From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Jul 27 2003 - 19:02:22 MDT
--- Brett Paatsch <paatschb@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> Rafal Smigrodzki writes:
>
> > Brett wrote:
> > >
> > > And this means that cheap labor in say the US cannot
> > > compete on price with cheap labor in say Malaysia.
> >
> > ### Yes, they can. If they don't want to, who cares. The
> > world was built by diligent workers, not lazy drones.
>
> Because of regulations put in place to protect him the
> unskilled worker in the US may not get the *choice* to
> sell their services at price parity with those in third world
> sweat shops. In some labour intensive forms of manufacture
> (perhaps producing Nike shoes) the total cost of production
> is substantially determined by the cost of the unskilled labour
> force.I think car plants and other forms of manufacturing facilities
> are also examples of where the cost of production is
> substantially determined by the cost of the unskilled labour force
>
> A multinational can establish its plant wherever it gets the cheapest
> cost of production. Capital can move across national borders
> easily but the US unskilled worker will not find it easy (even if he
> wanted to) to avoid the oncosts of occupational health and
> safety regulatons. The US worker is not free, in the free market
> to just up and relocate to the third world country.
>
> Nor I suspect would you or I want him to have to reduce his
> cost at the price of his health and safety.
In the original form of the US government, its revinues were almost
entirely based on either tariffs, imposts, and excises, i.e. trade,
since the primary function of the federal government at the time was
naval protection of trading ships and maintaining the 'channels of
commerce', i.e. the navigable waterways, which were the highway system
in the early US. It only stood to reason that those benefitting most
from such federal expenditures should pay the cost.
This was also why the rural Pennsylvanians, West Virginians, and others
rose up in rebellion against the whiskey excise tax, since the feds
made no investments in building channels of commerce across the
appalachians by which farmers could easily transport their crops to
markets in coastal cities. The feds invested in no Road Guard to patrol
roadways like the Coast Guard patrolled the rivers and lakes and
coastlines.
Another duty of the federal government is the 'general welfare' of the
economy, i.e. its economic vitality and long term stability (i.e. NOT
nanny statism). If high paying skilled manufacturing jobs are being
shipped overseas or replaced by automation, leaving just poorly paid
burger flipping jobs in their place, this is a constitutional concern
of the federal government because it deals in not just the long term
economic stability of the nation, but its political stability as well.
Even worse, a government that allows the export of not just its high
paying manufacturing jobs overseas, but its higher paying knowledge
jobs overseas is asking for only one possible result: the reinstitution
of feudalism, because all that will be left are wealthy stockholders
and lots and lots of burger flippers and blue jeans sales people, and
garbage collectors, etc etc etc. i.e. an aristocracy of educated elites
and a majority of uneducated and unskilled wage slaves.
This is not what libertarianism is about.
=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
- Gen. John Stark
Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com
Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/
Pro-tech freedom discussion:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom
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