Editor,
Maceo Carrillo Martinet's column about corruption in America should be valued only for its hilarious view of America's influence on humanity. He seems to be anti-everything but doesn't offer any explicit alternatives to the reader.
On this note I'd like to break down a few issues, causes and arguments surrounding humanity and then show a clearer perception of humanity's influence on America.
Manufacturing in the undeveloped world is an opportunity, not a curse. Cheap labor is probably glad to have a job that doesn't pay peanuts by American standards, about 25 cents an hour, but think of the alternatives. More to the point though, did American foreign policy create these abysmal conditions in a foreign land or was the culprit the essence of human nature to increase one's marginal utility?
Does Uncle Sam or the local despot have more influence in a country's domestic policy and reform?
Is it America's duty to police despairs world wide, and would you be the policeman if asked?
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At the root of all the trouble is what alarms me most about Maceo's article, one's understanding of economic theory as it relates to human interaction. I don't mean economics as it relates to money but at its most rudimentary level, as it relates to human choice.
Implying that American companies' products and their influence on the world are both unavoidable and responsible for suffering all around the world is first, false and second, the wrong base of the argument. Humans decide to work and engage in commerce, products don't force them to.
Need predicates any want, and with money wants are transformed to demand. Demand causes American companies' to produce goods for individual humans to consume in order to optimize their own Marginal benefits equaling marginal costs curve.
Unfortunately, many see only the result of a chain reaction that, when examined by link, is too light to notice but when viewed in whole too heavy for their consciences to bear.
Well imagine a world with no costs, wouldn't there be no gains? Maceo is just as susceptible to falling ill with enlightened self-interest while examining this troubling issue as anybody, after all who would believe that they could do anything intentionally or unintentionally evil?
Simply believing that not wanting a flame to grow will have the effect of doing so is foolish. Please realize that what your opposite contributes to the fire in added fuel you do with hot air. And in the end the flame will still warm all humanity.
Finally, just as dangerous to our youth as violent images in American pop culture are, so too are superficial, unsupported, misguided, simplistic arguments. In fact column is more like entertainment than argument, and if some poor ignorant fool can't take entertainment at face value, then somebody better do something about it.
Chad Gilman
Management student
