On this Independence Day, it might do us well to consider what forces now imprison us, aside from our corrupt government, of course. For as much as I fear the current occupiers of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and as much as I see the need to re-ignite the revolutionary fire to kick out the current King George and end his usurpations, I feel obliged to point out that he doesn’t work for himself. He works for his friends. And they are very, very rich.
It’s the same economists and market analysts, after all, who predicted that globalization was “inevitable” who are the ones who help determine economic policy and capital investment. It’s easy to predict rain when you create your own weather. Global trade has always been with us in some form or another–across the Mediterranean, along the Silk Road, later through the vast shipping lanes plotted out by Britain, the Netherlands, Spain. Arguably, Nazi Germany was doomed from the beginning because it relied on global resource management to survive. The war against Rommel in North Africa was necessary to cut off Nazi oil supplies after the Soviets joined the Allies. There’s a lesson here for us as well.
More recently, though, Wall Street has used the idea of globalization to sell the American worker out not because the American worker costs too much to employ but because Western capital has long desired to demolish labor, to get that pesky and item off the bottom line. Labor is comprised of people, and they are notoriously needy: they want time off and health insurance. They want to retire some day, and they want things like dignity and a safe place to work. The appeal of China isn’t just that it’s cheap but that the totalitarian government doesn’t require any of those annoying workers’ rights. As Great Britain learned in India, capitalism actually runs much better when democracy and human rights are out of the picture.
The Japanese, the Germans, the Koreans all think American workers are great, each opening automobile manufacturing plants stateside while Ford and GM continue to lay thousands of people off. And lest you think the problem is government interference in the free market, consider this: despite how they treat their workers, China actually has a very protectionist domestic market. Boeing was required to outsource a certain amount of their work to China in exchange for being able to sell their airliners there. Would it kill us to stand up for ourselves for once and demand the same of not just foreign companies who want to trade here but American ones?
But then, that would be a step toward managing globalization instead of allowing ourselves to be sodomized by it, and that would just be fighting the “inevitable.” That inevitability has allowed Boeing to get out of the business of actually building anything at all, as it spins off all its manufacturing facilities. Boeing now is little more than a brand name. This means fewer people get a slice of the billion dollar Boeing pie; those at the top get richer, and those who used to work the line get the good ol’ American pink slip.
No, we have sold out our individual and economic freedom so that a few people at the very top can get quite rich, and I can’t think of anything less American than that.