Quote: ( <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control=45">www.mises.org/freemarket_...control=45</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> )<br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>Factory owners in Bangladesh once faced international sanctions unless they stopped using child labor. Oxfam, the British charity, reported that the factory laid off 30,000 child workers. The children then took more dangerous jobs, with thousands becoming prostitutes or starving. <br><br>Like their English counterparts of 150 years ago, the unions who pinned Ms. Gifford to the wall have a dark, hidden agenda. Their goal is not to help children; it is to cut off imports, rip off American consumers, and pad their own wages at everyone else's expense. They have no plans for dealing with the problems of Honduras's children after they've been sent packing. As a union official told the New York Times, "I'm not an economist."</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> [my comment: Nice going, libs. Pushing all those children out into the cold.]<br>---------------------------------------<br><br><br>You guys need to step back and look at what you're saying. It's outrageous. I have simply proposed that I have the freedom to...<!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>buy a pair of shoes.</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <br><br>You apparently are proposing I should not have that freedom. Here again is this typical liberal (and neocon also, by the way) bizarre presumption to consign the freedoms of others unto themselves.<br><br>You would very much like to consign my freedom unto yourself (or some representative of your views) in order to make the shoe-buying decision for me. An all-pervasive micro-managing Orwellian government that literally decides for me which shoes I can buy? Is it also going to tell you what color they should be? Or when to blow your nose?<br><br>I don't need any help on the moral merits of who I do business with in the market place. As a matter of fact, I happen to believe if I see a guy selling shoes and he's not being paid much and is working long hours (some third worlders are pulling seventeen hour days) the best way to help him is to give him my business.<br><br>What happened in Honduras, for example, is that all these factories began to spring up and it has empowered the employees who can now play the employers against each other to a much greater extent. The employers are now competing for employees.<br><br>People like me are empowering these employees by increasing demand for their products and thus making the employee a more important player. The only thing standing in the way of much greater freedom and prosperity is the centralized government. <br><br>As long as people like you folks, keep propping up the tragic consensus about the need for coercive centralized government (a consensus that still generally prevails in most places), the corrupt, obstructive bureaucrats will keep the general workforce from dramatically increased prosperity. <br><br>In other words, wherever there is a centralized govt. to curry/buy/bribe favors...an unfair 'inside track' develops, which allows an elite few to prosper disproportionately. Get rid of the centralized government, and you eliminate all of that injustice.<br><br>I looked over some of those links that were provided and it was strictly propaganda stuff with a lot of the info being 'fudged'. In the few sample cases I looked at, of their claimed income figures (Vietnam, for example)...you can cross reference (with US Sate Dept. info, for example) and see that even the fudged numbers at these propaganda sites, work out to be average income levels.<br><br>Nike was paying five times the average income for similar jobs in Indonesia, at one point. <br><br>Listen carefully-- I'm not saying these employers are the epitome of moral distinction. I am saying that the alternative that people like yourselves are proposing <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>-a world wide authoritarian micro-managing Orwellian dictatorship that has bureaucrats who barely know how to spell their own name setting prices and wages from some remote location-</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> is a huge and tragic disaster in the making AND a beautiful windfall for the PTB who love, love, love any and all centralized control mechanisms (for their nefarious world domination schemes). <br><br>Remember, the topic I was raising here was about resisting tyranny. <br><br>------------------------------<br><br>Here is another quote:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.mises.org/story/628">www.mises.org/story/628</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>In the last few years, the Global Alliance for Workers and Communities (which includes the International Youth Foundation, Nike, Gap, Penn State University, St. John’s University, and the ubiquitous World Bank) has conducted several studies of Nike’s contract employment practices and conditions at its contractors’ facilities in different countries. The studies have included detailed interviews of several thousand workers and have been published at
www.nikebiz.com. Global Alliance’s studies on Thailand and Vietnam were released in September 2000 and are representative of the group’s findings. The report on Thailand revealed that Nike’s Thai workers want training in new skills as well as in life skills, such as parenting. Supervisors were rated as good by 70 percent of the workers; 72 percent thought their income was fair. The job benefits available to the Thai toilers include free annual physicals; uniforms and clothing; a clinic and health service; a canteen stocked with food, recreation and entertainment; and transportation. Where’s the exploitation? <br><br>Similarly, the Vietnamese laborers wanted better skills (tailoring and crafts for the women, and technical skills for the men). Most thought the factory was a "good place to work" and planned to continue at least three years; 85 percent felt safe at the factory. Compared to farm work, the factory workers thought that the Nike shop offered a more stable career and higher income. So much for that "sweatshop." It appears that the concept "sweatshop" is what the philosophers would call operationally unsound. </em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <p></p><i></i>
by rothbardian » Tue May 30, 2006 10:17 pm 
