Corporate vs People Immigration

Recently a debate has centered around the presence of illegal immigrants in the United States and the continual outsourcing of jobs from developed to less developed countries. These two debates are linked in a fundamental way that is becoming more important for us, as global citizens, to understand. The bottom line is that as long as corporations are free to move from country to country, while people are not, we will continue to see a decline in the middle classes of more developed countries.

The cycle of corporate development and migration starts when a country develops rules and regulations to attract companies to do business on its shores. The economy in the country grows, which causes inflation and gradually increases the costs of doing business there. In addition, as workers gain political power they demand increased wages and services. When it becomes expensive enough that the company can justify investing in a less developed nation (which will welcome them with open arms) the cycle begins anew. While eventually this might lead to vast swaths of the world having more development the immediate result is the marginalization of the new middle class as it springs up in different areas of the world.

The reason why companies can get away with moving jobs to poor areas and paying very small wages comes down to a misplaced set of values when it comes to immigration. Corporations and large businesses can select from the entire world the place where they think they will be able to make the most profit and for the most part quickly move there. While some countries may be too unstable or not have friendly policies, many are willing to oblige corporations in order to attract the jobs and new income they can provide. On the other hand, for most people living in the world the country where they have to work is the one in which they are born. The result of this imbalance is that companies can exploit the desperation of third world countries and more importantly third world workers.

Governments continuously compete for large corporations to bring more jobs to their areas. On the other hand most developed nations have powerful anti-immigration political groups and try to prevent people born in one nation from coming to live and work in theirs. Countries shift their policies to provide the best environment for large businesses instead of the best environment for all people. The result is that people are forced to see borders and walls but corporations are not.

A better approach would be to loosen up immigration law so that countries are forced to compete for the best environment for workers instead of the best environment for business. Currently such competition is extremely limited by the way immigration law works to prevent the movement of people. If people could move relatively freely countries would have to develop policies that would keep them there instead of migrating to other nations. Limited economic opportunity would remain a problem which foreign aid would be needed to deal with, but no longer would development depend on an exploitative cycle the ultimate effects of which could last generations (especially when large amounts of pollution are caused by nearsighted factory owners).

As leftist as open borders may sound at first the result is one that people who believe in free markets should understand as an increase in competition. Currently corporations rarely have to compete for cheap manufacturing labor. While top talent for higher corporate jobs may be hard to find physical labor can be found in much of the world. For poor workers in many countries almost any job is preferable to simply sitting in decaying communities, even ones that are severely underpaid or in some cases even hazardous. But they are not able to cheaply choose to leave their homes and seek employment in places where workers are protected from exploitation. Instead they must choose to work in the country they are born in or risk living outside the law and remaining exploitable. The current race to the bottom, where countries get investment dollars usually because they have little regulation protecting workers and the environment, could be changed dramatically if workers were more free to seek work in the place that treated them most fairly. Instead of building a new factory in a developing nation where the workers have no other choice companies would be forced to pay fair wages and locate in better areas because they would have no choice.

Clearly this post is only meant as a conversation starter and leaves out almost all detail and some serious considerations that would have to be dealt with before such a plan could be put into effect. All I want people to think about is whether 80 years of anti-immigrant bloviating has helped secure the middle class or whether it just might be undermining it.

Being Politically Incorrect

Recently several commentators have complained that concern over political correctness has either one limited their first amendment rights or two somehow limited the public debate in a way that handicaps us as a society. Both contentions are wrong. The reality is that the First Amendment has never been a shield against criticism of ideas by people who oppose your point of view. The idea that private parties should not be able to criticize what you say or think because it would somehow violate your free speech rights is a total perversion of the idea of freedom. As for the latter contention, most of the time things that are politically incorrect are really simply incorrect, dismissing them does not hurt he public discourse.

Your First Amendment rights protect you from one thing and one thing only. The government cannot punish you for your expressing your views on particular topics. When a commentator says something that offends a broad cross section of other citizens you are immune from them throwing you in jail not from them criticizing you and trying to limit your ability to broadcast your views. When a group of citizens say that they will boycott your sponsors based on what you said they are simply exercising their First Amendment rights in the same way that you have exercised them. If it turns out that the organization that argues that your views are so offensive that they should no longer be broadcast is more powerful than the people that think your views should be heard, you are silenced. But you are silenced by private action, not the government.

