7 ms·

I'm sympathetic to that idea, to some extent. Foreign workers would indeed be happy to get a marginal increase in their income, even if those wages and working

I'm sympathetic to that idea, to some extent. Foreign workers would indeed be happy to get a marginal increase in their income, even if those wages and working conditions are well below developed-country standards. But, then, aren't we just making a trade at that point? I will fire 100 local blue collar workers, and hire 100 foreign workers who will do their job for less. I hurt 100 people, help 100 people, and along the way pocket some extra cash for myself. I think most moral systems would have a problem with this. It is generally thought of as immoral to rend one person in order to help one other. (Yes, things get complicated when you hurt N people to help more than N people, depending on the number of extra people helped and the kind of hurt. For example, sacrificing soldiers in order to save an entire country. Generally speaking though, most moral systems have a problem with hurting people against their will except in extraordinary situations involving very large numbers. Does this trade situation qualify as that? I'm skeptical that is does.) There has to be a better way. Some way where we aren't harming local blue collar workers, but are still helping foreign nations develop, while giving those foreign nations on the path of strong worker protections and wages that we have here.

harryh 7y ago
It is generally thought of as immoral to rend one person in order to help one other. Not when it comes to buying things, which is what this situation is. Blue collar workers in the US (or other developed nations) don't have a moral demand on you to purchase their labor at the same rate forever. If someone across the street (or across an ocean) is selling the same product for less money it's perfectly fine to buy it from them instead. Do you think it's immoral when you, say, switch from Verizon to AT&T to get a cheaper rate on your cell phone plan?
- methodover 7y ago
  Yeah, this is another aspect of the debate I find myself challenging: Labor is different. Our human lives are different than a cell phone plan.
  - harryh 7y ago
    What do you think makes up most of the cost of a cell phone plan? Labor.
    - methodover 7y ago
      In regards to swapping cell phone plans, sure: If a cell phone company were to die because too many of their customers switched to a better competitor, that would be difficult for the employees of that company. But that's an entirely different situation than the matter at hand, where we're talking about the United States government's policies on trade and the impact on our entire labor class and their fate within our own borders. The entire point of an economy is to serve humanity. We're all participating in this circus to put food on our tables, provide for our children, grow, and enjoy life. We cannot lose sight of that fact. We have an obligation to see labor not as just cogs in a machine, but rather as constituents whose well-being we have an obligation to protect. (I have to say, and I'm sure you don't mean it, but you comparing a human being to a cell phone plan is among the more callous things I've read on these forums. It might behoove you to sprinkle a bit more empathy in your language, just a tiny bit.)
      - harryh 7y ago
        It's all the same though. In the vast majority of circumstances you aren't firing an individual American and hiring an individual from China. You're just choosing to buy something from a giant corporation that manufactures goods in China instead of a competing giant corporation that manufactures goods in the US. Switching cell phone providers is just like switching from American Giant (made in America) to some other purveyor of sweaters that manufactures overseas. Are you saying that you think you have a moral obligation to buy things made by American workers, who are universally wealthier and have access to a much stronger social safety net, than Chinese workers? If anything it seems like it would be the opposite to me.
        methodover 7y ago
        This discussion and the original post has been what the United States government’s trade policy ought to be, not the morality of an individual’s purchasing choice (say, to buy a Chinese-made sweater or a US-made one). I think the question you’ve asked is interesting, but I don’t see how it’s pertinent to the matter at hand.
- tengbretson 7y ago
