Protectionism --- Free Trade Poll

WI, You completely lost me. Sorry. If you want to stick to a topic you asked me to respond to, fine. If you want to throw out a bunch of posts that I think are meant to be sarcastic--but aren't coherent enough for me to be sure--I have nothing to add. I can't respond to crap that has nothing to do with anything.

But if you want me to be serious, yes, the way to kill child labor is to let it kill itself through an increase in productivity and competitive wages. And when a country adopts a policy against child labor, it is actually prolonging child labor. I know me saying this offends you somehow--and brings out your emotional worst. And it makes you post the way you did above, but why not just read, try to process and respond rationally? I'm not saying I get off on children working in sweatshops. I am telling you why it happens and how the problem ends organically if you allow it to by allowing countries to get richer on their own. If I am not being rational, explain to me how. Don't try to mock me. You couldn't for real, even on your best day.

A short post on a message board can not distill this well--and frankly, what people like Milton Friedman did (and continue to do), was use the kind of mathematical and statistical modeling that have given people learned enough to try to follow along a basis for understanding how economies work and why things happen all around us in real world situations.

When you brought up child labor, the industrial revolution--and how it actually helped end the practice, not cause it--was a clear example for me to post about. Your response has not been to show me fallacies in what I wrote, but things like, "No comment from me could in any significant way underscore the blatant lunacy above. It speaks for itself." Do you realize how ignorant that comes off? Don't dismiss me, as if I am a child and you have automatic righteousness on your side. Explain to me how what I took the time to post is wrong.

I purposely just paraphrased Milton Friedman, who is considered the brightest and most influential economist of the second half of the 20th Century, and depending on whether you think John Maynard Keynes was more groundbreaking (and you can make the case for either), arguably the most influential economic thinker of the entire century. I was not "appealing to authority," (although if I am going to appeal to authority, Milton Friedman's writings are not a bad place to appeal to). I wanted to get called a crackpot again and point out that I was just paraphrasing the most influential economist of the last 60 years. If he's wrong or crazy, do what smart people do -- show how he is wrong or crazy. Don't just try to be sarcastic and imply that I am a crackpot.

In any case, child labor still exists today in poor countries, so what I am saying is still all around us.

Prices are determined by supply and demand. Since there is limited production in those countries, demand for labor is low. Take a country like Cambodia. There is very little production. So to get by, a large percentage of the population has to raise animals and grow what they can eat themselves. The food they receive from farming is their wage... and it is a hard life. A poor life, with no prospects for improvement. Children are put to work. It's a matter of survival.

When Nike comes to Cambodia or Bangladesh and opens up a sweatshop, it doesn't put children into slavery and force them to work. Americans look at the conditions and are appalled. They should be. But no one accepts a job unless they think it will increase their standard of living. And most children in a country like Bangladesh are already performing labor--working so the family can even subsist--that is worse than the Nike factory, in terms of conditions and pay (or lack of it). So when Nike opens shop, people are actually happy to take the crappy sweatshop jobs, because coming from a place with no choices and no economic freedom, it gives more choices. And as appalling as the conditions are to Americans, who enjoy a standard of living most people in Bangladesh can't conceive of, it actually provides better working conditions. These conditions are terrible compared to American standards, but they are better than all previous available opportunities and alternatives in Bangladesh.

It's still progress, because the way to kill off child labor is to let it kill itself through an increase in productivity, which brings about higher, competitive wages. If a poor country is allowed to experience economic growth driven by industrial and technological progress and a market system, the demand for labor grows and workers achieve better wages and working conditions. And when people's standard of living increases, they don't have to put their eight year olds to work. Parents don't WANT to do that. They do it out of necessity.

When those poor countries like Bangladesh adopt policies against child labor--usually under pressure from outsider--it actually ends up prolonging child labor and keeping the countries poor. The supply of labor goes down and it decreases productivity. When productivity is low, no one comes to provide jobs, and those factories--which are the early seeds of an industrial economy taking hold, which can raise the standard of living--go away. And it keeps the country poor. Look at countries whose fortunes have turned. Places like India and Pakistan and even China. Economic freedom brought about the higher standards of living. And that freedom came from people starting out in crappy sweatshop jobs, which helped develop a burgeoning economy, which in turn brought in more demand for labor, which is what raises wages and working conditions.

