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Oncle Boris
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Once in a brown moon
Aug 2001
time: 00:32
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I am apalled by the domination of "American imperialism" values in these discussion boards. Here is something I've prepared for all of you guys. Hope you'll read it to the end and discuss it.
Basically, a State is an organisation which owns the "violence monopoly" over a given territory. Just think of feudal Afghanistan: it is not a true state, because no one holds the power.
To this point in human history, States have not delegated to anyone the monopoly of violence in international relations. Things are headed in this direction, however. A few centuries might pass, but it will eventually become a reality. It remains to see if this worldwide police will defend justice and human rights (personally, I highly doubt it).
No police=perpetual war between countries vying for power. This war is not always armed; it is usually economic and diplomatic. But it's still here, and it obeys to no morale whatsoever.
As far as I know, no democratic state has systematically applied the values behind its Constitution to its foreign policy, unless in isolated cases or when these values were found to be in accordance with commercial or political interests. The reason for this is quite simple: the Welfare state has given its citizens a fair dose of social justice, which can be used to hide atrocities directly or indirectly committed outside of its borders. Machiavelli calls this "Comfort and Indifference". Stanley Milgram used a different, psychological approach, in which he determined that people could operate a machine that tortured someone if the said person was in another room (and out of visual sight of the torturer). When the "victim" was moved closer, the rate of success of the experiment dropped from 67% to approx. 40%.
Now, most right-wingers, supported by media trusts, have made you believe that free-market is at the root of the success of the Western world. Saying that this is a barbaric lie would be an understatement.
Everything that made the succes of Western democracies, is in fact, the opposite of free-market.
In the 19th century, labor unions and strikes were forbidden by law, and child labor was common. Workers in France, USA, Canada, Britain were brutalized by the police or private security guards when they comlained about their condition. Child mortality was higher than in today's third world countries. Gradually, laws protecting basic worker rights were enacted, such as minimal wages, forbidding of child labor, legalization of worker unions. The forbidding of labor unions are a prime example of injustice: if industrials have the right to form conglomerates and oligopolies, why wouldn't the workers have the right to unite themselves? Free-market is a two way things, mind you. Socialist policies made the working class increasingly richer, to the point, as mentionned by Henry Ford, that it could buy the products it was manufacturing. It was only after the lesson of the Great Depression that this fact became widely accepted, however.
The importance of Labor Unions in the economic development of a country was so obvious that American Unions, confronted by their success, formed international unions aimed at syndicalizing poorer countries, to avoid their own jobs being exported over there. This is where globalization (slowly) starts.
(To be more specific, globalization has been going on from the beginning of the 20th century. Its pace has greatly accelerated after the fall of the USSR).
Benefitting from relative social peace in their home countries, enterprises started putting pressure on their governments to open acces to the worldwide markets, where the workforce is much cheaper, social policies virtually non-existent, and, better still, brute force readily available as a coercition tool.
Ergo, WTO, FTAA, GATT, World Bank, etc. All those are puppets of the United States and its allies. They are a tool to enforce economic domination and isolation against countries that are not willing to abdicate their sovereignty to free trade necessities.
Thirld World now=Western world 150 years ago (not in all respects, but many). They don't need free market; they need state-funded education (which is lacking), they need drinking water, they need acces to cheap drugs and basic healthcare. They need the profits of their natural resources to fund economic development in their own country, not to fill the pockets of some baby-boomer shareholder in New York or London.
Without state regulations, enterprises will never grant a single cent to an unspecialized workforce, simply because there are billions in the world, starving, that will work for a ridiculous pay. As long as there is some easy, repetitive work to do, and that the pure law of demand/offer is applied to employment, people will be exploited. This is why free market cannot be succesful in countries with low infrastructure and education levels. There are too much of them. Until every human being in the world is a valuable specialist, there needs to be some regulation preventing free market from instillling a perpetual, unbreakable domination. For this to happen, we need everyone to be educated. We also need to forbid child labor, so that children can go to school (half of the world's cocoa is produced by enslaved children).
