Stoicism

[quinterbeck]

Your humanity is neither your natural life nor your membership in the Volunteer Fire Department but precisely the gap that prevents you from being able to wholly choose either.

Is that a reference to a Series of Unfortunate Events?

Yes, I'm a fan.

It's been a long time since I read that series, but I enjoyed it myself! I was a bit young to be thinking about connecting the themes to philosophy back then though. Are you suggesting SoUA is written with Stoic ideas in mind?

[rotting bones]

It's been a long time since I read that series, but I enjoyed it myself! I was a bit young to be thinking about connecting the themes to philosophy back then though. Are you suggesting SoUA is written with Stoic ideas in mind?

The author is a New Atheist. Contemporary secularism harks back to the ideals of Classical Antiquity, and Stoicism was the ruling ideology of that age. Athens may have executed Socrates, but they erected a statue at public expense to honor Zeno. I would also argue that children are natural Stoics.* They repress bad emotions without having to perform spiritual exercises, and they regard socially approved authority as fate. Most of them also avoid inflicting serious harm. In my experience, they usually respect knowledgeable, morally firm people. (Disclaimer: Everyone I have ever been introduced to by my friends and extended family is a nerd.) I don't expect the author to have deliberately expressed Stoic ideals, but I don't think there was any way to avoid it.

*At least in intention. Not even Stoics were Stoic sages.

[MacAnDàil]

MacAnDàil: Do you have a plan to prevent corportations in China from being turned into people? The Saudi Arabia-led intervention in Yemen is still ongoing, mind you.

I just saw this; I didn't realise it had changed threads.
Would you mind elaborating?

In any case, I certainly find it somewhat ironic that the supposedly Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is much harsher to the workers and much too lenient to the large corporations than many supposedly capitalist countries. And, in these capitalist countries, corporations have too much power as it is; it's even worse under the current Chinese government. Also, if you're talking about corporations smelling meat, look at how some Chinese corporations are acting in Cambodia.

Boycotting Chinese goods on the basis of this, and the treatment of the Uighurs (while executive order 13780 is not something I approve of, the targetting of Muslims goes further under Winnie the Pooh), is likely an improbable task these days unfortunately. It did have an effect on apartheid South Africa.

[rotting bones]

On topic: I forgot to explain why I keep accusing the Stoics of caring about their dignity. Why is it so important to avoid passion if not out of a fear of losing control?

MacAnDàil: People are complaining about the absence of fair competition in China because they think Wall Street can make a lot of money if corporations were allowed to do business there freely. I doubt this will benefit Chinese workers unless they are allowed to stream into America. I doubt Americans will allow that either.

I will say it again: I don't think China is communist and I most certainly don't support its government. Let me summarize the discussion so far.

Capitalism is a global system. The oppression of the third world, American workers who survive from paycheck to paycheck, American prisoners, etc. keep the first world rich. The money available in the first world is what keeps their people interested in things like workers' rights instead of pursuing tradition like a bunch of brain-dead zombies. (cf. terror management theory) Trump came into power because the amount of money available in America fell in recent times. We will see worse if it falls even more.

The current international opposition to China is an attempt to take money away from there. The ruling ideology of the 21st century dictates that this won't make a difference and cites the cultural similarity of China to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Japan as proof. However, this is cultural chauvinism disguised as enlightened egalitarianism. Hong Kong and Singapore are rich because they are tax havens like Ireland. Taiwan and Japan were massively bailed out by the West as part of their strategy to contain the so-called Communists. Among other benefits, Taiwan was given more than $1000 in contemporary dollars for each one of their citizens by the early 1950's, and this sustained their investments for decades. Japan was not only a colonial power before then, but the US subsidized Japan's protectionist policies till the end of the Cold War. Japan has been shrinking since it ended.

In order to recreate the successes of these economies, it is necessary to pour a lot of money into enriching China too. Unfortunately, China contains a fifth of the world's population. If you scale up the contribution linearly, the money required becomes comparable to some of America's recent military expenditures. America won't be making that investment because the whole point of their opposition to China is to not give them any more money.

