They very much can and do hinder, and "earning more" is a complete red herring. There are countless examples where wages are so low that employee's conditions have no chance to improve - but importantly, if the corporations weren't there holding ownership of vast land and resources, the local people would be able to do far better for themselves. There have been protests for years in India against coco-cola bottling plants that use the vast majority of the available water and pollute the rest, leaving locals with limited water for their own crops and drinking supplies. The situation of the oil extraction in the Niger Delta is an ecological hell, hundreds of miles of poisoned land. All across the world people are being paid a pittance to grow monoculture crops that all get exported for the profits of big corporations, leaving nothing for locals but the bare minimum they need to live and continue work.Blind groper wrote:I disagree on the exploitation by external powers. They do not do enough to help, true. But they do not hinder. In fact, the opposite is frequently true. If an American corporation decides to move its manufacturing from the USA to a poor nation, due to getting labour at low cost, it still helps the poor country. The poor workers who earn low wages, are still earning a hell of a lot more than if they had no jobs.
Yes there is corruption, lack of stable governments and individuals being corrupted, that has allowed this to happen, but much of the time the corrupting forces, - the money, the arms deals, the promise of power, - come from outside. But what's most relevant, if you want to avoid simply placing blame and actually change things, is that it's the outside forces that the people of the western world have some influence over. We can do nothing to stop any potential despot from being greedy and corruptible, and if we could ten more would take their place. But as the main customers of multinationals we are in a position to demand fair trade and ethical business practices and that they stop offering bribes to governments that sell out their countries and people.