When what you says offends a large group of Americans they are free to lobby your employer to fire you. On the other hand when what you say offends the majority of Americans they are not able to use the coercive force of the government to fine, imprison, or silence you. The latter is prevented by the First Amendment. The former is a category of speech that is and should be protected by the First Amendment. Be wary of those who say something and then hide behind the First Amendment when others criticize it. If their view or comments are defensible they should be defended on their merits not on whether they are protected. On the other hand, if you get hauled off to jail for expressing even the most offensive of views call the ACLU they will help defend your First Amendment rights. 

Moving on to the contention that things that are politically incorrect need to be said because they are an important part of the debate, all I wish to say is that for the most part the emphasis should be on incorrect. Time after time someone has suffered a political backlash for saying something that never should have been said and then spent a few days doing the rounds on news shows bemoaning the loss of their free speech rights and how political correctness is polluting the public discourse.

The recent example of the n-word is telling. The person speaking seems to believe that the context of her comment were benign and that while maybe she should not have used the word, what she was saying (Dr. Laura if you don't know) was somehow a valuable point of view. She basically said that there should not be a melanin content test to determine whether it was appropriate to use the n-word. Fundamentally what she wants to do is ignore the fact when a racial epithet is used, the race of the speaker is a tremendously important part of the context. The fact that Eminem, a rapper widely known for trying to avoid controversy, is sensitive to how his use of the n-word would be perceived should indicate how controversial whites using the n-word usually is. In addition, this comment is simply not true. In the movie Boyz in the Hood one of the most memorable early scenes in the movie was a black police officer using the n-word with as much maliciousness as the word can be used with.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger further compounded her disgrace with what she said later in the phone call. Basically she said that if someone was going to marry outside their race they needed to have a sense of humor about racist comments and not be hypersensitive. The only proper advice here was to encourage the caller to talk to her husband about the issue and provide her with advice or resources about how to educate the people she thought were being insensitive. Our society has not come far enough in race relations to pretend that racial prejudice is simply a joke. In fact, a good indicator that we live in a society where justice instead of prejudice reigns will be when people no longer think making such jokes is acceptable and the jokes are no longer funny.

Even the point Dr. Laura was trying to make is tragically misguided. The use of the n-word by black comics as well as any comedy routine that relies on caricatures of common racial stereotypes by members of that race are not uncontroversial. Many people of all races find such routines to be offensive. One of the more disturbing facts about that genre of comedy is that there are still serious questions of black face and minstrelsy when those comics are performing for a white audience (not just the ones watching at homes, but the ones producing and choosing which comics will be given a national stage).  Since some white commentators are now asking why they can't call people the n-word or use the n-word the critics of those comedy specials are perhaps being proven right.

As for Dr. Laura basically said that all you hear on HBO is n-word, n-word, n-word, and that since it is o.k. for black comics to say it, it must not be all that offensive. This is wrong and displays tremendous ignorance for at least a couple of reasons. The first is the context issue mentioned above. The second is that while viewers may feel more comfortable laughing at black comics who use the n-word than they would be if a white comic was doing so, any use of the n-word is not uncontroversial. Dr. Laura is not being criticized for a lack of political correctness she is being criticized for a lack of correctness.

My final point on this matter is simple. When educated people jump to conclusions about race or sex and then air them, they are at the very least displaying prejudice of a very common sort. The fact that a black person on television uses the n-word does not mean that the term is not deeply offensive to people of all races. Dr. Laura's feigned or real ignorance of the simple idea that one or even several members of a group saying something derogatory about that group or using terms historically used to defame that group means that all members of that group should not be offended is the basest sort of prejudice. A black comic is not an authority for all black people, just like a white radio host is not the voice of all white people. Confusing one, or some, or even a majority of people of any grouping with all people who share that trait is the act of treating them like things instead of persons. Doing so is simply incorrect the politically can and should be dropped.

The Ground Zero Mosque and Racism

One of the recent controversies that conservative politicians have stirred up involves whether a mosque/islamic cultural center should be built two blocks from ground zero. One of the most glaring omissions of this debate has been the degree to which racism and prejudice is fundamental to most of the arguments put forward as to why it should not be built.

Fundamentally the repeated linking of Islam and terrorism is about racism. There are terrorists who consider Islam the inspiration for the violence they commit. But they are not alone. Throughout history people have used their personal religious views to justify violence. The distortion of Islam by terrorists in this century is neither new in history nor unique to the religion of Islam. In fact, the recent rhetoric about this country and constitution being the greatest gift that God ever gave the world is another example of using religion to justify violent acts.While there is a real difference between self defense and trying to impose your way of life on other people, our recent actions in Iraq and Afghanistan how easily the two are blurred. The reality is that the people who attacked us on September 11th are as representative of Muslims as the KKK is of Christianity.

