Sandy Sandfort wrote:
Yeah, the "sweatshop" workers' choices are lousy, but they have, in fact, made their choice to improve their lives by working in the "sweatshops" as opposed to starving on their own retched little plots of land. Good for them.
Of course you're ignoring the fact that sometimes the reason that they are "starving on their own retched little plots of land." is because of NAFTA and huge multinational corporations importing so much US factory farmed corn and other ag products into that country that they can't compete. We've been thru this discussion before. All else being equal, there is no logical reason in the world why they should be "starving on their own retched little plots of land." Peasant farmers have been making an adequate living on "their own retched little plots of land." for at least since before any recorded history, and, for that matter, can still do so. The average size farm in the world is only 7 acres, and if you talk to most of those farmers, they would much rather live and work on their little subsistence farms than move into a city and work in a factory. I myself lived for many years on a very small farm and most definitely, as soon as humanly possible, am going back to doing just that. Moving from your own piece of land in the country being you own boss to living in a hovel in the city working as a wageslave in a sweatshop for peanuts is not an improvement by any stretch of the imagination. Anyone who spends any time at all researching the conditions of peasant farmers in the 3rd world who leave their land and go to work in sweatshops would never come to the conclusion that they chose to do so. -- Harmon Seaver, MLIS CyberShamanix Work 920-203-9633 Home 920-233-5820 hseaver@cybershamanix.com http://www.cybershamanix.com/resume.html