By Stewart N. Thorpe of Citizen Press Revolution
During colonial times in America, while we were importing slaves from Africa, it was actually illegal to have slaves in England. Out of sight, out of mind, the English, like us, could feel that they were morally wholesome. Now, the United States of America is the last standing super-power, the last standing empire of power over the entire world of nations. And we are endorsing and encouraging modern-day slavery.
Multinational corporations do the dirty work. And we allow them by consenting to do business and acquire their services and products. Many third-world countries work for starvation wages, money not enough to prosper and frequently not enough to even feed their families, unsafe and dangerous working conditions, living conditions that few of us could even fathom, for us, for you, for me.
We justify ourselves as justified ourselves before. These people are inferior to us.
How else can we justify the human right violations practiced by the "outsourced" and out of sight practices regularly carried out? If those practices were occuring inside our own borders, there would be a ripple and tidel wave of outrage against this raping of dignity and exploitation of humanity. And yet, if it happens in Thailand, Malaysia, or Burma, it is okay.
Is their humanity not the same as our humanity? If it is the same, how can we continue to allow our multinational corporations to exploit their humanity?
We have reasoned, consciously or not, that the people of under-developped countries are inferior in their humanity, that they do not deserve the natural and human rights which we proudly claim on national holidays, which we often claim makes us the best nation in the world. Does being the best nation in the world thus mean that we are superior in humanity against every else in the world as well?
We have not learned from racism against blacks. We have not learned from the slavery in the South.
Once again, we condone and encourage slavery in modern-day times.
Because they are not citizens, they do not deserve the so-gloried freedoms we enjoy. Likewise, when a black indentured-servant in America gained his freedom, bought his own land, laws prevented him the right to pass his private property to his son. He, after all, was not English. He was an alien. He was designated as being from Africa. Now, all we have done different is to outsource slavery for our benefit under the masks of multinational corporations.
We are certainly not the leader of the free world.
We are the leader of our own freedoms against those of others in the world.
The sooner we realize that we are, once again, slavemasters and sympathizers for this new slavery, the sooner that we might rightfully claim that righteous title: that we are the leader of the free world.
Until then, the title we truly deserve is that we are (once again) the leader of new slavery.
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Excuse me, but capitalism requires that some are subordinated. If you want everyone to recieve the exact same "living wage", move to china or viet nam. In capitalism, someone wins and someone looses...deal with it.
Starvation wages are not necessary. The profits and salaries of top business leaders is gross. When the CEO of Wal-mart makes 3500 dollars an hour and a full-time Wal-mart employee you see in the store makes 10,500 a year, there is a gross imbalance. This imbalance, however, doesn't even represent the astronomical wage exploitation of third world workers. Considering the extreme poverty of these nations is only being worsened by exploitation by us, we could easily afford shaving off some money that would make a tremendous difference in their lives, an amount of money that would really just be a drop in the bucket for these multinational corporations. It is un-necessary and it is unacceptable by a nation that thinks itself as leader of the free world. How can you honestly justify the exploitation in wages and in human rights against other people, restricting their freedom, preventing them from things such as a safe working conditions, free speech, legal grounds to find justice at work, etc and call ourselves leaders in freedom? This is a contradiction. This is hypocrisy. You should read the range of writings by Adam Smith, the so-called father of capitalism. You obviously have no idea how capitalism was actually intended to be.
Citizen Press Revolution