The Agrinautica

   People have been very friendly here. In my search for housing I made two friends who didn't even have places I was interested in. Harpreet is an American consultant who emailed me about his place after I had already decided on this place. He was very curious about bees though and volunteered to share his tips for life in Brisbane as an American, so we ended up meeting for coffee on Sunday. He was quite nice and I hope we manage to keep in touch.
   Also a girl (also a consultant, as it happens) emailed me asking how my housing search was going (I had an ad in the "looking for housing" section of their craigslist equivalent (Gumtree)), because she was just starting her own search and wanted to know what she was getting into (she's not in Brisbane yet). I sent her the spreadsheet I had nerdily made of my findings ... and recommended the room Harpreet was trying to fill -- so maybe I'll be able to help them both simulteniously! Also she said we should get a drink when she comes to town.

   Later on on Sunday I went down to use the totally sweet lap pool in my building. After thrashing about for a bit I proceeded on to the hot tub. I was a bit skeptical at first because it was already crowded with 5 heads and I didn't want to intrude on some group of friends ... but then I decided to be an American and barge in regardless ;D
   As it turns out it was two groups that hadn't already known eachother so it was all okay. There were three Koreans and one relatively cute Australian girl who looked to be in her later 20s, and her 7 yr old daughter. Both parties lived in this building, and, we were amused to discover, all three of us are the same apartment on different floors.
   The three Koreans all have bachelor degrees (one's something in engineering, one's international relations (like me), I forget the third), but are currently making $20/hr here working as housekeepers. They seemed pretty okay with that. They said in Korea people would look down on people working as housekeepers, but here no one cares. Also hotel housekeepers would probably make about $4/hr back in Korea, according to them.
   The girl is a government lawyer. She commented that here in Australia it's not uncommon for working-class people to make more than professionals, and especially at the mines, a truck driver could make $160,000 a year! She added parenthetically that as a lawyer working for the government, she of course doesn't really make much.

   So there you have it. I feel like it kind of explains things a little. I had previously assumed that EVERYONE made proportionately more here than in the US, and since people who would be making $7.25/hr in the US are making $20 here, I was thinking the people who make more than that in the US must be filthy filthy rich here. But I guess it's just that all those "bottom-rung" / unskilled jobs simply pay a lot here and the other jobs don't pay much more, if that.
   Imagine that, the working-class instead of being paid below the poverty line and having to work 80 hours a week and live 12 to a room to make ends meet can actually live out their lives here with self respect and dignity. That is clearly un-American! :D

   In related news items, it was reported in the news here today that strawberry farmers had found the costs of harvesting to be greater than the prices offered and may just let their crops rot in the field (recall from my earlier post, strawberry pickers earn $22/hr here).
   And in news the other day, about 300 people were "discovered" to be working for the health ministry without any actual job -- ie the job they once had had been eliminated and union rules prevented their termination, so they've been getting paid without an actual job.


At work!

And as the Australian girl turned out to have been born in Canada, I'm not sure I've met a single native Australian yet! Well certainly my boss is, but his grandfather actually went to Berkeley (and as he studied horticulture, and the Berkeley research farms where all over at this little place called Davis, later to become UC Davis, he probably was where I went to school 60 years later! Small world!)

From Ecofoot.org, based on fifteen questions my lifestyle requires the following acrage be dedicated to my upkeep:

ACRES / CATEGORY
5.2 FOOD
0.5 MOBILITY
1.2 SHELTER
1.5 GOODS/SERVICES
8.0 TOTAL FOOTPRINT

IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 ACRES PER PERSON.
WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 4.5 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE ACRES PER PERSON.
IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 1.9 PLANETS.

   But what's it all mean? The implication of the webpage is that we're all living horrible gluttonous lives and should be ashamed of ourselves. But let us put this in perspective.

   Going back to the beginning: A popular misperception is that life during the stone age was nasty brutish and short. Modern research indicates that it appears in the stone-age humans, living off the land like hippies, only had to work about three hours a day between food hunting, food preparation, & miscellenious other tasks, and the rest of the time was theirs to lollygag about and doodle on cave walls. This however, was only sustainable if humans kept their population density at 1-2 people per square mile -- that is, having an individual "ecological footprint" of 320 - 640 acres. Over time the population increased and people had to work harder to get the same sustenance from smaller portions of land ... eventually leading to today's conditions where in the United States we have to work eight hours a day and have a footprint of 24 acres a person...

   Now certainly we should try to do whatever we can to be as efficient as possible and thus have the smallest footprint as possible, but we can't reduce our feetprints infinitely. And in the mean time I will not be shamed by guilt-tripping webpages.

   In conclusion, we're on a collision-course with a lack of footroom for our prints and all out world resource war. (=


   This entry shameless cobbled together from comments I made to insolent_pool's post, which was inspired by eazyt's post.
   My facts come from Of Cannibals & Kings, by Marvin Harris, which I flipped through one day during a meeting because I found it on someone's coffee table; and also Guns, Germs & Steel by Jared Diamond which I flipped through while waiting in an airport once.


Unrelated Picture of the Day

   If there's one thing I think people should care more about, but instead seem to have a shocking disregard for it is people in other countries.

