Have You Been to Cambodia, Dick?

Nick Gillespie | January 15, 2004

Writing from Phnom Penh, The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof reminds the Democrats in general and Dick Gephardt in particular that their party "has been pro-trade since Franklin Roosevelt, and President Bill Clinton in particular tugged the party to embrace the realities of trade."

Kristof describes without flinching the grim conditions in Cambodia--and how global trade is improving them and giving people there more and better options:

All the complaints about third world sweatshops are true and then some: factories sometimes dump effluent into rivers or otherwise ravage the environment. But they have raised the standard of living in Singapore, South Korea and southern China, and they offer a leg up for people in countries like Cambodia.

"I want to work in a factory, but I'm in poor health and always feel dizzy," said Lay Eng, a 23-year-old woman. And no wonder: she has been picking through the filth, seven days a week, for six years. She has never been to a doctor.

Here in Cambodia factory jobs are in such demand that workers usually have to bribe a factory insider with a month's salary just to get hired.

He also worries that the Democrats "may be retreating toward protectionism under the guise of labor standards."

Whole column here.

In the December issue of Reason, Johan Norberg, author of In Defense of Global Capitalism, made the case that globalization represents the poor's best chance for advancement--if only the developed nations would play fair. Here's that interview.

Comments

|1.15.04 @ 1:06AM|#

"... reducing the bargaining power of labor"

To be completely fair, we have plenty of statist interventions that artificially increase the bargaining power of labor.

|1.15.04 @ 1:09AM|#

Kevin--

Do you believe South Korea would have independent unionism and political democracy today, if the United States had excluded their products from our markets back in the day?

|1.15.04 @ 2:25AM|#

As a print subscriber, I wish the excellent reason.com site would somehow identify articles from the print magazine so I could immediately know that I've already read that article and move on to something that's web-only.

|1.15.04 @ 2:57AM|#

"To be completely fair, we have plenty of statist interventions that artificially increase the bargaining power of labor."

I believe he was referring to the friendly hijinks that the government plays on labor organizers in places like Vietnam and El Salvador.

|1.15.04 @ 2:58AM|#

Joe,

I've never been prouder of anyone in my life.

Warren|1.15.04 @ 3:08AM|#

"...factories sometimes dump effluent into rivers or otherwise ravage the environment. But they have raised the standard of living in Singapore, South Korea and southern China..."

Huh? I thought Singapore was the cleanest, wealthiest, most friend-iddely-endist place on earth. A triumph of 'benevolent dictatorship'. Of course nobody has any rights what so ever and the government has unlimited powers, but who needs civil liberties when you've got security.

|1.15.04 @ 3:10AM|#

I'm still all about insisting on the right to organize.

Kevin Carson|1.15.04 @ 3:21AM|#

joe,

Yeah, that was it.

Andrew,

I'm not for excluding any country's products from the U.S. market. All tariffs and import bans should be struck down unconditionally.

I just want the U.S. government to get out of the business of making overseas investments profitable.

Americans should be free to do business anywhere they want, without hindrance by the government. But they should do so at their own expense, and internalizing all the costs and risks of doing business overseas. That means Washington doesn't subsidize the export of capital through the World Bank, smoothe out foreign exchange shortfalls with the IMF, subsidize shipping, etc. That also means it doesn't prop up authoritarian or anti-labor regimes, overthrow regimes that threaten to nationalize U.S. investments, open up markets with gunboat diplomacy, and all the other kinds of stuff described by Smedley Butler in "War is a Racket."

|1.15.04 @ 3:59AM|#

Kevin,

"Unconditionally?" We have a government. It sometimes signs trade deals to eliminate tarriffs with other countries. When our government is considering doing this with a country that persecutes organized labor, should it make the cessation of that persecution a condition of signing the agreement?

|1.15.04 @ 4:01AM|#

Kevin-
Don't take my point in the wrong way. I'm not going to deny that there isn't a very strong possibility that that the hand of the state doesn't play a role in restricting their options.
Or that there isn't a difference between global trade and free trade.

Still, you can't deny that of the available options, I'm willing to guess that many people would prefer to work in a factor vs. rotting on the street. I know that sounds extreme, but if you're an agrarian society competing with the West's production abilities, an individual (especially unfree) is very limited as to what they can do to live and support a family. The pictures of developing nations don't lie. Hence, even if their options are limited by the state, I'm pleased to see someone say that people prefer to work in the factory than their other options.

In simple terms, factories/mills in the west succeeded for the same reason that they are succeeding in the East now. Of the available options, people see it as their best opportunity to further themselves and their families.

fyodor|1.15.04 @ 6:25AM|#

Joe,

I'd venture to guess that Kevin will/would say that our government simply shouldn't be negotiating trade deals in the first place, and that therefore there's no need for our government's elimination of trade barriers to be linked to what other nations' governments do.

Gotcha right, Kev?

|1.15.04 @ 7:16AM|#

Why does the US Government shut out Agriculture imports from the third world and then destroy the price for such commodities with subsidized US exports. No wonder a "factory" job is such a bonus when the agriculure system in Asia and Africa is being destroyed by Europe and the US.
Keep your factory jobs and instead buy food fromthe third world at decent prices you may also solve the illegal immigrant problem as well who mainly go to low paid farm jobs in the US

|1.15.04 @ 10:35AM|#

From the tag line, I was hoping this little diddy was going to tell me where Cheney's been. Anyone, anyone? Lonewacko, do you have any theories?

As for the sweatshops, it's great to read someone actually showing evidence that people prefer the "sweatshop" to their other options. This is similar to people romanticizing about the wonderful utopian, American farm vs. big city life during the industrialism of the late 1800's. No, farm life was brutully hard, which is why everyone went to the big cities for a better life.

|1.15.04 @ 11:31AM|#

You all would have been proud of me. I took this exact line in an argument with my leftist counsin when he complained about "consumerism spreading around the world."

"Those people are so freaking poor, they have two shirts and one pair of pants! They need to earn some money, so they can buy more damn pants, and the only what that's going to happen is for them to get real jobs! You know why they buy Gap tee shirts instead of traditional shirts? Because the Gap shirts are better made, and they don't have to spend two days of drudgery that they could spend earning a lot more than the price of a tee shirt!"

Cripes, I sounded just like a libertoid. Then again, he thinks a softie liberal for not supporting the right to bear belt fed machine guns.

Kevin Carson|1.15.04 @ 11:59AM|#

yelowd,

I've also seen arguments that the working class of Europe 150 or 200 years ago preferred working in the "dark satanic mills" to their "other options." The question is: is the range of "other options" the spontaneous result of a free market; or does the visible hand of the state (in collusion with sweatshop employers) play a role in restricting alternatives to selling their labor on terms set by U.S. capital?

At least this time Nick, unlike other posters on this subject in the past, referred simply to "global trade" instead of "free trade." Because the latter is something we don't have. We have a corporatist system of subsidies to the export of capital, and government intervention to artificially increase the profitability of foreign investments by reducing the bargaining power of labor.

|1.15.04 @ 12:58PM|#

joe:

You'll come around on the belt fed thing.

Becker Michelle|9.10.04 @ 2:10AM|#

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