>>Now you're talking about what the
>>people in their own sovereign
>>country want to do.
>>It's not right to question
>>their sovereignity.
>
>This isn't questioning their sovereignty.
>It's RESTORING their sovereignty.

Sovereignity always exists. It just not always in a democratic form.

>
>>If 27% of the population chooses
>>factory work over fishing, they
>>must have a greater standard
>>of living because of it,
>>right?
>
>Maybe a better standard of living
>than some, but it remains
>a poor one.

Poor relative too? I would much rather be a fisherman than working in a factory.

>In so many words, yes.
>But it's not a "mythical
>parity," it's new precedents about
>responsibility and accountability, as well
>as new conceptions of global
>awareness.

Based on?
What if it conflicts with cultural practices?

>> That doesn't make sense,
>>and it's an insult to
>>folks who want to determine
>>themselves.
>
>You can't "determine yourself" under economic,
>reproductive, and physical oppression.

National self determination, not individual determination.

>No! If you read the other
>posts... I (and many labor
>activists) believe that it's not
>our place to choose whether
>those people have jobs.

which is what you are essentially doing, but not with that intention, but with that knowledge.

>We only intervene when they
>ASK for solidarity campaigns (as
>in the cases of Nicaragua,
>Salvador, and Thailand).

No quarrel with that. If the governor can call Pres. Bush for help, it's okay for others to act. We should have a policy of non-involvement.

>>What interest do
>>we have in raising their
>>pay?
>
>So they can eat. So
>other people can eat.
>So there are standards as
>to how a worker can
>be treated.

They're eating now. What they have to have steak?

>>Sure it's nice,
>>but why is it just?
>
>It's "just" that people be paid
>enough to not die.

Hyperbole.

>> Why is it better
>>for an American company/industry to
>>monopolize the labor force in
>>a foreign country?
>
>It's not. However, RESPONSIBLE and
>ACCOUNTABLE American business can help
>develop the local labor market
>by raising the wage floor
>and bringing in capital.

It's humanitarian to do so.

>Doesn't
>>this halt the ability for
>>native businesses to compete for
>>that same labor?
>
>Well, in many cases the actual
>factory owners are local developers,
>but the imbalance still occurs
>because the vast profit still
>goes to the U.S. corporation
>and the middle men.

So the local developer can raise prices.

>Okay, I'm going to try a
>semi-economic perspective (since the human
>rights/social responsibility didn't seem to
>work).

It doesn't work for me, cause it's basically an imposition of our will over theirs.

Sweatshop workers sell
>what to their employer? "Labor
>power," or the capacity to
>work. Unlike any other
>commodity, labor power can't be
>physically separated from the laborer,
>so sweatshop workers MUST sell
>their "labor power" or it's
>rendered useless -- i.e. if
>they don't go to work
>they lose that commodity.
>If "labor power" is all
>they have to offer (which
>is the case with most
>uneducated/unskilled sweatshop workers),

Here's where we differ. Many of these so-called uneducated unskilled workers, are also doing other jobs. Subsistence farming, cooking, service, fishing, are all unskilled/low skills jobs. It's not like the Us where if you don't have a formal education you can't support your family. (and even that is a misconception based on what it means to support a family).

then they
>are FORCED to work, no
>matter what the conditions of
>the market.

> A farmer can
>choose to enter the market
>or grow food for his
>own subsistance. An artisan's
>commodity can be sold for
>subsistance, and leaving an undesirable
>market still leaves the artisan
>with his commodity.

The unskilled worker exists with the rational actor.

>BUT... a sweatshop worker can never
>"opt out" of the market
>because their "labor power" is
>all they have. This is
>not a choice that they
>make.

The person who becomes a sweatshop worker has options.

>That's a valid criticism. I've
>defined basic human needs as
>survival and reproduction, both of
>which are being severely threatened.

I'm not going to argue it cause i don't know the breadth of your statement.

> If I was shown
>that, say, Honduran cultural morality
>didn't hold those things as
>basic human needs, I wouldn't
>fight for them. A
>little unlikely, though...

hmmm.

>>So you're telling me, Nike goes
>>to a south eastern asian
>>country and corrals and chains
>>these people to sewing machines?
>
>They used to. Now it's
>just barbed wire, security cameras,
>abuse...

evidence on the former.

>>And should we judge them as
>>less worthy of self-determination if
>>they aren't democratic?
>
>They "aren't democratic" in a manner
>that removes all possibility of
>self-determination.

We have different ideas of what it means to determine one's self.

>Well, I'm going to leave this
>one alone, except to say
>that I think the right
>to determine your own circumstances

Right only exists if you can back it up.

>Okay. Kensington Welfare Rights Union:
>a group of welfare recipients
>and poor people in N.
>Philly who actually USE the
>UN Declaration of Universal Human
>Rights to catalogue human rights
>violations committed against poor people.
> They are trying to
>hold governments and institutions culpable
>for poverty in many situations.

How they will prove this in our system is beyond me? Or rather how they will be remedied for these violations is what i'm wondering.

peace
k. orr

http://breddanansi.tumblr.com/