8931: Jobs, again (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Michael Deibert <michael_deibert@hotmail.com>

Dorce writes: "Bad, abusive jobs are not better than NO jobs.  Fix the
conditions then talk about investing in assembly jobs.  Until
then, expect road blocks."

I guess that statement can ratchet up street cred among armchair radicals 
and middle-class, bourgeois revolutionaries now that the Cold War is long 
over and there a no lefty insurgencies remaining to support (the FARC and 
ELN in Colombia don't really fit the heroic model, right?), but it does very 
little to put food in anyone's belly. With the intelligence and diligence of 
the Haitian population, the same population that is able to thrive so when 
they move to Brooklyn or Miami and are able to operate without fear of 
zenglendos, constant poisonous political crisis and nauseatingly corrupt 
business practices, it should be obvious by now that the fault rests not 
with the instinctive hard-working, entrepreneurial spirit of the people 
themselves, but with those who demand option zero at every turn. Who 
benefits when any attempt to start a business is met with a noose of red 
tape, an aura of potential violence and an attitude of thinly-veiled 
contempt from the representatives of those one is trying to help? It 
certainly doesn't hurt the already entrenched elite, who have been 
circumventing any idea of social responsibility for so long that thwarting 
new enterprise will simply help them retain their exploitative position. It 
certainly doesn't harm the class politique politicians who can continue to 
make noise about the fight against globalization as they zoom around town in 
imported cars. It certainly doesn't hurt the radical first-world leftists 
under the blanket of privilege and comfort provided by their fortunate 
position. The only people who do get hurt by this kind of rhetoric, it seems 
to me, are the working people of Haiti, who have had too little work of any 
kind for far too long. Roadblocks, necessary tools that they sometimes are, 
haven't fed anyone that I've met yet, and who wouldn't take a bowl of 
mayimoulen over the fragrance of a burning tire?

Michael



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