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But where is the line? Can I import hundreds of people to manually have them dig coal out of the ground with their bare hands because I can't afford the machine
by SimonPStevens 8y ago
But where is the line? Can I import hundreds of people to manually have them dig coal out of the ground with their bare hands because I can't afford the machinery yet and claim I'm bootstrapping a mining business. We would typically call this exploitation.
Many types of business can't be bootstrapped. That is not unusual. Bootstrapping is primarily a popular approach now due to easy computer automation that makes a small subset of companies viable with the very small staff and no expensive hardware. It certainly isn't a default across all industries.
The labour pool is a market. You are not entitled to cheap labour just because you want it. If you can't find someone willing to do your work at the rate you want to pay it's because someone else is paying more for the same work, so you need to pay more to attract the labour.
Importing people from abroad is something that only exists as a solution because of the imbalance of development levels around the world right now. I expect that this is an anomaly that we are going to see correct itself in time once all countries reach a similer level of development. Where will you import your cheap labour from then?
In the UK we used to employ children to work in the mines and the mills. This was eventually realised to be exploitative and made illegal. I'd bet that all the business owners at the time complained how would they ever be profitable without the cheap child labour. But they either adjust or die, and I'm happy with that tradeoff. If a business is only viable with child labour I would prefer it didn't exist at all.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago> Importing people from abroad is something that only exists as a solution because of the imbalance of development levels around the world right now. I expect that this is an anomaly that we are going to see correct itself in time once all countries reach a similer level of development. This has never been the case in the past; there is no reason to expect it in the future.
- ben_w 8y agoDisagree. In the past, “abroad” was physically closer and in what is now the same country. Londoners can pay the Welsh less, but they can’t go on literal slave-gathering raids c. 999 AD. It’s all a matter of degree. Degree of progress, degree of wage difference, etc.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoThe definition of "abroad" is of no interest. The world has always been the same size. There has never been a time when all countries / regions / whatever-you-like were at a similar level of development, and there is no reason to expect that such a thing will or could happen.
- sanxiyn 8y agoLess developed countries tend to have higher growth rate, so there is a reason to expect convergence.
- emiliobumachar 8y agoBut there are large - sometimes huge - steps back, e.g. Venezuela. Any reason to think they'll stop happening?
- tremon 8y agoThe world has always been the same size Not in terms of travel distance or the speed of human movement (remember when "around the world in 80 days" was an actual accomplishment, worthy of fantasizing about?)
- sam0x17 8y agoThere is every reason to expect it. Compare now with 20 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 200 years ago. The graph is exponential.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoIf everywhere develops at the same exponential rate, you can easily see that the gaps in level of development constantly grow over time. Exponential growth is not meaningful for this question.
- Retric 8y agoHaving a few poor countries is not enough to balance things. The global economy is currently balanced on having billions of very low wage workers, but low wage workers push an economy forward so it’s not a stable equilibrium. Either workers send money home via remittances, or work in their own country kick starting the economy.
- sgt101 8y agoI think that rule of law and development of institutions (cf. Chinas progress vs Africa's progress) are the drivers of economic development.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Retric 8y agoWithout the rule of law, you don't end up with large scale factories. Corruption is kind of a sliding scale, but factory workers take infrastructure in a way that oil does not. That said some African countries are actually doing rather well. Botswana has seen real economic growth ranking in the top in terms of GDP PPP, just ahead of China, and that's without oil. PS: Africa's population density is also much lower due to war and corruption. Overall, it's 1.216 billion over 11.73 million mi² vs say 1.339 billion in India in 1.269 million mi² so about 10x the population density. China at 1.386 billion over 3.705 million mi² is again 5x Africa
- sgt101 8y agoWell - the sharp and unexpected decline of fertility levels globally reported in the news last week : https://www.bbc.com/news/health-46118103 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-46118103 Also the improvement of economic conditions in some parts of the world will mean competition for labour globally.