Hence, I don't think it follows that becoming capitalist will improve the conditions of workers in China. Look at the historical precedents. Before the formation of the USSR, Western countries violently suppressed workers' movements. Concessions were made in the 60's because Western leaders were terrified of the USSR. (edit: They were made starting from the 30's. These concessions are arguably being taken away as the years go by.) Conditions are bad in China now, but they were even worse when the country was openly capitalist. There is a way to avoid these situations despite the lack of money, and that is to create a direct democracy. The problem is that almost nobody supports it, and that "nobody" includes the Communists. Apart from their innumerable pseudo-scientific beliefs, 20th century Communists failed because they believed in the leadership of the workers by a "vanguard party" composed of the elements of the working class with the most developed "class consciousness", ie. frothing working class bias. Game theory and common sense both say that this will lead to the creation of a labor aristocracy, which it did. As a result, the Communists refused to believe in reality. They accused common sense of being "mechanical" thinking and opposed it through their incomprehensible "dialectical" spirituality. Please don't repeat their mistake on behalf of your ideology.

What I support is benefiting everyone. That is why I'm opposed to revolution in China by the elements that are currently calling for one. A potential objection is to argue that all of China should be a giant tax haven, which means admitting you are a libertarian. I'm assuming you don't want to go in that direction. There may be other objections, but I don't know what they are. Feel free to quote facts at me.

[Ares Land]

On topic: I forgot to explain why I keep accusing the Stoics of caring about their dignity. Why is it so important to avoid passion if not out of a fear of losing control?

If you want to lead a virtuous life, or be happy, or live in peace, what you need is proper judgement. What you need is reason.
Your passions (fear, desire, anger, etc.) can be misleading. Fear of death, for instance, will certainly prevent you from being happy or living in peace whereas reason allows you to understand that you have no control over your own death. It may also lead you to neglect your duty: you may avoid going into battle, because you're afraid of dying, whereas reason would tell you that you need to fight.

Reason vs. the passions are a big deal in Greek philosophy (Neo-Platonism advocated abolishing all passions whatsoever).

Personally, I feel that while the Stoics had the right idea, some of them went a little too far and missed a paradox there. Fear, anger, desire are all useful, they're built into us for a reason, and trying to repress these is going against our own nature. A more sensible course of action would be to accept them but not let ourselves be ruled by them.

There are two questionable assumptions there, by the way:

• The Stoics start out with the assumptions that all human beings desire happiness. That looks eminently reasonable, but I don't think it's true!
• I'm neither a neuroscientist or a philosopher to prove it, but I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as 'reason'. With an MRI you can see, for instance, that when, say, we move a finger, the nerve impulse has long been sent when we 'decide' to move it. But I think that, like the self, it's a useful simplification of whatever is really going on.

[rotting bones]

Your passions (fear, desire, anger, etc.) can be misleading. Fear of death, for instance, will certainly prevent you from being happy or living in peace whereas reason allows you to understand that you have no control over your own death. It may also lead you to neglect your duty: you may avoid going into battle, because you're afraid of dying, whereas reason would tell you that you need to fight.

It is good training for the beginner rationalist to prevent passions from interfering with analysis. The part I don't agree with is that passion is fundamentally incompatible with analysis. If you had to explain the world to someone, it would be inefficient to use a perfectly dispassionate rationalist without mirror neurons. Freud's analysis of the transference is incompatible with Husserl's bracketing method.

(Neo-Platonism advocated abolishing all passions whatsoever).

...

A more sensible course of action would be to accept them but not let ourselves be ruled by them.

Aristotle didn't. He wanted to moderate the passions without eliminating them.

Personally, I feel that while the Stoics had the right idea, some of them went a little too far and missed a paradox there. Fear, anger, desire are all useful, they're built into us for a reason, and trying to repress these is going against our own nature.

In philosophy, if you change the definitions, then everything changes. For example:

If you mean nature in the physical sense, then nature doesn't care. Whether you are passionate or dispassionate, it is all natural. It is impossible for the unnatural to exist.

