1. The crime of forcing another person to submit to sexual intercourse;
2. The act of seizing and carrying off. Abduction.
3. Abusive treatment. Violation.

So I, a female, don’t find the word all that inappropriate.

What’s your rationale? What would it be tied to, then? “Alternatives” are there, but there aren’t “Alternatives” for everything, you know. Maybe it’s because it’s being prevented or no one is looking hard enough or no one has found it yet-who knows. And even when there are “alternatives” to everyday goods, some are VERY hard to find, not very credible and some are even…illegal?

Google is telling me that the labor cost associated with a ~$70 Nike shoe is around $3. A 7% increase to costs of goods would be inconvenient, but as a society, we’d probably survive.

My point wasn’t that doubling wages for poor workers is the best possible strategy. (Though, I could see decreasing hours by 30% and increasing pay to compensate, or instituting safety standards that reduce effective productivity).

Instead, I’m disagreeing with the article’s conclusion that western standards of living are inexticably tied to neo-colonialism and the availability of super-cheap labor in developing nations.

@Fiendish: You are right that the EU makes up a large number of countries, however, for many of them the structural unemployment rate is much higher than it is elsewhere, so you are being just as disingenuous by saying they were at “full employment”. Many estimates put France’s full employment rate in the 7-9% range, which is higher than the US range of 5-6%. Don’t even get me started on all the statistical tricks that are used to hide the true level of unemployement (in the US and elsewhere).

@Richard: Fine, double the price of the flip-flop. Doesn’t seem all that bad. Now, double the price of the shirt, the pants, the underwear, the food, the computer, the cell phone, the tea kettle, the stove, etc. Congratulations, you just increased the cost of every single item, and therefore the cost of living in the US. Now wages will adjust, to an extent, but most likely the quality of life for US consumers will fall. Now you might claim that this is a fair trade off, but let us go to that far away country where the guy is now making 2 dollars a day. He now has 2x them money to spend. In the short run, there will be the same amount of food / goods / housing to consume, and therefore, with more money chasing the same amount of goods, you just succeeded in raising the cost of everything in that far away country, in the end leaving that individual probably not much better off. Inflation is a bitchy thing, and the only real way to get around it is to have some of that money go into investing in the productive capacity of the “country”.

As an example of the above problem, look at China and India. Hundreds of millions of newly “middle class” individuals now wish to consume more meat, more food, just like the middle classes do elsewhere. What did that do last year? Pushed up the price of food globally, until many millions of people were freshly pushed below the subsistence line.

These topics are way more complex than many people think. As easy as it is to say “evil american / corporations and exploited third world nations” it is not that cut and dry. There are a lot of bad things about the US (including the absurd, economically inefficient, health care system, that no economist in his right mind would support in its current form), but trying to replace an organic complex system with a top down “mandate for change” is not the solution. The solution, as it has been for centuries is to take 2 steps forward, and one back, and effect the slow, plodding change that has brought countries like Egypt, Mexico, China, India, etc from the poorest of the poor to not as poor as before… To keep allowing our sensibilities and our technologies to evolve, and to continue to “vote with our dollars” in order to affect change on a global system.

Which is not to take away from your article, which makes an excellent point.

George: Europe experienced over 10% unemployment when the economy was good? I only ask because I’m genuinely concerned that people will believe you. As a European citizen, I’d like to point out that a) Europe is not a country, and therefore b) there are many economic systems working within the EU, and finally c) your “10%” was therefore blatant fabrication and many European countries had long periods of full employment before the economic crisis. Thanks for playing, though.

There are countries with few resources that do well (Japan) and regions with many resources that do badly (Africa).

Natural resources were a part of our history, but I don’t think anyone can credibly claim to know what would have happened in an alternate history where we didn’t have as many.

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And, the more I’ve thought about it, the worse the $1 flip-flop example seems. I suspect that we could have very, very cheap flip-flops without contributing to economic exploitation.

The labor cost of producing the flip flop will be less than $1. So, we could double the labor cost and have flip-flops for less than $2. (Probably somewhere around $1.25)

The difference between $1 and $1.25 (or even $2) for a flip flop would be pretty trivial to most of Old-Navy’s consumers, and would make a gigantic difference in working conditions. (For instance, halving the expected hours, while keeping total pay fixed)

So, it seems mistaken to say, “You can’t have one without the other.”

that guy is traveling through africa a lot, he is the special embessador of the UN for nutrition & food (not sure of the title, but you get it)

but “don’t do it” would also mean: do not intervene within their social & ecnomic system. this is what we still mess up. africa could very well hold out on it’s own, where it not for us pushing our cheap goods, taking their cheap goods and making a profit both ways.

at least that’s roughly what i that i was told in the “international development studies”, uni vienna.

“Hunger has not been down to fate for a long time — just as (Karl) Marx thought. It is rather that a murder is behind every victim. This is silent mass murder” – Jean Ziegler

i just can’t see your logic in this one.”

And don’t forget – in some of these cases, multinational corporations have more to gain by keeping dictatorships intact, rather than having anything close to a real democracy where the people aren’t treated like cr**.