More Harrassing Larry

Look who's responsible for taking out and dealing with the trash at the hotels. The poorest, least educated, least thoughtful. Go behind a hotel in Norway and you'll see the trash dealt with in some eco-sensitive and expensive way. Which has everything to do with Norwegians being rich, educated, and highly socialized compared to Fijians.

I didn't say anything about how to get from Fijian social and economic conditions (which are actually quite good by third world standards) to Norwegian conditions.

But I think no good argument can be made against the proposition that the incomes of the workers are more likely to rise when the gross national income is rising. It does not follow that our only option is to hope that the workers will get their fair share by trickle down and do nothing else. Measures short of revolution and redistribution by force have been applied by capitalist societies with mixed success for more than a century. And they have always been most successful when the overall economy was growing.

The economic principles of the imperialist societies of a century ago appear to remain valid, but today they are stood on their heads in the application. For example, in 1907 the US and the British Empire wanted influence in China because they hoped to make it a market for their industrial goods. The rivalries among the empires was for overseas markets. The terms of trade were such that the poorer countries always got screwed and their people impoverished by foreign trade.

In 2007 the capitalist countries seek to gain influence by providing (or withholding) access to their own economies as markets for the goods of the poorer countries. The terms of trade are such as to enrich the poorer countries. The obvious example is China and the Tiger economies - Japan, Korea, Thailand, Taiwan. Sometimes, as with OPEC, the relationship is involuntary.

What provokes so much controversy and resistance is that the resulting increase in wealth in the exporting countries is rarely distributed fairly. The resulting development is rarely attractive or socially desirable. In short, the developing countries are in the same situation as the developed ones. Rising wealth is a precondition of increasing incomes and improved living conditions for the workers, but by no means guarantees it.

Even so, opposing growth of national incomes and infrastructure development seems to me to be always and everywhere a mistake. Romanticizing poverty and backwardness is always and everywhere a mistake. What is wanted is fairer distribution and redistribution of wealth, not less wealth. What is wanted is more social controls on development, not less development. This is true both at home and abroad.