But in places where that isn't allowed to take hold -- the place that adopts the policies against child labor -- poor people are left with no options, no place for industry to take hold and prosper, and they are left tending a piece of barren land. And they put their children to work anyhow, in order to try to survive -- without any choices, options or hope for anything better. And the cycle is perpetuated--with child labor existing much longer than it would have if you had allowed a more prosperous economy to develop.

Poor places have child labor because they are poor. Not because of unscrupulous behavior.

Families cannot survive without their children helping to provide. Child labor only really dissappears when an economy becomes rich enough to get rid of the practice, and countries become rich when they are allowed liberal, open economic practices and are allowed to trade freely.

Go ahead and try to be sarcastic. Call me crazy and tell me that Milton Friedman was a whacko. So were Copernicus, Nietzsche and Jonas Salk, I suppose.

People think that rich countries, such as ours, benefited from child labor laws. It appeals to emotion. Without understanding markets, the emotional thought is, "The evil industrialists were enslaving all the children. But then we became enlightened enough to pass laws and fix it." It's not true, though. It wasn't legislation that made countries that had child labor in their histories rich (England, Hong Kong and plenty of others did too). And it isn't legislation that ended the practice. It was economic development -- as Milton Friedman pointed out, the industrial revolution was well on its way to ending the practice of child labor already, before those laws were passed, and those laws actually ended up extending the poverty that causes child labor in the first place, because they retarded economic development in some of the poorest places in the country and made parents keep their kids from school and out in the fields working so the family could survive.

You can call me crazy. You can tell me Milton Friedman or any classical economist is crazy. You can give me all the "ooooh academia" idiocy you want (I am not even following it. I think you are trying to put me down somehow). But not reading what I am trying to say and at least trying to understand it is ignorant.

Don't tell me Milton Friedman--or anyone else whose jock you couldn't hold--was crazy. Show me how he was crazy, and do it intelligently.

 

I know you are trying to be sarcastic, cranberry, but I'll respond seriously...

Child labor is not a good thing, unless you get off on seeing kids laboring.

I also know that I can't make that go away by dictating that it has to end. Poverty is what leads to child labor. Unless you solve the poverty, your "intervention" can't end the problem. And limiting economic opportunities makes the countries even more poor. So yeah, your "intervention" doesn't help anyone, and it makes things worse. Not unless you have a formula for creating wealth that raises the standard of living to the point that things aren't so poor that children are forced to work.

As far as I know, no one has created that kind of wealth out of thin air and made the whole world prosperous.

But many of the people in places like India, Pakistan and China, who have seen their fortunes raised by jobs most Americans would thumb your noses at -- which have led to better jobs, and in turn, higher wages and better working conditions in a relatively short time frame -- would agree with part of what you meant to be sarcastic. Their idea of "intervention" was to allow free trade, allow richer places to import jobs and to allow them the economic freedom to make choices for themselves. And their standard of living has been on the rise as a result. And things we find abhorrent, like child labor, are ending organically, as people have more wealth and don't have to send their kids to work. No one could dictate that. Becoming wealthier places dictated it.

"Patience," as you put it, served America pretty well, too. We went from an agrarian economy, in which child labor was the norm, to an industrialized economy in which people became prosperous enough to start sending their children to school rather than needing them to help the family subsist, to being the richest country in the world.

 

Fenian, if you want to end that kind of poverty in your pictures, show me a way to create wealth.

Telling me that there is widespread poverty in the world doesn't address anything. We all know that.

The way to alleviate it is to allow economic freedom and to allow people's standards of living to increase. Does most of India live in extreme poverty? Yes. Of course that picture is very real for much of the world.

What is your point?

India as a whole has seen its standard of living increase dramatically--and it continues to increase--as the worldwide economy has globalized and its people have been given economic opportunities. Things are MUCH better in the country than they were 30 years ago. Will you argue that?

The country is on a path for what is in that picture to eventually come to an end organically (the way that crappy labor conditions ended in the U.S. as we became a wealthier nation). It wasn't legislated away, though. It is happening because of economic development. Can you argue that?

We both find that picture disgusting. Tell me how you can legislate that away (as opposed to finding a way to create the wealth to end it) and I'll jump on board. You can't. And as I posted, I can show you how attempts to do it usually make things worse and perpetuate that kind of poverty by limiting the choices that give people the economic freedom to raise their standard of living -- as many OTHER people in India can attest to.

