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High Tech Misery In China
theodp writes "Think you've got a bad job? Think again. You could be making keyboards for IBM, Microsoft, Dell, Lenovo and HP at Meitai Plastic and Electronics, a Chinese hardware factory. Prompted by the release of High Tech Misery in China by a human-rights group, a self-regulating body set up by tech companies will conduct an audit of working conditions at the factory. In return for take-home pay of 41 cents per hour, workers reportedly sit on hard wooden stools for 12-hour shifts, seven days a week. Overtime is mandatory, with workers being given on average two days off per month. While on the production line, workers are not allowed to raise their hands or heads, are given 1.1 seconds to snap each key into place, and are encouraged to 'actively monitor each other' to see if any company rules are being transgressed. They are also monitored by guards. Workers are fined if they break the rules, locked in the factory for four days per week, and sleep in crowded dormitories. Okay, it's not all bad news — they're hiring."
we have to pay for coffee!
Horrible working conditions in China, film at 11.
Sad that this stuff is so common; let's see if it changes over time as the country develops
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Foreign companies that utilize this type of thing should be hit with heavy penalties. This would also encourage them to check working conditions before signing a contract with a manufacturer.
In return for take-home pay of 41 cents per hour, workers reportedly sit on hard wooden stools for 12-hour shifts, seven days a week. Overtime is mandatory, with workers being given on average two days off per month.
The alternatives being what?
Substinence farming or starving?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It'll be brutal for a while, but think of how much you'll get when you sell the movie rights!
And "free traders" say we should just "buck up and compete with" slaves. We are slipping backward into the early 1900's. Factory jobs used to pay better than the sales-clerk jobs that are replacing them, but they won't if your competitor is allowed slave labor.
Table-ized A.I.
What we are seeing here, my friends, is capitalism gone wild.
1) Government regulation (and enforcement) setting minimum working conditions.
2) Enthusiastic uptake of some kind of "no humans were exploited in the making of this product" sticker, in the free market.
I've found it heartwarming at work that the younger staff are all hugely in favour of "fair trade" products that purportedly don't exploit poor farmers and farm labourers, mostly as applied to coffee and sugar products. The aggressively seek them out and we have people coming from floors around to our "fair trade only" coffee station. We older folks are "for" this stuff as long as you stick it under our noses, shame us a bit, and it doesn't cost *much* more.
Which it doesn't, of course - that's the pathetic thing about these stories - the conditions in that factory, as opposed to conditions that might not pass muster here but at least wouldn't *disgust* you, are probably scraping $2 off the cost of the $60 "MS Egronomic 4000" keyboard that you could only pry from my cold, dead (non-RSI'd) fingers. I'd be happy to pay $65 if it came with such a sticker...the other $3 paying for the checking and enforcement of the rules from the sticker-issuing NGO.
Okay, so here's the thing.. The rest of the world needs to refuse to do any sort of business with China until business practices are brought in line with at least a minimal respect for human life. It would help Chinese workers because they wouldn't have to endure this kind of shit, and it would help the developed world because our factories wouldn't have to try to compete with stuff produced in this way.
In this day an age why not automate? They could have an automatic press which pushes all the keys in at once. 1.1s per key @ 104 keys per keyboard as opposed to 2-5 seconds for a machine to do the whole thing. I'll all for creating jobs and keeping people employed, but I'd rather not have to worry about buying products from companies that support these kind of environments. In all likely hood all these big companies already knew the conditions in these factories and are only acting on it now since it was made public.
Why pick on just PC manufacturers, but leave Apple out of it? Remember Apple's keyboards and almost everything else bar XServes are also made in China. Subtle bias against Windows by the Apple crowd?
Seems they can do no wrong for doing wrong.
It cost you $2.99. What the heck do you think?
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
they'll soon be running linux by edict of the state. that makes everything else fine. it's the sign of an enlightened society.
i guess i will just have to stop buying products from these company's but that won't do anything. I wounder if bill gates foundation would help these people?
When looking at the list of companies mentioned I wonder if the type of keyboard that is being produced is a cause or effect of the demand for cheap keyboards (and cheap labor to produce them). While I do not actively condone sweatshop labor, I am guilty of using more than one dome-switch keyboard (though I do have one IBM Model M that drives my coworkers nuts).
However, if there suddenly was a spike in demand for Buckling Spring Keyboards would that change the situation? I'm not sure if workers - under pressure or not - could assemble buckling spring keys in 1.1 seconds.
In other words, are the markets flooded with lousy keyboards because that is what sweatshops produce for us at the demand price, or are we using sweatshop labor to produce the maximum supply of disposable keyboards without concern for what consumers actually want?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I think I'm safe, the IBM keyboard I'm typing this on was made in Thailand.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
No, you're seeing totalitarianism gone wild. All of the shitty labor in China is backstopped by the government and its willingness to create political prisoners.
