Not Enough Exploitation?
Nha Trang, Vietnam

I just finished reading Nicholas Kristof's latest NYTimes op-ed piece "Inviting all Democrats". In this column, he bemoans the fact that most Democratic Presidentail candidates are going against the traditional "pro-trade" history of the party when they call for international trade rules that consider workers' rights, environmental protection, and human rights standards. He argues that employing more people in "sweatshops" for $2/day in places like China, Cambodia and Africa trumps any of these other concerns. Kristof also argues that mandating a certain level of environmental responsibility would send more jobs to places like Mexico, where development is further along, thereby increasing income disparities and breeding instability in less developed nations like the one I'm in now.

After living on and off in the developing world for at least 12 months of my 23 years, I can see where Kristof is coming from, but his arguments are short-sighted. It's important to look at environmental instability as just as pressing a threat as economic instability

Per capita income in Vietnam is about $1/day. And people here work all day, from before sun-up to after sundown. This is not to say all of their jobs are difficult. Most require large amounts of sitting punctuated by frantic bargaining and a flurish of activity. And few jobs are what we would consider "professional." Not even all of them require specialized skills. Certainly construction work is an exception to this--and it is hard work (when the work exists). Jobs like working in a market, selling souvenirs or driving a cyclo (like a pedi-cab) or motorbike are different. Many of these simple jobs needn't be replaced. Almost any economist would disagree with this reasoning, but I use the simple argument that the world--the planet--cannot sustain a universal middle class (or "American") lifestyle. If we begin lifting these people out of poverty by making goods that will wreck their environment, we will have a short-term benefit with long-ranging consequences. The only way we should even consider universal uplift in living standards is if we change the way goods are made by implementing environmental protections and utilizing green energy like solar and wind.

Still, there are cases where Kristof makes a convincing argument. Driving a cyclo is one job that I consider a waste of human potential. The market for motorbike drivers is already flooded--and they pollute. So wouldn't that driver be better off in a factory? I don't know. Monitarily, the motorbike driver's lot would improve, but at what cost to his mental health, and what about the polution created in the process?

Somewhere in the middle is tourism. It's harmful to the environment in some ways, but in others, it enables the preservation of certain environmental treasures and historic areas. Right now the Vietnamese are dependent on tourists as one of their main means of social uplift. Building more factories could make Vietnam a less desirable tourist destination, but would make them less dependent on tourist dollars.

I have always considered myself part of what the mainstream media has wrongly labeled the "anti globalization" movement, the one that first gained attention with the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, Washington in 1999. I'm not anti globalization. I'm just an environmentalist. I'm anti-consumerist. I'm against unfettered trade, but I'm not against the blurring of national boundaries.

When I hear economists or investors talk about consumerism "greasing the wheels of the market," I tend to think of soulless mall shoppers and the pollution caused by a million Chinese factories running without pollution standards. When traditionally communal indigenous lands in Chiapas and other parts of southern Mexico get partitioned off and commodified by governments so that transnationals can buy the land for resource exploition, I feel outraged. It's uninventive to say there are no alternatives to the current model of globalization. We are becomming a more unified globe with every passing day, but I do not think we should sacrifice the environment so that Vietnamese workers can make one dollar per day instead of two.

I sent this to the NYTimes. Let's see if I can get a letter to the editor printed. Not likely, but hey, it's worth a shot, right?

Tomorrow I arrive in Ho Chi Min City.