We are fighting Al Qaeda  because they want to kill us. We disagree with them fundamentally on many issues in different areas of life and most importantly about what values make a nation. The value I think most important in our nation is pluralism. The dream of this country is fundamentally about the idea that the peoples who commit themselves to this nation can come together based on the values of freedom and democracy. The idea that Muslims being welcome to worship where they choose is somehow a victory for the terrorists instead of a victory for pluralism seems simply wrongheaded to me.

Unfortunately the stirring up of this controversy and the rhetoric around it has denied our country the victory that we could have had. In Prom Night in Mississippi Morgan Freeman is asked why he was willing to pay for a school's prom on the condition that for the first time in history the prom be integrated. He responded that when he tells people about this aspect of his home town, that in the year 2007 the school still racially segregates prom night, all he can say is that it's the stupidest damn thing he has ever heard of. I sincerely question how I can talk about the great respect our country has for freedom of religion when so many of my fellow citizens are so easily blinded by prejudice.

The fantasy that allowing the building of a mosque will make ground zero into a headquarters for terrorists is little more than prejudice against more than a billion people based on the actions of 19 of them. More importantly, while some commentators have said that victims of the attack have a legitimate emotional point they ignore the broader the view that reveals the gritty new face of American racism.

Anti-Muslim prejudice has caused local controversies about building mosques in several areas. Some mosques have even been attacked, defaced, and destroyed. The sliver of legitimacy that was provided by the location of the proposed site in New York has allowed commentators to come out against a Mosque with a thin veil of legitimacy to cover up the stink of their underlying prejudice. The national figures commenting on this issue aren't concerned with the thousands of people who were directly effected by the attacks in New York. They are using this controversy to tap into a nationwide animus that is just as illogical as de jure segregation. The sheer hypocrisy of some of leaders who worship the constitution but ignore its pluralist values is astounding.

Some commentators have intimated that because some of the people involved in building the mosque favor the imposition of sharia law we should be troubled. But the same commentators refused to call out leaders who argue that good christian values must be reflected in our marriage laws. Or leaders that proclaim that the Ten Commandments should be openly worshiped in our courts. These leaders do not stand for the American value of pluralism. The imposition of a Christian theocracy is just as unappealing to me as the imposition of an Islamic one. On the other hand, I am not troubled by the Catholic that wants to ban birth control and condoms for the same reason that I am not troubled by the Muslim who wants to impose Islamic law. Neither idea will ever become a reality as long as our country is recognizable. 

Fundamentally we have to ask ourselves whether our commitment to pluralism, promised in the 1st Amendment and bled for in several wars, is so weak that we cannot support an Islamic cultural center close to a place where people of many faiths were killed by an enemy of our Nation.

If we really don't care about pluralism, then I would question how important winning the war really is. 
 

Atlas Shrugged and unemployment

One of the most famous passages penned by Ayn Rand discusses the value of money, especially gold, as the epitome of value and virtue. In the United States, we have a simple way of placing value on things, we price them. While there is some talk about the dignitiy and moral worth of every person, at the end of the day we value the work that people do, which is an important part of their personality, by paying them different amounts of money. The basic idea is that money should usually approximate value and that people who contribute to society will obtain wealth. We believe this so strongly that there are scarcely other ways to express value. Engagement rings, large weddings, the price of a fancy dinner, private planes, nice cars, a chic apartment, a nice home, a good neighborhood, a large television, all of these things are ways of advertising status and displaying the value of our lives to strangers, family, friends, and lovers.

I am not advocating that we all give up creature comforts or that the things we buy are in some way all evil. My sole point is that they are not signs of virtue or talent either. The underlying statement of Ayn Rand is that property is acquired through virtue and innovation. That the accumulation of wealth is somehow morally praiseworthy. The converse was also argued forcefully; those who do not amass wealth are morally blameworthy, lazy, unintelligent, and destructive of society.

Neither of these things is true. For the most part, people want to be productive for reasons other than just money. Also, the most important predictor of social class at death, is what social class a person is born into. In other words, what seperates the haves from the have nots has more to do with differences in opportunities at birth than anything else.  

