Is it enough?

[Cadre]

I argue day in, day out with a fellow in my literature class. He's very much so a conservative democratic. You see, we were discussing poverty/third-world/countries and their working conditions.

We got into the topic of child labour, and sweat shops. He was trying to convince me that it's good that Disney CORP funds numerous sweat shops in rural Haiti because there is nowhere else for these people to work (and that is better than being a bum on the street).

I kept arguing " You're wrong, simply because there are sub-standard working conditions and a severe lack of employment opportunities, does not mean one should have to work under tyrannous owners and in cruel conditions. It's like saying that I should compromise my goals in life because they seem hard to reach. I refuse to ever be satisfied by sub-standard working conditions. They can be so much better."

Am I wrong, or can this guy not see the light.

[Impenitent]

all that needs to be done is the exportation of socialist nanny state ideals... if the government only could enslave the company management and workers, er regulate the companies and insure that they all got paid union wages everywhere why we'd have business stop all over the planet...

[commonsense]

I wish a Haitian or Haitian-American would answer this question...(though I hate hyphenating!---immigrants to our country mostly recognize it is freedom that brought them here, and they embrace the founding philosophies now largely obscured from our own schoolchildren without sacrificing their past ethnic culture)
As an American with a studied appreciation of all of human history (read suffering) and our founding philosophies specifically, I would answer you this way:
The only thing that the U.S. should consider itself morally (and best practicably) to do is "export" its founding principles of strictly limited participatory govt, individual rights and economic freedom. (I wish we oould oust our socialist teachers and once again teach our children the same thing!)

A Haitian ex-patriate could tell you better, but Haitians hold the distinction of being the first free nation in the Caribbean.

Conditions for the fledgling island nation were different than they were for the largely educated colonial Americans whose entire history was dominated by participation and self-rule, but the recipe is always the same...

True, like your friend says, any job is better than none once a nation desires industrialization (and all inevitably do) but the concentration of power and a history of strawmen over a population with little education result in the usurpation of human and natural resources that pains your sensibilities and moral outlook, as well it should...

However, remember that everything that we can point to that is good in the modern world is the direct result of the human ingenuity that flourishes when man is left free to pursue his own family's best interest, and that is all owed to our American Founding Fathers and the post-renaissance philosophers who influenced them!

I beseech all humanitarian thinkers out there, especially those whose objectivity hasn't been corrupted by their livelihood depending on futilely working to serve their own bureaucratic self-interest...

to "think outside the box" when their humanitarian impulses, like yours, cause them to consider "what can be done" to aid their fellow man in international instances like the "sweat shop" situations you decry...

It would be far cheaper, more sincere and honest, and conceivably more effective if people like you were to organize an educational campaign, maybe even nothing more than air-dropping educational propaganda about the spiritual and economic benefits of freedom, and let this already historically-proven-to-be capable people work out their problems for themselves...

Before you "poo-poo" what I suggest, try opening your mind, and remember that when eliminating human suffering is truly at the heart of your motivation, you must also bear in mind that when you tax Americans and spend money forced from the wallets of working American families, you are creating a set of not immediately tangible after-effects that cause similar human suffering on many levels:
You take upwards of 50% of that working family's life blood and sweat, not to mention 50% of their time spent working to pay that tax which in turn, robs their daughter of her emotional needs of having either parent spending that time with her... (and all the sociological-scale problems that invites)

When you tax:
You create a concentration of funds geared toward some distant goal, that tempts many open hands along the way who might otherwise be engaged in using their creativity and ingenuity toward more honest and effective ends....this temptation creates and cultivates a "they all do it, so why shouldn't I" mentality that erodes our entire society's morality...
(being a shining light and example to the world cannot be underestimated)

When you tax:
You cultivate the notion in our children that power is a necessary evil that provides "what is best for us and all humanity" despite its obvious abuses...

When you tax:
You allow people to work for pay within a system "just to get a paycheck" even if they are not themselves overtly corrupt, but degrades our national spirit all the same because these people see the futility of their work and it lessens faith in all our systems and in our own humanity,
when people like you, with pure and sincere intentions could do efforts more efficiently and better motivated because the work was purely humanitarian...

I could go on, but all I ask of well-intentioned thinkers like you is to not doubt that the same hopefulness of spirit within you that allows you to believe there are solutions to human suffering,
can also allow you the strength to see there are even more hopeful and even more humanitarian "outside the box" solutions.

[Cadre]

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (commonsense,)
I wish a Haitian or Haitian-American would answer this question...(though I hate hyphenating!---immigrants to our country mostly recognize it is freedom that brought them here, and they embrace the founding philosophies now largely obscured from our own schoolchildren without sacrificing their past ethnic culture)
As an American with a studied appreciation of all of human history (read suffering) and our founding philosophies specifically, I would answer you this way:
The only thing that the U.S. should consider itself morally (and best practicably) to do is "export" its founding principles of strictly limited participatory govt, individual rights and economic freedom. (I wish we oould oust our socialist teachers and once again teach our children the same thing!)

