fact, it w ould probably be illegal.
A corporate executive’s responsibility is to his stockholders—to
maximize profit, market share and pow er. If he can do that by paying
starvation w ages to w omen w ho’ll die in a couple of years because
their w orking conditions are so horrible, he’s just doing his job. It’s
the job that should be questioned.
Aren’t corporate managers quick to adjust and make small
concessions, like letting people go the bathroom tw ice a day instead
of once?
Absolutely. T he same w as true of kings and princes—they made
plenty of concessions w hen they w eren’t able to control their
subjects. T he same w as true of slave ow ners.
Small concessions are all to the good. People in the T hird World
may suffer a little less, and people here may see that activism can
w ork, w hich w ill inspire them to push farther. Both are good
outcomes. Eventually you get to the point w here you start asking,
Why should we be asking them to make concessions? Why are they
in power in the first place? What do we need the king for?
I w as recently in T rinidad, w hich is under “structural adjustment.”
W hile talking to some laborers, I asked them how they got to their
job site. T hey said they had to take a taxi. I asked, Isn’t there any
bus service? and they told me that the route from the poor part of
Port of Spain w here they lived had been eliminated, and they now
had to pay a substantial part of their earnings on private taxis.
It’s happening everyw here. T ransferring costs from the rich to
the poor is the standard device of improving “efficiency.”
I drove to w ork this morning. T he roads are full of potholes, and
there w ere big traffic jams, but it’s hard to use public
transportation, because it takes too long and is, in fact, more
expensive than driving.
Depriving people of an alternative to driving forces them to buy
more cars and more gas. Potholes increase car repairs and
purchases. More driving increases pollution, and dealing w ith the
health effects of that pollution costs even more money.
All the discomfort of all these people increases the gross national