To just about anyone with an understanding of economics this isn't exactly new information. The attempt to lower barriers to the movement of commodities has been a long process stemming back centuries really. Rarely, though, are the barriers to the movement of people discussed. There has never been in the entire history of the world any economy that was entirely open/free - there have always been regulations; however, it has always been decidedly more difficult for people to move than for commodities to move. The point I'm making here is not to try to drag out the necessity of the free movement of persons, but rather to point out that the so-called "free trade" movement is really only about commodities, and not about people, which makes the process disingenous."In short, these trade deals are designed to make sure that an autoworker in Detroit has to compete head to head with an autoworker in China, and that anything obstructing this competition is removed.This may look like free trade, but it is only half the picture. The trade pacts have done little or nothing to remove the extensive licensing and professional barriers that prevent foreign doctors, lawyers, economists, and journalists from competing on an equal footing with their counterparts in the United States. While the corporate CEOs are invited into the planning sessions, if not the actual negotiations, to ensure that barriers to competition with Chinese autoworkers are eliminated, there is no comparable effort to ensure that barriers to Indian doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc., are eliminated. If U.S. trade negotiators approached the highly paid professions in the same way they approached the auto industry, then they would actively be trying to uncover all the factors that prevent direct competition between U.S. professionals and their counterparts in the developing world, and then construct trade agreements that eliminated these barriers. They would be asking hospitals, law firms, and universities what is preventing them from doubling, tripling, or quadrupling the number of doctors, lawyers, and economists from developing countries working in their institutions. They would also be asking the trade negotiators from Mexico, India, or China what obstacles prevent them from sending hundreds of thousands of highly skilled professionals to the United States.This does not happen. In fact, the exact opposite happens."
The reasons for this are patently obvious. If a company can move their factory to Singapore, a quite authoritarian state, they know they can be ensured an ample supply of labor replete with a state that will back industry before backing the civil or political rights of laborers - which makes it a nice place to easily make money. The same can be said of any of the other 3 Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan) - great environments to make money in because of repressed labor rights. Move to China and you have the same story yet again, but with an even greater surplus of labor. This kind of begs the question of what I'm getting at, though.
My point is that if there was a truly "free" competitive global market then, yes, commodities would freely move between borders free of tariffs or quotas; however, people would move freely as well. The large reason why it's cheaper to generate a commodity in a "developing economy" is simply because those economies do not have much in the way of rights for their laborers - much less social welfare systems for the people at large - and this makes it easier to get workers who will work extremely hard for little to no pay. For those who've read my first blog post - Breaking Ground - you'll probably see here how easy it would be for the US to go this route if current trends continue, which is a point that Ariana Huffington makes in her book, Third World America.
The idea here is really quite simple. It's not a "free and competitive" global market if you have all of your heavy manufacturing sequestered away in authoritarian states where the people have no choice but to work at unfathomably low wages, in horrible work environments, with no social benefits at all - all the while they're unable to leave the country. It's effectively economic serfdom - or even slavery if you wanted to make the conflation, which wouldn't be entrely misplaced - whereby these people are beholden to make commodities for other people that they will never themselves be able to afford.
This is a point, by the way, that geographer Dr. David Harvey makes quite clear from a Marxist perspective - "capitalism never solves its problems, but merely moves them around geographically". Dr. Harvey makes the point based on a simple take from Marx's writing in the Grundrisse whereby “Every limit [to capital] appears as a barrier to be overcome” (Pg. 404 of the Penguin Books version of the Grundrisse - or view here). The reason for deindustrialization and the push toward globalization was that the democratic process in America actually made it possible for labor to act in concert to gain a greater share of the profits from the sale of the commodities they manufactured, which is a limit to capital that capital cannot abide, and therefore capital must seek a new avenue for growth. In this instance it was the movement to authoritarian states (like China or the Asian Tigers) that had a surfeit of laborers all of them desperate for work to make enough money to get by. Of course not all of them are overflowing with laborers.
Take Thailand as an example where there is little ability to unionize (according to the US State Department) and the country faces a "full employment" problem with unemployment hovering around 1.2% in 2010 (CIA World Factbook on Unemployment by Country). According to traditional Austrian-school economic thinking this sort of situation would create what's called "wage-push inflation" whereby the fact that since nearly everyone is employed if a company wants to expand they have to pay higher wages to lure someone from another company. Well in Thailand this doesn't hold true, seeing as it has 3% inflation, which is pretty low (CIA World Factbook on Inflation by Country). This is reflected in the fact that “Wage rates in Thailand are among the lowest in the world compared with similarly sized economies”. So if unemployment is low, but wages aren't increasing...how are they getting production out of the economy?
It might seem that I'm digressing here, though I do hope to talk on drug policy with regularity in this blog, but in fact I'm quite on point. Thailand is very much part of the free trade movement - in fact it was Thailand that bore the brunt of the East Asian financial crisis, which PBS did a bit on in their Commanding Heights series. Thailand allowed commodities to flow out of the country, but labor is very much controlled, and it's not as if countries like the US, the UK, or continental Europe are throwing open the doors and saying "come in - we'll give you a better life" to all of those who are forced with the prospect of the daily consumption of amphetamines just to keep food on the table.
