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New York, 8:28 PM
Thu Nov 26
3 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/03/09
11/03/09
Thanks Latoya! #capitalism
11/02/09
I remember watching something with the Dalai Lama and people like the CEO of Ben & Jerry's discussing why ethical business practices could be just as profitable as what we're used to, it's just that very few businesses want to change because a lot of the people involved either don't care or deliberately remain unaware of the consequences.
I do not understand how we can operate like that. It's not sustainable. And even if people don't care about future generations, they don't have to. It's fucking us right now. #capitalism
11/03/09
They have a vested interest in promoting a certain specific vision of what constitutes 'ethical business practices', because it's big for their marketing and feeling good about how you're saving the world one pint / shirt at a time is often the value-added that sells their product and gets them noticed.
Drawing a bright line between what's 'ethical' and 'unethical' is often exceedingly difficult in practice. For instance, "Don't lobby Congress to give your industry unfair perks" -- Well, nice to say, but if you don't lobby them they'll often unfairly *punish* you (To an absurd degree -- Shout outs to my hemp farmers and my online poker entrepreneurs!), and what exactly constitutes 'fair' is an open question. Fair as in 'don't hurt, don't help, just let you do your thing'? Fair as in 'don't give you a better deal then they're giving other related industries'? Fair as in 'prop you up only as much as your main foreign competitor's government is giving them'? Not to mention that lobbying is a matter of negotiation, and you have to start out asking for more than you think you can get if you want to get anything. How can you calibrate it so finely so you only get what's 'fair'?
Or 'sweatshops', to pick another example. Plenty of low-wage factory labor in the developing world is emancipating for people, particularly women, who've formerly felt trapped in a rural setting under the thumb of their family. There are myriad issues involved in determining whether a given 'sweatshop' is ethical or not. None of this is easy.
11/03/09
Of course it's not easy. Neither the article nor I suggested that it is. But it is possible. I don't think it's actually that complicated to find what is and is not ethical in a given situation. Just because something has some benefits doesn't mean it's not exploitive overall, and that we shouldn't work to improve it. Go watch Schmatta: From Rags to Riches to Rags to see what else those liberating sweat shops are doing. Unregulated business does not help things, and while it might improve some things in the short time, tends not to in the long term. Same thing with unchecked capitalism.
I appreciate these issues are complicated, but that's pretty much the point. What we've been doing doesn't work. Time to try something else. And we can start by being far more ethical in how we go about it. #capitalism
11/04/09
I'd rather talk to my friend down the street here in Guilin, who spent ~7 years working in a sweatshop in Guangzhou and just finished her law degree. She wouldn't describe herself as 'exploited'. It wasn't a fun experience, but it certainly beat the alternative for her. The Schmatta documentary isn't so much anti-sweatshop as it is anti-trade -- it's lamenting the loss of the New York garment industry. The failing there is in our lack of investment in our education system and communities to reduce the size of our unskilled work-force, not in the trade itself; the gains from trade (the incredibly cheap price of clothing these days, for starters) are very real. The problem isn't the jobs we're losing -- as a tech-heavy, relatively well-off nation, unskilled garment work is the sort of job we *want* to see going overseas. The problem is our lack of adequate commitment to the people who formerly held those jobs.
""Unregulated business does not help things, and while it might improve some things in the short time, tends not to in the long term. Same thing with unchecked capitalism.""
Sorry, but this is a straw-man argument; nobody's arguing in favor of entirely unregulated business or entirely unregulated capitalism. We're talking about whether the core of capitalism is positive or negative, not some extremist, pure version of it. Even on the international policy side of things, the purist 'Washington Consensus' has been out of vogue with most economists and development types for a long while now. Almost everybody goes for Noreena Hertz-style interdisciplinary analysis, to varying degrees. #capitalism
11/02/09
11/02/09
I find this to be something of an oxymoron. It's like searching for a more dry form of water or a nanoscale giant. A more ethical capitalism is like trying to find a master that beats you less often than other masters. #capitalism
11/03/09
11/02/09
We need to be in a place where we can talk about these things without someone just yelling "Commie!!" and shutting the conversation down, because things are not working, on a lot of different levels. #capitalism
11/02/09
11/02/09
11/02/09
11/03/09
11/02/09
This should be interesting -- presuming she doesn't end up dead in some 'accident', like the associates in The Firm.
Dear Brian Griffiths:
You get an 'A' for Orwellian doublespeak and an 'F' in humanism.
Cudwamper. #capitalism
11/02/09
11/02/09
And, yeah, Adam Smith did not just tout capitalism as some new awesome thing. It was more along the lines of "here is the way I see markets working. Also, here is the way I see people can be exploited, so we should be careful, here." If Smith heard the "capitalists" of today, he would facepalm. or headdesk. or possibly both. #capitalism
11/02/09
In a similar vein, Marx acknowledged that capitalism is a great way to build wealth. Both of these "worldly philosophers" are much more complex than they are popularly given credit for. #capitalism
11/02/09
11/02/09
Both are social constructs with pretensions to being a force of nature and the more we believe them, the more entrenched they will become.
11/02/09
Weirdly, I agree with both of you. I do think that human nature has a tendency towards ugliness and bitterness and animosity...but I also think there's a huge capacity for change and growth.
So much of what happens is due to lack of awareness over how interrelated everything is. Too many people have no idea that these issues feed on each other, propagating, cycling...but we can stop it if we make the effort and stop trying to live our lives like nothing we do matters, like there are no consequences. Not in the religious sense, but basic ethics.
There are days when I think there's hope...and days I don't. #capitalism
11/02/09
11/02/09
05/12/09