REPEALING THE LAW OF COMPARATIVE DISADVANTAGE

Today, the near totalitarian ascendancy of corporations has left many of us feeling like sleepwalkers helplessly witnessing the alien usurpation of traditional American democratic values. The main purpose of government run by politicians dependent on corporate campaign contributions to get elected seems to be to enable the designs and slogans of big business. The key buzzwords are global free trade and privatization without which you cannot have democracy according to the pundits of privilege. The truth is that free trade is really monopoly trade and privatization is really socialism for the rich, all depending on how you look at it. From the perspective of workers in Asia making .50 cents an hour making goods for America, it is slave wages. From the perspective of those who own and work for the socialist entities known as corporations, the world is their oyster. The question that begs to be asked is whether this is for good or for evil.

Karl Marx was the first to point out that the capitalist economic system is a survival of the fittest jungle. The fittest being the employer who most successfully exploits his workers in order to produce the cheapest product. This law of the jungle has few loopholes. It requires even the most humane employer, who wishes to survive, to fight and win a competitive war. The winner will be he who produces a product of similar quality at the cheapest price. This requires paying labor the least amount possible. Global free trade competition then is a global race to the bottom for labor. Thus, an economic principle that is inherently inhumane is at the heart of the capitalist system. And this is true whether you are a socialist or a capitalist.

Needless to say this law of capitalist economics hasn't been lost on transnational corporations competing on a world scale. They have in fact fine tuned this brutally immutable law of economics and given it new meaning. Instead of exploiting their own fellow citizens who are protected by civilized laws, (Or were) they move their operations to somebody else's' country, where the workers are at the mercy of an authoritarian government. They then milk that situation for all its worth until it becomes possible for the workers to demand higher wages and better working conditions. Then they pick up and move on to a country that is even more hospitable to their need for ever cheaper labor. This economic game of musical chairs is in effect how American and other multi-national corporations have accommodated to competition on a worldwide scale. Criminally dangerous working conditions, pollution, ruin of the environment and inhumane slave wages hosted by totalitarian governments necessary to enforce these conditions, are the price that is being paid for survival of corporations. All this fitness is what unmitigated immoral competition leads to. In a moral world, they would all be judged unfit. But the multies are prospering big time. Unfortunately , the American worker's industrial base that provides him with jobs is disappearing at the same time. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that sooner or later if enough high paid workers lose jobs to low paid outsourced workers, there will be a decrease of demand for goods and services. The moral of this story is that if this degradation of jobs results in overproduction, conventional wisdom suggests this is a recipe for depression. Then it will be our turn on the wheel of misfortune.

Is there any way out of this competition based on inhumane treatment of labor? Logically, under the laws of of economics, the competition between labor for jobs worldwide will continue until worldwide wages for workers will level out at the lowest level. If there is still a surplus of labor, the cost of labor may even drop below subsistence level worldwide as it is in some places now. The whole world will be like Marx described the weavers in England who were reduced to starvation when their earnings were not enough to make ends meet.

There is really only one way to keep this horrible scenario from coming about short of miraculous technological breakthroughs. And that is to change the inhumane law of competition once and for all. In place of free trade based on the idea of competition, there should be fair trade based on the idea of cooperation. The moral justification of free trade is the so called law of comparative advantage. This so called law is the biggest hoax in the history of the world. The idea that every country has some advantage in the world market place great enough to compete with global corporations and provide jobs for its populace is a total fraud. It is an intentional fabrication to justify the dominance of a few countries over the many. The only comparative advantage of poor countries is surplus population willing to work for slave wages. The law of comparative advantage should be expunged from textbooks and the minds of men. Then, there will no longer be a justification for free trade based on an economic game of musical chairs.

There must be a new economic world order based on a moral principle of what is a fair deal for all nations. This will be a foundation for a new temple of man This new economic principle we will call The Law of Parity. Under the aegis of this new economic principle, all exporters to a country with this law in place would be required to compete with domestically produced products of the same kind on a fair and equal bases. Fair and equal in this case defined as being required to charge the same as those products cost if they are produced locally.

A parity price would place a new kind of moral law and order on worldwide economic competition. Instead of competition to see who can produce the cheapest merchandise by exploiting labor the most, there would be competition to produce quality goods and hire skilled well paid workers. Workers around the world could be paid a remunerative amount for their labor that would not be at the expense of labor elsewhere and every country would now have an opportunity to create employment by building a domestic economy without fear of being undersold by established monopoly competition from abroad.

The worldwide effect of parity will be to raise the standard of living of the whole human race to a par with the rest. Transnational operators will no longer have an incentive to employ their capital where workers can be exploited the most. There will now be an upward pressure on human improvement instead of the downdraft there now is.

The alternative to some such enlightened new economic order for America is to watch our standard of living deteriorate until we are on a par with the lowest coolie wages in the world. You think it can't happen here? It is happening The other alternative that is also happening now is to talk our citizens into auto-genociding themselves out of existence by taking more and better birth control devices until our culture disappears and is replaced by willing immigrants.

But what is the cost of a moral world order to Americans? What about all the cheap imports? My answer is , Americans do you want to have jobs with dignity or do you want to have a permanent McDonalds minimum wage slave economy? Do you want to have cheap imports produced at the cost of your jobs or jobs based on fairly priced goods made at home? Parity Economics will allow you to have a wage based on reality and morality instead of one based on knavery and slavery. Wake up Americans! You have nothing to lose but a dismal future living a half life of poverty, ignorance and unemployment. A full digital version of "Parity Economics, How to Level the World Economic Playing Field" is available on ebay or here for $5.00.