But if nature is a purely negative category excluding the artificial, then there is nothing more natural than dispassionate annihilation, regardless of whether the targets are natural or artificial. Preservation of things we are passionate about is largely a work of culture. In that sense, dispassion could be more natural than passion.

Personally, I don't think "nature" is a coherent concept. The root of this dispute is how we conceptualize the nature of analysis. For example, see the dispute between psychoanalysis and phenomenology in continental philosophy I alluded to above.

If you want to lead a virtuous life, or be happy, or live in peace, what you need is proper judgement. What you need is reason.

...

The Stoics start out with the assumptions that all human beings desire happiness. That looks eminently reasonable, but I don't think it's true!

Oppression comes into the world whenever virtue, happiness or peace is prioritized over freedom.

I'm neither a neuroscientist or a philosopher to prove it, but I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as 'reason'. With an MRI you can see, for instance, that when, say, we move a finger, the nerve impulse has long been sent when we 'decide' to move it. But I think that, like the self, it's a useful simplification of whatever is really going on.

The problem is the metaphysical belief that there is a rational soul that is polluted by the impure material body. Philosophers with more mechanical inclinations were unwelcome in Athens. In reality, even our dispassion is a function of the material body itself. In the context of free will, this is called compatibilism. The brain does whatever it does. The result is free choice, or in this case, analysis.

PS. I should probably clarify the position of phenomenology. In their conception, the analyst maintains an emotional distance from experience to reach objectivity. It's like war Zen, where the enemy "appears" and is reflexively struck down. The person doing the striking has disappeared entirely, so there is apparently no negative karma.

[Ares Land]

If you mean nature in the physical sense, then nature doesn't care. Whether you are passionate or dispassionate, it is all natural. It is impossible for the unnatural to exist.

Yes, I mean this in the physical sense, ie. what actually exists. Which is why I argue eliminating passion is ultimately vain: a human being has adrenalin, a limbic systems and hormones. No matter what you do, you'll feel anger or desire. (The Stoics are right, though, in noting that by correcting your judgement and not holding incorrect opinion, whatever suffering anger or desire might cause won't be nearly as bad).

Oppression comes into the world whenever virtue, happiness or peace is prioritized over freedom.

I don't agree with that. First, that's assuming happiness is independant from freedom (I'd argue they're essentially the same thing!). Second, there are plenty of counter-examples. Many societies valued freedom very highly and were awfully oppressive. Consider the Spartans, or the Confederates. Both chose to fight for freedom in circumstances where they were certain to lose, and both were particularly oppressive compared to their contemporaries.

[zompist]

Capitalism is a global system. The oppression of the third world, American workers who survive from paycheck to paycheck, American prisoners, etc. keep the first world rich. The money available in the first world is what keeps their people interested in things like workers' rights instead of pursuing tradition like a bunch of brain-dead zombies. (cf. terror management theory) Trump came into power because the amount of money available in America fell in recent times. We will see worse if it falls even more.

The current international opposition to China is an attempt to take money away from there. The ruling ideology of the 21st century dictates that this won't make a difference and cites the cultural similarity of China to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Japan as proof. However, this is cultural chauvinism disguised as enlightened egalitarianism. Hong Kong and Singapore are rich because they are tax havens like Ireland. Taiwan and Japan were massively bailed out by the West as part of their strategy to contain the so-called Communists. Among other benefits, Taiwan was given more than $1000 in contemporary dollars for each one of their citizens by the early 1950's, and this sustained their investments for decades. Japan was not only a colonial power before then, but the US subsidized Japan's protectionist policies till the end of the Cold War. Japan has been shrinking since it ended.

I think we've been over this before, but I want to say again that I think this view— that First World prosperity is due to extracting resources from the Third World— is wrong. It's been standard left-wing thinking for at least a century, but so far as I know it's not based on figures, just on outrage: because a thing is outrageous, it must be the only outrageous thing; it must explain all other outrages.

