Letters to the Editor
Chernobyl Kid
Published Letters: 79 Editor's Choice: 13
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Damn furriners!
[Read the article: Cannon fodder at State]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Mikko the Finn writes:
"I hesitate to offer my views on American policy as a European, a Finn in particular, after having had some insults hurled at me in some instances by Americans calling me all sorts of names with common pejorative 'foreigner' somewhere there in the mix."
As a citizen of both Canada and the Netherlands, I think the rest of the world is entirely within its rights to criticize American foreign policy. What the Americans do overseas, affects us too. If the Iraq quagmire makes a further mess of the Middle East, the rest of us will be clobbered by disruptions in oil supplies. (That's the Canadian, minus-30-Celsius-in-winter half of me talking.) If there's a showdown with a nuclear Iran, we all get the fallout. The U.S.'s refusal to honour Kyoto is a threat to anyone in coastal areas. (Dutch half talking now.) Et cetera. Et cetera.
If Americans don't want the rest of the world to comment on "their business," they should stop making it their business to undertake projects that threaten the rest of the world. No annihilation without representation.
Were you not a "foreigner," Mikko, the people who shout you down would instead accuse you of being a liberal, a coast-dwelling elitist, or (if you were a red-blooded-red-state-red-meat-eater) a traitor who should know better.
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Well, look at it this way.
[Read the article: Paris is burning]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What would happen if you passed a law that said anyone under the age of 26 could be convicted and jailed without a trial?
The onus should be on the more powerful party to demonstrate why they should be allowed to use their power.
Is that a fair comparison? I think so. Compare the effect of a jail term on your resume, compared to a period of unemployment. In fact, some employers will suspect that the latter may conceal the former. What about the effect on your earnings? The effect on your career progress? The effect on your mind, your confidence, your ability to deal with the world? The fact that we convict people of being superfluous without a trial doesn't make it right.
So, what happens in countries where workers can be dismissed for no reason?
Well, based on the experience of the anglo-saxon world--especially since the unions were smashed or otherwise made irrelevant in the 1980's--you get companies laying people off for no reason. (Or, more specifically, for reasons having nothing to do with the long-term health of the company, and certainly with no justification on the employee's end.)
What then? People end up on public assistance--i.e. paid for by the people who still have jobs. After awhile, the still-employed get tired of paying for this (or are persuaded that they can't afford it and/or will never need it themselves) and so people are cut off and forced to take jobs that pay much below their old ones. (And, I might add, which are inherently worth less. What is the benefit to the economy and to the public good, besides moving numbers around, of a bunch of people flipping burgers? You can't just say "at least it's a job." Being a teacher or a government clerk is a job. Explain to me why a government clerk adds no value to a society, but a burger-flipper does.)
Look. What does it mean to be a worker in America today? It means that if you do well, you do very well, and if you don't, you do very poorly indeed. The fact that those who do well have the means to trumpet their own success doesn't change the fact of the large number of losers.
In any employer-employee relationship, the employer almost always is inherently the more powerful party. The bigger the employers (corporations etc.) the more powerful they are. Again, the onus should be on the more powerful party to demonstrate why they should be allowed to use their power.
If I were French, I'd be freaking out now too. At least during the Thatcher, Reagan and Mulroney years, the liberalization of the labour markets took place at a time where very few people had ever been subject to such a labour market. Americans/Canadians/Brits arguably didn't know any better. The French, by contrast, have seen what happened elsewhere.
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Perhaps a better example.
[Read the article: Paris is burning]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Patricia Schwartz writes:
"The worst thing about Abu Ghraib was what it did to their resumes, right?"
Patricia objects to my comparing summary dismissal without cause to incarceration without cause.
Notwithstanding that in a capitalist system, removing someone's livelihood can be as devastating as locking them up... my point had to do with the exercise of power and the justification for doing so. It's a peculiarly American position that the abuse of power is okay as long as it's wielded by the private sector.
But perhaps my comparison was out of proportion. (So is hers, by putting Abu Ghraib in the same category as the California penal system. But anyway.)
-Suppose the government could revoke your driver's license without any reason?
-Suppose Exxon could take your property without any due process?
-What if they could take away your gun with no explanation?
Rhetorical questions all, obviously. Americans would totally shit. But I've chosen some American examples because the French are responding to a threat to what, in their culture, is of comparable importance.
Actually, in any sane system, job security would be a more fundamental right than a driver's license but anyway.
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You'd want nuclear weapons too.
[Read the article: Bush's bluster]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Saddam learned the hard way that the only way to ensure that you don't get overthrown by the U.S. is to get some WMD's. Once you're a nuclear power (like North Korea or Pakistan or China or Russia) Uncle Sam leaves you alone, regardless of your politics.