A Haitian ex-patriate could tell you better, but Haitians hold the distinction of being the first free nation in the Caribbean.

Conditions for the fledgling island nation were different than they were for the largely educated colonial Americans whose entire history was dominated by participation and self-rule, but the recipe is always the same...

True, like your friend says, any job is better than none once a nation desires industrialization (and all inevitably do) but the concentration of power and a history of strawmen over a population with little education result in the usurpation of human and natural resources that pains your sensibilities and moral outlook, as well it should...

However, remember that everything that we can point to that is good in the modern world is the direct result of the human ingenuity that flourishes when man is left free to pursue his own family's best interest, and that is all owed to our American Founding Fathers and the post-renaissance philosophers who influenced them!

I beseech all humanitarian thinkers out there, especially those whose objectivity hasn't been corrupted by their livelihood depending on futilely working to serve their own bureaucratic self-interest...

to "think outside the box" when their humanitarian impulses, like yours, cause them to consider "what can be done" to aid their fellow man in international instances like the "sweat shop" situations you decry...

It would be far cheaper, more sincere and honest, and conceivably more effective if people like you were to organize an educational campaign, maybe even nothing more than air-dropping educational propaganda about the spiritual and economic benefits of freedom, and let this already historically-proven-to-be capable people work out their problems for themselves...

Before you "poo-poo" what I suggest, try opening your mind, and remember that when eliminating human suffering is truly at the heart of your motivation, you must also bear in mind that when you tax Americans and spend money forced from the wallets of working American families, you are creating a set of not immediately tangible after-effects that cause similar human suffering on many levels:
You take upwards of 50% of that working family's life blood and sweat, not to mention 50% of their time spent working to pay that tax which in turn, robs their daughter of her emotional needs of having either parent spending that time with her... (and all the sociological-scale problems that invites)

When you tax:
You create a concentration of funds geared toward some distant goal, that tempts many open hands along the way who might otherwise be engaged in using their creativity and ingenuity toward more honest and effective ends....this temptation creates and cultivates a "they all do it, so why shouldn't I" mentality that erodes our entire society's morality...
(being a shining light and example to the world cannot be underestimated)

When you tax:
You cultivate the notion in our children that power is a necessary evil that provides "what is best for us and all humanity" despite its obvious abuses...

When you tax:
You allow people to work for pay within a system "just to get a paycheck" even if they are not themselves overtly corrupt, but degrades our national spirit all the same because these people see the futility of their work and it lessens faith in all our systems and in our own humanity,
when people like you, with pure and sincere intentions could do efforts more efficiently and better motivated because the work was purely humanitarian...

I could go on, but all I ask of well-intentioned thinkers like you is to not doubt that the same hopefulness of spirit within you that allows you to believe there are solutions to human suffering,
can also allow you the strength to see there are even more hopeful and even more humanitarian "outside the box" solutions.<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>


That's exactly what I was looking for. Thankyou!

[commonsense]

"Cadre", you're very welcome, you honor me.

I hasten to add that probably the best thing any of us can do for the world situation is to first insist that all the nebulous and not readily tangible socio-politico-economic and indeed, spiritual conditions I described as being part of our own nation....

be reduced by aggressively moving toward less govt in all areas.

At present, it seems to me ( I am just discovering the possibilities myself) that the Libertarian Party offers the best hope for a return to the core philosophy that is responsible for all that is good in the world.

Cadre, I've been to several third world counries. There were people walking around the streets doing nothing. To say hiring these people and paying them way less than an American would accept for the same work is expoitation is rediculous. These people would love to work for a fraction of what you or I would accept. To say they work in near slave like conditions, or in sweat shops is rediculous. If conditions were that bad they simply wouldn't show for work and nobody could make them. Forget what you see in the movies, it's not like that. No Industrialized world company can go into Hondurous, set up shop and force the populous to work in outragous conditions, it simply would not happen, and it doesn't happen. These people are happy to work for what we would consider substandard wages. In their country, those wages go a long way. Start dealing with reality and not from some ideological platform. In other words, your teacher is probably correct.

[castille]

So shut down all the factories and fire all Third World workers. No more exploitation. No more food either.

[Autophage]

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (castille,)
So shut down all the factories and fire all Third World workers. No more exploitation. No more food either.<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>

Quite. Many such workers are happy to work where they do, as it pays more than other local jobs. What bothers me is when corporations say they'll put a factory somewhere IF the government of the given third-world-country will build a road to it. They should just build the road themselves, and the government then could perhaps reduce taxes on the land developed thus, to encourage more such jobs to appear.

And if the workers hate the conditions too much, they can come to America and complain about how their jobs are being outsourced to third-world countries.