The Nationalities are on the move.

[Teufelsdröckh]

My dear list'ers, may I return to my original criticism of free trade as
it is being writ: that without the free movement of people, it isn't (free)?

If the global operation of industrial capital tends to improve the lives
of the less industrialized who are found to have something to sell, why
do the recipients tend to leave their homes for the home country of the
new wealth rather than stay in their own (much improved) environment?
And if the ultimate goal is -- though the means may be less than noble
-- that the common wealth be increased, why do governments attempt to
restrict the migration of people between countries?

Could it be that these operations of industrial capital actually tend to
exacerbate the inequalities between the rich and the poor? That as the
poor become marginally less poor, the rich become disproportionately richer?

Now some analysis:

Here in the USA, my adopted country (such a process, though!), we wallow
in cheap oil and meat, in cheap clothing, enjoying cheap electronics.
This allows us to feel that despite our stagnant wages our lives are
improving. So it is important that we allow our companies to pursue
cheap resources and labor around the globe. If we feel bad about
sweatshops and child labor and prison labor and decimated rainforests
and pollution, we have to remind ourselves that without them we could
not afford to live as we do, because our jobs would not be able to pay
us more and they would move someplace cheaper, too. And we can't let
very many people from those poor countries move here, where we're more
often allowed at work to use the bathroom when we have to, because they
would work more cheaply and we would lose our jobs and be just like they
were. So we don't mind that our bosses make 500 times more than we do,
because they're working hard to make sure we don't suffer too much. And
those trade deals are part of that: Exploiting others to protect our way
of life, the envy of the world. Why did the sixties revolution fail?
Because no bourgeois society really wants to go backward, which is what
would happen if we really tried to make everyone in the world equal.
Revolution can only occur when the people have nothing to lose, so all
those protesters in Québec would be quite chagrined if they actually
won, when they would no longer be able to afford their Birkenstocks and
Apple computers. And the only way forward is the same way it's always
been: money and technology. Which the fact is, sad as it may be, some
people have it and some people don't. If everybody had it there wouldn't
be anywhere to progress, to expand operations, to find new sources of
wealth. And without progress, it would be like nobody had anything.
Which, if you look at the bosses is kind of how it feels for most of us
already, except we have the internet and the Gap and OK health care (who
wants to complain? it invites more trouble). Yes, we have The Gap.
That's life. Haves and have-nots. And have-even-lesses. And
have-even-mores! Goddamn sixties, looks like they won anyway, 'cause
we're all living in the third world now.

--------------------------
Excuse me, my grandfather, who barely escaped the Nazis (may their name
be blotted from memory!), typed the preceding when I went to open a
bottle of wine (cheap! from Spain!). He's always meddling. He is
unhappy. He has never read Pynchon. He does not question. Life is
terrible enough, he says, without starting to try to change things and
really mess it up. But I say, The bosses do fine by themselves, they
don't need our help. They can mete us our stringy wages but they can't
buy our loyalty, because they are the ones who have never known loyalty
to any man or nation. Stalin and Mao's ineptitude killed millions, but
capitalism's territorial wars killed millions, too.

So I ask again: If there is such an effort to liberalize international
trade and investment, why does it not also consider the free movement of
people? What if national borders were only administrative, as between
the states, provinces, or departments of a country? Then, trade might be
more honestly called "free."

--
Diogenes Teufelsdröckh