David Buchanan wrote:
>
> JC: I have a lot of sympathy for your concerns. Seems "the battle in
> Seattle" is such a case. I wouldn't presume to defend the actions or
> opinions of every protester against the WTO, but there is the same basic
> fight we've through this century. Its a battle of intellectual and
> social values, don't you think? I mean the principled dissenters are
> interested in the human rights of workers, the ending the enviromental
> degradation caused by industry and other broad issues. It seems the
> defenders of the WTO are hardly concerned with anything other than the
> bottom line. It the same old same old.
My comment:
I'm sympathetic with concerns about workers rights and the environment,
but I'm not sure it's fair to suggest (if I understand you correctly)
that the protesters' goals are "intellectual" and thus somehow superior
to the "social" values of those with whom they disagree.
First, it seems strange to characterize protecting the environment or
promoting workers' interests as "intellectual". Isn't the former more
biological and the latter more social?
In any case, those who argue for free trade without rules governing
worker rights and the environment have plenty of intellectually-based
arguments for their position. Among their arguments, incidently, is
that workers and the environment both would be better off if Western
companies were encouraged to invest abroad and improve economic and
technological conditions. I'm not endorsing this view, but it's just as
"intellectual" as those of the protesters.
It's hard for me to see how any general moral framework will yield an
easy answer to policy questions like this. There's often too much
uncertainty and too many changing circumstances to claim any ultimate
"truth" about the consequences of a given policy. And, to the extent
that we can know those consequences, they often will involve helping
some at the expense of others. So there may be no "right" or "highest
quality" answer, just a question of which group you happen to care about
more.
All of which is to support the view expressed by Roger that neither the
MOQ nor any other analytical framework/method will produce any permanent
(static) answers to meaningful issues. That's not to argue against
doing good analysis -- just that you can't assume there's a single best
answer if you somehow do the analysis "right".
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