What really sucked about the Olympics wasn't the smog or anything else, it was the media broadcasting the fake news that China is just another free country. And the west sucked it down.
Capitalism can only work because it thrives on and creates the poor.
We wouldn't be in the mess we're in without it.
Call me a troll or flame me, but there has to be a better way than chasing the profit...
Sustainability perhaps?
Watch those corners
...street begging, prostitution, et cetera.
Sadly, it's true that these sweatship jobs are often a good option compared to what else is available in those countries.
It is most definitely a high violation by Western standards, true. But, do we really need to psuh to Westenr standards? And can we?
TFA did point out that these people are being paid even less than what *Chinese* labor law requires. That at least needs tob e fixed
Trouble is, these placed would probably clean house tem[porarily when inspectors show up.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
To be honest, I thought they had machines that pop keys on and assemble these things - but I suppose over there people are cheaper than machines.
105 keys at 1.1s per key is about two minutes per keyboard, that's 1.36 cents in labor costs.
You could pay a massive $0.02 more for your keyboard and give these people shorter working hours *and* the weekends off.
Imagine what a difference it would make if we all paid $1 extra for our computers, or $0.50 more for a pair of sneakers.
Something to ponder next time you're enjoying a $5 Starbucks coffee.
No sig today...
The IBM keyboard I'm typing this on was made in the USA. In 1984.
I loved my Model M until someone reminded me how much better the IBM Selectric typewriters felt. Now I'm kind of pissed of that I can't get one of those for my computer.
I know, I know: -1 Offtopic.
It could be. Is there a whiny judgemental sound whenever you hit a key?
That's you making baby Jesus cry.
This is the price we pay for $10 keyboards and $20 Nikes....oh wait. I never thought that we should have let China join the WTO, but at the same time, trade has been one thing that has kept tensions between the US and China at minimal levels. Unplug them from the global grid at this point and we would have North Korea on a much more massive level. Last I checked the US has about 300 million people and China is what 1.6 billion now? The best we can hope to do is extend our influence as much as possible at this point or who knows, we may all be speaking chinese in the next 100 years....
zosxavius photography
This actually isn't such a bad job in China. Just remember that everything is relative. Most of these people will be glad just to have a job and money.
My company has several factories in China, and while the conditions aren't as 'bad' as the article describes, they're still quite spartan with long hours. But that's normal.
China is going through its Industial Revolution right now. It would be more appropriate to compare it to the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Britain - where working conditions were initially far worse than most modern factories in China.
My IBM F2 Model M says "MADE IN USA". I wonder if that includes all of its components...
I demand action at once. Action, cheap goods... and a pony!
I had a couple of IBM model M's till I sold em last year (got a pretty penny on eBay), would have kept them except they don't have Windows keys which I use fairly extensively.
Anyway I really like the keyboards on my Eee's as you don't have to move your fingers very far or have to press them down as hard as fullsize keyboards, even with my large hands I can touchtype on the Eee's.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
I long for the days of a Solid IBM mechanically switched (none of the membrane shyt) keyboard
Those People Who Are Crazy Enough To Think That They Can Change The World Probable Can
And the greatest thing is, as soon as minimum conditions and pays are introduced your $10 keyboard all of a sudden becomes a $60 keyboard for the exact same product. Products are cheap because of the conditions in which they are manufactured.
We will see more "ask slashdot" for where to buy a cheap keyboard.
Foreign companies that utilize this type of thing should be hit with heavy penalties.
I would like to see that, too. Though I think it would be quite difficult to enforce, for more than one reason:
Foreign companies. If we take Lenovo for an example; how do you levy fines on them? They are a Chinese company, after all. You could try to levy against their US division, but the effectiveness of that is probably doubtful.
utilize. How do you define that? From the article:
"The factory named in the report is not one of HP's direct suppliers, but is a supplier to two of our suppliers," the company said in a statement.
So it would appear that HP is not directly utilizing the sweatshops. Would you want to levy a fine against them anyways for a decision that may have been made by one of their partners and not them? Or would you go after the HP supplier who was contracting with the sweatshop (and then what would you do if that supplier was foreign?)
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
1. Workers who have found favor with their superiors (often attractive young women) are notoriously assigned the plum task of fitting the heavy-duty "Control", "Alt", and "Delete" keys, at premium pay of 43 rather than 41 cts/hr.
2. 1.1 seconds per key may seem long enough, but occasionally the "Caps Lock" key gets stuck and workers have to scramble to redo their last dozen or so key sets.
