Not long ago HN was gushing over how Apple's moves to India and globalization at large was 'uplifting poorer economies'. You can't have uplift the poor without human rights in tandem.
It can simultaneously be true that globilisation is uplifting poorer economies and also that there is violence breaking out near Bengaluru.
Asia has proven to have a repeatable formula for getting wealthy. Working hard & cheaply is a key step.
Globalization doesn’t try to uplift human rights. It only seeks to enrich through free trade. Turns out, enriching people is fairly effective at eliminating human rights abuses. Or at the very least, there’s enough of a correlation that it’s worth repeating.
By what mechanism does it do that? Everyone who is motivated to make profits has incentive to pay the least possible on payroll and taxation. Human rights empower people to demand higher wages, and any government-sourced provision of quality of life increase taxation. People who's talents align with in-demand skills may have some leverage to increase their wealth and provide a better life for themselves, but without government intervention, that means little for everyone else.
Edit: Do agree about unionization - but once again, the right to start or join a union is something that must be enforced by government policy, and voters need to care about human rights for that to occur.
People choose the best option - so if I have a job doing hard manual labour for $70/hr or desk job that pays $80/hr I'll go do the desk work because it is easier and better paid.
But someone needs to do the manual labour, so if literally nobody takes the job on then whoever wants the work done is forced to raise wages or do without.
In a practical way, things like the Apple supply chain increase demand for workers, so the equilibrium wage has no choice but to tend upwards. There are more jobs but the same number of people - so if a business wants its job done it has to pay more.
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol's_cost_disease where improvements from high-productivity workers translate into increased wages in other unrelated segments. People get paid more without even necessarily doing anything differently!
Then all that adds up to it being difficult to oppress the human rights of wealthy people. They have the resources to fight back.
There might be some merit to Baumol's cost disease, but I'd wager the studies that support the theory were limited to domestic economies in wealthy countries (orchestras in particular are a weird example because they are propped up often by sponsorship and government arts funding). Even still, consider now the growing wage disparity in the US, a 'wealthy' nation, where people are earning less almost across the board excluding tech, yet a sliver of the population is gaining wealth exponentially. Gained advantages from production efficiencies are being routed by globalisation - the claimed 'uplifting' force for the poor. And on the other end, China had to find slaves from somewhere to fulfil demand at the lower end, and suddenly a bunch of 're-education' camps pop up and commandeer the most politically expendable population as extra human resources.
So? My company has no incentive to pay me any more than they absolutely have to, or treat me any better than they are forced to. They pay me well and treat me very well, because the market says they have to.
That incentive doesn't limit the upper bound quality of life of employees in any meaningful way, unless changing jobs is illegal.
> ...Gained advantages from production efficiencies are being routed by globalisation - the claimed 'uplifting' force for the poor...
I'm not sure exactly what the argument is there, but America's problems are certainly not linked to new corporations entering the American market due to globalisation. If anything, the problem is that the jobs America would use to make poor people wealthy and satisfied are leaving and going to places like Bengaluru, where they will in time raise local living standards substantially.
It is difficult to argue that globalisation is hurting America and India simultaneously. India is strictly better off, and America is arguably better off under standard economic theory.
> consider now the growing wage disparity in the US
The US does a lot of stupid stuff economically speaking, like everyone else. The zeitgeist of US politics for the last 12+ years has been all about protecting failing institutions from change and they are paying a price for that. But that has not so much to do with globalisation.
It seems everyone is talking past my original point here. I'm not sure if it's in bad faith, or if it's just that they haven't followed the entire thread. So let me restate that I'm not talking about jobs in wealthy countries, for people who can leverage their skills for a better wage.
> It is difficult to argue that globalisation is hurting America and India simultaneously.
Not at all, you're missing the bigger picture. It's easier for me just say 'wait and see', because the back-steps on human rights around the world are an emerging pattern at the moment that I think most people in the western world are completely naive to.
If your country degrades its human rights in order to compete for un-automatable unskilled labor, or any labor at all, the ability to unionize evaporates, government policy favors corporate interests over its citizens, and we end up with countries like India, looking across at what China is doing, and copying it. They aren't looking at the West and going 'democracy is great!', let's give our citizens freedom, they're going 'Our friends in wealth and power have a bunch of striking workers, how do I help them keep their profits and increase government revenue'... and then look at the US and other western nations that are bending to China's will. (And it's only a matter of time before western nations start winding back human rights, or liveable wages to 'be globally competitive', just follow the anti-union behaviour of some of the large tech companies).
Crucially, if there's a place in the world where enabling slavery provides a competitive advantage, it will happen, until it's outlawed globally, and that can only happen through global will motivating the right political manoeuvres. And don't become complacent about the human rights that you enjoy today, because they are already being undermined.
> They pay me well and treat me very well, because the market says they have to.
Maybe you have a nice job and are treated well by your employer, but you weren't born to low status in India, you were born in a wealthy country, possibly had a good household and upbringing, and maybe have some rare talents that give you an edge over your fellow citizens. You won the lottery. Means nothing to the sweatshop worker making your underwear.
> But that has not so much to do with globalisation.
Absolutely it does. You only have to see how much of the domestic manufacturing capacity has been transferred to China, taking the jobs along with it. America has amassed a large trade deficit with China and other countries, and their GDP hasn't suffered a hit, because the people at the top are making plenty of money. The real people who are suffering are the one's who got Trump elected.
China. The people in China are undoubtedly economically uplifted. They have ever fewer rights though.
in fact. the chinese recently just claimed to have finished the job. apparently the very last village classified as being in poverty there got reclassified.
https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/china-83...
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20201123-the-psychology...
But that's just the start, and the situation with the Uyghurs is the tip of the iceberg, plenty of that is going on in sweatshops around the world.
Anyway, I won't keep on repeating myself:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25405400
> 1 million is a small number.
What sort of monster are you?
And you can be sure that this problem is still happening across the broader population at the tail end. Any talk of China lifting its citizens out of poverty has to be viewed sceptically, given their brazen lack of transparency.