 

Fenian, your problem--and the reason I can't respond to you without you degrading it and telling me to go read some history (yes, that is condescending)--is that you think I am arguing a side. Everything with you is ideological. But I'm not arguing a side. I'm trying to argue rationally. If I'm not, tell me where I am mistaken. I LIKE those kinds of responses when I communicate with people who are intelligent. I am open to them. I love it when I see something clearly... and someone is able to challenge it rationally and bring a new clarity to me.

You don't know the appreciation for David Hume that I have. He had important ideas that changed the world. As did Adam Smith.

John Maynard Keynes may have been the most brilliant man who lived in the 20th Century. He was so brilliant that some of what he wrote is amazingly difficult to follow, but when you finally grasp a small piece it is like a bright light shining above. He had ideas that it takes intense study for most mortals to fully grasp--and most can't fully grasp them. As did Milton Friedman.

They each made important contributions to what we know about rational economic thought. Some of what they said is fairly universally accepted and inarguable. Some of what they contributed is still being debated.

I'm sorry you think I am arguing from "authority." You keep saying that. I'm not. Some things are nearly universally accepted by people who understand how markets interact, though. There have been plenty of chances for people to point out the fallacies in those widely accepted things. And those chances never end.

I am laying out something. If I am not being rational, explain the fallacies in what I posted. Do it rationally, and take the time to spell it out, the way I think I am. Posting a picture of extreme poverty or making a sarcastic comment doesn't do it. Telling me that poverty exists doesn't explain why it does or how your ideas that you can fix it somehow with intervention (if I am characterizing you correctly)--rather than creating wealth--are good ideas and not ideas that perpetuate that poverty, as I have tried to explain. I am making a case that is backed up by what others have pointed out--and in the last 50 years have modelled using complicated mathematical analysis that IS scientific. I am not arguing from authority. If I am being irrational, please tell me how and explain rationally where the fallacies in what I am saying are. I am OPEN TO IT... if you bothered to offer up something more than "read some history," which I'm not even insulted by anymore, because it makes a statement about you, not me.

When it comes to economics, there are ideas--some on the fringe--and there are "theories" that are almost universally accepted because they are time tested. Market economics is one of those things. So yeah, maybe I am arguing from authority when it comes to the most basic tenets of market economics that people here get upset about, and end up responding to emotionally. When I said earlier in this thread that free trade boosts the standard of living of countries and creates wealth, that is one of those things that has been time tested and is provable if you want to take the time to understand some complex interactions between various forces. It is accepted as fact by at least 95 percent of reputable economists who understand how markets interact. Do you REALLY want to argue that point? I'm sorry if that makes me someone arguing "from authority." But not EVERYTHING has sides. Does that really make it a science? I don't know. I do know that it's more inarguable than the theory of evolution, which is considered scientific.

Anyhow, I need to take a break from this. And I really am not in the mood to get piled on by people who are just going to jump in and try to tell me what a moron I am. So I'll come back to it later.

 

cran, quick response to this before I go. PLEASE STOP FUCKING CHARACTERIZING ME IN RIDICULOUS WAYS. I don't do it to you. When did I ever say I find human suffering was acceptable? It's ridiculous and it's insulting.

With that out of the way, what I am talking about is how we address human suffering. Unless you can create enough wealth to alleviate poverty (which is just ONE THING--an economic thing--that contributes to human suffering), you are not offering me anything. My posts have been about that. I am saying, allow things to happen that create economic opportunities and you organically see wages increase, which leads to higher standards of living, which alleviates some forms of suffering.

But the fact that the world is marked by scarce resources and widespread poverty is not something ANYBODY gets off on. Sorry, you are trying to claim some sort of moral authority. Pointing out that the world sucks isn't a prescription for best dealing with it. I am trying to be rational. When I say that you can't "intervene" and fix things, I am not saying it because I don't WISH you could. I'd love to wave a wand and alleviate all economic suffering. I'm also smart enough to know that it isn't possible and, in fact, years of attempts to do so have had the unintended effect of creating more poverty and suffering.

As for me being a vegetarian and not wearing animal products, I am not sure what it has to do with anything. It's simply a moral choice. And it leaves me no worse off than I would have been, from a utilitarian standpoint--in fact, it offers me great utility. I have no need to eat meat or wear leather--I do perfectly well without those things, and most importantly I feel more satisfaction with myself and eat healthier, as a result. So I personally benefit from that individual choice. And in fact, I probably spend less on food than most people do, if you want to look at it simply from a financial standpoint. What does it have to do with this, though?