And guess what? America's foreign policy is based on forcing other countries to accept free market as it is, without regards to their own benefit. Their main tool is economic sanctions (see: Cuba), but they do not hesitate to use brute force when needed (Vietnam, funding of the Contras against the Sandinists, funding of the coup against Salvador Allende). This will not change as long as huge corporations are the principal donators to Republican and Democrat campaigns (the only two parties that have access to the White House).
There is something you can do about it. First, forbidding enterprises from donating to political parties is a step in the right direction. Many states have adopted a system in which 1 vote=1$ transferred to the party with public funds. This is not perfect, but it's better than Halliburton handing out 5 millions to Bush's campaign.
You can also ask for a dramatic change: demand that foreign countries who wish to export to the US must obey to a "minimal worker condition deal". Economic sanctions would be directed at those countries who do not follow it, instead of the current system where they are used against socialist states.
Vote for someone supporting the Tobin Tax: basically, this one says that by taking a few cents on each stock market transaction, you could amass billions over billions of money that could be directed towards humanitarian aid.
Above all, don't expect CNN or FOX news to tell you what I've been telling you in the last few hundred words.
As long as the US doesn't change its tone, I will consider it an Evil Empire, keen on extending its domination to nurture wealth in their homeland at the detrimen of 66% of the world's population.
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Zylka
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Do you think anyone even relatively important or influential gives half a pile of **** for what you think? Go away, you're about as welcome here in the OT as you are in real life American affairs.
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Zylka
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Hey guys, look at me I'm mad. Here's a 3 paragraph discertation as to why - as well as reason why you should entirely change your system of international beliefs!
By me, Oncy Boris
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yavoon
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the third world needs a lot. protectionism IS a good way to get ur economy off the ground. just ask south korea or japan.
george washington was the leader of the revolution in america all those years ago. after two terms in office, george washington stepped down.
now look at all the revolutions the third world has had. have their leaders stepped down? there is no set of rules u can make to compensate for good cultural values or good leaders.
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Harry Tuttle
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of the Hoople Heads
Mar 2003
time: 00:32
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"Now, most right-wingers, supported by media trusts, have made you believe that free-market is at the root of the success of the Western world."
1) The advancement of population growth and the "conquering of the west" in the U.S. was made possible by the Railroad tycoons.
2) Oil was refined and made into a myriad of different fuels because of the work of Standard Oil, British Petroleum, etc...
3) The first permanent communications line between North America and Europe was made possible because of the investment of the telegraph companies.
4) Automobiles became so cheap to make after the invention of the modern day assembly line that the cars eventually came within the grasp of the average person.
5) Ben and Jerry, a bunch of hippy pot heads, started an ice cream company on the side of the road and eventually became millionaires.
Uh, yeah, I think we owe the free-market a lot. It allows for the ultimate expression of freedom - selling and buying whatever the hell you want.
And no, socialist policies didn't make the poor richer so that they could afford automobiles. It was the fact that our standard of living rose because the free market allowed for investment in research and infrastructure.
Believe it or not, people with a lot of money tend to be able to make the world better for the rest of us because they can drop a million for building that factory or researching that weird refrigeration process.
So let's see - better standard of living through the free market (research, economic gain) - or - crappy standard of living because someone decided to pass out turnips for everyone...
I'm gonna stick with the free market. 
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Tripledoc
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But does corporations, monopolies and plutocracy really have anything to do with free market. Is it not more like mercantilism today?
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Imran Siddiqui
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The Potterverse
Jan 1970
time: 00:32
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quote:
The forbidding of labor unions are a prime example of injustice: if industrials have the right to form conglomerates and oligopolies, why wouldn't the workers have the right to unite themselves? |
This one statement indicates the utter wrongness of your argument. Can you explain to me how forbidden labor unions are part of the FREE market? Free Market economics requires that workers be allowed to unionize.
quote:
Ergo, WTO, FTAA, GATT, World Bank, etc. All those are puppets of the United States and its allies. They are a tool to enforce economic domination and isolation against countries that are not willing to abdicate their sovereignty to free trade necessities. |
Yes, all these groups were set up so we could conquer the world! It isn't because free trade has led to amazing growth in countries such as South Korea? And further more, more opening up of an economy leads to people having access to information from around the world and may lead to calls for political change.
quote:
Vietnam, funding of the Contras against the Sandinists, funding of the coup against Salvador Allende |
So ALL this was about economic domination and not fear over an expanding Communist/Socialist threat in the Cold War where you had two sides who generally hostile to each other?
