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Lifeboat
Economics
In "In Praise of Cheap
Labor," Paul Krugman suggests that because Third World workers are better
off working in multinational factories than living off garbage dumps, we should
respect the multinationals for their contribution and avoid policies
establishing basic labor standards. But the comparison should be between what
was done and what should have been done, not what would have occurred
otherwise. Consider the following: A boat captain comes upon a drowning woman
in a lake, saves her but then rapes her.
Now according to Krugman,
since the woman is better off than she would have been otherwise, the boat
captain is to be admired and rewarded for what he has done. My complaints about
the lack of social justice in this case are simply dismissed by Krugman as
lofty self-righteousness.
There are
valid concerns as to the potential effectiveness of international labor
standards, but Krugman provides no theoretical or empirical proof that they
would not improve the lives of Third World workers. The capital owners (and
First World consumers) are collecting significant "rents" from these
activities. It may be possible to force them to share these more equitably with
the workers. Back to the example: If the boat captain is restricted to only
charging the woman $20, he may still choose to save her.
-- Shelburne
Robert
Just
Overprice It
I enjoyed Paul Krugman's
"In Praise of Cheap
Labor," but he seems to miss the point.
American consumers enjoy low
prices. That is why there is this boom in foreign manufacturing, and that is
why "Dollar Stores" are so popular. When a consumer can walk into a store and,
for only one dollar, purchase something that was manufactured in the Third
World, most consumers can understand why the person who made that item earns
only 60 cents an hour.
The moral
questions and outrage arise, however, when a consumer forks over $129 for a
pair of sneakers that were assembled cheaply in some Third World country.
American sneaker manufacturers, at this point, seem a tad gluttonous.
--Jim Rhodes
Nikenation
I agree with nine-tenths of
Paul Krugman's "In
Praise of Cheap Labor." We cannot meaningfully compare wages in Indonesia
and the United States. Nor can we often comprehend the far bleaker alternatives
to these jobs that exist in the industrializing Third World.
But
Krugman takes no account of how political violence can factor into this
equation. If arrests, imprisonments, and worse prevent workers in Third World
countries from making claims for better wages and working conditions, then
Krugman's system of global supply and demand starts to come unhinged. The moral
component to Krugman's argument is that we should not allow our squeamishness
to prevent Third World laborers from deciding that 50 cents a day making
Reeboks is better than a deadening, declining rural poverty. No argument here.
But if those workers are compelled to work for low wages by extraeconomic
threats, then that choice is an illusory one.
-- Joshua Micah
Marshall
Beat on
the Brat
I was enjoying Jacob
Weisberg's "Battered-Republican Syndrome" until he equated support for
parental rights with support for child abuse. I abhor child abuse and feel that
the abusers should be punished, but corporal discipline is different.
When a child continues to
behave in a way that can cause harm to himself or to other children, a spanking
can be extremely effective. I do support parents who don't believe in corporal
punishment--if they can raise their children well without an occasional
spanking, more power to them. But I think the most damage is done to children
who receive no discipline at all.
Weisberg
would have everyone believe that my wife and I are evil or maladjusted because
we have spanked our children. But we are highly responsible parents who have
very happy, confident, well-behaved children. They know that we love them and
they also know that we mean what we say. I'm disappointed in Weisberg's lapse
of logic and lack of understanding of what it means to be a good parent.
--Michael Fry
Caucasian Invasion
In "Human Clones:
Why Not?" Nathan Myhrvold makes the preposterous assertion that calls for a
ban on cloning amount to discrimination against people based on another genetic
trait.
Racism is the very thing
that makes human cloning insidious. Once human cloning is perfected, as
Myhrvold presumes it will be, who will utilize this method of procreation?
Those who have access to it. Who will have access to it? Those who live in
technologically advanced countries and have the financial resources to afford
such a luxury: Caucasian men.
Cloning
will merely present nervous Caucasian men with the means to attempt to ensure
that they aren't outnumbered by those threatening masses of other races on what
they consider their own territory. He defines genocide as "seeking to eliminate
that which is different," and argues that bans on cloning fall into that
category. But cloning does not produce "that which is different." It produces
the same product repeatedly. Bans against human cloning are the only protection
the average citizen has against Big Brother social and genetic engineering.
-- Marla
Caldwell
Frum the
Horse's Mouth
In the "Dialogue" on Gay Marriage, David Frum writes that "[c]hildren raised without
both biological parents are between two and three times as likely as other
children to commit crimes, to drop out of school, to get pregnant in their
teens, to be unemployed as young adults." During the welfare-reform debate, he
blamed the welfare system for the ills of single-parent families. Now he blames
liberalized marriage and divorce laws.
Notice that he doesn't say
that these problems are associated with children of divorced parents, only that
they're problems of children "raised without both biological parents." That
includes many illegitimate children, orphans, and abandoned children. Someone
truly interested in understanding the causes might want to know how many of
these children are raised in poverty, are born to drug addicts, or had fathers
who never married or even lived with their mothers. Someone without such a big
ax to grind might also look into a comparison of statistics for children raised
by one or two nonbiological parents, such as adoptees and stepparents, and
compare them with children raised by two biological parents in deeply unhappy
and/or abusive relationships.
But not
Frum. He's happy to toss out this statistic that folds in all possible
childhood abandonment, and pin the blame entirely on the reforms in the divorce
laws: "Only now are we beginning to appreciate the extent of the damage done,"
he writes. Fine. Let's just see if he remembers this next time the subject of
welfare comes up.
--Dan Schwarcz
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