Post by franklin on Jul 3, 2010 22:34:02 GMT -5
Globalization would do much to help people throughout the world, it will help raise the standard of living of people. It is the very policies going on to "help" them that is ruining their standard of living and the environment
Here is the problem globalism is not necessarily bad in of it self it depend on who runs it a bunch of extremely greedy,egotistical corporatist elites playing gods wont do.
While it might also be true that many African leaders are sell outs, there seems to be a lot of drive to develop things like ethanol in order to address the energy problems in many African countries even though oil is a major export from Africa. On the other hand even African leaders who complain about European policies still have their countries open to cheap imports
But as shown here there is in fact a desire for more trade and Africans are in fact paid for their exports. This is on horticulture but this is also true for things like copper exports and other kinds of exports. In fact I think higher taxes on corporations will be passed on to Africans being paid less and more primative working conditions as companies will want to cut costs because of these taxes.
Its complicated but these countries are clearly paid for their exports and would prefer to have more market access
"Agony as Uganda flower export orders continue to decline" (article from Valentines day)
www.africanagricultureblog.com/2010/02/agony-as-uganda-flower-export-orders.html
And as seen in this article, clearly the problem is not corporations regardless of however malevolent those running the corporations are, the problem is agricultural subsidies from governments. However maybe the corporate people control the politicians that control the government but if the price on cotton were higher the good people of Burkina Faso could hold out for the highest bidder and could compete on the world market thus rupturing the power of the big powerful corporations
"Scraping a living from cotton" from BBC April 2005
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4398153.stm
As for copper since the historical problem has been lack of investment and low world prices on copper cartels would not have really solved that problem. Maybe with higher copper prices things will be different
This is cool check this out
Jim Rogers: Buy Silver- CNN Money 6-21-2010
Watch 1:20-2:35
Talks about depressed price of sugar and sugar ethanol. Not mentioned here is that many African sugar farmers were put out of business because of the policies of the European Union and depressed prices
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCeuwnkmL3s&feature=player_embedded#!