Such is the nature of the free trade in commodities, but the confinement of labor. Capital's nature is to seek out a place where the most surplus labor value can be extracted, and Thailand is a fantastic example of this in play. It should be noted that when this process is maximized in Thailand that it stands to reason that the process will inevitably be forced upon other economies, which many Americans could likely sympathize with right now as they work longer and longer hours just to maintain their standard of living - forget getting ahead or moving up. Unfortunately the confinement isn't being limited to just people now, but also information.
The past year has shown the power of the internet, and especially social media networks. The revelations brought forth from Wikileaks cable releases showed deep corruption in some countries, and especially corruption wherever major corporations went (here's looking at you Pfizer re: Nigeria). The vast majority of the power rested with the social networks, however - I think it's self-evident how powerful they were and continue to be in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Israel, and notably for where this blog entry will now go - Turkey, and then the United Kingdom.
Turkey was to begin implementation of a massive set of internet filters in August of this year, which has apparently been postponed till at least November. These filters claim to largely seek to ban "adult" content, which while seen as normal right now in terms of parental controls for children is not seen as normal for an open society to impose on everyone. The ban, however, is not just blocking websites belonging to porn companies, but even websites that tangentially have porn posted on them. What defines, porn, of course is a topic unto itself (the infamous US Supreme Court ruling that you "know it when you see it") and it's the reason YouTube has been banned in Turkey for some time now. The new filters will also ban aggregation sites like Reddit, since one of the "subreddits" contains pictures posted by users of themselves in various stages of undress or sex. Prime Minister Erdogan has even gone so far as to bash Facebook, not for the typical reasons of a lack of privacy, but because of how easily "immoral" content can be posted to it. That might sound shocking to some, but what do you think is happening in the United Kingdom right now.
Today David Cameron (Prime Minister of the UK) delivered an address to parliament where he stated:
"Mr Speaker, everyone watching these horrific actions will be stuck by how they were organised via social media. Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. [And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them.]
"So we are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality. I have also asked the police if they need any other new powers."
Note: The bit in square brackets above was in the scripted statement but the prime minister did NOT actually say it in the House of Commons.
To make it scarier still, take this bit from a piece written in The Guardian.
"Cameron also said, according to a Guardian tweet, that he would look at asking online services to take down offending photos."
Note a similarity here? Where does the censorship stop is the question The Guardian asks, and rightfully so, because it begs the question of any censorship state - who decides what's banned? If you've ever seen the movie The Boat That Rocked (also known as Pirate Radio) you'll see a great example of how the UK used to work with regard to public decency laws. It's quite simply an incredibly slippery slope, and if engaged upon, it puts the United Kingdom in the same footing as Turkey - both seeking to control their own idea of "immoral" acts.
Now someone will get angry at me and claim this is a false equivocation - but I think not. The United Kingdom is, at present, not seeking to engage in a clamp down on "adult" content on the internet - or in general for that matter as anyone who's walked through many areas of London would find with the ease of obtaining escort servces. The censorship, however, is straight-out censorship. People have the right to be angry - there's great documentation of the extent of the narrative in the United Kingdom to paint the police and the establishment as victims of an underclass, but in reality it's quite the other way around (see: Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously). The only hope of expressing themselves, when the media recites the official narrative that the state and the establishment is under some sort of state of siege from the underclass, is for those people to communicate their ideas and opinions through other means.
Which means there might very well be Facebook groups dedicated to putting up graffiti art or meeting up to knock over some trash bins or smash some windows - banning it on Facebook won't silence it, but will just drive it underground where it will fester with even greater fervor than before. The obvious answer is to let them post about their meet ups, and then have police public relations officers or other social workers show up at the time and try to engage those who show up in a dialog. Don't dictate to them - listen to them - because the reason they want to smash things is because they feel it's the only way anyone will ever hear them.
Capitalism likes to feign that it's solving things and making them better when it touts the benefits of globalization, but in reality it just moved production to a place where it could be done cheaper through civil and political repression. Capitalism likes to keep up the illusion that this is not occurring, but the internet and social media makes it difficult to control those messages - hence the attempts to block the flow of information out of authoritarian states so the world can't see just how hard it is to work in a Nike factory making shoes or a Foxconn factory making pats for yet another Apple product. By hiding the true nature of production, and encouraging commodity fetishism, the materialism that pervades the consumerist nature of our current economy can be persisted for yet another quarter - short-term profits are the ones that matter after all.Yet there is a shouting in the night for relief from it all, and I'm not just talking about what Al Jazeera English so excellently documented in Bahrain.
We have to be wary of those that would seek to control the flow of information, for in their hearts, they dream themselves our masters. We have to understand the nature of the plight of workers in other countries that make it possible for us to buy yet another electronic gadget. We have to have solidarity with one another to see the dangers in letting our own individual greed and obsession with wealth and materialism define who we are, instead of just being a weakness.
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