Hard News: Modern Endeavour
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Thanks again for a most encouraging post.
Whilst its not all good news here (I'd hate to think what the conditions are like in the Djarum factory, in a nation which won't ban or reduce tobacco advertising because their is too much damn money in the end product), the major change that has come from the growing enfranchisement of the populace..in terms of physical numbers actually voting, this is the world number two...is the demand for reform. It's easy to forget that after 5 decades of authoritarian rule, the last three of which were under a dictator who is estimated to have amassed, with US, World Bank, and Australian connivance, over $20Bln, it was the people who threw him out...and then threw Megawati out five years later by popular vote largely because she was not pursing reforms fast enough. The current guy, SBY, knows he is on notice.
If the workers in these factories were paid Western levels the "turmoil" that would lead to would be 1) less vulnerable Western workers losing their jobs, and 2) an increased proportion of profits staying in-country rather than being repatriated to the West.
It would also lead to a massive class of several million workers being paid the equivalent of $5,000 a week, far more than the Chief Justice, the President and any Cabinet Minister combined. I get the feeling that might cause some turmoil.
The thing is, that things are slowly improving but as much as anything here, as my post to Joe's comment indicates, it's the Indonesians (and the Thai, and the Malaysians, and the Vietnamese) who are doing it, not the paternalist foreigners...Western influence often having been very disruptive as we know. Last year the Labour strikes in Jakarta were big news in Asia...the city was completely stopped, and the unions were legally flexing their growing muscles. It was a very big deal here, and I thought it was fantastic. Workers are being more and, especially for the export markets, paid well above minimum wage and being given health and job protection benefits.
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If the workers in these factories were paid Western levels the "turmoil" that would lead to would be 1) less vulnerable Western workers losing their jobs, and 2) an increased proportion of profits staying in-country rather than being repatriated to the West.
Of course, that would have factory workers earning the same as skilled professionals, so the professionals would have to get a commensurate pay rise. What period would you implement that over to avoid runaway inflation? (Something Vietnamese are grateful to have left behind - one million dong = <$NZ100.)
As it is, people begin to prosper anyway. South Korea managed it, and even become a democracy in the process.
I can see three problems here:
- Lack of political freedom - not a minor matter. It's still a one-party state. But it seems to me that the government is authoritarian, not a plutocracy. The investiment capital coming in means roads and schools and jobs. You'd rather live here than in certain former Society republics, for sure.
- Queenstown Syndrome: not here yet, but certainly in some Indian cities, where property prices are going through the roof.
- Environmental impact. They're very efficient at clearing farmland and planning and building factories, but you don't hear a lot of green talk. Although there was a news item this morning about a successful project to develop an organic fertiliser at one of the local universities.
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Hmmm. Put
...that exam cheating is rife at tertiary level.
and
...a successful project to develop an organic fertiliser at one of the local universities.
together and there may be some very nervous students around.
Maybe we can licence the technology. I have a few students who would benefit from being recycled into fertiliser.
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nzMM,
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Simon: You know full well the the Indonesian elite earn far more than their official salaries - with those alone they are not educating their kids in the West and buying them the flash cars that upset Debbie Coddington. Further, if the salaries of workers increased this would increase the tax base, which would in turn enable the paying of public officials decent salaries.
Simon and RB: Yes, the locals might be "doing it for themselves" to an extent but 1) this does not absolve us in the West of our ongoing relations with the non-West, and 2) much of this doing it for themselves is predicated on certain Western policies and practices - most notably capital investment, technology transfer, and a lack of tarriffs for these countries exports. It is still incumbent on Westerners to consider whether or terms of engagement might be better/more just than the current terms. Furthermore, as I mention time and again, the most vulnerable Westerners should not be forgotten...
Finally, I might mention the negative effects that this current international trade regime is having on formerly industrialising countries - the Argentinas, South Africas, and Fijis (remember the latter's textile industry?) - who aren't able to accomodate the loss of their industrial sectors to the same extent as richer countries, of the new $3/day competition.
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Thats cool -- oh and i see this as well. Nice.
Oh yes, verrry nice. You couldn't wish for a nicer bunch of middle class white men sitting in judgement ...
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Marcus,
truly, if you don't think that paying a percentage of the Indonesian population (perhaps 2-3%) a wage that is five times the national average would not instantly throw this country into turmoil, then I really don't know what to say. If you don't think that elevating a large percentage of the urban blue collar to an elite level wouldn't fuel massive inflation, destroy the rural economy which drives Indonesia and cause an immediate rise in unemployment....I'm pretty sure I know what most Indonesians I know (and I mix with a fairly activist bunch involved with, amongst other things, the landmark press freedom Playboy case) would say...phrases like condescending paternalism, white man's burden and the like. They are used to it from Australia...Downer is forever coming here and saying "haven't you done well". The general response is who the fuck do you think you are..oh, you're a white man......Even the phrase "this does not absolve us in the West of our ongoing relations with the non-West" seems paternalistic, and is condescending.
