Jason is correct word by word. However, it starts with a worldview that lowest cost production is an end instead of a means. Yes, Europe [and the US, Japan, everybody…] cannot impose higher socioeconomic costs on its business than on those of its competitors. If we define competitors as meaning the entire globe, that has consequences. In China there is a sufficient surplus of unskilled workers that the pay can be so low that factory workers sleep on mats under their work stations. Is this what we wish for ourselves? Now Europe would democratically opt for a higher level of social benefit relative to personal consumption. Why must we change to be like them if we don’t wish to OR the reverse? Just so Ford can make parts worldwide? I see work as something we do for economic gain in a social context. I have helped bring board games and RPG’s to the market. Enough other people found value in them so that they purchased them. If no one wants Dead Night of Space, then no one will purchase the books, and [eventually] I will run out of funds to make more. Capitalism works on that scale. However, there are other norms. One of them is democracy. We use votes, representative government, rule of law as mechanisms to interact with each other beyond exchange of money. So as a polity, we have decided that the printers I use to print my books cannot pour their printing wastes into the water system. Certain chemicals must be handled in special ways to work the environment. This is a social cost that adds to my costs of production and thus my price. Now a printer that wasn’t bound by these rules could use the same equipment to print books marginally more cheaply. Should I be allowed to say I want to use the polluter printer so my micro press books are fractionally cheaper than someone else’s? If so what has happened to the political decision that clean water matters? Globalization takes away the polity’s right to make these decisions. It reduces everything to economic cost and a race to the bottom. Is this the world we want to live in – a Corp Rat dystopia out of 80’s cyberpunk?
posted by scott 4:46 AM