Monday, April 28, 2014

Made in China

Frederick Douglass did a great job at pointing out how the coolie trade is merely an evolution of the African slave trade, "kindred in character and results". As I continued to reflect on the matter, it occurred to me that the coolie trade has evolved to take another form, where instead of shipping the laborers overseas, we ship the labor. Of course cheap labor continues to be imported into the US, but the market dynamics on a global scale changed drastically once manufacturing companies began moving overseas. This maneuver has become an important part of the ongoing modernity discourse insofar as cheap labor, feeding the "lust for gain", as put by Douglass in his editorial.

The link below further elaborates on the current trends of cheap labor in a market that has complex interdependency. As said by the narrator, "That's the basic engine of today's global economy: cheap labor. Either it migrates to where the work is, or the work migrates to where there is an abundant supply of cheap labor."https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2m4ogCvOW4

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