Sweatshops:
Welfare recipients calling for information now reach operators in India. “Labor migration,” “outsourcing”—way out—“offshoring”: These Indian workers are highly qualified: they are very good at explaining to the recipients that they need to go out and source themselves some jobs.
In many countries employees have the right to organize. Here at home, too, the right is organized.
Unions try to oppress the workers into thinking they’re oppressed.
Of course the students are against these job programs. They’re students. They don’t like jobs. They’ve been trying to shut down the anti-poverty groups like the WTO and the IMF. My advice is to do what you’re good at. Maybe it’s studying, maybe it’s partying. And let Phil Knight do what he does best. Let him make shoes. With help from his, let’s say, associates.
Some of these countries have been accused of keeping two sets of books. That’s normal. It’s called double entry bookkeeping.
Companies have been moving jobs to places where you don’t have intermediaries—third parties trying to get in between the associates and the associators. So it’s just the company, the subcontractor and the teenage girl. And the people that bring the barbed wire. And the army. There’s no interference from people agitating for complex labor formulas like minimum wage and 12-hour day and bathroom breaks.
Now, when you professional activists decide that these job conditions aren’t good enough for our overseas subjects—objects, pronouns, whatever—when you decide that for them, that’s cultural imperialism. That’s wrong. If they want to work in sweatshops, eat at McDonald’s, that’s their business. If they want to wear Nike—well, they can’t afford that. Or McDonalds.
But keep in mind, without us, there wouldn’t be any jobs. There’d just be the old system of poverty that some people will say results from the old imperialism. Well, that’s why we’re trying to fix it with the new imperialism. New, improved sweatshops. British imperialism might have been bad for some people, but I’m here to tell you it was sure better than what went before. It’s not true, but I am here to tell you that.
For example, take the Philippines. which we did. There’s this export zone there called Cavite, and can you believe it, the workers there—sorry, associates—tried to bring in unions. Trying to oppress the workers into thinking they’re oppressed. No. The sweatshops represent great progress. For example, in the Philippines there’s unions all over the country, except in the export zones. So we’ve established a beachhead of openness, with nice big open shops. People criticize these zones because they’re surrounded by guards and walls and barbed wire. You know, we wouldn’t have to do that if it wasn’t for the terrorists trying to get in. Terrorists—you know, unions. Unions are terrifying. Me.
We’ve sponsored a number of competitive athletic events,
like the Race to the Bottom.
In fact, it’s a system that works so well that some factories in the Philippines have packed up and moved into the zones, for security from these terrorists. The zones are like industrial parks, but with taller walls. They offer generous benefits, like tax holidays—companies pay no taxes for five years. It’s true the people in the area can’t fund their schools or hospitals, but you really don’t need an education to work in these places, and you’re not going to live that long anyway. So what’s to whine?
We also get the communities competing, offering competitive wage structures to attract the zones. In fact we’ve sponsored a number of competitive athletic events, like the Race to the Bottom. It’s a kind of a bidding war, which is a lot better than a shooting war. In a bidding war, people die, but nobody notices. Here. You.
What do they want, work and wages both? Greed is a problem.
FTAA
The FTAA would create a market of close to 800 million people, accounting for approximately 11 trillion dollars in GDP. Some say the FTAA is just NAFTA in stereo. Some are concerned that this is all a push by big business in the United States and a political ploy to bring the hemisphere under America’s total dominance. That’s not sporting. I’m sporting. Some folks go in for extreme Frisbee, extreme shopping, extreme hanging out. I go in for extreme trade. It’s not for weak, sissy, third-rate, third-world type countries.
I know some want to know exactly where the extreme factories are. They’re at undisclosed locations. But I can tell you this: they’re near a McDonalds.
Market fundamentalism allows for a temporary adjustment period, during which workers have less, shall we say, work. Then they get more work. But at less wages. What do they want, work and wages both? Greed is a problem.
We’re not cutting their wages, we’re making their jobs easier by automating them. The people are then freed up to get another job. In fact, the stores are being entirely automated. The products are dispensed from a machine in a new sub-chain called the Auto-mart.
Free Trade zones bring growth. Lots of indicators are up. Hepatitis, ozone particles, birth defects, clearcutting. Wages, we’re working on. Or not.
NAFTA supports privacy rights. Private ownership of education, health care, energy, water. True, water rates have doubled, along with cholera and hepatitis. And killing of anti-privacy rights demonstrators, who are members of the public—what hypocrisy. Privatize the public? Hey, I’ll look into it.
NAFTA provides protection against big government, protecting big and medium-big corporations. NAFTA Lawsuits have been used to repeal a Canadian law banning a chemical linked to nervous system damage—a clear violation of the right to privately govern your own nervous systems. And others’.
Walmart
Many of you have asked, why hasn’t Walmart gotten into sponsorship? Why isn’t there a Wamart Arena, why aren’t there Walmart Orioles, Tarheels, or at least Razorbacks? Walmart tours by Britney Spears? Limp Bizkit? Toby Keith? String Cheese Incident?
These are too small time. Walmart needs to do Walmart Disneyland. Walmart CNN. Walmart Senate. Disney built a town, “Celebration”—small time. Walmart Pennsylvania, maybe. Walmart Argentina.
Some call it a union-busting, community-killing, slave labor-inducing behemoth. But kids enjoying shopping at Walmart. And kids enjoy sugar, too.
They’re up to $285 billion a year in sales, larger than the five closest competitors. It’s like the US spending more on military than all others combined: the only way to be safe.
People slandering Walmart are a bunch of special interest harpies. Labor, health care nuts, environmentalites—the environment’s always criticizing us. The Wal’s response: “Critics have an unfair advantage. They’ve got nothing else to do but criticize. We’re too busy making our customers happy to really get out and tell our story.”
I was over in China, there’s a great wall there, and a free market, known as the Great Walmart of China, and they have a lot of people joining the union. Of course it’s a company union, the company being China. Actually, that’s the only country where Walmart associates can join a union.
October Surprise
There are two Americas: there are the red meat states, and then there are the vegetarian states. The red states have emptied out; thanks to agribiz there are now only two guys per state, working the farm—plus the white guy that owns it. Then there’s the black vote—Bush won by that, just by one, Clarence Thomas. Listen, we bought that election fair and squarish. Bush didn’t lie. God would not tell the Prez to lie. Checkmate.
Monitoring the dubious practice of allowing everyone to vote has been called election fraud fraud by some. There are various methods: “Spoiling” ballots, rejecting “provisional ballots,” ballots with parts of democrats’ names missing, not counting the absentee ballots, “caging” lists to challenge voters with “suspect” addresses, new voter ID requirements—we’re going to have the best identified Americans in the world. If your ID has a middle initial and your voter card doesn’t, you think we’re going to let you perpetrate initial fraud?
Then there are the arguably misleading robo-calls: You cannot vote, your polling place has been changed—well, people who can’t see through cheap hoaxes shouldn’t be voting.