  > If someone across the street (or across an ocean) is selling the same product for less money it's perfectly fine to buy it from them instead. The people across the ocean in this instance are working obscene hours under deplorable conditions. When you take your business to these overseas firms you are effectively telling your local workers "these are the conditions I think you ought to be working under." Except it's even worse because you don't have the stones to say it to their face.
  - harryh 7y ago
    In some cases they are, but as the people across the ocean have gotten richer (much much richer) their working conditions have improved dramatically. Success!
    - claudiawerner 7y ago
      Have they? The state of labour laws in the countries which produce cheap goods sold to Western countries seem generally poor, especially given the timeframe for which this has been happening. It's also suspect how work is treated merely as a matter of wage and benefits rather than a question of the nature of wage labour itself.
      - harryh 7y ago
        Have they? Unequivocally yes! Understanding this ironclad fact is one of the most important things to understand about changes in the world economy over the last 50 years. China has gone from a country full of subsistence farmers to a country of middle class wage earners.
        claudiawerner 7y ago
        That wasn't really the question being asked - the question concerned more, whether, for instance, people feel happy working for wages, under working conditions that seem set fifty years in the past to any Western observer, and what the quality of life is like in conjunction with the regimes which typically administer these policies. The argument, to me, seems rather similar to the argument the English bourgeoisie made during the industrial revolution - and it rings even less true when you realize that this new wage earning class is largely not composed of the same group of people who were subsistence farming. From the perspective of a critic of wage labour (and class society), one form of domination in substinence farming has been replaced by arguably a quantitatively better but much more cunning and egregious one, which disguises its aims through the mantra of freedom to buy and sell - and you won't find many people who would give up that freedom now. That doesn't mean the freedom is desirable, it just means it's better than what came before.
- tomatotomato37 7y ago
  The thing is that US workers have a lower bound on the fee they can charge for their labor, due to minimum wage laws. Those laws were enacted because we as a country believe there's a moral duty to ensure a minimum quality of life for it's working citizens (and in extension humans in general). Letting industries who would historically underpay US workers to instead just underpay some other countries workers defeats the whole purpose of those minimum wage laws, causing a worse quality of life then if nothing was done at all. Countries that want to treat its citizens well need to reign in that globalist behavior.
  - harryh 7y ago
    The current US unemployment rate is 3.5% which is near all time historical lows. Virtually no one is unemployed in the US because of the combination of international trade and minimum wage laws.
    - tomatotomato37 7y ago
      That's because most vulnerable workers are either skirting labor laws through the gig economy or have given up and dropped out of the labor pool altogether, which means for whatever reason they don't get counted in the unemployment rate
      - harryh 7y ago
        To whatever extent that is happening, there is no evidence that it has happening more today than it was happening 50 years ago (before globalization) so comparing the unemployment rate of today to the unemployment rate then is still a perfectly valid comparison.
    - methodover 7y ago
      There are more ways to measure the health of the American worker than the BLS' unemployment rate. What about other statistics? Things like like... - Wage growth over time - Health outcomes - Savings rate - Credit card debt rate - Feelings about the future (are we on the right track/wrong track?)
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  >Do you think it's immoral when you, say, switch from Verizon to AT&T to get a cheaper rate on your cell phone plan? This is an astounding comparison that seems to aim to reduce questions of exploitation down to questions of personal morality, rather than the actual historical development of the systems we have and the ones we like to see. Is it immoral to switch phone providers? I don't think so. Is the system in which switching a cell phone provider can actually harm labourers morally questionable, even on the grounds that liberal egalitarians set out? For sure.

