It's too late for Gautam's request, but Brad DeLong wrote an insightful article about offshoring yesterday:
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004-2_archives/000262.html Seth Stevenson Urges Us to Be Worse Than Debbie--Much Worse Than Debbie Seth Stevenson of Slate urges us to become morally upstanding by undertaking a course of action that would worsen the misery of India's poor. No, seriously, he does. He writes: Trying Really Hard To Like India. By Seth Stevenson: [T]ake our last night at Marari Beach. We somehow end up drinking in the bar with a thirtysomething American woman.let's call her "Debbie".who is six stiff drinks ahead of us. Between sips of some tropical concoction, she delivers a slurry monologue explaining that she has come to India on business. Her business: designing doormats. No joke. One of Kerala's big industries is coir.a textile made from coconut husks. On a bike ride we took around the village (yes, "the world beyond the hotel gates"), we could see into huts that had looms and people weaving coir into simple mats. These mats get trimmed and finished (by some big export factory) to Debbie's design specs. Then they get shipped to North America and end up in some middlebrow home-furnishings catalog where you can buy them for $26.99. Debbie is drinking heavily because her job here is wicked depressing. She buys in bulk from the big exporter, who pays a shady middleman, who (barely) pays the villagers here. The villagers can make about three mats per week.all of excellent quality.and for this they get paid a few cents per mat. The middleman of course takes all the profit. Debbie, goodhearted human that she is, is on the verge of drunken tears as she describes all this. She knows the whole thing is grossly unfair. And that she perpetuates it. But if she wants to keep her job with the American firm she works for, and still make deals with Indian exporters, there's not a damn thing she can do about it. And unless you have carefully avoided buying any products made by Third World labor--and chances are you have not--you're really no better than Debbie. Suppose that all of us who would otherwise buy coir doormats for $26.99 at Cost Plus World Market read Seth Stevenson's article in Slate, obey his injunction to become 'better than Debbie" by not buying our coir doormats--or "any other products made by Third World labor." What happens then? Demand for coir doormats drops through the floor. Cost Plus World Market stops selling them. Debbie's company transfers her to another job, managing a maquiladora in El Paso. Mr. Big Exporter goes bankrupt, and has to return to his ancestral village in Oudh. Mr. Shady Middleman loses his job too, and has to become a lower-paid janitor at the Luxury Beach Hotel where Seth Stevenson says. "Ha, ha! Serves them right!" you say. "Disgusting exploiters! They got what's coming to them." And you kick back and feel morally virtuous. And next year, what do the tourists who leave Big Luxury Hotel and take a ride around Desperately Poor Village see? They look into huts. The huts are empty. The looms stand idle. Nobody is making coir mats anymore--Mr. Shady Middleman is no longer buying. What are the people who used to sit in their huts and make coir mats doing instead? We don't know. But we do know one thing: Whatever they are doing, they would rather be making coir mats. Those who took up the option of making coir mats did so because it seemed to them to be the best available option. And we--by trying to preserve our moral purity by not becoming polluted by physical contact with the products of Third World labor--have stolen that option from them. Seth Stevenson thinks that those who do not buy the coir mats are morally superior to Debbie and the rest of us: they are not complicit in the exploitation of Third World labor. But there is another way of looking at it--a way that makes those who do not buy the coir mats (and Seth Stevenson) into moral monsters. Suppose that Seth Stevenson, on his bicycle ride, were to stop by a couple of empty huts, run into them, steal the looms, and then smash their looms to pieces on the beach and dance in front of the resulting bonfire. Then the villagers could no longer make coir mats. They would have to find something else to do--something else that is worse than making mats. Such a theft-and-bonfire would have the same effect on the people of Desperately Poor Village as... as... drying up demand for their products by urging First World consumers to adopt a higher standard of morality and eschew the products of Third World labor, no? So shouldn't we evaluate Seth Stevenson's plea for us not to buy coir mats as having the same moral value as loom-smashing, since it has the same effect on the people in Desperately Poor Village? By this way of thinking, Seth Stevenson is a thief. No, he is worse than your common-variety thief: a common-thief steals from the rich, while Stevenson steals their livelihood from the poor. Stevenson is a thief who steals the poor's livelihod. No, he is even worse--for he incites others to steal the poor's livelihood as well. And he is even worse than that: a thief--even the master of a gang of thieves--makes use of what he steals, while Stevenson simply destroys the looms (or, rather, urges us to destroy the looms' market value as a capital good.) There is no reason. He's a thief--no, worse, the organizer of a large gang of thieves--no, worse, the organizer of a large gang of vandals who prey on the world's poor. By my lights, Stevenson is on a moral plane far, far lower than that of Debbie. Debbie may be reborn as a Brahman. But the karmic wages of Stevenson's internet virtual loom-smashing ensure that he will, at best, be reborn as a dung-fly. What would Seth Stevenson do--instead of urging all of us to help him virtually smash the looms of Desperately Poor Village--if he wanted to improve his chances of being reborn as something higher than an insect (a mangy dog, say; or a lesser marmoset)? The odds are low: some people will read his piece, and not buy the coir doormat, and India's exports will drop, and some looms will stand idle, and some people in Desperately Poor Village will lose their livelihood and be forced into some worse situation because of his actions. The karmic burden can only be lightened, not removed. Here are some possibilities: * Praise coir doormats extravagantly, to boost demand in America for * them. With higher demand, Mr. Shady Middleman will have to go * further, work harder, and pay more. More families will have the * option of making a livelihood by weaving coir doormats--and those * families that take up that option are pretty likely to be made * better off as a result. * Agitate for the expiration-on-time of the Multi Fiber Agreement, * which restricts textile exports from the Third World to the United * States--and so virtually smashes more looms in a minute than Seth * Stevenson on his bike could smash in a year. * Figure out a way to generate alternatives to Mr. Shady Middleman. * If there were two or three such bidding for Debbie's business, * each would be a lot less shady--and each would pay the mat-makers * more. The fact that Mr. Shady Middleman has his local monopoly is * a sign that this is going to be hard. Either Mr. Shady Middleman * himself is barely getting by, and nobody else with the * organizational skills to successfully do his job wants it; or bad * things happen to competitors at the hands either of the local * police or the local notables. Kerala is the province of India in * which the local government does the best job of protecting the * poor against the rich, but it is extremely rare in historical * perspective for the government to be anything other than a * committee for managing (and advancing) the affairs of the local * landlord class and the local bourgeoisie. * Take more vacations at Big Luxury Hotel, so that it will have to * hire more people from Desperately Poor Village, and so give them * even better options. * Band together with the other guests at Big Luxury Hotel, collect a * pool of $10,000 or so, and give it to a committee of senior women * in Desperately Poor Village to lend out in small amounts to those * in the village who need capital for projects. * Buy the villagers some goats (or whatever other piece of * agricultural capital seems useful). * Give money to the Kerala Ministry of Education (which is a * reasonably clean and uncorrupt institution). * Agitate for the United States to increase its foreign aid budget. There are lots more constructive things that Seth Stevenson could do. But urge his First World readers to join him in boycotting the products of Third World labor, and so virtually smash the looms that are the best current option of the inhabitants of Desperately Poor Village? No. No! No!! No!!!! No!!!!!!!! Think analytically, people. Think hard about opportunity cost--what people's options are--and how to expand those options, not narrow them. Think not about the first-round effects of actions, but their implications for equilibrium. Only thus do you have a hope of attaining Enlightenment. Seth Stevenson will never achieve the blessed state of being reborn as a Boddhisatva--or even a Neoliberal Economist--at this rate. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
