> It interesting that Nike moved from Korea to Indonesia.  This
> move can be looked at as a success story, Korea has now moved
> to a different state of industrialization (and debt). It's people
> have a better education and standard of living than they had
> a generation ago. The failure of companies to invest at all in
> third world countries has much more serious consequences in
> human terms

etc

We've covered all this rather thoroughly some while ago (about 6 months
ago?).
One can always make some sort of a case for benignly moving one's production
fron the US to Mexico to Korea to Indonesia & China & Phillippines to
Bangladesh & ??? to ????????? etc. And yes, there are alays people who are
happy to work for the $1 a day or whatever the going rate is for
sub-subsistence level living.

But the reality, which is what the Nike protestors you had to wade through
were aware of, regardless of whatever clever accounting that can be done to
make th4e case look benign, is that we (including me of course) are living
on the forced labour of others who in the vast majority of cases have every
bit as much "right" to a reaosnable return for their llabour as anyone in
the "devloped" countries do.

While the putative $1 a day will but far more than it would in Western
economies, and is therefore misleading as a measure of its true value to the
recipient, there are many essential things that it will not buy. It goes
with back breaking (or body destroying) working conditons, unconscionable
working hours, child slavery (by any standard that you would set if they
were YOUR children involved) and inadequate resources to address either
resultant chronic disease and long term results of the working conditions.
Even in countries where the conditions are "half acceptable" (such as eg
Filipino workers in Taiwan) the pay for work and working conditions would be
utterly unconscionable in a Western society. Quite why we feel morally
entitled to inflict the cost of our living standards on other human beings
in such a manner is utterly beyond me. I'm well aware that many have no
qualms in doung so and will argue their right to do so. Many more (rarher
like me) will largely live on the results of the misery and suffering of
others with very little thought or care.



                Russell McMahon

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