General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Offshoring: Should America be impoverished in order to help other populations become better off? [View all]jwirr
(39,215 posts)countries in the first place we would not be in this mess. Self-sufficiency at least as far as it was possible should have and still should be the goal. Instead we did to them exactly what we did to ourselves.
We have been building a world that is corporatized in the sense that the only goal is profit.
Wendell Berry talks about how we moved farming from nuture (care of the land and people) to exploitation of both. That is what we exported to other countries. And we did it in the name of the poor and starving. It did not and will not help them.
A friend from Africa (Nigeria) let me read one of his books regarding this in his country. Prior to this industrialization of Africa most families lived on a few acres and produced enough food for the family. THEN comes a soap making factory that offers jobs to some of the people. Families began to move off their land at the promise of a better life. Along comes the big peanut farmer and he buys their land. But it was all a lie. There were jobs in the city but not nearly enough for all that were now coming to the city so many more ended up in the ghettoes of the cities. They had no land to return to and no jobs. The IMF had borrowed the peanut farmers money to buy the land so most of the crop was exported to pay the loan and the people starved.
This is what we did in most areas. And this is what they are doing to us now. In fact in the area of farming most of the farms in the USA have already been corporatized and serve the exploiters not the people.
Our offshore businesses will never make it better for anyone but the rich - their only goal is profit. And in making a profit it will not matter that they are not taking care of the land or the people. They have turned them into a finite product like oil and coal.