It was in my second year as a grad student at USC that I first interacted with Professor Harry Richardson--I was enrolled in his class. A fellow student complained about the labor conditions in the maquiladoras. Harry, who later was my dissertation adviser, asked what the alternatives were if those factories were ordered closed because of conditions that are not ok by our standards. I can even now picture the class in my mind, and the student who brought up the point had no answer--she seemed kind of stunned that somebody could ask such a question. Kristof's column on sweatshops essentially is a restatement of Harry's remarks.
Maybe I remember it so well because I think that was the year I know I started losing belief in ultra-left policy alternatives--like many, I too quite seriously sympathized with leftist idea(l)s when I was in India. Graduate school was the time I read and discussed a whole range of political/economic/philosophical ideas, starting with my roommate, Avu, who was in the doctoral program in the business school. The facts didn't quite match up with the rhetoric of the left. Slowly I started drifting towards the middle.
The political journey hasn't ended yet, and for all I know I might hit the reverse gear too. As of now, and thanks to Camille Paglia, I now have a label to describe myself--a Libertarian Democrat! (Can't remember where I read it a few years ago, and I can't seem to track it down. She said that before Kos used that phrase.)
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