Fairness
People talk about fairness as if it's a good thing. Is it? While much of the world lived off subsistance farming (more than half) and lacked basics like electricity, clean water, sanitation, and nutrition, Akron enjoyed a generation of prosperity. The period lasted from the end of the Second World War through about 1990, when the last tire factory closed. Given the high salaries of workers (there were more car owners per capita in Akron for a while than any other part of the US), one could see the tire industry's collapse as 'only fair'. The chief beneficiaries were probably tire plants in places like Indonesia, where most people live on between $1-2/day, placing them in the 25-49th percentile of the world's population. Undoubtedly, the lives of many Indonesians improved with the introduction of that industry.
All this represents a progress towards fairness. Do you get the impression that fairness isn't necessarily a good thing? Indonesians are rather ugly people. Aside from much of Bali and several small communities in Sumatra, Indonesia is a Muslim country, with more Muslims than any other country in the world. Personally I'd rather see the place struck by a plague and decimated than witness the death of Akron and its decidedly unfair pay scales. I consider this natural and normal. Most of the people I'm writing to, just by virtue of being able to read it, are doing better than most of the global population - often through no virtue of their own. This is a lack of parity that should be preserved, and institutionalized - through trade barriers.
All this represents a progress towards fairness. Do you get the impression that fairness isn't necessarily a good thing? Indonesians are rather ugly people. Aside from much of Bali and several small communities in Sumatra, Indonesia is a Muslim country, with more Muslims than any other country in the world. Personally I'd rather see the place struck by a plague and decimated than witness the death of Akron and its decidedly unfair pay scales. I consider this natural and normal. Most of the people I'm writing to, just by virtue of being able to read it, are doing better than most of the global population - often through no virtue of their own. This is a lack of parity that should be preserved, and institutionalized - through trade barriers.