Arguments like this give socialists a bad name. At least most socialists realize that while these things may not have been correct, they were done for most moral reasons and not economic (though economic may have been part of the reason).
quote:
It was the fact that our standard of living rose because the free market allowed for investment in research and infrastructure. |
The other Boris is better than the Uncle  .
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Zylka
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exactly
I opened this threat expecting an exciting gayventure - one involving our resident B being grossed out over breeders giving/recieving head on top of a straw dispenser counter, or something.
Name change, pronto. You can be Uncle Sava
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Ned
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of Aptos, CA
Oct 1999
time: 21:32
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OB, Why do socialist countries like China have no unions or, if they have them, why are they controlled by the "party?" I think it is obvious that socialism and vital unions have nothing to do with each other.
I am not sure that unions ever did anything for the economy as a whole. What they did do is improve the working conditions and average benefits of the workers. But, if these same things are guaranteed by the government - for example, OSHA, social security, workman's compensation, heath care, etc., are unions really necessary anymore?
The primary question on the table is how we can spread these same conditions to the rest of the world, is it not? I give you China as a good example of progress of the average worker. The Chinese are proving that capitalism brings a good standard of living and that socialism and unionism do not.
So, the answer for the third world is to adopt the methods of the Chinese and the rest of Asia, become the manufacturing arm of the West. Conditions will improve rapidly for the average worker.
Killing trade with China can only harm the Chinese worker. That surely is not what you want, Boris.
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Oncle Boris
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Once in a brown moon
Aug 2001
time: 00:32
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I welcome your arguments.
There has been some misunderstanding.
I'm glad that even free-market advocates support the existence of Unions. This has not always been the case, as proven by history. Aristocrats and industrials used to say unions woulk destroy civilization! That is not a joke. Still today, I've heard many right-wingers claim how bad are unions. Obviously this is not the case of you guys.
Now to the Tycoon part:
Many railroads in North America were built by imported Chinese workers. They worked in quasi-enslavement conditions similar to the forced labor of the gulags. Trust me, they didn't get a penny from the railroad benefits. All right, their grandson lived in a richer society. Great.
19th century America had almost no labor condition regulations. True, railroads brought more shops and employment. But industrialization in its first years brought a WORSENING of general human condition. Owners never would have increased these guy's pay if they hadn't been forced by law, for a simple reason: their work was unspecialized, and thus they were easily disposable and replaceable. As said in my "essay" (some humility here!), even by 1929, the rich hadn't understood that minimal wealth for the masses would increase their own profit on the long run.
In 1850, what a tycoon wanted was money right away: so he hired private guards or bribed the local police to bring back his men to work when they went on strike. It still works like this now: the American commercial deficit is on the rise because corporations are producing more and more goods outside of the US. It may increase profits right away, but no one will laugh when the next great Depression comes.
My conclusion here is: let tycoons do what they want as long as their workers get minimal working conditions. Wherever that may be. Why is it that a Chinese desserve 1/12th of the salary of an American worker?
Put it otherwise: Socialism + free market is the way to go.
Now to American foreign policy: what America is pushing right now is "free market"- without the socialist component. Their argument: government hindrance is an hindrance to free market, therefore it must be banished. WTO & Co is about forcing other governments to pursue this policy.
I am repeating myself: Third World Countries are at Stage 0. Tycoons won't increase the pay of their workers, unless forced to. American foreign policy: making sure other countries won't force them to. That is a widely documented evidence throughout independant press.
Zylka: shut up you idiot. Really. I'm not telling anyone to change his belief; I'm saying that, contrary to what some might think, their government is not defending their values.
Hope this time I'm being clear. I want legitimate attacks, not glorifications about the greatness of Standard Oil and William Randolph Hearst.
And to terminate, some dialectics.
Thesis: free market
Antithesis: unification
Synthesis: oligopoly---- cartel ------ end of dialectics
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21-12-2003 05:31
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