harryh 7y ago

It is generally thought of as immoral to rend one person in order to help one other. Not when it comes to buying things, which is what this situation is. Blue collar workers in the US (or other developed nations) don't have a moral demand on you to purchase their labor at the same rate forever. If someone across the street (or across an ocean) is selling the same product for less money it's perfectly fine to buy it from them instead. Do you think it's immoral when you, say, switch from Verizon to AT&T to get a cheaper rate on your cell phone plan?

methodover 7y ago
Yeah, this is another aspect of the debate I find myself challenging: Labor is different. Our human lives are different than a cell phone plan.
- harryh 7y ago
  What do you think makes up most of the cost of a cell phone plan? Labor.
  - methodover 7y ago
    In regards to swapping cell phone plans, sure: If a cell phone company were to die because too many of their customers switched to a better competitor, that would be difficult for the employees of that company. But that's an entirely different situation than the matter at hand, where we're talking about the United States government's policies on trade and the impact on our entire labor class and their fate within our own borders. The entire point of an economy is to serve humanity. We're all participating in this circus to put food on our tables, provide for our children, grow, and enjoy life. We cannot lose sight of that fact. We have an obligation to see labor not as just cogs in a machine, but rather as constituents whose well-being we have an obligation to protect. (I have to say, and I'm sure you don't mean it, but you comparing a human being to a cell phone plan is among the more callous things I've read on these forums. It might behoove you to sprinkle a bit more empathy in your language, just a tiny bit.)
    - harryh 7y ago
      It's all the same though. In the vast majority of circumstances you aren't firing an individual American and hiring an individual from China. You're just choosing to buy something from a giant corporation that manufactures goods in China instead of a competing giant corporation that manufactures goods in the US. Switching cell phone providers is just like switching from American Giant (made in America) to some other purveyor of sweaters that manufactures overseas. Are you saying that you think you have a moral obligation to buy things made by American workers, who are universally wealthier and have access to a much stronger social safety net, than Chinese workers? If anything it seems like it would be the opposite to me.
      - methodover 7y ago
        This discussion and the original post has been what the United States government’s trade policy ought to be, not the morality of an individual’s purchasing choice (say, to buy a Chinese-made sweater or a US-made one). I think the question you’ve asked is interesting, but I don’t see how it’s pertinent to the matter at hand.
tengbretson 7y ago
> If someone across the street (or across an ocean) is selling the same product for less money it's perfectly fine to buy it from them instead. The people across the ocean in this instance are working obscene hours under deplorable conditions. When you take your business to these overseas firms you are effectively telling your local workers "these are the conditions I think you ought to be working under." Except it's even worse because you don't have the stones to say it to their face.
- harryh 7y ago
  In some cases they are, but as the people across the ocean have gotten richer (much much richer) their working conditions have improved dramatically. Success!
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
    Have they? The state of labour laws in the countries which produce cheap goods sold to Western countries seem generally poor, especially given the timeframe for which this has been happening. It's also suspect how work is treated merely as a matter of wage and benefits rather than a question of the nature of wage labour itself.
    - harryh 7y ago
      Have they? Unequivocally yes! Understanding this ironclad fact is one of the most important things to understand about changes in the world economy over the last 50 years. China has gone from a country full of subsistence farmers to a country of middle class wage earners.
      - claudiawerner 7y ago
        That wasn't really the question being asked - the question concerned more, whether, for instance, people feel happy working for wages, under working conditions that seem set fifty years in the past to any Western observer, and what the quality of life is like in conjunction with the regimes which typically administer these policies. The argument, to me, seems rather similar to the argument the English bourgeoisie made during the industrial revolution - and it rings even less true when you realize that this new wage earning class is largely not composed of the same group of people who were subsistence farming. From the perspective of a critic of wage labour (and class society), one form of domination in substinence farming has been replaced by arguably a quantitatively better but much more cunning and egregious one, which disguises its aims through the mantra of freedom to buy and sell - and you won't find many people who would give up that freedom now. That doesn't mean the freedom is desirable, it just means it's better than what came before.
tomatotomato37 7y ago
The thing is that US workers have a lower bound on the fee they can charge for their labor, due to minimum wage laws. Those laws were enacted because we as a country believe there's a moral duty to ensure a minimum quality of life for it's working citizens (and in extension humans in general). Letting industries who would historically underpay US workers to instead just underpay some other countries workers defeats the whole purpose of those minimum wage laws, causing a worse quality of life then if nothing was done at all. Countries that want to treat its citizens well need to reign in that globalist behavior.
- harryh 7y ago
  The current US unemployment rate is 3.5% which is near all time historical lows. Virtually no one is unemployed in the US because of the combination of international trade and minimum wage laws.
  - tomatotomato37 7y ago
    That's because most vulnerable workers are either skirting labor laws through the gig economy or have given up and dropped out of the labor pool altogether, which means for whatever reason they don't get counted in the unemployment rate
    - harryh 7y ago
      To whatever extent that is happening, there is no evidence that it has happening more today than it was happening 50 years ago (before globalization) so comparing the unemployment rate of today to the unemployment rate then is still a perfectly valid comparison.
  - methodover 7y ago
    There are more ways to measure the health of the American worker than the BLS' unemployment rate. What about other statistics? Things like like... - Wage growth over time - Health outcomes - Savings rate - Credit card debt rate - Feelings about the future (are we on the right track/wrong track?)
claudiawerner 7y ago
>Do you think it's immoral when you, say, switch from Verizon to AT&T to get a cheaper rate on your cell phone plan? This is an astounding comparison that seems to aim to reduce questions of exploitation down to questions of personal morality, rather than the actual historical development of the systems we have and the ones we like to see. Is it immoral to switch phone providers? I don't think so. Is the system in which switching a cell phone provider can actually harm labourers morally questionable, even on the grounds that liberal egalitarians set out? For sure.