Pax Americana

[HershOstropoler]

Originally posted by Kramerman
we aquired the philipines, and withdrew from there as well due to the bitterness of some of being 'dominated' by foreignors. some enjoyed the fact that we built up their infrastructure, and largely stayed out of their lives (we didnt force them to follow a religion, we didnt force them to give up their traditions, etc) unlike their passed rulers, domestic and foreign.

I have no idea whether you or pc have a more ****ed up view of history.

[Dom Pedro II]

we aquired the philipines, and withdrew from there as well due to the bitterness of some of being 'dominated' by foreignors. some enjoyed the fact that we built up their infrastructure, and largely stayed out of their lives (we didnt force them to follow a religion, we didnt force them to give up their traditions, etc) unlike their passed rulers, domestic and foreign.

Hmmm... apparently you are not familiar with the years of guerilla warfare between us and the Filipinos after we "acquired" them in 1898. We used some rather brutal tactics there...

[Kramerman]

Originally posted by Dom Pedro II



Hmmm... apparently you are not familiar with the years of guerilla warfare between us and the Filipinos after we "acquired" them in 1898. We used some rather brutal tactics there...

i am familiar with it. im talking about after that. by the mid 30s their commonwealth government was fairly autonomous. but this is totally beside the point i was trying to make that some were bitter against the US and some werent. everytime i try and make a point in few words, i leave things open to misunderstanding i suppose. by anymeans, the philopeans was not the best example, as the majority were bitter, and rightfully so, as they were a full fledged colony

[Ned]

Problem Child, I don't know where to begin with your long posts. But let me ask you why it is unfair to give people jobs in poor countries so long as the wages are fair by local standards even if the wages would be outrageously low if they were performed in the United States?

[Lord Merciless]

Originally posted by Ned
But let me ask you why it is unfair to give people jobs in poor countries so long as the wages are fair by local standards even if the wages would be outrageously low if they were performed in the United States?

Because that means his job will be eliminated!

[Ned]

Jobs will be eliminated in the location where the payscale is too high. However, the point was made that this was unfair, not to the Americans who lost their jobs, but to the people in poor countries who got them.

The question on the table is why this is unfair to the people who are given jobs for fair wages by local standards.

[Lord Merciless]

Originally posted by Ned
Jobs will be eliminated in the location where the payscale is too high. However, the point was made that this was unfair, not to the Americans who lost their jobs, but to the people in poor countries who got them.

The question on the table is why this is unfair to the people who are given jobs for fair wages by local standards.

A typical strawman's argument made up by those labor union hypocrites. They only want to appear compassionate and morally superior.

I can perfectly understand one's opposition to globalization if his job is on the line. However, I hate people who masquerade their true reasons with hypocritical lies.

[problem_child]

Originally posted by Ned
Problem Child, I don't know where to begin with your long posts. But let me ask you why it is unfair to give people jobs in poor countries so long as the wages are fair by local standards even if the wages would be outrageously low if they were performed in the United States?

You have people as young as ten working twelve hour days and coming away with only enough money to eat a meal of insufficient protein content (washed down with a glass of water contaminated by the local chemical plant), and sleep in a corrugated-iron shack before turning up bright and early the next day to do the same all over again. The child workers can't get an education because of their constant toiling, the adults don't save enough to be able to move on, healthcare depends on NGO charity, and beleive they need proper healthcare, the amount of coal-dust or carpet-fibre these people breeth in every day due to low (cheap) working conditions. It's a hampster-wheel situation, and saying 'Hell, all the whores on that street get treated like this for a dime a day, so what's the problem?' doesn't add fairness to the situation.

The reason why resource rich 3rd world nations have populations that are so much more cheaper to employ then Western populations, is because the leaderships that wanted to raise taxes to reinvest back into the local infrastructure and protect their industries, persue socialist policies and offer their people things like free-education and healthcare and so on- are against the interests of the powers that be (they are evil socialist/communist scum that must be stamped out lest they threaten America and it's all important interests). What's been good for America and other Western populations (enhancing the value of the workforce) isn't good for the populations of the mining/cash-cropping-demarcations (3rd world countries) because then they wouldn't be nice an cheap, then they might get rude and start having 'expectations' that might eat into capitalist profit-margins.

When you talk of corporate investment in the local economy its mostly the investment in building mines, highways and ports to get the goods out, extraction-infrastructure, it's not public hospitals and schools and b-roads connecting villages with clinics and all that other cozy-nestling-in-the-valleys shinny-happy-people-being-healthy-and-well type stuff that most people with children really do care about.
Look at the Philipines, that's a nation that's been close friends with America for awhile now, and there you do have big shinney towers, office blocks and mansions for the rich and so on, but then you also have more people scratching a living from Garbage Mountain, and a thriving sex-industry to service the US military because selling their bodies is the most valuable thing poorer people there have access to.