Nevertheless, we live in a society that places fundamental value on the myth that social status is conferred based on hard work and talent. For my part, even though I know that a broad downturn in the economy has led to my current personal long term unemployment crisis, I nevertheless ponder every day whether I have anything of value to contribute to our society. After all, no one so far is willing to pay me for my work.

Drugs and OIl

There are two topics in the headlines right now about problems with commodities that the United States consumes in larger quantities than any other country in the world.

Oil

One problem is the major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Since the oil rig explosion on April 20th of this year millions of gallons of oil have been flowing into the gulf of Mexico and will continue to do so for some time. Wildlife is being devastated, 11 workers lost their lives, the people living along the Gulf Coast have lost their livelihoods, many people along the gulf coast will lose their way of life, and a major oil company has shown that with all the technology we have today we cannot plug a hole in the ground on the bottom of the ocean. There is a man made disaster going on and many blaming the lax standards of a greedy oil company.

I don't want to pick a side in that fight. I want to point out only that oil spills happen. In fact this is not even the worst one to occur, it is merely the worst that has been in United States territory. The bottom line is that drilling for, bringing up, transporting, and using fossil fuels is going to always involve risk and until we as a society find another source of energy we are not going to be able to eliminate the impact of those risks.


Drugs

The other is the problem of illegal immigration from Mexico and boder security. I saw a report yesterday detailing how the Mayor of a Mexican border town was assassinated by cartel lords who did not like the fact that he was in faovr of law and order. What amazes about this story and the broader debate about immigration is that somehow the United States consumption of illegal narcotics is almost always overlooked. Our society is funding the war lords of that region by buying narcotics at a tremendous rate and yet we don't want to acknowledge that the real reason so many people are trying to cross the border is that Americans are destroying large regions of thier country.

This is not to say that I blame drug addicts for border problems. I don't. I have scarcely any understanding of why we as a society consume so many narcotics. What I do know for certain is that our policies for managing the use of illegal narcotics have not been successful in limiting their use. I also know that hundreds, if not thousands of people in the border area of Mexico die in fights to control who gets to supply our demand for narcotics. I can't come up with some simple solution that is going to solve this problem. I do think we should at least start by acknowledging that a tremendous amount of the instability down there is a result of narco trafficking. Continuing to pretend that cutting off the flow of drugs and people is a more reasonable solution than cutting off the demand is a hypocritical way of blaming our problems on another country.


Conclusion

While we seem to be obsessed with how oil is damaging the livelihoods of Americans and we are in the mood to start innovating a way to cut our consumption of oil, we may want to think about how we can cut our consumption of narcotics as well.

On the other hand, we could just continue to condemn the lawlessness of the Mexican side of the U.S. Mexican border and the greed/recklessness of oil companies and wait for more people to die.

What do You Fight For?

I was recently watching the movie Citizen X (the one about the Russian serial killer) and one of the lines in the movie struck me as fairly profound. The hero of the movie was bantering with a man who was his superior about the proper way to go about catching the serial killer. Hero says "You believe a man is what he says?" The superior says "when he is paid to talk for a living." The hero admonishes "A man is what he fights for."

Growing up in the U.S. I think I have become far too caught up in the idea that what I am is somehow inextricably caught up with how I am employed. (A topic I intend to come back to in another post). I found this hero's idea of self definition or really self-ideation to be much more interesting and perhaps useful. Undoubtedly, at least in part, because I find the things that I fight for to be much more important than the things that I have so far found employment doing.

For starters I would have to clarify what I mean by "fights for." In my mind to fight for something has nothing to do with physical violence. Instead to fight for something is to make a commitment to an ideal that you carry through in your day to day actions. You fight for passionate beliefs you feel compelled to take risks for. The ideas you fight for are the ones you would hazard losing your best friends over, rather than compromise those beliefs.

The core concept is one of personal integrity. Is my identity whole if I refuse to live by x or y ideal that I have set up for myself? Most of the times these struggles will take place in your own mind.

Of course not every personal belief will fall into the category of things that someone fights for. For some people, none of their beliefs have this strong of a value.

As for myself, there are many things that I fight for in this way. I don't have all the answers for how I would want the world to look, or how the infinite details of it should be organized. But I do have a few ideas and basic principles that I know I want to be a bigger part of it. Agope, as preached by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., tolerance, equality, understanding, and love are a few of the things I fight for.

In some sense I guess that means I fight against violence, intolerance, inequality, ignorance, and hatred, but I would much rather think about what I am fighting for instead. I would challenge people to think about the things that they fight for and decide whether they would want others to judge them based on those things.