Profiting from Modern Slavery
I got feedback to my entry 21 - Absurd Attitudes, that the money spent on pets in rich country is not so much, that it would make much of a difference, if it were spent on suffering humans instead. I cannot judge, if this is true or not. But I was criticizing more the attitude than the behavior of people, who care more for a cat in their own country than for a human in a far away poor country.
The pets were just one example for a general attitude of people in comfortable countries. I call a country a comfortable country, where people's need for food, shelter, health and education is comfortably met, where the law and the government protects people from crime and where women are equal before the law. This means mainly our western societies.
Most of the people in comfortable countries consider the people in the poor countries of the third world with hypocrisy and double standards.
1. A standard of living, that they would perceive as outrageous for themselves and for all citizens of their own country, does not elicit any protest or perception of injustice. Poverty and miserable conditions in the third world are considered as a consequence of the inferiority of the people there, who would not deserve any better.
2. The good willing ones attempt to improve the misery in the third world by private donations to charity organisations. But it is condescension, the receiving people are not empowered but made and looked at as beggars. A lot of the donations go into bureaucracy or is spent on spreading religion as a byproduct.
3. Governmental foreign aid is considered as generosity by many people, but in reality it is not altruistic but a manipulation to gain power for even more exploitation, because a lot of such aid never reaches the people but goes into corruption.
4. Those managers and politicians, who have the economic power to dictate and to enforce the outrageously low prices for products from third world countries are in my opinion criminals and sociopaths of the worst kind, they are monsters. This exploitation of apparently free people is in reality not any better than the legal slavery in past centuries. But I doubt, if they could enforce this exploitation, were they not backed up by the acquiescence of the population, who wants to get the cheap stuff.
The same people, who have fervently attacked Bush for starting a war in Iraq to secure the oil, go to the next super market and buy sugar, coffee and cheap clothes and do not think twice about it. Bush's soldiers killed people with one shot. The managers, who dictate the price of the sugar or the t-shirt, kill the people slowly with starvation, unsanitary living conditions, lack of health care and unhealthy working conditions. What is more cruel, to kill someone with one shot or to kill people by slow slavery?
I got feedback to my entry 21 - Absurd Attitudes, that the money spent on pets in rich country is not so much, that it would make much of a difference, if it were spent on suffering humans instead. I cannot judge, if this is true or not. But I was criticizing more the attitude than the behavior of people, who care more for a cat in their own country than for a human in a far away poor country.
The pets were just one example for a general attitude of people in comfortable countries. I call a country a comfortable country, where people's need for food, shelter, health and education is comfortably met, where the law and the government protects people from crime and where women are equal before the law. This means mainly our western societies.
Most of the people in comfortable countries consider the people in the poor countries of the third world with hypocrisy and double standards.
1. A standard of living, that they would perceive as outrageous for themselves and for all citizens of their own country, does not elicit any protest or perception of injustice. Poverty and miserable conditions in the third world are considered as a consequence of the inferiority of the people there, who would not deserve any better.
2. The good willing ones attempt to improve the misery in the third world by private donations to charity organisations. But it is condescension, the receiving people are not empowered but made and looked at as beggars. A lot of the donations go into bureaucracy or is spent on spreading religion as a byproduct.
3. Governmental foreign aid is considered as generosity by many people, but in reality it is not altruistic but a manipulation to gain power for even more exploitation, because a lot of such aid never reaches the people but goes into corruption.
4. Those managers and politicians, who have the economic power to dictate and to enforce the outrageously low prices for products from third world countries are in my opinion criminals and sociopaths of the worst kind, they are monsters. This exploitation of apparently free people is in reality not any better than the legal slavery in past centuries. But I doubt, if they could enforce this exploitation, were they not backed up by the acquiescence of the population, who wants to get the cheap stuff.
The same people, who have fervently attacked Bush for starting a war in Iraq to secure the oil, go to the next super market and buy sugar, coffee and cheap clothes and do not think twice about it. Bush's soldiers killed people with one shot. The managers, who dictate the price of the sugar or the t-shirt, kill the people slowly with starvation, unsanitary living conditions, lack of health care and unhealthy working conditions. What is more cruel, to kill someone with one shot or to kill people by slow slavery?
Those monsters have the power to enforce slavery-like living situations and working conditions upon the third world. But they also have the power to force even the not consenting people to partake in that system against their will.
When I go to the cheapest supermarket and buy sugar, bananas or a t-shirt, I too pay the cheap price. Would I go to another supermarket, where I pay more, not one cent more would go to the people, who produce the stuff. The more expensive supermarket only makes some more people in the supply chain rich.
But there is not much, that one person can do. Even if I could boycott ever product from modern slavery, this would not help anybody. The people would earn even less.
I refuse to donate in condescension and pity to charities. People every where on this globe deserve a fair and correct price for their product, and I would feel better, if I could pay it to them on the basis of being equal partners of commerce. Not on the basis of economic power, but on the very simple basis of the hours of life, someone is investing. It is an outrage, that a person in a comfortable country works one minute to receive the value of one entire day's work in an economically poor country in return.
In many countries, there are laws about minimal wages. What really is required, is an agreement on a decent minimal wage all around the globe.
