And it wouldn't surprise me in the least if the question "would these people have better lifes if these ships weren't sent to Chittagong?" isn't asked.
Because it's largely irrelevant. The gangster-capitalist argument of "all else being equal, would you prefer a job with a trans-nat to no job" is nonsense, because all other things need not be equal. Assuming that they are denies the power of political progress. So no, I don't want to stop sending shipwrecks to India, full stop. I want to stop sending shipwrecks to India and instead pay the then-unemployed workers with some of the largesse captured by the trans-nat fatcats.
- Jake Ceterum censeo Chicago esse delendam
Look at South Korea, Taiwan, and Europe for that matter. And then contrast it with all the countries that never got anywhere, and look at the ones that are now at last moving forward, and ask yourself what they have done to get moving. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
You're really now in danger of endorsing that exploitation as some kind of necessary step on the road to all-industrial progess. When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
Would make a nice pair of argumentations with redstar's. *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
But there is some truth in what you two are complaining about: we will not all be equal until economically we are equal, and we won't get there without letting the developing world develop. We keep talking about gini coefficients and applying them haphazardly (to countries, for instance, rather than regions or, ultimately, the world itself). We will not achieve peace, imho, until we are thinking about gini in terms of global equality, and not intra-national equality. And we don't get there by blinking our eyes, and tapping our feet, and wishing liberal christian democracy and euro-centric values on the developing world.
The question then becomes which development models are the most humane and effective and here, there is room for a lot of argument.
