would be dragged into the economics of sweatshop labour when I first posted on Cameron.
You didn’t? Then why did you bring up the subject of sweatshops? We were talking about British politics and the new Conservative leader.
I initially mentioned Nike in the context of sweatshops, it seems you are only concerned if the workforce in those sweatshops is indebted labour – which is why I mention the Marianna Islands.
This doesn’t seem to be a sentence. But as you introduced both Nike and sweatshops, what is your point? Then you add then that I am “only concerned if the workerforce in those sweatshops is indebted labour. ”
Wrong. I’m not interested in sweatshops at all. I don’t even concede that the places we’re talking about are indeed sweatshops. And then you inexplicably throw in the Marianas – all in one confused, angry sentence.
One rather unpersuasive argument justifying the rightness of the sweatshops in this region of the world is that the peasants would be picking garbage, a far worse alternative. (Which region of the world are we in now? Factories in Indonesia, or have we gone over to Oceania again?)
It’s not unpersuasive at all. If I were an Indonesian landless peasant, it would certainly persuade me. The alternative is not being an airline pilot or working as an executive at an air-conditioned international bank on $85,000 a year. The alternative is trawling through stinking, steaming hot garbage mountains in the equatorial sun. That is inhuman. Factories offering steady jobs paying rates applicable in the local economies offer hope and a future.
So working in a sweatshop is seen as progress. Yes.
Then, dear reader, we get to the nub: Work or starve and underpins, in my mind, what is wrong with capitalism.
And there we have it: A plea for Communism. Quelle surprise!
You add: No doubt we will cross swords again …
No we won’t. One can’t argue against dull brute stupidity. And your English is too poor. Comprehensive school then a sociology degree from a tenth rate university? Work in the public sector do we?
Verity why don’t you just take a chill pill?
I am afraid it is you that is angry dear and over what exactly? If you can’t take the heat stay out of the kitchen.
From the start it should have been obvious to posters that I was coming from the left on the issue of Cameron and his “conservatism with a conscience” policies – I really wanted to highlight how they were just hollow. The so-called shift to the left of New Labour is a mere illusion, hence the reason for bringing up the topic of Nike, as Cameron had used them as an example of what this new caring conservatism will look like… that all seems to have been lost on you.
Talk about dull, brutish stupidity! I would have thought you would have relished the opportunity to demolish my arguments but instead you choose ad hominems. Poor child.
Guy saw my position almost immediately but it’s taken you this long to figure out that the bottom line was “communism”. Pull your socks up, old bean.
And by the way I wasn’t referring to you but COI when I said that no doubt we would cross swords again. Whatever gave you that impression?
Marks for fisking. 2 out of 10. Verity shows much potential but she must try harder.
… sighs, just read COI’s coming out statement again. Aren’t we clever Verity! When you are amongst friends why do you find it necessary to disguise your identity? Very strange. So you are annoyed because I exposed the stupidity of your premise for why sweatshops are good for people in the southern hemisphere? Good, because it was rather odious and your follow up argument bringing in airline pilots is dangling rather incoherently alongside it.
The “candidate list” (now further restricted by the 120 strong “A list”) will make any come back for pro freedom elements in the Conservative party difficult.
The “A list” (the bit about it being half female is not important) is the dream of men like the late Sir Edward Heath. Just what I would expect from a man of Mr Cameron’s background.
Nor is it wise (or “adapting to the situation” or whatever Guy said exactly) to rule out any free market in advance of an election (of course this makes a farce of the “policy reviews” but it is more than that).
So one comes into office and then (for example) one introduces tax relief on private medical cover – having said one would not.
Errrrr “Pull the other one it has got bells on”.
People elected without a mandate are not likely to be able to do much (even they wish to).
I remember being told not to worry about the “compassionate conservatism” of Mr Bush – it was clever packaging. Accept that it was not – it was wild spending.
Old style British people despised the “clever” and with good reason. A “clever” person seeks to trick others, whereas things that are worth doing can only be done honestly. “The ends justify the means” forgets that the means shape the end.
Perhaps most voters can not be convinced of the need to (for example) control government spending. But one should still try. I do not have great faith in most people – but I would still not seek to trick them, no good will come of it.
For if one is elected to office without having convinced the voters of some things (not everything, but some things) then it is not worth being elected to office – as one will not be able to do anything worth doing.
Unless (of course) one seeks office for the big car and the other perks – in which case one is a clever person.
So working in a sweatshop is seen as progress, they have ceiling fans after all! I don’t think that working in conditions that are inhuman or starving is much of a choice!
