I've been thinking about this, and ended up posting a long piece over at GFT discussing how I think that the problem goes much deeper, into the way we frame this as an "immigration" or "border control" problem.
It's not. It's a "capitalism" problem, and to even have any remote hope of solving it - and as Miller points out that when the Chinese climate change hoax really kicks in it's likely to mean massive population shifts from the tropics on a scale that will make the current situation look like a country club weenie roast - would mean a seriously unsparing look at how We the People have set up our economic system to lure the very people We then have the sort of hissyfit about that leads to us doing dumbass things like the election of an orange-colored real estate grifter to national office.
"The bottom line is that to keep meat cheap the business had to cut costs, and worker's pay is typically the single biggest cost of any business.Read the whole thing, as the kidz say.
The same is true of nearly any business you look at that employs significant numbers of undocumented people. Construction, landscaping, agriculture, "hospitality" (meaning hotels and restaurants). This isn't anyone's "fault", or, if it is, it's Our fault, We the People. We've forgotten that it's the nature of capitalism; you can hope to charge everyone a premium and go broke, or you can skin your costs down to the bone and make them affordable to Joe and Molly. It's why commercial aviation sucks. It's why WalMart. It's why the guy running that leaf-blower snuck in from Michoacan.
So unless we plan to start paying what we'd need to pay to give all those legal citizen busboys, maids, drywallers, chicken-gutters, and tomato-pickers a living wage the reality of people coming here outside the legal process is going to continue."
Walls did not work for the Qin, the Han, the Sui, or the Ming dynasties. Neither did they work for Hadrian and Antoninus nor for Andre Maginot. Some claim that the the Red Snake wall built by the Sassanians from the shores of the Caspian to the mountains kept out the hordes, but the legitimacy of that claim has been challenged.
ReplyDeleteWe know for sure that walls for military defense do not work. Why would economic walls work any better?
A great book on the subject is: "Empires and Walls by Chaichian.
http://www.powells.com/book/-9781608464227
Because we've done it successfully before. The New Deal legislation of the Thirties forced the Masters of the Universe to accept collective bargaining and the Roosevelt government halted the use of soldiers to break strikes. That led to a wave of unonization and the temporary end to a lot of this sort of sweatshop labor. Add to that the regulation of lawless banking and financial shenangains and you had the setup for a growth of a "middle class America".
DeleteThere's no reason we couldn't do that again, other than our own gullibility and indifference. We've let the same people who impoverished us in 1929 back into power, and, duh, they're right back at it...
Stopping strikebreakers and keeping banksters on a tight leash was - and is - a prudent move. An updated New Deal is needed. The vampires of the banking world are alive and well. Still leeching out the blood of the wanna-be middle class, while sucking up to the billionaires. And sweatshop labor has been reinvented via independent contractors with zero benefits, zero paid sick days, zero paid vacation, no right to overtime pay, no labor union, no time off for a sick family member or a new baby, and few if any legal rights and protections under federal and state laws.
ReplyDeleteBut mox nix, I was speaking of border walls erected to deter economic immigrants, not as an allegory of a New Deal wall or bastion against fiancial predators.
That's the point of my post, tho; that there's a wall needed...but it's a wall between the "job creators" and their ability to create an economy based on economic serfdom. The Trumpkins are angry at the wrong people, as usual.
DeleteGood point. You are right that they would be happy to turn us into a third world scheisse-hole if it put another buck in their pockets.
ReplyDeleteSorry about going off topic. I was all fired up about Trump's candidate to be director of the UN's International Organization for Migration. The guy, an American, for some reason wants to import Trump's wall to the Alps to keep the scary Ayrabs and Africans out of northern Europe. Another multi-billion dollar project. A redux of Mussolini's 'Vallo Alpino'. Lots of treasure to convert Il Duce's Denti di Drago into something that will keep the serfs from walking through.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/PianDeiMortiFossato_37.JPG
I thought one of the most insightful - and frightening - bits of the Miller piece I link to is his offhand comment about climate change. The tropics are going to become uninhabitable, and I don't think the northern countries have really thought enough about that. If you think economic serfdom is getting worse now, wait until the climate refugees begin flooding north. Good luck with that wall then...
ReplyDeleteDOD agrees with Miller. Four years ago SecDef Chuck Hagel said climate change is a "Threat Multiplier". That opinion still prevails within the inner rings of the Pentagon:
ReplyDeletehttps://search.defense.gov/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&affiliate=dod-search&query=climate+change&commit=Search
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-military/climate-change-threatens-half-of-u-s-military-sites-pentagon-idUSKBN1FK2T8
That despite the sound-proof and reality-proof phone booth in Scott Pruitt's EPA office:
http://therealnews.com/media/cartoons/phonebooth.jpg
And despite the Koch influence on Cadet Bone Spurs:
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=21230 Half an hour, but the first four minutes are worth watching.
I had to share...
ReplyDeletehttps://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/1386cbCOMIC-political-science-institute.jpg