Comment by AlecSchueler
18 days ago
That's verging on a white man's burden kind of argument. We can help tackle global income disparity without telling poorer people that they should be happy we're offering them the jobs we don't want to do ourselves.
Growth in manufacturing products for export, first in wrecked post-war Japan, then in Taiwan, and then in China, is what lifted all of them out of deep poverty into global powerhouses and technology leaders. You better believe that they were happy to have those jobs others didn't want and to capitalize on them to grow themselves.
Manufacturing jobs produce locallly useful materials, pay for locally useful machines and equipment, and atleast in the first 2/3rs of industrializarion locally useful skills.
This stuff does bring them money which is nice, but a person having access to and learning to use a welder or lathe or loom or repair or fabricate such thhings has value far beyond merely their wage.
Tools and the skills to use them is the most important thing in building a modern society. Countries don't really ever transition from agrarian straight to a modern service economy.
We could but we don’t. Like, let’s buy artificial diamonds so kids in the Congo aren’t mining blood diamonds, but you never hear about the follow-up of helping those kids out of poverty. I’m all for ethical sourcing, but we are horrible at the other things we should be doing to alleviate poverty around the world.
I can see why many think that our global social activism would be better redirected at simply making poorer people less poor as opposed to their exploitation. It’s definitely a jaded view though.
"We can help tackle global income disparity "
As long as it doesn't involve just giving them money. This experiment has been done in Africa for as long as I can remember and there's only more poverty and a higher birth rate.
"without telling poorer people that they should be happy we're offering them the jobs we don't want to do ourselves"
A corrupt government is usually the reason a country doesn't prosper. There's no jobs because businesses end up just getting ripped off and move elsewhere (along with anyone smart). What's left is a broken infrastructure and abject poverty.
Until this is fixed, things will never change.
> there's only more poverty
That's simply not true.
> A corrupt government is usually the reason a country doesn't prosper
You're probably ignoring the centuries of corporate rule in India that systematically removed wealth to Britain, and which left behind a traumatised and humiliated population that was allowed to play in a game of capitalism they didn't start with the cards already stacked against them.