We’ve had a post about the “UN as a stepping stone to world government.” I’ve noted that the American right seems quite paranoid about the notion of a ‘world government’ (and the UN)… and if the American right is paranoid about something, one can bet that this reflects the paranoias of the corporate elite… since, need I spell this out… the American right is basically the world’s best mouthpiece for global capitalism, i.e., the interests of the main global corporations. (Like microsoft, who took over skype, forced you to accept multiple downloads per day, and then when you go to contact skype customer service, are directed to the microsoft website, which has ‘support options’ for about 16 different ‘products’, none of which is skype!!!)
Well, one reason why the American right (and thus the global corporate elite) is paranoid about any notion of world government is that it represents the possibility of having uniform global labour laws. Now, friends, global corporations thrive, and make most of their dough, on exploiting legal loopholes which arise between different countries. It’s interesting, because while feudalism thrived on having many local legislations, capitalism is seen as having broken down this feudal mentality. But now we see that the global companies are actually happy with the current fragmented world system, insofar as it gives them major tax shelters, and also, employment loopholes.
Thus, when unions in the developed world got too strong, they moved to the third world, where they can exploit the workers much more handily, for much less dinero paid.
Some day, however, it is more or less inevitable that we will come up with some global labour laws – kind of like global bills of rights. This is simply too logical, too scientific, for it not to happen; unless we really do experience a return to the dark ages, but even then, at some future point, we’ll emerge again, and people who are sensible will realize that this is the only sensible way to do certain things. Now I have stated that I think that local and regional government is best at many things, and that I think any global government should be federal. But the only way for people to avoid exploitation, truly, is to have a global set of labour laws. This means, that there will be universal rules for workweeks, for vacations, for minimum wage, and for working conditions.
Imagine: universal rules for working hours, minimum wage, working conditions, maternity leave, etc. So that if companies try to avoid them in one place, they will have to abide by the same laws elsewhere. This, friends, would not spell the death of capitalism. Far from it. In fact, global capitalism could support all 2 billion of us (on this as the ideal global population, see other posts) with us working very few hours per week, at a lovely high living standard to boot. Economists know this, but they are trained in business schools run by big corporations, and so aren’t the sort to broadcast it.
In Western Europe, they have fairly uniform laws regarding labour; and somehow, capitalism hasn’t died here. MOst people are employed, and employed well enough. If things are very expensive here, as I have argued elsewhere, this is primarily due to other reasons besides labour laws (including too many monopolies, small houses, and too-strict business-opening requirements).
So, imagine a world where you could enact generous and proper labour laws, and the companies wouldn’t be able to just say, “Ha! We’re closing our factory… how do you like that, suckers?”
Proper labour laws. What are these? Gosh, how about, where everyone has a God-given right to work at a job which is suited to their abilities, and which maintains them in as much dignity as they can support, and which gives them time for things outside of work, while also ensuring that their company can get things done relatively efficiently? Surely that sort of life-work balance isn’t that hard to come up with…. or to implement… it’s just that the corporate elite screams to high heaven if anyone gets the slightest notion in their heads that any concession at all over their 80 hour work-slave environment which they have forced most of us into nowadays, and so nothing at all gets done, because as soon as any legislator dares limit any workplace abuse, s/he is pounced upon the next day by the army of rightwing attack dogs which the elite pays in order to keep enough people’s anger directed at the people’s would-be champions, in the form of 24/7 ‘news’ diatribes.
No wonder we can’t get anything done in the US; but the Euros for the most part have their heads up their own collective cultural asses too much to look at the big picture, either, and so we find very little idealism over here, or effective movements for change. It could be done; but we need to educate effective, actual economists, who are actually left-leaning, insofar as they support raising the living standards and lifestyle standards of the majority. If we start to get these people being produced, we will find many more people beginning to talk about global labour laws. Of course, we’ll need Arab and Chinese and African and Indian springs, and Latin American ones as well, but that doesn’t seem so impossible as before, or so far off… and then, armed with our army of compassionate economists, we can work with the lawyers who keep democracy afloat (see my article on the judiciary and the dark ages), to forge a truly compassionate, and yet totally functional and effective, global capitalism, which maximizes the living standards of all.
Not a bad idea, really?
