On Sat, 20 Oct 2001, Jim Choate wrote:
* "Low wage" compared to _what_?
What it takes to have reasonable living standards and sufficient resources to help ones children do better than themselves.
Reasonable? Well, compared to dying of malnutrition, anything is "reasonable". After that, it's mostly a matter of letting economic growth do its deed.
Because if the producers allow this behaviour they put themselves out of business.
OTOH, dismal civil rights conditions make a country a hostile, high risk environment to investment capital. That gives a reasonable incentive to the government/dictator to do something about those rights violations. A similar argument holds for credit ratings and the subsequent cost of foreign loaning.
If the market were open, it isn't. The reality is that the market is controlled in such a way as to keep the status quo. This ensures the political, social, and economics supremacy of a small minority at the expense of the many.
And guess what? Part of globalization is getting the fundamental human rights and civil liberties infrastructure in place in these countries.
This bozo can't tell the difference between a 'socialism' (which is what he's describing) and a 'dictatorship'. Sounds more like he's begging the question.
Sure, they're separate. That by no means implies that socialism is stable or that it could be kept from degenerating into a dictatorship. Cf. Hayek. Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:decoy@iki.fi, tel:+358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front openpgp: 050985C2/025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2