Meet Iron Eaters | 28 comments (28 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Meet Iron Eaters (none / 0)

What these pictures show is not the horrors of capitalism, but thee very fact that these people voluntarily do this work shows how unimaginably awful subsistence farming is.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 08:41:49 AM EST
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Re: Meet Iron Eaters (4.00 / 3)

Actually, it shows both.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 08:43:27 AM EST
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Re: Meet Iron Eaters (none / 1)

That these men came from terrible conditions of poverty is clear. That they even had a choice between subsistence farming ("awful" or not) and this work is less clear. Have either you or Starvid any evidence of a link? (I've looked and haven't found anything more than a mention of "poor villages on the other side of India" in alexius's blog that Das Monde links to.)

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 09:12:09 AM EST
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Re: Meet Iron Eaters (none / 1)

No. It occurred to me that I should add a footnote to the effect that he was assuming that they had such a choice, but Christopher decided to wake up ...

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 09:44:18 AM EST
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Re: Meet Iron Eaters (none / 0)

Alright, alright.

But I bet the spin is "how horrible these awful transnational corporations/capitalists are!" and not a word said about how these people would rather break up ships by hand than farming the land they have farmed for thousands of years.

And it wouldn't surprise me in the least if the question "would these people have better lifes if these ships weren't sent to Chittagong?" isn't asked.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 09:14:11 AM EST
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Re: Meet Iron Eaters (none / 1)

OK, OK!

But it seems to me you're the one who's projecting a lot here: farming the land they have farmed for thousands of years. How do you know this?

There's overpopulation, as linca says. There are quite probably social distinctions that mean some families may have too little land or animals to live off. And there may well be - as was for long the case in Europe - a family structure in which some sons at least have to go off to "seek their fortune" or more prosaically go where they hear you can get $1.50 a day shipbreaking.

Generalising about subsistence farming on this basis seems a stretch. (And my comments are not meant to defend dirt-poor subsistence farming either: just that subsistence farming on which you can subsist is surely not "unimaginably awful").

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 09:25:23 AM EST
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Re: Meet Iron Eaters (4.00 / 2)

some families may have too little land or animals to live off.

Some don't have any at all. Not all lower castes were for farmers...

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 10:02:21 AM EST
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Re: Meet Iron Eaters (none / 1)

...not to mention disappropiation.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 10:03:24 AM EST
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Re: Meet Iron Eaters (none / 0)

Oh come on, even in places where population growth has gotten under control, like in China, people leave farming for industry. It might be awful, but it's still less awful than the life of the romanticised third world farmer.

We can also look back at our own history. In 19th century Europe people left the countryside en masse for the horrible industrial cities, because the cities were less horrible than the alternative.

And eventually, things got better.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 10:31:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Meet Iron Eaters (4.00 / 3)

Those that left the countryside en masse during the 19th century were not the subsistence farmers, but their domestics and various hired hands. Much of the rural exodus was actually a redistribution from small scale, decentralised artisans to large scale industries, too.

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères

by linca (antonin POINT lucas AROBASE gmail.com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 10:48:32 AM EST
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Re: Meet Iron Eaters (4.00 / 3)

Still more projection on your part.

What's meant by "romanticising" the third world farmer, and who do you believe is doing it?

The C18 Agricultural Revolution began in England, where the move to the cities was not a flight of peasants from the land that they were desperate to get away from, but a result of the Enclosures, which destroyed by privatisation the previous mode of agricultural production.

The idea that "things got better" when heaps of people were living in exploited filth in C19 industrial cities, compared to rural poverty, is so potty I think you're just trying to stir it up. Right?

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 11:40:34 AM EST
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Re: Meet Iron Eaters (4.00 / 3)

It's hard to tell objective benefits of leaving farming for industry, or taking other such "best" choices. What people do is they follow each other: they solve their hardships by looking at apparently successful decisions, or where everyone is moving. What else would you know?

And then there is the promise of opportunity. Capitalism is indeed good in providing great opportunities, to relatively few eventually. People apparently like to make a lottery choice, even with substantial life-size risks. Concentrating on success stories while ignoring silent evidence of loosers is one of those logical fallacies that Taleb talks in "The Black Swan".

by das monde on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 10:17:31 PM EST
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Re: Meet Iron Eaters (none / 1)

And it wouldn't surprise me in the least if the question "would these people have better lifes if these ships weren't sent to Chittagong?" isn't asked.