It's based on a clear and outrageous fact, of course: colonialism is exploitative and enormously destructive. The British Empire was ruinous for (to give just two examples) India and Ireland. This is not the same thing as proving that colonialism was actually profitable!

In fact the revenues of the East India Company were always a mess. After 1757 it controlled the revenues of Bengal— and basically spent it all on conquering the rest of India. It was constantly in debt, requiring British subsidies. Indeed, raising taxes to pay for its Indian misadventures was one of the things that triggered the American Revolution. Finally the British government had to disband the company and rule directly. The French gave up on India largely because they figured— probably correctly— that it was a financial liability.

Britain did profit from having a huge colony during WWII, when 2.5 million Indian troops helped it out. On the other hand, it was completely unable to protect its colonies in east Asia, and it ended the war owing 1/3 of its war debt to India. The fact that Britain was so terrible at developing its colonies also means that they were not much of an asset, and once defending them was no longer effortless, they were a liability instead.

Some figures from today: US trade with India is $88 billion. Compare that to the Indian economy, whose GNP is $3 trillion, and the US economy, with $21 trillion.

Total US trade with all countries is $4 trillion— but the majority of that is with other developed nations. (China is a special case, $635 billion— but that barely exceeds our trade with Canada.)

The sad truth is: we don't make a lot of money from poor countries, because they don't have a lot of money. That doesn't mean they're not exploited! But the sin of capitalism isn't so much robbing the poor as ignoring them. Getting a lot of attention from the developed countries is a mixed bag, to be sure. But to be ignored by them is arguably worse.

The charts I took from Piketty add some historical focus. The value of national wealth in France in 1910 that came from owning foreign entities was about 1/7. That was a big big deal to French colonies, of course. But 1/7 of a thing is, well, 1/7 of a thing, not the whole thing, not even half.

Look at the US chart too. Our holdings of foreign entities have almost always been negative. That is, other countries invest in us. But though the raw numbers are big, they're dwarfed by the size of the US economy.

Again, global exploitation is real, but it accounts for only a fraction of global wealth. Capitalism creates wealth, and does so pretty well. 19th century America got rich mostly by trading with itself. (The South of course had wealth as slaves, but slavery is like colonialism: really only good for the small elite, and terrible for developing an economy. As Tocqueville noted in the 1830s, slavery meant that southern Americans disdained work and entrepreneurship, with the result that economic and demographic power tilted ever more toward the north.)

[Vardelm]

But the sin of capitalism isn't so much robbing the poor as ignoring them. Getting a lot of attention from the developed countries is a mixed bag, to be sure. But to be ignored by them is arguably worse.

It strikes me that this may sort of be what's going on with the "fly-over" states in the middle of the country. The coasts are wealthier and largely ignore the interior, leading to less economic development, which in turn leads to resentment & political alienation.

[rotting bones]

Yes, I mean this in the physical sense, ie. what actually exists. Which is why I argue eliminating passion is ultimately vain: a human being has adrenalin, a limbic systems and hormones. No matter what you do, you'll feel anger or desire. (The Stoics are right, though, in noting that by correcting your judgement and not holding incorrect opinion, whatever suffering anger or desire might cause won't be nearly as bad).

That's okay. I feel like when people say "It is natural to be emotional," they mean something different from, "It is physically impossible to be unemotional."

I don't agree with that. First, that's assuming happiness is independant from freedom (I'd argue they're essentially the same thing!). Second, there are plenty of counter-examples. Many societies valued freedom very highly and were awfully oppressive. Consider the Spartans, or the Confederates. Both chose to fight for freedom in circumstances where they were certain to lose, and both were particularly oppressive compared to their contemporaries.

How much do you know about Spartan "freedom"? https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collectio ... an-school/

[rotting bones]

zompist: Even if capitalism is the best generator of wealth, that has no bearing on improving the lives of Chinese people because China is already capitalist.

1. Investors simply do not offer colonized countries the same opportunities as the colonizers. My examples are intended to explain how other capitalist Asian economies developed themselves despite the difficulty in securing loans.

