The Internet created a borderless world.
That never came in the thought of the one who created it, Sir Time Berners-Lee; the advancement of technology could bring so many advancements to human kind. If more people would realize the march of technology, many would take the opportunity to expand them in a positive way, like Capitalism did.
The advancement of technology helped capitalism to be such a powerful system that it can expand anywhere, which brings us to the term of hyper mobility of capitalism. Industrial capitalism does not rooted to a certain place only nowadays, but it followed a certain trend. Capitalism tends to go to third-world, poor countries for cheap materials and labors, well, maybe not materials, but definitely cheap labors.
One could say that those poor countries that invited capitalism to them, for me, it is due to the rapid growth of technology. Internet could be obtained anywhere, so, for example; management in America could easily monitor and get updates from the factory in Jamaica. Microprocessor and microchips are getting smaller and cheaper, cutting the cost of production for capitalist. Thus, they could gain more profit which could be invested in moving into a low labor cost area that would result in lower wage, furthering increasing their profit.
From the movie Life & Debt, the Jamaican workers are paid so low that the profit gained from the products made by them is more than 5 times the labor cost. 5 times! Even my parent does not get yearend bonus 5 times their salary per month.
The bitter part that technology and capitalism brings to a country is that they destroy more than they build. Whenever they detected another country that offers an even lower wage and less regulation, they would quickly transfer there. The factory that used to offer new job to the people suddenly stripped them away. They are more like a locust swarm; migrate from place to place just for their benefit, leaving destruction in their wake.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Technology Advancement with Capitalism
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3 comments:
It is definitely true that advancements in technology have further advanced the ease of the hyper mobility of capital. In this age of technology, money can travel around the world in an instant, with the click of a mouse. The problem today arises from the fact that capitalism, as great as it is has little restriction in its current form. The internet has even fewer restrictions than capitalism. Human nature tells us that while laws are good for everyone (for the most part), very few people are willing to give up their freedom to be ruled or bound by someone or something, until someone steps into the authoritarian position. The key idea is to restrict the exploitation of developing countries by major corporations. However, a question needs to be asked; who needs who more? Does Microsoft need India or does India need Microsoft? No matter what the answer is a company like Microsoft still has the advantage because it knows that if India doesn’t need them, then there is another country waiting in line to accept them.
There is nothing that we could do about it actually unless the government decided that they change the way the economic system works right now. I am not trying to be supportive towards Capitalism but it is the truth. The more powerful or wealthier you are, the more you can influence people. Unfortunately, in the world of Capitalism, the powerful man increases their power more than the less powerful man and therefore, increase the economic distance between them. Even the government has less power than the capitalist because the government itself thinks that if they let the capitalist grow, more profit will produce and they could benefit from it. This situation had become worst when technology appears. Such technology as the Internet for instance, when the capitalist know that internet is capable to give information across world, they tend to build their influences in other countries. As Asyraq had said in his post, the situation can be described as the term hyper-mobility. Other factor that contributes the capitalist to make a step to other countries is because the people from other countries especially the third-world countries demands work. They had no choice but to work because if they don’t, they will starve. But then, their wages did not match their work. They had to do lots of things; things that stops their creativity to grow, yet they had low wages. How annoying this was and for me, this is absolutely violating humanity.
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