This massive country, of 250 million, with a continuous history going back 4000 years, has had it's ups and downs, some terrible, but is far far more complicated than you seem to think. It's economy is massive, not only in dollar terms, but, much more importantly, in Rupiah (ie internal) terms, which you need to adjust for local scale. What you are suggesting would rock that local scale, perhaps destroy it.
There is an obligation on the part of the west to ensure fair trading terms, I agree, especially when one considers the pillaging and the acquiescence to pillaging of the past few hundred years (which still goes on in the Timor Sea and elsewhere) but assuaging guilt by raising some wages to some arbitrary western level is not smart. The biggest thing Indonesia needs is education....lots of it, at all levels for the rural masses and urban poor, but Indonesians educating Indonesians, not well meaning Westerners....educate the educators.
technology transfer?......visit the IT Malls in Mangga Dua and tell me where anything like that exists in Australia or the UK
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Simon: I'm surprised with cars so cheap in Indonesia that the NZ motor trade doesn't source cars there instead of Japan?
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They source motorbikes..Vespa mainly, out here for Europe, but the paperwork and tax on exporting these I understand is prohibitive.
The other major difference between Japan and RI of course is that cars get retired in Japan...not so here..and there is a three month waiting list on many cars
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Simon:
Obviously any shift in the international economy of this sort would have to take place gradually, but that doesn't mean that rebalancing the terms of international trade can't or shouldn't take place. And bringing Downer into this is a bit of a red herring.
My point about technology transfer refers to production rather than the availabilty of consumer goods.
Do not get me wrong - I also believe that Westerners do have an obligation to provide capital to places like Indonesia to compensate for practices such as the Dutch, as I understand it, syphoning off 20% of the Dutch East Indies' annual GDP during their overlordship.
What has happened though in the current world economy is that the West and Japan have simply subsituted one set of workers for a cheaper set of workers. The contemporary industrialisation and development of a place like Indonesia - to the extent that it arisen from outsourcing - has been directly at the expense of people from the "wrong" parts of South Auckland or Buenos Aires, and increasingly parts of the white collar economy. In advocating $3 a day wages you are directly advocating the strategic use of poor people around the world for the benefit of the owners of Western firms and local elites, and to a lesser extent middle-class Western consumers.
I think we agree that we do not want the tarriff barriers to go back up. What we need is for capital to keep going to Indonesia and for it to be used to enrich working Indonesians, whilst not leading to the strategic impoverishment of vulnerable Westerners, Fijians, Argentinians, etc. This can only be done through the gradual but definite establishment of global employment standards for exporting firms.
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And as a footnote, commenting on your remarks on Australian-Indonesian relations - I am not an expert - but I do think that the Indonesian elite finds its southern neighbour very useful as a bogey-man for consumption in the imagination of its masses.
Conversely, most of the time, and not withstanding certain well-known exceptional moments that seem to prove the rule, it also seems that the Australian elite is terrorfied of offending Indonesia, and is very eager to please its northern neighbour.
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And as a footnote, commenting on your remarks on Australian-Indonesian relations - I am not an expert - but I do think that the Indonesian elite finds its southern neighbour very useful as a bogey-man for consumption in the imagination of its masses.
I would say exactly the opposite is true. The Indonesian masses, if there is such a thing, which there is not in a nation of 250 million with the fastest growing middle class in the world I (nor is there such a thing anymore as a controlling "elite"), don't even think about Australia...the nation is largely a non issue here...it exists, that's about all. Generally Indonesia looks inward. It's the Australians who have spent billions building bases in the NT and have had a defense policy for decades dominated by a ludicrously non existent threat from the north. Fifteen minutes here with ones eyes open would illustrate how absurd the notion is. Downer is perfectly relevant, as he's indicative of the "you need to do this" or "this is how we can help" quite racist patronising that comes from the Southern Continent all the time.
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Australian elite is terrorfied of offending Indonesia, and is very eager to please its northern neighbour.
quite right too with all those billions in processing charges being extracted from the Timor oil and gas fields before the "net split" with Timor...nobody actually thought they were sending troops into Timor Leste to defend democracy...oh, I think NZ did......
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In advocating $3 a day wages you are directly advocating the strategic use of poor people around the world for the benefit of the owners of Western firms and local elites, and to a lesser extent middle-class Western consumers.
firstly I think those middle class western consumers are being as royally screwed as many in the third world...what is America anymore other than 300 million people to enrich banks and large corporations. New Zealand and Australia may have health benefits and such, but they certainly pay for them via tax regimes, indirect taxes, mortgages, interest, rates and a multitude of little taxes like massive parking charges and . And I'm always hit by how unhealthy everybody looks when I return to Australia or NZ. And why do you have to pay two or three times as much for an item as you do in Indonesia or Vietnam when the labour is the fixed. Those insurance companies and banks that dominate every street corner in Queen Street made most of their money from NZ's middle class, and those that supply them. Microsoft might manufacture in Asia but it makes almost all its money charging the western middle class.
The thing is Marcus there is grinding poverty here, which has to be addressed, but it exists beyond the sweatshops you talked about when this thread started. Unreasonably inflating the salaries there will not help those people, even if done gradually. Quite the opposite..it will push them further down the heap, and cause quite some pain.
