A belated post linking to the January 15th results will be accepted if it also links to all entries nominated for…

A belated post linking to the November 6th results will be accepted if it also links to all entries…

A belated post linking to the November 6th results will be accepted if it also links to all entries…

A belated post linking to the November 6th results will be accepted if it also links to all entries…

A belated post linking to the November 6th results will be accepted if it also links to all entries…

A belated post linking to the November 6th results will be accepted if it also links to all entries…

First off…&nbsp any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here.&nbsp Die spambots, die!&nbsp And now…&nbsp the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Unilateral? Riiiiiiiiiiiiight by Four Right W…

First off…&nbsp any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here.&nbsp Die spambots, die!&nbsp And now…&nbsp here are all the links submitted by members of the Watcher’s Council for this week’s vote. Council links:Academic…

With all the noise on Fair Trade and Fair Standards, Nike, and their subcontractors are actually willing to impose them. One of the reasons is to destroy the local competition or manufacturers that they deal with, where the workers are paid even less than in the Nike factories.

It suits these sub-contractors to Nike and Nike itself to drive up these theorised costs of their lower cost competitors driving them out of business and their workers out of jobs. Workers who generally work in worse conditions and lower pay in locally owned companies.

First Worlders take it for granted that they have safety nets like social welfare and unemployment insurance. We third worlders don’t necessarily have that and we view your aid packages with suspicion – one more way to coerce us, for example, to endure your farming subsidies that 80% of which go to funding 10% of your richest farmers to flood our markets.

As for how sweatshops fit in – Philippe Legrain in Open World describes further the process of industrialisation that occurred in South Korea on these very sweatshops. Starting with bras and shoes, the workers too were paid lower wages in comparison to First Worlders, but more than those of their bretheren on farms and for comparatively shorter working hours and better conditions. Further still, their workers and other local industries gained new skill knowledge brought by these foreign industries. All at the same time being more able to send their children to school instead of being more likely to drag them to work in the field.

Over time this advanced to more value adding and higher skilled jobs with better pay and more diversification, so much so that eventually South Korea is now on the High-Tech frontier, with an accompanying fall in the output of cheap shoes and bras, while the sweatshops disappeared because of economics – not legislation.

The brutal truth is that industrialisation can only take place through hardship and sweat, as industrial history reflects unpleasant working conditions that existed throughout Europe, the US and Japan as these First Worlder nations industrialised.

This process can be voluntary, or it can be the brutal forced processes as seen under Communist Russia. $1 trillion of aid and five decades later hasn’t exactly seen much industrialisation in the intended recipients. This is instead more likely leverage money.

It is also wrong to apply the same environmental and social standards to an unskilled workforce that a highly skilled one like, say, Norway’s is. Our poor nations productivity and production bases simply cannot support the costs that a First World nation populace can incur. And price increases unsupported by productivity increases is a recipe for inflation and national disaster.

Over time, as the situation improves and we can afford it, so we will likely implement some of your much desired legislation you want to force on us, but not by the force of your misguided good will. And don’t tell me that you want to preserve our way of life either – millions of people packed into tiny shacks without proper work is not a lifestyle one wants to stay in.

All their dreams and hopes smashed on the funeral pyre
I will never give in until the day i die
Get myself some independence
Carve out a future with my two bare hands
Oh my friend, oh my friend, oh my friend

Somewhere tonight out on the street
Somewhere beneath this city’s heat
In the eyes of strangers who pass me by
Life is cruel and so unkind
Oh, oh the spirit of ’76

-The Alarm

I don’t think anyone is advocating that Cambodia remain a worker’s hell hole. What I think the debate centers on is whether or not that change should be more organic (I hate that word but can’t think of another at the moment) as opposed to more artificial. Should the change in working conditions be gradual thereby setting a foundation within the society or should they be uprooted and replaced with those found in developed nations?

Serpent –

I would say that the scenario you’ve outlined is not slavery. By definition, slavery is an act of force. You’ve outlined a situation of choice. In essence, your scenario invovles deferred compensation while acting as a servant/companion. If the nature of the relationship is clear upon commencement and does not divert from those agreed upon limits, then I do not see the harm though it’s not a situation I would ever choose.

If Nike were a Cambodian firm, and every penny profit they made from these sweatshops stayed in Cambodia and was spent in Cambodia, then maybe the analogy with early industrial europe and the US would hold.

And if conditions in our (western)factories were wrong enough to change 100 plus years ago, what makes them right in Cambodia now?

Thatâ??s a good point Ms. Oberwetter.

But it doesnâ??t really answer the question I posed unless you tell me whether you consider the enlistment system of the Military immoral or not?

Essentially what I am getting at is Slavery immoral even if the Slavery is consented to voluntarily? If an individual considers it better (more beneficial) to be a slave then to be a freeman is slavery still wrong in any sense?

Yesterday I linked to a post by Radley Balko regarding a Nick Kristof column on foreign “sweatshops.” I think that post has lessons for Americans regarding illegal immigration. The point of the post (and of Kristof’s column) was that so-called…

Imagine the sticker shock if everyone in the world were paid what we “believe” they should be paid. Of course everything looks better on paper than in practice.

Take West Virginia’s coal mines, for example. We didn’t demand the mines shut down; the workers continued to work and feed their families and changed the industry from within.

Perhaps we should be happy that a few people are able to feed their children and attend school rather than facing a lifetime of 20 or 30 strangers a day humping away at them.