The free market has been lauded as a hallmark of a democratic and free society. G-8 countries convene every year, discovering ways to spread the good news of this economic gospel. Domestically, the free market promises that the good life could be held by all if one would just work hard enough at his dream. Yet not all seems to be rosy with this dream. On an international and domestic level, the free market has not given the liberation it has promised. In some ways, it has only cemented the inequality already there.
In "Globalizing Hate", (Amy Chua, Amnesty Now, Summer 2003), the author argues that a rampant global free market does little to ensure equality for all the world's people. Instead, an ethnic majority that has been suppressed already, perhaps through slavery or colonialism, becomes further exploited by a richer minority. This richer minority may wield power due to old colonial ties, such as Britain in Iraq, or simply due to the entrepreneurship of a wealthy few, such as Chinese emigrants in Southeast Asia. Many times, this leads to violence on the part of the oppressed majority.
In her article, Chua cites an example with personal overtones. Chua's aunt, Leona, was an ethnic Chinese entrepreneur living in the Philippines when she was murdered by her own Filipino driver, with the complicity of her two maids. The Filipino police never apprehended her killer. Chua's aunt owned a plastic conglomerate in the Philippines, but her servants slept on mats on a dirt floor. Leona justified this treatment by claiming that if they didn't like it, they could go work somewhere else, an argument commonly used in the United States when workers complain about job conditions. But like the American working poor, finding another job with better conditions was difficult for the Filipinos. Ethnic Chinese controlled sixty percent of the Filipino economy, and much of the remaining forty percent was dominated by Spanish mestizos; many of the conditions that Leona's driver found in her service would be found in the service of these other foreign investors.
This same economic story could be told in Indonesia, where the Chinese only account for three percent of the population yet control seventy percent of the economy. Liberation of Indonesia in 1998, which the US hailed as a grand celebration for democracy and free markets, only served to spark the violence in Indonesia that still continues until this day. One way to explain this phenomena is that since the Indonesian natives were never accorded dignity, they used their initial days of freedom to express the violence that had been brewing for so long, much the same way an adolescence rebels when he finds freedom from an oppressive family. Yet all the violence and all the rhetoric of freedom spinning have still not given either the Filipinos or the Indonesians economic destiny. Global financiers still hold prime real estate and control the markets within the region.
On the American domestic front, much of the same reality takes place as overseas. One of the reasons Republicans favor tax cuts so readily is the so-called "trickle down" effect. Business and CEOs receive tax breaks, so more jobs can be created. More jobs mean that more people can have the dignity of making their own living. Yet what this equation forgets to include is that employers are not required to pay above the minimum wage, which in many regions of the country is either at or not much above the federal minimum of $5.15. Restaurants with servers can still get away with paying half of that to their waitstaff, making them reliant on the generosity of customers, customers who generally feel they are paying too much for too little already.
Companies feel that they are generous when they start out paying a dollar or two above minimum wage, saying that teenagers who live at home take many of these jobs. While this is true, many of these teenagers are not saving up for a car as much as needing the job to help subsidize their families. And many more of these people who live at minimum wage are not teenagers without children, but teenagers and adults with dependent children to support. Generally speaking, three hundred dollars a week before taxes does not provide for the necessities of life in any part of the country; very few regions of have living wage laws. And while people like Bill O'Reilly legitimately claim to pay a higher amount of taxes when they file to the government, the working poor are subject to the same sales tax that the affluent are. A man making $100,000 a year may congratulate himself on being frugal by buying shampoo at the bulk discount store, but the same two dollar shampoo may be a "splurge" for the man on minimum wage because he can afford nothing more. Both pay the same amount in sales tax, regardless of who can afford it more.
The answer to the free market problem is not necessarily to destroy it and replace it with socialism. Switching economic styles may just shift the same problem into different squares; the economic oppression may just go from an individual entrepreneur to the government itself, accomplishing nothing. Adding to this, the rich, even in a socialist economy have the money to lobby the government, much like is under capitalism, so then all has changed is the semantics.
What needs to be done is to introduce a sense of fairness and morality to the global market, and a reality check that recognizes where the free market exacerbates the innate prejudices already present. Throwing a few dollars at the problem and declaring elections will do little to change the climate when greed rules the marketplace. In the case of the international market, those who employ natives need to be more generous in their application of economics, for example, making sure that their employees are treated with respect. Those who are doing international business would need to see the people they are employing as equal human beings who have just as much standing as they do in the human scheme of things, and not as a lesser racial or ethnic group.
In the case of the domestic market, much of the same principle applies. Those who are in the highest corporate echelons need to reprioritize what it means to be successful, and be willing to divert some of the profits from making their corporation bigger to the coffers of their employees. Middle class consumers may become more conscientious in their buying as some of the cost is diverted to them, perhaps limiting resources exploited for consumer purposes, but if one considers his fellow man to be his brother, a higher price that makes sure his brother is fed well will not be as bothersome.
An exact distribution of moneys is not necessary, and may not even be feasible without major outside control factors, illogical to employ in a free society. But a decent living wage for all people is only moral. In this respect, when the lessons of fairness and regard of others as equal human beings worthy of dignity takes place, perhaps the golden dream of free market capitalism can work its wonders.