2. Do you really believe that loosening restrictions on business will increase the wealth of the average Chinese? That hasn't worked in India so far. If it has the opposite effect, then opening up the Chinese economy is bad news for the local quality of life.

Even if your argument is relevant, I have some questions about it. My understanding is that a growing economy necessarily runs at a monetary loss. This sounds like a paradox, but it's true. Money is not a product. It's just a tool used to increase the liquidity of the real economy. For example:

1. If capitalist corporations are raking in a huge profit, that means most people don't have enough money to spend buying their manufactures and a recession is at hand. The rational capitalist solution is to have firms take a loss one way or the other and then bail them out. To control inflation, the government needs to secure loans from various investors. Or if you're France, use dependent third world countries to get money into your banks.

2. Economics is founded on the assumption that goods are interchangeable. Strictly speaking, this assumption is false. Japan's colonies were "poorer" than Japan on a monetary basis, but they had natural resources that Japan has always been notoriously poor in. Japan would have been unable to secure its supply lines without its colonies despite being "richer". This is not an isolated example. Today, mineral extraction from the Congo takes place through local warlords, who are perfectly integrated into the global economy. If those countries had demanded a higher price, the end products would have been correspondingly expensive. The situation was different in early America, the land of opportunity. Rural pre-European Americans neither exploited nor defended their natural resources very effectively. My understanding is that those "commons" are much diminished these days.

3. The high purchasing power of first world countries depends on cheap third world imports. Not only raw materials for industry, but also manufactures from places like China and Bangladesh. In light of point 2, relative prices of the imports and exports are less important than the quantities and their relative demand. Poor people sell their goods cheap, and if they don't, there are options for finessing their opinions. Even before Covid-19, 70% of Americans lived from paycheck to paycheck IIRC. My understanding is that for many of these people, their quality of life depended on the price of the cheapest goods available. Even if the third world is a monetary drain on the first world, Chinese workers who are being paid a pittance for their labor are still sustaining the quality of life in the first world. Then there are interest payments from the third world to the first, etc.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Ares Land]

How much do you know about Spartan "freedom"? https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collectio ... an-school/

That's my point exactly! The Spartan made a big deal out of freedom (it justified the two big wars we chiefly remember for: the Persian subjects were 'slaves' to their kings, and the Athenians imposed tyranny) and their society was exceptionally oppressive. (All of their contemporaries owned slaves, but none of them went out of their way to make sure the slaves were miserable).

[rotting bones]

Be reasonable. Sparta only cared about the freedom of Spartans. These days, valuing freedom means valuing universal freedom in one sense or another.

The whole Spartan system was bizarre from today's point of view. They didn't properly train in war because they "didn't think it worked". Spartans were just naturally superior because they had subjugated their neighbors.

[Moose-tache]

Global exploitation is real, but it accounts for only a fraction of global wealth.

Maybe I misunderstood, but I don't think rotting bones was criticizing capitalism for only generating wealth through exploiting the third world. The part you quote talks about the exploitation of first world workers. And the question of how capitalism facilitates the exploitation of workers of various kinds is a complicated issue.

Aviva Chompsky wrote about this extensively. As the American textile industry caused relative prosperity and inspired greater assertiveness in workers in New England, capital fled to the Piedmont region of the south. Once the southerners got uppity, capital moved to Colombia. Then to Thailand. Then to Indonesia. At every step of the process the industry required a gap between the wages of their employees and their customers in order to make a profit. This was great for any country trying to attract industry, but of course if their citizens became dangerously comfortable with middle class living they would find themselves undercut by someone else. Meanwhile the whole time manufacturing was fleeing the United States to set up shop in poorer countries, the place of manufacturing on the value-added chain was dropping, with new white collar jobs emerging as the ideal for middle class workers. So the American middle class as a whole was getting more productive, and physically making goods became less essential to economic production. If manufacturing leaves wealthy countries as they develop newer and better ways to make a buck, then the top industries in the third world will include many of the things that used to be highly profitable industries in the first world but no longer are. In the US, the big earner went from plantation agriculture to manufacturing to IT, and as a direct result we see IT, manufacturing, and plantation agriculture in other countries as we go down the ladder of wealth. The point of all this is that we would naturally expect the fraction of US wealth that comes from direct extraction from the third world to be a small one, but that does not mean that the wealth that is generated within the US has nothing to do with that small fraction that comes from overseas. The gap in wealth between rich and poor countries has always been a major part of global business, and has had a direct impact on what sort of businesses, consumer culture, white collar jobs, and other economic activities that occur in the US. One day we'll outsource all our IT jobs to Burkina Faso so that Apple and Google can pay their software engineers less, and by then the American middle class will be making trillions off of, I don't know, asteroid mining or something. And in that future we can compare the enormous profits from space mining to the pitiful gain that comes from software, and brag that only a tiny fraction of our wealth comes from exploiting the third world.

