I went to lunch with some friends the other day and on the way back to class, I noticed a book in the backseat of one of my friend’s car. I believe it was Atlas Shrugged, it doesn’t really matter which Ayn Rand book it was, I knew it was poorly written because her name showed up on the cover. So I made fun of it.
I feel I need to say, in the interest of full disclosure, that I have never liked Ayn Rand. When I was in high school I tried to read Anthem, because some friends had recommended it to me. At the time I was a hardcore conservative with libertarian leanings. But when I started reading this book it seemed to me like a thinly veiled attempt to propagate an ideology. Granted this was an ideology I was almost completely sympathetic to, but I had a problem with bad literature representing my thoughts. It was more offensive than if I had read something with which I disagreed. In fact, disagreements aren’t that offensive to me, I rather debate than preach to the choir. So anyway, this poorly written immature bit of propaganda was the catalyst for our conversation.
The meat of our conversation was centered around the role of nation-states in the global economy. My contention was, and is, that individual nations need to be strengthened so as to properly regulate international commerce. My friend’s disagreement with this centered around the idea that government regulations impede the freedom of markets to do their thing. My contention with his contention is twofold: first, the notion that regulation unnecessarily hampers markets is spurious. I would say that there is little more to unregulated markets than ultra powerful people dictating to others what is or what ought to be, but bear in mind that this is really a hypothetical assessment. We’ve never really seen unfettered markets, but the closer we come the more powerful people who are already incredibly powerful become. Second, that markets are a force of nature similar to physics. Markets don’t exist in a state of nature, they are fictional cultural artifacts used to articulate a number of human activities. Markets don’t do anything, people do. And then people use markets as an aggregate of that human activity.
So, that said, we then got into a debate about 1) what a country is and 2) whether it is appropriate to use the simplest definition of a country, or even a word so crude as country.
When I explained to my friend that the ideal purpose of nation-states is that they should function as tools to ensure justice for the people who live within their borders. I would describe nation-states as fictional aggregates of human activity, similar to markets. Nation-states including, but are not limited to, such factors as cultural identity and geographical borders. These characteristics have been both a hinderance and a boon to protecting people all over the world from all kinds of injustice. But in the face of corporations gaining more and more power over a growing number of people’s lives. For example, Jeremy Scahill exposed the use of contractors from companies like Blackwater in a capacity that has been reserved for agents of the state in representing the state in a war. This use of contractors in the “kill chain” directly undermines the sovereignty of the people from whom the state derives its power.
It is possible that given the proper motive and circumstances a large enough corporation could abandon the pursuit of simply attempting to control the current governments of certain nations, and just pay a private military to overthrow it and secure their own puppets. Admittedly I have no reason to believe that this will happen in the near future. But the potential for such an event makes me uncomfortable, to say the least. In Jihad vs. McWorld Benjamin Barber suggests that democracy must be safeguarded against unfettered corporate capitalism and reactionary nationalism that threaten it all over the world by strengthening the framework of international law intended to secure nation-states and their citizens. I don’t know what specifically needs to be done to safeguard democratic nation-states from a capitalism run amok.
Now, this is not to say that capitalism is the problem. In fact I think that when democracy is at its strongest we see the best representation of the aforementioned market as aggregate of human activity. But those markets need to be subordinate to the civic responsibilities and freedoms that the nation-state exists to ensure. In short, the accumulation of wealth is much less important than the need for justice in civic life. In fact we ought to be able to ensure that the wealth that is created is used in the interests of the common good. Wealth is first and foremost a representation of resources and productivity. These resources are derived from the commons, and the productivity is directly effected by the strength and empowerment of citizens. For example, I worked for a company that sold, among other things, tweezers. At first the tweezers they sold were made in Pakistan out of steel from, I believe, Pakistan. The failure rate of these tweezers that were of complete Pakistani origins were astronomically high. The cheap price of Pakistan’s labor and materials was thought to offset the cost of disposing of so many inferior sets of tweezers. Later on the lesson was learned and, while still being manufactured in Pakistan, the tweezers were made from German steel. The quality of the tweezers was visibly better with higher quality steel. It seems that this higher quality can be attributed to the quality of the steel used and the skill of the workers employed to refine it. These factor are the result of a comprehensive set of education and labor standards laws that have helped strengthen the commercial success of Germany and other western nations for decades.
If it were possible to ensure that the products produced anywhere in the world would be of the same quality as those produced in western nations, the labor market would be a much better place to be. But in order to create those conditions the wealth accumulated from production everywhere needs to be reinvested into the public sector to ensure that no nation is left behind others. Taiwanese children should not be used as manufacturing machines any more than should children in the United States. But it is the responsibility of the people of Taiwan to ensure that their children are well prepared for life and work, but they can’t do that if nations everywhere allow the very existence of the nation-state derided and undermined in the interests of short-term wealth.
What will we do?
Grace and Peace,
Jared