Because it's largely irrelevant. The gangster-capitalist argument of "all else being equal, would you prefer a job with a trans-nat to no job" is nonsense, because all other things need not be equal. Assuming that they are denies the power of political progress. So no, I don't want to stop sending shipwrecks to India, full stop. I want to stop sending shipwrecks to India and instead pay the then-unemployed workers with some of the largesse captured by the trans-nat fatcats.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 09:28:46 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Meet Iron Eaters (none / 0)

Exactly how are you going to get political progress without first getting economic progress and an educated middle class? And in a place like Bangladesh, of all places?

Look at South Korea, Taiwan, and Europe for that matter. And then contrast it with all the countries that never got anywhere, and look at the ones that are now at last moving forward, and ask yourself what they have done to get moving.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 10:37:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Meet Iron Eaters (none / 1)

I'd bet France in 1880 or the US in 1780 were less developed than Bangladesh is now...

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères

by linca (antonin POINT lucas AROBASE gmail.com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 10:49:28 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Meet Iron Eaters (4.00 / 3)

I don't know the specifics of the former two, but Europe raped the rest of the world to get rich. Oh, and we had laws regulating the flow of goods and capital to such an extent that it's doubtful that any modern trans-nat could have survived - much less prospered - in the regulatory environment of 19th cent. Europe. The closest we got to a genuine trans-nat was the British East Empire Company. And a fat load of good it did for East India...

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 11:09:19 AM EST
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Re: Meet Iron Eaters (none / 1)

Beg to differ to some minor extent: we did have transnats, certainly in the railway sector, but they went away with the wave of nationalisations. (For example, there were large French companies owning privately built and run railways across Europe, and some locomotive builders expanding or buying rivals.)

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 12:50:11 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Meet Iron Eaters (none / 1)

"what they have done to get moving" : that shipbreaking industry is an example?

You're really now in danger of endorsing that exploitation as some kind of necessary step on the road to all-industrial progess.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 11:47:52 AM EST
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Re: Meet Iron Eaters (none / 0)

Would make a nice pair of argumentations with redstar's.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 12:51:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Meet Iron Eaters (4.00 / 3)

Fat chance. Big difference, ideologically, between those running the show in the one place versus those running the show in the other. You can actually manage this transition and cushion some of the excesses (though not all).

But there is some truth in what you two are complaining about: we will not all be equal until economically we are equal, and we won't get there without letting the developing world develop. We keep talking about gini coefficients and applying them haphazardly (to countries, for instance, rather than regions or, ultimately, the world itself). We will not achieve peace, imho, until we are thinking about gini in terms of global equality, and not intra-national equality. And we don't get there by blinking our eyes, and tapping our feet, and wishing liberal christian democracy and euro-centric values on the developing world.

The question then becomes which development models are the most humane and effective and here, there is room for a lot of argument.

I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from them Eugene Debs

by redstar on Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 at 09:50:46 AM EST
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Re: Meet Iron Eaters (4.00 / 2)

Subsistence farming on much less land than is necessary to survive. A rather significant difference : India is overpopulated.

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères

by linca (antonin POINT lucas AROBASE gmail.com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 09:16:29 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Meet Iron Eaters (4.00 / 4)

seems to me that rather a lot of people might enjoy and/or benefit from a (re)reading of The Making of the English Working Class... lest we replicate that "enormous condescension of posterity" which the author deplored and which motivated him to underatake a major opus.

most of the migrating rural people, at the time of the Enclosures, weren't flocking joyously, spontaneously from farmsteads to the cities... They Wuz Pushed. with intent. so that others could consolidate the land into vast private estates, so that others could exploit the labour of the dispossessed -- who were now abjectly dependent on the money economy for the barest necessities of life and hence forever under the thumb of the money-lords. same process still going on today as the tide of Enclosure and the cash-crop plantation system reaches all around the world.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 at 03:02:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Meet Iron Eaters | 28 comments (28 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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