Monday, 26 July 2010

The Timid Times Flip-Flops Over "Expropriation"

"It is in the nature of business to seek to maximize profits by minimizing overheads, including the cost of labor and land..."
"As the area covers farmland, wetlands and the habitats of rare bird species, locals are worried that it could lead to ecological destruction."
What's wrong with the first quote is the same thing that's wrong with the second quote. The writers of the editorials from which these quotes were taken are either so clueless or so gutless as to render the difference an indifferent and pathetic grey: I wouldn't trust these guys to peel a fucking orange.

Now sure, it is true that Hon Hai want to reduce their overheads, by in this case in Miaoli for example, obtaining the surrounding farm land at a cheaper rate, but ask yourself this question: cheaper than what?

Consider the second quote: does "ecological destruction" refer also, even if secondarily so, to the lives and economic interests of the farmers?

Both of these quotations illustrate a single, flip-coin point: on the one hand, it is the democratically sanctioned power of government which is being brought to task for the purpose of Hon Hai's overhead reductions whilst on the other hand, it is precisely due to their inability to correctly distill the mixed premises of "freedomanddemocracy" (uttered in semi-automatic prosody) that Chiu Yan-ling, Loa Iok and Lo Hsien-hsiu cower before this blatant theft of property with wimpy protestations about what may happen to "rare birds". What will happen to the birds is that they will move elsewhere. What will happen to the farmers is that years of their hard work and accumulated value will be destroyed by one fell act of "expropriation" whose false justification rests solely upon the democratic premise. If the property developers cannot raise sufficient capital to purchase the land from farmers at prices both parties can freely agree to, then they have no business continuing to operate in the real-estate market.

It is a disgrace that such slovenly drivel can be published in the Timid Times and it is doubly disgraceful that these writers still pick up a monthly salary for doing so. I would have terminated their contracts the moment I read those editorials.

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