Free or fair trade?

Was it? WAS IT?!

Its not taking advantage if it yields a net benefit to them aswell. You have to learn the difference between absolute and relative poverty. Their wages and working conditions would be unacceptable by our standards, and rightfully so, but again, the alternative is much, much worse. Sustenance farming and scavenging for resources is a far worse fate than working in a sweat shop. It isn't our responsibility to provide a western standard of living to everyone on the planet. Even if it was we couldn't afford it. What we can do is enable them to lift themselves out of poverty by promoting economic cooperation. We do that by allowing them to sell their labor at prices, while abhorrent in North America, are a God send to a poor farmer.

With regards to India, I wouldn't say their industrialization process has been pain free. Sweatshops exist in India but frankly India's economy is far different from China's. Farming is still a viable option in India because they haven't destroyed their environment to the extent the Chinese did. That doesn't mean they don't pollute the atmosphere. They're third in the world in carbon emissions. The service sector is also much more vibrant. In fact all the economic progress you allude to was a result of the liberalization of its economy and the removal of trade barriers and tariffs.

Edit: Dug up this stat. 10% of people in China today live below the global poverty line. When industrialization began in 1978 that number was 64%.

It is our job to provide a basic standard of living to people. Sweat shops and factories in many places like India and China don't abide by labour laws within the country. They also don't respect workers rights they work in terrible conditions that are usually unsafe. These jobs usually cause serious health problems or even death. Workers are commonly beaten and/or killed if they don't meet quotas that are almost impossible to reach. We should crack down on these companies that exploit labour in these countries by shutting them down if they don't start respecting people's rights.

The problem than is not trade laws but national labor standards. When you are asking that other countries raise their labor standards to meet yours, the argument is couched in terms of altruism. But, in truth it's prompted by self-interest, fair trade is designed as a sort of export protectionism. If you really wanted be better labor standards, focus on local political and social conditions. These are far more critical than international trade law.

It isn't our job to provide anyone with anything. That's the job of the governments of their respective countries to add additional regulations and enforce the current ones. Though that would create a lot of problems itself. And what is a "basic" standard of living? Surely its not a western one because there isn't near enough resources in the world to bring everyone up to our level. As I said if you look at the poverty numbers in China they've gone down immensely since their industrialization. A factory worker in China is probably meeting all of his basic necessities of life. Naturally its not a life any of us would appreciate but to him, who probably suffered his entire life previous on a sustenance farm, its a God send. Sure, more could probably be done for worker safety, but forcing companies to abide by extremely high standards simply destroy's their incentive to build factories there in the first place. That means less jobs, more sustenance farming and more suffering.

If you admit there aren't enough resources to bring people up to our level, then it is obvious that the west has too much privilege in there life's and that you should be immediately arguing for compensating the third world for western exploitation. But I would disagree that this is completely true, the vast majority of wealth of the west is in the hands of a few, the capitalist elite. If wealth was distributed more evenly, we'd have plenty of money to hand over to the third world. The example I gave, if we made Amazon a cooperative, each worker would earn ONE MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR. That's plenty of money to deal with price increases for the new processor chip. The western proletariat has a duty to have solidarity with its brothers and sisters in the eastern society's and end this system of theft and exploitation. However a good portion of the west's wealth is gained through third world exploitation, and we need to take up responsibility for this mess we created, White privilege has to end.

No I want workers rights. A worker has a right to a fair wage, job safety, not to be beaten, a say in how their workplace is run, etc. There is also a very large number of modern slaves at work to bring you these products like bonded labourers and prisoners.

Again, you want everyone to have as good a life as we do here. Thats certainly a noble thing to wish for, but not realistic. If those "rights" you describe were enforced, the jobs would disappear. Theres no sense in having more worker rights if there are no workers to take advantage of them.

The workers wouldn't disappear if there first world counterparts wherent getting the value they created taken away from them in the greatest theft scheme ever.

But, it doesn't.

Your still doing substance work, just in a factory instead of a farm. It's not exactly a far worse fate, even if it's slightly better.

So people will starve, and die of easily curable disease. But that's ok, because their Third-World Peoples.

But even if they develop, they will develop like we have. With wealthy having everything and the poor having nothing. We can help them.

Again, why should they starve so we can eat plentiful meals?

And how did China destroy their environment? Well, did anyone really think that the corporation there to meet the lowest possible expense would care for the environment?

What? So by liberalizing your economy you will instantly having massive, double digit economic growth? There's more to it than that.

I'll need a link to find the falsities in those numbers.[/quote][/quote]

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If you go from starving on a farm to being slightly (or more than slightly) better off in a factory because of industrialization, that is a benefit. The people who work in sweat shops aren't starving. Again you fail to understand the difference between absolute and relative poverty. A factory worker in China is significantly better off than he would be were that factory job not available to him. No one is saying he's as happy or as well off as we are, but there aren't enough resources in the world to raise everyone on the planet to our standard of living. I don't know how many times I can repeat this. If everyone in the west was willing to accept a significant reduction (and I mean very significant), in theory, we could bring some sort of equality to the world. That isn't happening so the best hope for these people is to enable them to work for a competitive wage and allow the goods they produce to be sold on a free and open market. It worked in North America and Europe, there is no reason that it won't eventually work in the developing world.

China liberalized its economy and almost overnight achieved massive double digit economic growth. India did the same thing albiet with lower growth numbers.

China's environment is a mess because its government allowed itself to grow stupidly. There is a reasonable level of economic growth that can be sustained without wrecking your environment and causing inflation (which the Chinese have avoided because they're manipulating their currency). Its not big bad western industrialists that are responsible for this. Its the Chinese government.

As for the poverty estimates, they vary. And certainly its possible they are higher than they may be due to the Chinese government manipulating the numbers, but undoubtedly the standard of living for most Chinese has increased, more so in urban areas due to factory work.

Tell a worker who is dying of lead poisoning due to the factory he works at the same thing.

Silly leftist babble

I like how your ignoring me.

I learned a long time ago that arguing with a Communist is a futile and frustrating endeavor.

I'm a anarchist first and foremost.

Even worse.

I kind of like how I am not the only one on my side of the argument anymore.

That being said:

And he lived a reletively long life with [probably] a MUCH higher living standard than his ancestors... ever.
Consider that he could have weighed the chance of getting lead poisening and in the process, securing the future of his family by working against not working or working in a lesser field and them dying and his family line continuing to be poor. It is the lesser of the two evils. As good as that is.

Mmm... I don't think that you will like me either...
On the other hand, to be fair, arguing with any ideologist is usually futile and frustrating.

I have doubt that such a statement will endear you to him.

See Lenin?

Hardcore Communists and Anarcho-Capitalists are the worst in my experience. Anyone who puts ideology before practicality isn't worth my time.

So it's right that he died of something very easily preventable.