Reply #29: A couple blind spots in your scenario [View All]

[Spike89]

There is no true labor mobility in a globalized world. Name one country that has a truly open labor emigration policy and doesn't include significant language/cultural/logistical barriers to free labor migration. I couldn't just waltz into Canada as an American citizen and get a job and I certainly can't think of a country closer in culture and geography. That is all somewhat beside the point anyway. Labor (in the classes you're describing based on your assertations that factories are "mobile") is NOT free economically or socially to move in the nomatic fashion you describe.

A bigger flaw in your scenario is that you've bought into the idea that geography no longer matters. For a huge portion of the labor force, that is simply not true. Explain how coal mine owners are going to relocate the coal mines to...well anywhere. Will the timber barons move the forests, or the mills that handle the timber? Farm labor will never move away from the farm. Aside from resource-based industries, there are a huge number (and growing) of labor positions that require highly educated workers. These jobs need to stay near the source of workers and by the time 3rd world countries have built the infrastructure to train their workers to compete they aren't truly 3rd world any more and their people won't work for pennies a day.

The reality is that the days of huge labor employment at factories churning out commodity items is coming to a close. Automated factories will eventually make large-scale sweatshop factories unattractive economically. The U.S. is is still the largest manufacturing economy in the world--we just don't make cheap crap any more.