From: Arlo J. Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Fri Jul 09 2004 - 19:44:31 BST
Dan, Mark, and everyone,
> >BTW, this is exactly the way it's intended to work. Arlo's example
> >of Coca Cola in Tijuana, as well as his discussion of the Eco-South
> >in general, is well worth thinking about.
>
> Who is behind this conspiracy? The CEO of Coke? All the CEO's of all the
> corporations who have moved to the eco-south? Who intends things to work
> that way? Sounds to me like they might all get together and conspire to
> conspire.
>
It is no conspiracy. Coke is not covering up it's production in Tijuana. It, and
the other companies flocking to poorer nations where they can pay slave wages,
are responding to the current dialogue that places "accumulating wealth" above
all else. It is no secret that the easiest way for a corporation to increase
profits is to decrease employee wages. Since we have a minimum wage here, and
no such protections exist in Mexico or other impoverished nations, Coke is only
doing the logical thing (in the dialogue of modern capitalism). Moving to
Tijuana and paying cents to the hour for labor.
The problem is, you see, the executives of Coke are completely aware that their
wages are so low their workers can not even afford to buy drinking water (for
one concrete example), and thus a majority of children in Tijuana suffer from
infantile and juvenille diabetes (Coke sells its soda their cheaper than the
market cost for bottled water). This is why I don't buy the "we are bettering
them" argument. We don't show them any regard for their lives as humans. What
we are doing is keeping them alive and poor so we can continue to pay cents to
the hour. If we were really concerned about bringing them prosperity, don't you
think Coke would at the very least offer wages that would allow the laborers to
purchase clean, drinking water? If you knew that your employees, Dan, were paid
so little by you that they could not afford drinking water (remember that their
groundwater has been polluted by thousands of ton of industrial waste lead,
dumped by American corporations), would you still justify paying them what you
do "because you can"? This justification is exactly what Coke, and the arguers
for modern capitalism, are making.
Funny, I can see CEOs of all the tech industries that have been fleeing to India
actually saying, "We are shutting down production in San Diemas because I have
a moral obligation to assist with the creation of prosperity in the poor
regions of India".
> I think you are failing to see the big picture. You're thinking short term,
> not long term. There's an old house I bought a number of years ago in a poor
> and violent neighborhood. It sits on a busy avenue that leads to what was
> then a new shopping mall. All those cars going to the mall don't just drive
> by, they bring something to the community it didn't have before. I guess you
> could call it "hope" for lack of a better word. I sold the house early this
> year at a very handsome profit as the property values have skyrocketed in
> the old neighborhood.
I think you should schedule a trip, one week should do, to Tijuana and live
among the Coke employees and get back to me about us bringing them "hope". If
you are able to do this and write to me that you see nothing immoral in the way
Coke, through the dialogue of modern capitalism, treats these people, then I
would be fully surprised.
Arlo
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