OK, Carol. Tell us what your alternative to this is. What do you suggest instead?
In the third paragraph of my comment above I missed out the word “moves” – as in ruling out “free market moves”.
The point is that (on health and much else) Mr Cameron is ruling out even modest free market moves.
We have heard “sharing the proceeds of growth before” – this is the Bush mantra.
Remember – a certain percentage of the surplus on social security, a certain percentage on tax cuts (although not taking so large a proportion of people’s money is hardly spending of course), a certain percentage on Mr Bush’s spending plans….
Of course the United States government (at least by some calculations) had a surplus in 2000 – there is no surplus in Britian. There is a large and growing deficit (even after Mr Brown’s P.F.I.s, Railtrack debts and other “off budget” tricks the deficit is already above 3% of G.D.P.).
As for “growth” – industry is already in decline. No doubt G.D.P. will eventually follow.
Some tax reductions do indeed produce more revenue (for example cuts on the higher rates of income tax – Mr Davis said that the case for a “flat tax” was unproven, but the case for getting rid of higher rates of income tax certainly has been). But control of public spending is vital.
As for the claim that public services can be made “good for everyone” (the central claim of Mr Cameron).
The best that can be said of this is that Mr Cameron is mistaken.
The Chocolate Orange Inspector was a dig at Cameron. I suspect most people knew it was me as I had been harping on about it elsewhere on this site.
Here is an unequivocal statement under my real fake name: Nike factories and factories that make footballs, T-shirts and similar items are good for people in the third world. These employees are no longer crawling over garbage mountains, which are, in effect, also giant compost heaps that are actually steaming – some of the children helping their mothers scavenge are in bare feet and no protection. Or scavenging along the gutters hoping to see a dropped coin, a cigarette butt from which the tobacco can be taken out and dried, along with the tobacco from other buts, and sold. Or trying to panhandle outside the big hotels and being continually chased away by the hotel itself and the police.
Many people queue overnight, or even for days, to get an interview for a job at a Western factory. It’s a wonderful step forward. It gives them a regular income and it gives them hope for the future. What you and your fellow bleeding hearts, carol, ignore is, this is their choice. No one is forcing them at gunpoint to queue for an interview. They are adults – not dependent children, as the left prefers to see the masses – and they make a choice to try to work in a factory.
These companies bring First World concepts to local economies. Not through governments, but through commerce. I know some have subsidised canteens for cheap, nutritious lunches. From my own experience elsewhere, I am guessing that there is either a company doctor, whose services are free, or some form of medical care.
This is capitalism at work. Not compassionate capitalism. Pragmatic capitalism.
No vapid, cheap sentimentality of UN servitude for studies, and experts and alms. A start on the road to capitalism provided by the real experts: capitalists. Some of these workers’ children will graduate from universities and go into the professions and wealth creation. All in one generation. I love it.
Tim, a less exploitative system – the Big Logos can afford to pay fairer wages and provide better working conditions and still make profits but poor pay and poor working conditions go hand in hand with their success.
Big retailers need to establish, at the minimum, a code of conduct for suppliers which will protect workers, this is beginning to happen. Unions – supporting unions instead of penalising them. Unions would ensure good work practices and fair wages for workers.
Some transferring of technology to the periphery would be good too, this would go some way to lifting the standards of living for many there. Instead of just taking advantage of low labour costs, the transfer of technology would be putting something into communites for the long term. Affordable products for the home market could then be made alongside those expensive products which are exported to the west.
carol – who is to determine “fairer wages”? You or the company’s CFO of the country?
“Unions – supporting unions instead of penalising them. Unions would ensure good work practices and fair wages for workers.” No. They will ensure that the manufacturers go elsewhere. Unions are destructive to capitalism. We should not be exporting the worst of the West – although certainly, it is the choice of the third world countries themselves whether they allow unions – unelected by the electorate – to gain ascendency over the electorates.
carol – You say, “the transfer of technology would be putting something into communites for the long term.”
One: what has been put into the “communities” (such a beloved word of the left) is large amounts of capital to build the factories, to buy the vehicles to transport the goods, and the pay the workers.
Two: Besides this, transfer of technology has been a constant for the last 30 years. It is one of the kingpins of development in the third world and a key point of negotiation and agreements between multinationals and governments. It is a given. It is old news. It has been happening for 30 years.
Net gain for the country: Jobs. Jobs for parents that allow children to stay in school and get a real education and go on to the professions and wealth creation. Infrastructure, as in roads, warehouses, communications. Plus transfer of technology.