Cheapening population has been happening in South East Asia and Latin America for years (I won't even go there about Africa, anyway the Europeans have the longer history of screwing that continent up).
The effect of Globalization/USCorporate Hegemony is that corporations can shop around for the nations that sell their labour force the cheapest (reduced taxes, lower wages, deregulation, lower working standards, younger child labor etc). You assume that 3rd world populations from nations with often vast material wealth are some how naturally worth only a fraction of the value of Western populations, that somehow it is as it should be that twelve hours out of a Guatamalans life is worth only a buck or something whereas twelve hours out of a US citizens life is worth much much more, I disagree. If these nations hadn't been screwed over by the military-industrial capitalist imperium and their tyrant-lackies for the last fifty years, the time of one of them would by now be worth as much as your time.

However the oil/arms/industrialist fatcats that choose your governments for you wouldn't want that kind of a scenario, where would their markup come from then? Furthermore if the wealth hadn't been bled out of these countries as 'one-wayly' as possible they might start doing nasty degenerate things like processing their own raw materials instead of selling that to the corporate hegemony for pittences as well.

As for my concern really being selfish and out for my own working-value... hell yeah! Now that the capitalist mechanism owns the world and corporations have elevated themselves and their agenda above even the power of their own governments, the chickens are coming home to roost. Jobs are starting to flow from the West to the nations that have been cheapened for the past few decades where the people have to work damn hard for alot less.
Social investment in the 1st world is already on its way down (and out), in the UK our education, healthcare and transport systems are an underinvested mess, and it'll get worse, the government doesnt dare tax industry because then the corpos will swan off and build their factories elswhere. So instead they offer them welfare, tax-cuts, subsidies (especially arms-manufacturers)

Effectively the system that America has championed all these years, and the tactics it has employed in the ignorance of most of it's own population, has finally succeeded in lowering the value of human effort and society world wide. All that invasion, warlord-creation, coup facilitating, torture training, oppression, war-manufacuring and suger-coating of massacres has finally led us to undercut ourselves.

So, well done US.

[problem_child]

Originally posted by HershOstropoler


I have no idea whether you or pc have a more ****ed up view of history.

If you think I have a ****ed up veiw of history, that'd be because of all the ****ed up things you find when you get interested in looking at history's nasty ****ed up little corners.

[Ned]

PC, thanks for the simple answer - that the real problem is job loss in the United States. Not once in that long reply did you even begin to argue that giving a job to someone outside the United States at wages that were fair locally was unfair to the person who got the job.

Next question. From Joe Consumer's point of view, which is better: A TV set that costs $1,000 or the same TV set that costs $500? The answer is obvious. Now, is it "fair" to Joe Consumer to require him to purchase the $1,000 TV set instead of the $500 TV set where the only difference in the two TV sets is that the more expensive set was made in the US?

[HershOstropoler]

Originally posted by problem_child


If you think I have a ****ed up veiw of history, that'd be because of all the ****ed up things you find when you get interested in looking at history's nasty ****ed up little corners.

US foreign policy towards the 3rd world is mostly based on promoting crony capitalism - not free markets, not democracy . So far we agree.

The socialist "solutions" you come to however are another issue. While Allende, for example, was not a communist and the US support for Pinochet simply criminal, it took him just a few years to completely **** up his country's economy. Your "evil WTO" is completely off.

[problem_child]

Ned, what you're saying amounts to rationalizing that if a guy can buy a tv from a fence, then what's the injustice, a fence can sell the tv-set allot cheaper then a retailer that doesn't sell stollen goods. I am not American, and I'm not really arguing against economics, just against the screwed up stuff the USG has sponsored in order to make things cheaper, mostly for Corporate overheads, most of the difference is pocketed by them to increase profit-margin, they don't pass the savings on to you either. If 3rd world workers at least get a good deal and the money goes into their economy, then that's something, but it doesn't, most of it goes to paying of interest on huge debts aquired under tyrants to loan-shark arms supplying governments.

Hersh, Allendes government screwed up the economy because Nixon wanted it that way 'Make em scream', he used every economic-warfare trick in the book to make the socialists come apart. Allende wasnt just running the country, he was running the country against considerable US opposition, and those guys don't just sit on their hands if they have a problem with you, they make you scream.

[Ned]

PC, You seem to have a basic misunderstanding of economics. I would be willing to go through some of the basics with you if you wanted.

You also seem to be mixing politics with economics to a degree unwarranted, IMHO. For example, if there were three TV sets for sale, all identical, one made in the US, one in Japan and one in a third world country by a US company, you would say that we should buy only the Japanese TV set because US companies were involved in the making of the other two, and of course, the evil US government is under the contol of and the tool of these US companies.

Do I follow your reasoning correctly?

Clearly, whether giving a job at a fair wage to the person in the 3rd world country is unfair to either the 3rd world person or the US worker is totally irrelevant. It is unfair only because a US company is involved and US companies are evil.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by MrFun
You can apologize to me, Boris, Redjon, Starchild, Asher, Wittlich, and the other gay and bisexual Apolytoners over PM for using this remark.

Speaking of dragging others into something...

(A doing a name search really dredges up interesting things! )

[Verto]

What's the record for how long Poly has gone without some kind of "America is evil" discussion going on?