And yep, I'm sorry, even if it does sound condescending, for those in Fiji and Argentina (although I understand there is quite some growth in other sectors there) but, as hard as it sounds, in an imperfect capitalist world there is a degree of Canute-ism in your comments.
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er....."massive parking charges and...." something I forgot....
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ah...I remember...: "stress levels..."
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. . . in an imperfect capitalist world there is a degree of Canute-ism in your comments.
This seems to have come full circle, back to Marcus's assertion that treating economic globalisation as some kind of natural force (tide?) amounts to a
. . . deterministic, There-Is-No-Alternative ideology
From your description of the rise of democratic people power in Indonesia, and perhaps the current crisis between the US and Mexico, it appears that globalisation is very much subject to being shaped by mass political will.
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Indeed Joe, and to which one might add the apparent collapse of WTO Doha Round and the tensions in the European Union project between those wanting primarily a economic union and those wanting a political union as well with common European citizenship, charters of human rights, employment standards, etc.
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Russell! Quick! Put down that bowl of pho and walk away!
Russell? You OK? I'm not poking the borax. -
Simon:The fact remains that, despite what you seem to be inferring, South Auckland factory workers have considerably more purchasing power than their Indonesian equivalents doing similar work - they recieve a greater share of value within the business process...
I think that we are in agreement that Western consumers do get gouged routinely - but to focus on consumers solely ignores all the other practices and actors in the processes of the creation and distribution of monetary value, and closes off access to them as issues of politics.
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South Auckland factory workers have considerably more purchasing power than their Indonesian equivalents doing similar work - they recieve a greater share of value within the business process...
In Indonesia Marcus, I would dispute that. I'm not sure if a worker South Auckland paying rent or mortgage and feeding kids is significantly better off that somebody in Bandung working in a textile factory, or has more disposable income in real terms inside the economy.
When you can feed a family for a day on about seventy US cents..and with fresh fruit and vegetables, an SMS on your cellphone is 1.5 cents, which it is
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it appears that globalisation is very much subject to being shaped by mass political will.
indeed, as it has been here. It's not the first world guilt burden that has forced through the changes, slow that they may be, its the 80% turnout in the last election here and the consensus, and political pressure, that drives.
Indonesia has a hell of a way to go, but watch it go....unless of course the army goes stop again, circa 65, that's always at the back of your mind. But I think its gone too far now.
Joe, as an Indonesian observer, you gotta see the party rallies here..quite something, and there is a massive pride in what has been achieved, as there should be.
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Simon: But housing in the slums of Jakarta is not comparable to housing in South Auckland in terms of things universally considered good such as running water, electricity, space per person etc... food and diet, I admit are probably trickier issues, but I suspect that the South Aucklander has greater food security.
In any case though, the gouging of the Western consumer does not legitimate what is happening to these people as producers or the treatment of those who are being substituted for them.
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. . . you gotta see the party rallies here..quite something, and there is a massive pride in what has been achieved, as there should be.
The four occasions that I've returned from Indonesia, whether to NZ or to Oz, I've always had something of a sensation of returning from the future.
Re. the emergent middle class, this was the biggest change I noticed when visiting after an 11-year absence in the mid-80s. The phenomenon of Indonesians as tourists in their own country was almost unlnown in the mid-70s.
Australia's record re. Indonesia is tragic. When I first visited in late '74 I envied the Australians who'd learned Bahasa in high school. After the Timor debacle Indonesia became seriously uncool, and under Fraser the teaching of Bahasa was slowly dropped.
In the dark days of May '98, while the army was provoking riots in Jakarta, Paul Keating emerged from his seclusion to assure ABC radio listeners that his good friend Suharto would do the right thing. He might be a military dictator who'd been in power since before the Beatles' White Album came out, but at heart he was a constitutionalist. As long as you had a constitution, democracy could wait. Sadly, Keating's views were probably the most progressive of any Australian leader, including Whitlam.
One of my favourite writers is Pramoedya Ananta Toer. He makes a pretty good case that Indonesia's elites have a centuries-old tradition of participating in a divide-and-conquer collusion with foreign interests.The army's actions in Irian, Aceh, Timor, the Moluccas etc. under Suharto were simply a continuation of this.
There have been times when the Republik has seemed like a political myth about to disintegrate. Right now it seems that a genuine unity, independent of the army, is finally possible.
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But housing in the slums of Jakarta is not comparable to housing in South Auckland in terms of things universally considered good such as running water, electricity, space per person etc
Sounds like the South Bronx. No, the slums of Jabotek are awful but those as often as not tend to be full of people not working in the factories on a wage..internal immigrants, scavengers, and the like..and there are vast numbers of them. There are also millions of people in Jakarta living in vast leafy suburbs, and some fairly large housing estates not a million miles from the ones you see in London.
Yeah Joe, the funny thing about Bali is that overwhelmingly the tourists are from Indonesia..the foreign ones, here in record numbers now, are the cream. I love that line about the future...I may borrow it if that's ok. This is an incredible country, no?
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