I don’t like your Marxist term “periphery”. Periphery of what? To their own lives and families, these people are not on the periphery. They’re in the centre of their own lives. How dare someone from outside define them as “the periphery”?
Everything about the left is dehumanising and designed to create “the masses” – controlled by people far away.
Capitalism thinks locally.
a less exploitative system – the Big Logos can afford to pay fairer wages
Carol, do you also hang around upmarket restaurants telling diners they can afford to leave larger tips?
Verity, those huge mountains of garbage are exactly what is incentivising the very poor to work in those wonderful sweatshops with wonderful ceiling fans that you describe so lovingly! Capitalism thrives on competition and it needs reserve labour to ensure flexibility. That’s great for business. If a trans-national decided to set up shop in a rural community where people were able to provide for all their needs from the land, there would be no attraction to work there.
Also, the fact that the Asian economies were plunged into a near state of collapse due to market forces responding to the over-accumulation of capital seems to have escaped you. The only reason families are picking through garbage is because capitalism failed. Millions of people were laid of work and minimum wages dropped. Subsidies on food were removed while prices soared. They now pick through garbage.
Your understanding of the left is really stultifying.
It is not true that there has been a transfer of technology to the “third world” and the shoe industry is a good example of how labour intensive production is outsourced to the periphery. (I really can’t be arsed whether you like my use of the word “periphery” at all). So stitching and assembling takes place in the sweatshops but the parts that go into shoe anufacture are brought in from outside.
It’s refreshing to look at the world from another persons point of view and read comments that challenge your own assumptions. So if you don’t mind I am going to sojourn here for a while and breathe some new air.
Said with no sense of irony. Has it escaped you that is exactly what the corporate sweatshop does? Unbelievable.
carol – thank you for welcoming me to the world. I appreciate it.
It would help me to understand your post if you could explain your sentence: Your understanding of the left is really stultifying. How can my sadly ignorant appreciation of the left be stultifying? Appreciate it if you can explain this.
People have been picking through garbage for generations.
Before I respond to any more of your fake points, can I ask two things? A: Why are you up so late? Are you on welfare and don’t have to get up in the morning – or ever? Or B: are you a student in a college formerly known as “technical”?
For sure, you have never been to a third world country, although god knows, you would love to go and show them how much you understand them.
I am sorry to make accusations, but you are a cultural imperialist. You want to force your failed culture on the third world because you failed to force it onto the first world.
Fortunately, many third world countries, except those in Africa, enjoy the western mode of capitalism. I never tire of quoting the great P J O’Rourke, because it is one of the telling quotes of the age: when the water level rises, everyone’s boat goes up. I love that thought! I want all to prosper.
Guiding hands of command economies are toast.
Carol-As a real life example, look at Singapore. We smashed up and destroyed the unions(more or less), and look where we are now. The unions as they existed in the tubulent independence era only incited riots and social unrest that chased away employers and foreign investors.
In seeking better wages and ‘rights’ for their workers, they condemned their members to unemployment.
So LKY destroyed them. Accused them of being communists. Tossed them into jail. Amazingly, a fair number of the jailed came out and became good capitalists.
And look where we are now. If not for the sweatshops and ‘bicycle factories’, as I have heard such low capital, labor intensive, low technology, light manufacturing economies described, there would not be any advanced manufacturing or extensive service sector either, because such things are the steps on the path towards economic prosperity.
There is no other way. Every country that has gone the command economy route has failed, while (almost) every country that went capitalist has succeeded. The proof is in the pudding on the table in your bloody air-con room!
As for the observation that ‘Asian economies were plunged into a near state of collapse due to market forces responding to the over-accumulation of capital’, I beg to differ. There were reasons other than just economic policies that were the cause of the 1997 collapse. Note that my country Singapore, which was, and is still, staunchly capitalist, weathered the storm pretty well. If capitalism was the cause, shouldn’t we be living in scrap heaps by now?
Capitalism is a necessary, but insufficient condition for success. Culture and politics have their roles to play too, and it was exactly those factors that underpin the crisis.
But avoid capitalism, and all you will ever get is dust in your mouth. Enjoy eating dust, fool.
Carol writes – ‘It is not true that there has been a transfer of technology to the “third world”…’
Thank you Carol, for explaining everything to me with such clarity! I could never figure out why there were no cars, motorbikes, mobile phones, PCs, in Vietnam until you pointed that out…
On a side note, I just paid around US$80 to see a doctor in socialist Hanoi. Incredible! Whatever happened to those battalions of free doctors the Cubans used to send out to their communist allies?
