What College Kids Should Really Protest: Farms

In honor of the fact that my good friends Liz and The Beard (I am not entirely sure why I keep up the charade of screen names, but I guess it works for now) will be visiting me in the Big Apple this weekend, I feel that I should egg them on a little so we have something to argue about. Beard, this one's for you.

On my old stomping grounds, I linked to a column by Nicholas Kristof that suggested promoting sweat shops was in the best interests of developing countries. Craziness ensued as we all debated this shocking statement by someone with strong credentials advocating for the most in danger in developing countries. Now, while I can understand hatred for sweat shops and the large international companies that support them, what I don't understand is how a much greater evil often goes unnoticed and unprotested. That evil is American and European agriculture subsidies.

Instead of rehashing the sweat shop argument at all, I want to start by making a statement I think we can all agree with; there are economic factors in developing countries that help to keep wages low. Basically, that means that the manufacturing firms that come into these countries are paying a market wage. The last debate revolved around whether that was fair and whether anything could be done about it. But I don't think anyone can argue about whether there are economic conditions keeping wages down in developing countries overall. So if our goal is to eliminate jobs that offer terrible working conditions for unfair wages, one way to approach that would be to try to attack these conditions that push wages down. (Please don't think that I am suggesting this should be done instead of the types of advocacy and boycotting that go on now. I am only arguing for another, equally important, front in the war on sweat shops.)

The problems is that there are many factors keeping wages down; an oversupply of labor due to stagnant economies, corruption, underdevelopment and mismanagement of resources all have an impact - but are also a lot harder to combat that the one I didn't mention. Agriculture subsidies in the west would be easy to get rid of (in the sense that we control them - we cannot stop corruption for example) if the political will was there. And the harm they cause to developing countries is very real. The fact that agriculture in developing countries has to compete with agriculture in Europe and America that is supported by the government robs them of the opportunity to use one of the few resources they have in a global economy. These subsidies keep profits and wages extremely low as farms in developing countries struggle to have a product that will actually sell on a global market. Without the supports, farms in the West would have trouble competing and farms in developing countries might grow and help the economies in their countries expand.

The reason few talk about this is because American farmers are not as easy a target as international manufacturing companies. We love to hate big corporations - they are evil and greedy and exploit the worker whenever they can. Farmers though are a metaphor for the best things about our country. Farmers are thought to be the hardest workers, people who don't have the luxury of taking days off. They make their living from their own hard work; they are the rugged individuals that exist today to remind us of how our country began.

So it is understandably hard to try to pass legislation that could very well bankrupt our hardest-working citizens. But if we are to be serious about improving the lives of everyone around the world and ending labor practices we wouldn't tolerate in our own country, we need to abandon these practices fast. We cannot fall into the trap of only attacking symbols that we don't like. If we are going to make real changes, we need to be willing to advocate for the right policy even if, in the short run, it hurts the symbols we do like.

Challenge

I have long held, and am now more convinced than ever, that liberals have no coherent foreign policy position. I finally finished reading Peter Beinart's book, The Good Fight, which was well-researched, exhaustive, and informative. I wish I could make every liberal read this book. And it's not because I think every liberal should agree with him, even though I found that I do. What I want more than anything is for liberals to actually give serious thought to foreign policy. I long for a day when the Democratic Party can be more than the Anti-Republican party in international affairs.

The fact is that the Democratic Party, although there are differences in it (which some would like to eliminate), has strong positions and vision on most domestic issues. For the most part, liberals are supportive of more restrictions on gun rights, favor basic levels of assistance to the poor and elderly, and believe homosexuals should have the same marriage rights as straight people do. They are also pro-choice and anti-death penalty. In the past and the present they have sought to protect civil liberties, voting rights, racial equality and fair treatment in the workforce. I know it isn't quite this clear; there are many shades of gray here.

The point though is that there are consistent and clear policy positions on the left for most domestic issues. When it comes to foreign affairs though, we are left supporting the invasion of Iraq, but then calling for an early exit. Many members of Congress knew so little about Iraq that they could be fooled into supporting a war because the president was apparently their only source of information. In previous posts on my old blog, I asked my friends to find me liberal writings or speeches by Democratic leaders on foreign policy. Most of what I came across was hawkish and not really supported by the most vocal in the party.

I realize now though that was the wrong question; I was trying to prove that liberals were not thinking objectively about foreign policy. What I really want to know is what my more liberal friends think about foreign policy. In my next post I will lay out my vision for American foreign policy, which is very similar to the one laid out by Beinart. But I also want to hear what everyone else thinks. In our future there will be more situations outside this country that will require decisions. There will be more Darfurs, Somalias, and Haitis. We should know now what we are and are not willing to do. We are in a war with jihadists (although that shouldn't necessarily be the only lense through which we see the world) and if we are going to win, liberals need to think critically about how we can accomplish that while maintaining our basic principles.