The LDCs (lesser developed countries) tend to have an absolute advantage over the better developed countries either in cheap labor (both in terms of low wages and in terms of poor social services, working conditions and environmental destruction) or in abundant natural resources. Those LDCs also tend toward strongman rule.
What we have been seeing through the processes of globalization has been the leveraging of abundant, cheap labor coupled to the cartelization of oil to shift wealth and power from the industrial democracies to the asset rich autocracies in the name of free trade and the free flow of global capital.
Both China and the Middle East interfere in the unfettered workings of the free market in crucial ways to bias the system in their favor: China by controlling the value of their currency and by managing their private equity investments; the Middle East through price making via OPEC.
No comments:
Post a Comment