Wobbly, and we should remember that Singapore was being developed with factories and infrastructure while it was still fighting communists in the jungle, and it was only just separated from Malaya as it then was and was a brand new country. When they separated from Malaya, they didn’t even have a police force or an armed services. The were having to put all that into place at the same time as developing a way to earn their living.
At a speech in India, LKY has identified the lack of factories as the one element holding India back now. He says that no country can get on the road to real development and wealth if it ignores the vital need for manufacturing. This is the one reason, LKY points out, that China is moving faster than India. It has set itself up to be a vast workshop and welcomed in the multinationals. As a result, it is manufacturing brand name products that the West is confident in buying.
India is only now waking up to the importance of having a thriving manufacturing sector – for all the obvious reasons.
I’m sure carol the commie could put the Mr Lee right. Indonesia, a country I absolutely loathe, is doing the right thing for its economy, meaning its people, by welcoming factories from the West. Those foreign companies will build roads and warehouses, using local labour – or as carol would have it exploiting, the workers by paying them a living wage.
Jakarta now may even be at the point of the government themselves building roads and industrial complexes to accommodate light manufacturing, to attract foreign companies. That’s what Singapore did in Jurong.
Steve Edwards – They’ll be wanting jet planes next. And a national airline. Oh, wait a minute …
Carol,
Big retailers need to establish, at the minimum, a code of conduct for suppliers which will protect workers, this is beginning to happen. Unions – supporting unions instead of penalising them. Unions would ensure good work practices and fair wages for workers.
When you say that they “need to establish”, what do you mean? Some already do this voluntarily, because they either have people owning them who wish to live that way, or choose to do so because they have premium customers who demand it. For those who choose not to, why should they establish it? To be quite brutal about it, what’s it to them?
What standards do you mean? I’d include one – that the workers are choosing to give their labour and not forced to work there in feudal slavery. I think that quite a few people would be happy with that definition. I doubt that any large retailers do this anyway – either they are run by people with a moral code that defies this, or they know that the PR consequences would be too terrible.
Some transferring of technology to the periphery would be good too, this would go some way to lifting the standards of living for many there. Instead of just taking advantage of low labour costs, the transfer of technology would be putting something into communites for the long term. Affordable products for the home market could then be made alongside those expensive products which are exported to the west.
Huh? So what do people in the Phillipines or China wear on their feet right now? I imagine that there already people making shoes for the people who live there, and making a profit. Just because they export shoes to the west, doesn’t mean that they aren’t producing for themselves, unless you can show me that they have reached some sort of capacity and everyone there is making shoes.
In neither of your points have you fully detailed what you propose. You suggest what you’d like to see, but lack specifics. Who is going to get the large retailers to sign a code of conduct? Who is going to transfer the technology?
I’m not saying that raising people’s living standards isn’t desirable, it’s just that there are many ideas of how to achieve this. “It would be good” is not a plan, it’s a dream, a desirable outcome. Work with the 5 Ws – “Who, what, when, where and why”.
No one needs any retailers or manufacturers signing up to someone’s ridiculous, politically correct (read ‘fascist) “codes of conduct”.
If people like their products and find them dependble, they’ll buy them. This will ensure that the people employed by them continue to enjoy regular income.
It’s called the free market and throughout human history it has worked better than any bossy-boots busying himself/herself with what is good for “the masses”.
Anyone who doesn’t like his working conditions is free to leave. If there aren’t any other sources of income around, he may prefer not to exercise that option. One assumes the employee is an adult and is capable of making his own calculations of what will be best for him and his family. He doesn’t need other people – foreigners at that! – doing his thinking for him.
Conscription If Mr. Cameron expects my self to be bound to his antisocial band namely a ‘conscripted binge drinking army’ with a ‘gun or rifle’ and expect me to use it on some one. I say let Mr. Cameron be the first to sample its affects or find onother way.
A gun or rifle only consumes the flesh by destruction and creates more negative emotions which are in turn a destructive, spiral spinning more and more out of control like its inventor and the fool who doesn’t think before he jumps..
I say stick it up your own rear end and let it off sir, if that’s your idea getting votes,
Will you be building a Berlin wall next and starting your own ‘cold war’? Why don’t you simply think before act.
Tech ‘Spiritual Philosophy’ get your act together not apart, then you will find peace and harmony will prevail in others, which is what you seek.