Also, and this is a separate point, the idea that India was "not profitable" for the British is a popular myth. The cash flow from the EIC was pretty pathetic. But the value of goods extracted by taxation, usually re-exported to prop up Britain's trade balance with Europe and the US, has been estimated by economist Utsa Patnaik at around 45 trillion dollars after inflation.

[Raphael]

This is not the same thing as proving that colonialism was actually profitable!

In fact the revenues of the East India Company were always a mess. After 1757 it controlled the revenues of Bengal— and basically spent it all on conquering the rest of India. It was constantly in debt, requiring British subsidies. Indeed, raising taxes to pay for its Indian misadventures was one of the things that triggered the American Revolution. Finally the British government had to disband the company and rule directly. The French gave up on India largely because they figured— probably correctly— that it was a financial liability.

Britain did profit from having a huge colony during WWII, when 2.5 million Indian troops helped it out. On the other hand, it was completely unable to protect its colonies in east Asia, and it ended the war owing 1/3 of its war debt to India. The fact that Britain was so terrible at developing its colonies also means that they were not much of an asset, and once defending them was no longer effortless, they were a liability instead.

Some figures from today: US trade with India is $88 billion. Compare that to the Indian economy, whose GNP is $3 trillion, and the US economy, with $21 trillion.

Total US trade with all countries is $4 trillion— but the majority of that is with other developed nations. (China is a special case, $635 billion— but that barely exceeds our trade with Canada.)

The sad truth is: we don't make a lot of money from poor countries, because they don't have a lot of money. That doesn't mean they're not exploited! But the sin of capitalism isn't so much robbing the poor as ignoring them. Getting a lot of attention from the developed countries is a mixed bag, to be sure. But to be ignored by them is arguably worse.

The charts I took from Piketty add some historical focus. The value of national wealth in France in 1910 that came from owning foreign entities was about 1/7. That was a big big deal to French colonies, of course. But 1/7 of a thing is, well, 1/7 of a thing, not the whole thing, not even half.

Look at the US chart too. Our holdings of foreign entities have almost always been negative. That is, other countries invest in us. But though the raw numbers are big, they're dwarfed by the size of the US economy.

I've seen you make points like that a couple of times before, and somehow I didn't get around to stating my objections before.

Basically, I'd say your argument might be simply a neat imperialist accounting trick. It's entirely based on looking at everything's monetary value. But the monetary value of things is determined by the global economy, which is dominated by the rich nations and people.

What if we use different metrics for valuing things? What, for instance, about the work that goes into producing goods and services? Would you seriously claim that each year, the result of more hours of human work is brought from the richer parts of the world to the poorer parts of the world than vice versa? Would you seriously claim that over the last 700 years, the result of more hours of human work was brought from the richer parts of the world to the poorer parts of the world than vice versa?

That said, rotting bones's apparent belief that everything in politics is about capitalist greed is probably nonsense. Political behavior, and human behavior in general, is dominated by factors a good deal older than capitalist greed, and a good deal more deeply ingrained in the human psyche.

