I was having a discussion with a friend the other day. We were talking about if the "market" should decide how and where jobs should go. We talked about how industrial jobs and IT jobs are moving to India, China, etc. I am of the opinion that markets are artificial constructs. I believe that the workers who produce any good or service should be the owners or, organise the parameters of their own market for their own benefit. He thought that textile jobs moving to third world countries where workers are paid poverty wages, for example, was a natural progression of the "market". And the myth that he was relying on was that markets are the most efficient way to raise standards of living, salary levels, etc. But before I get into that argument, we have to ask ourselves "what is a market"?
A market is a mechanism that allows people to trade goods - cloths, food, steel, etc. Theoretically, markets are governed by laws of supply and demand. Theses laws or principles, are typically what most Western governments control their won markets. The reason markets exist is to make it easy for buyers and sellers to find each other and exchange goods. Really, anyone (including you or me) who can regulate interactions between people can create or control a market. Since the nature of markets is to facilitate (and regulate) exchanges between buyers and sellers, I'll state that there are 3 principle actors in any given market - buyers, sellers, and regulators. What I want to address is who has the power in markets? To answer that, you have to understand WHAT is power in markets.
The buyer in a market has a need to fill. The seller has a good/service to sell. The only reason a seller is motivated to sell something is for profit.
A small note here. Craftspeople, people who make their goods on the principle of good design, pursuit of knowledgs, etc., have traditionally entered their craft on an altruistic human principle. After their material needs are met, they tend to pursue their craft for a larger human need (creating tools for irrigating fields), or for the sake of the craft or knowledge itself ( research universities ). I bring this up because a craftsperson might sell their good in a market. But their primary purpose for creating the good was not necessarily profit.
Anyways, for the seller to make a profit, they have to sell their good for more money than they spent to create or buy it. The longer you can generate profits between exchanges, the more wealth you will generate. I take wealth to mean an abundance of things (tangible and intangible) of value relative to others in your social class. The idea of wealth is one of the great arbiters in human relations. Wealth is therefore a source of great power in human affairs. So, if I have the power to define what price all cloth buyers will pay to cloth sellers, I can really effect what profit (and wealth) a seller will have. In other words, I would have a lot of power in that market. So price being a main mechanism in any market (see my thoughts on "Prices" in On Work), any party that can effect the price of a good sold on a market has a great deal of power in that market.
Now back to the idea of letting markets decide where jobs should go. Large markets only exist within the field of human affairs. They are natural in that they naturally develop to allow buyers and sellers to easily exchange goods and services. However, just like any other human facility, markets can be shaped an guided to fit our intended needs. Let's take language as an example. Language is a natural human facility that allows us to communicate with each other. However, it is very possible to guide and regulate language to fit agreed human needs. In the same way, we should guide and regulate markets to fit agreed human needs. For example, moving textile jobs to Mexico where workers are paid poverty wages with no labour rights, and removes those jobs from the working class in North America, is detrimental to the social needs in both places. In this case the buyer of labour, corporations, have undue economic, political and legal power to regulate the sellers of labour, the working class through governments (regulators). Governments routinely design labour and economic policy to maximize the profits of corporations.
My ultimate argument is that letting the "market" decide how and where jobs should go depends on how much power the labour has in that market relationship. If as citizens/labourers we realised that we ARE the market, we would revolt and create alternative governing bodies. We would gain an upper hand in the labour market, as well as create a legal framework for labour controlled means of production. And as Noam Chomsky points out in "On Vision", collective worker councils are much more democratic means of facilitating and regulating the labour market. There's so much more to say, but what's your opinion?
REFERENCES
1) "On Vision"; Noam Chomsky
2) "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844"; Karl Marx
3) "Free Market Debunked"; Thom Hartmann
4) "Do as the US Says, Not as it Does"; Joseph Stiglitz
5) "China Floats, America Sinks"; Greg Palast
