Thanks for Givin' Me That Job, Massa!
Madsen Pirie writes at the ASI blog:
Uh, yeah. Same way the feudal aristocracy "created" all those farming jobs by "giving" the peasants access to "their" land. Same way the nice folks at Gosplan and the industrial ministries in "provided" all those Soviet workers with factory jobs. Whatever ruling class controls access to the means of production in a society can also, by definition, be said to "provide" employment and "create jobs." BFD. In a lot of cases, those multi-national companies are supplying crutches to the same people whose legs they broke, with the help of the local government.
It is gradually dawning on activists that multi-national companies like Nike, Macdonald's, and Coca-cola are not the enemies. On the contrary, they create jobs and growth opportunities in poorer countries.
Uh, yeah. Same way the feudal aristocracy "created" all those farming jobs by "giving" the peasants access to "their" land. Same way the nice folks at Gosplan and the industrial ministries in "provided" all those Soviet workers with factory jobs. Whatever ruling class controls access to the means of production in a society can also, by definition, be said to "provide" employment and "create jobs." BFD. In a lot of cases, those multi-national companies are supplying crutches to the same people whose legs they broke, with the help of the local government.
posted by Kevin Carson | 3:33 PM
3 Comments:
It's more complicated than that, and the analogy isn't that close. First, all these multinationals do make their own workers better off, but partly by moving food from mouth to mouth so others there get worse off. But the Nikes do increase total production while coffee growing usually only diverts it. With the former it is a distribution problem but the bare assertion that they are providing is correct.
In the feudal system there is the co-evolution of parasites issue. Feudal overlords in most places didn't conquer, rather they genuinely provided protection from the more virulent dark age raiding bands. (Don't forget that appeasement behaviour is natural and initiated by the victim.) England was different from an explicit conquest, which colurs our view.
This is completely ludicrous. Coca-Cola, ruling elite, sounds like Ronald Reagan, libertarian.
- Josh
Josh - You haven't heard of the Killer Coke campaign, have you?
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