All across the political spectrum, the idea has taken root that human beings mostly care, or perhaps mostly should care, about their material self-interest. That idea was made popular by Karl Marx on the Left and Adam Smith on the Right. But, well, if most people would really care mostly about their material self-interest, we'd probably all live in a socialist Utopia by now.

People care about their egos. They care about their social status. They care about being liked and respected by their communities, or their friends and loved ones. They care about pride in their in-group. They care about being able to see themselves as the kind of person they want to see themselves as. They care about never having to admit mistakes. They care about excitement and adrenaline rushes.

That's where the mental energy that really shapes human affairs comes from.

[Raphael]

Be reasonable. Sparta only cared about the freedom of Spartans. These days, valuing freedom means valuing universal freedom in one sense or another.

No True Scotsman argument. "Oppression happens when people don't care enough about freedom" - "Here are examples of people who cared a lot about their idea of freedom but were still very oppressive." - "Well, they didn't care about real freedom!"

[rotting bones]

Be reasonable. Sparta only cared about the freedom of Spartans. These days, valuing freedom means valuing universal freedom in one sense or another.

No True Scotsman argument. "Oppression happens when people don't care enough about freedom" - "Here are examples of people who cared a lot about their idea of freedom but were still very oppressive." - "Well, they didn't care about real freedom!"

I'm saying that freedom meant something else to them than to us. I presented evidence to substantiate that argument.

Also, "everything in politics is about capitalist greed" goes way too far. I'd argue that many, many more things are about capitalist greed than people these days usually think.

Sorry for my short comments. I'm working from home.

[Ares Land]

Be reasonable. Sparta only cared about the freedom of Spartans. These days, valuing freedom means valuing universal freedom in one sense or another.

Alright, does valuing universal freedom alone preclude exploitation? I doubt it.
Let's take France has an example. France has valued freedom very highly, ever since the Revolution and, at the same time, had no problem at all with colonialism. There's no contradiction there: everyone was pretty convinced about 'the White Man's Burden'.

Some figures from today: US trade with India is $88 billion. Compare that to the Indian economy, whose GNP is $3 trillion, and the US economy, with $21 trillion.

Total US trade with all countries is $4 trillion— but the majority of that is with other developed nations. (China is a special case, $635 billion— but that barely exceeds our trade with Canada.)

The thing is, there are some forms of "exploitation" that don't show up in those figures. Most manufacturing is outsourced to countries with cheaper labor costs. Apple outsources manufacturing to Foxconn. What shows up in the figures for US trade with China is however much Apple pays Foxconn for that; but the retail price is what show up in US GDP. Wealth creation has happened in the internal market. There has been "exploitation" of Chinese workers: labor laws, health and safety regulations are more lenient, wages are lower. Apple wouldn't get anything like these production costs if it manufactured in California. That differential isn't factored in when calculating GDP or trade figures. The same applies to food, clothes, manufactured products...
If we spend $100 on groceries instead of $150 because the apples are imported from Peru, the extra $50 is spent on the internal market as well. (And again, trade between Europe or the US and Peru looks insignificant, because we buy them apples for cheap, and the money we save is spent on the internal market).

Why am I using scare quotes, though? Because it's not as simple as a story of the West oppressing the rest of the world. Outsourcing manufacturing has made China richer, not poorer. (Which doesn''t make the moral dilemma any easier.)

[rotting bones]

At first, Frenchmen even supported the Haitian Revolution. Then they gradually became "reasonable" as ideology evolved to let them both love freedom and enrich themselves. The meaning of freedom is a deep issue in contemporary philosophy. The Ljubljana school would classify Spartan freedom as "obscurantism". A huge part of their theory presents a meaning of freedom that avoids obscuring oppressive practices.

PS. They trace their origins to the early French Revolution.

[rotting bones]

Thank you, Moose-tache, Raphael and Ares Land, for your comments on economics. I was also taught in class that the British deliberately destroyed the medieval Indian textile industry. They wanted Indians to be cotton growers exporting cheap cotton to England. The British would then manufacture clothes in their factories and sell them back to us at a premium. However, my history classes were very nationalistic. I don't know if any of this is true or not.