   Sure people will always express a polite concern about the welfare of people in other countries, maybe even vaguely endorse policies or movements which they've taken a wild guess might help people in another country. But I found when it actually comes to seriously caring about them, people exhibit a shocking geographic discrimination.

   The most blatant example of this I think is during presidential elections, where for months you hear every day about both candidates stumping around about how they're gonna stop "us" from "losing american jobs!!" etc etc. And even outside the context of elections you hear people say that - losing American jobs to anyone in any other country is apparently always considered a tragedy.
   You see, if someone in Ohio loses their job to someone in Guatamala, all I ever hear is that thats an outrage. From politicians, from people in Ohio, from people here thousands of miles from Ohio.
   But the way I see it, someone in Ohio loses their job, three people in Guatamala gain jobs. That unemployed person in Ohio is probably STILL better off than the three people in Guatamala who now have better jobs than they did before.
   And so, I don't care if trade liberalization causes Americans to lose their jobs. And I submit that you too should consider people living outside your border to be just as human as those living within it.

Addressing the Excuses
   As I've run this argument past my friends, as I mentioned yesterday, nearly all of them balked at it. Lets explore some of the counter-arguments they raised:

(1) "Trade with oppresive regimes legitimizes them!!" was one I got from a number of my friends. And this is a convenient out that makes one feel really morally upright for not caring about people, but does it really make sense?
   First and foremost, do you know of any South American (those from elsewhere please bear with me on the focus on trade in the Americas, but it's the terms trade liberalization is usually talked about in here) regimes that are evil and oppressive offhand? I mean, yes there are certainly some sinister ones that come to mind in the past, and there's some now that have corruption problems or are otherwise less-than-optimal, but are any of them actually non-democratic? I think first and foremost this counterargument hinges upon a silly, inaccurate and patronizing idea of what life in South America is like.
   But furthermore, studies show* that democracy only flourishes when per capita GDP is higher than $5,000 per annum. Therefore the answer to helping oppressed people is not to refuse to have anything to do with them but rather support their economic development.

(2) "Yeah now those jobs are being done by people in sweatshops!" -- Yes human slavery does still exist and still do sweatshops. HOWEVER I know of no country, particularly in the Americas, where it's a regular part of the economy. People have a choice in what they do. If they're working in factories in conditions that we'd find deplorable or with a standard of living we'd find unacceptable, it's presumably because they didn't have better options. They chose to work at the factory because without the factory their options would be worse.
   I'm not saying we should call the situation all a-okay because of this logic, I believe everything possible to improve their conditions should still be done, I'm just saying that it's not because of free trade that their conditions are bad. And more to the point, because their conditions aren't optimum is absolutely not a justification for not wanting them to "take American jobs."

(3) "Hey I'M from Ohio!" objects hereticxxii at my use of Ohio as an example. "LOL but now you work in Korea" say I.

(4) "Well what if it was YOUR job that was taken overseas" Honestly I'm pretty sure if I got edged out by beekeepers in Mexico I'd feel the same way about it if I got edged out by beekeepers in Utah ("the Beehive State") or say that filthy squatter who set up his beehives on empty land not half a mile from our bees last week and the County has been dragging its feet on investigating. His bees are bad-tempered (one stung me in the ear while I was snooping around) and his practices unhygenic (leaving collapsed colonies side by side with healthy ones, is he TRYING to infect them all with something?!) ... but I digress.
   But yeah, if I lost my job I lost my job and blaming the guy that took it would just be focusing frustration in a wrong and negative direction.


What About Those Who Lost Their Jobs
   My main point here is that we shouldn't see Americans losing their jobs due to free trade causing those employment opportunities to move elsewhere as something deplorable, due to the fact that the people receiving those jobs are better off. But so as not to be completely insensitive to my fellow Americans, I thought I'd hit on why it's also better for America.
   The world is a better place when everyone is producing what they have a comparative advantange in producing. That is, everything is being produced by whomever it is most efficient for it to be produced by. The free market causes this to happen, and this is a good thing because it means there is more all around consumer goods being produced, meaning there is more for everyone to consume. To put it more simply, it's better for the economy.
   When we subvert free trade by trade barriers we keep our people happily doing stuff that they are not the best at producing. They may be happy, and if they're in a swing state the politicians will pander shamelessly to them, but they're not actually going to be producing as much as they would if economic restructuring were allowed to follow its natural course. Over time if we were to allow it to sit like this our economy would become increasingly backwards as it would fail to keep up with the global economy.
   Being unemployed sucks. Finding a new career can be daunting. However, these auto workers or factory workers who are losing their jobs DO presumably have the ability to do other things, and would presumably end up doing them if they had to.


In Conclusion
   In conclusion the fact that people care about the welfare and specifically employment status of people belonging to their own country infinitly more than they care about the same for people of a different country is an arbitrary discrimination. You should care just as much about the welfare of people in other countries and you shouldn't try to edge them out with protectionist trade policies.


* I wish I could remember my original source for this but I can't. But if you google for example "democracy $5,000 per capita" you get a number of references to it, including one from JSTOR that is surely a scholarly enough source to cite, but I no longer have JSTOR access /=

** Pictured at upper right: employees making use of gratuitous free space at the Budweiser factory I visited last week

See Also
The Making of Entry 3 - An outtake
Topic 3 Bonus Entry - Probably a better entry than this one!