3. That guy in Silicon Valley who keeps ordering Dvorak keyboards.
4. Each keyboard must be manually inspected for fitting errors, such as mis-slotted keys. When a mistake is found, the entire assembly line stops and the factory PA system drones "Abort? Retry? Ignore? Fail?" over and over until the problem has been corrected.
OK, so we've accounted for not more that .2 percent of the cost of a keyboard. Realistically this is much less because I've seen very few $10 keyboards.
Maybe we should also ask, where does the rest of the money go? I can't think of the last time I paid less than $1 for a keyboard. Even retail apparel margins aren't that good, perhaps some tech executives need to take a look at their cost structures...
Blaming this on the Chinese while still exploiting things is bullshit.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Heh, I just ordered a new Lenovo keyboard, and according to UPS it looks like it's enroute from China. I wonder if I should feel bad about it....
my 'original' microsoft natural keyboard (bought in 1994, still working just perfectly) cost me $250 or so from what I remember, and the latest natural keyboard 4000 I bought for the office was only $60...
The 'original' says it's made in Mexico, I wonder when the production was moved... I also don't see why keyboards have to be so cheap, it's not like you change it every day: I can totally see myself using this keyboard for another 15 years easily (assuming that in 15 years I can find a ps/2-whatever converter, that is my only worry)
-- the cake is a lie
Free and liberty per se, there is no point to be upset because other people choose to do tougher work, while in your country farming is more profitable.
I wonder how hard it would be to remove the middle man, and would this decrease or increase costs? I wouldn't have thought it'd be that hard to find out who a manufacturer is, unless if parts of coming from many different companes. Then yeah, it would become difficult.
... We no longer expected a free keyboard with our new PCs? The companies on the list are all major PC manufacturers, so a large number of those keyboards are probably the cheap ones that are provided with new computers. But do we really need a new keyboard with every new PC?
After all, a large fraction of all the new PCs purchased today are purchased to replace existing systems; which themselves had keyboards before. And being as keyboards themselves have not changed dramatically in the past 10 years (or more), there is a good chance that the consumer could have just used the keyboard from their old system on their new one.
The throw-away mentality towards consumer electronics is likely a major culprit in the development of these sweatshops.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
disgusting. what really upsets me - we chose to employ cheap labor instead of making progress in robotics. think you guys: in the past Americans invented a vending machine to distribute Coca-Cola or Pepsi - did not employ 20 million laborers to stay still and hold the cola for you - a vending machine was invented, mmmmk? what's the hell is wrong with us now, why we cannot innovate any more to assemble those damned keyboards?
[quote]You could be making keyboards for IBM, MICROSOFT Dell, Lenovo and HP [/quote]
Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in C:\Webpages\nlcnet\article.php on line 115
webhoster should be fined, because indirectly it's supporting unfair labour
We DESPERATELY need to automate like America use to. But to pull that off, we must change several things.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Which would _obviously_ be bad, ummm, why?
What you want is the Logitech Illuminated Keyboard. Full hardcore switch action. Made in China though.
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
Ahh, the ol' buckling spring... You can still find them if you look (http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/). There's nothing like tactile + auditory feedback when typing :).
I'll just shill for Unicomp, then, if that's all right with you.
Middlemen add costs. In a supply chain this aggressive, no costs are added without a good reason. What do you suppose the justification for these middlemen is?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I've got a wireless one built in China, but I don't know where my laptop keyboard im typing this on was built.
Where do I send my resume?
http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/cu104ps2.html ...
http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/cus101usenon.html
nice new "original" IBM Model-Ms by Unicomp
Concerning orders of magnitude, it wouldn't hurt if some of the posts to slashdot were an order of magnitude less stupid.
TFA states these workers are being paid 41 cents/hour to work 84 hour weeks. Let's pay them 82 cents/hour to work 42 hour weeks. This will require twice as many workers, working shifts half as long, and double the labour cost for each keyboard.
100 key keyboard at 1.1s per key is 110s, which is under 2 minutes. Original labour cost is 1.3 cents/keyboard. Under the relatively humane proposal, this doubles to 2.6 cents per keyboard.
It would take six intermediaries between China and the U.S market to each mark-up this additional labour by 100% for the humane labour practise to add $1 to the cost of a keyboard landed to the consumer.
I've heard a rumour that Walmart doesn't have six intermediaries in their supply chain, and those they do have rarely get away with 100% markups.
This has nothing to do with the economics of production. It has a lot more to do with Chinese society having pockets of corruption where everyone with the power to put a stop to this turns a blind eye to enslavement conditions, and powerful corporations turning a blind eye to the greater powers in China not doing much about this.
Even Detroit would have difficulty coming up with a way to make a $10 keyboard cost $100. $40/hour with a production rate of two keyboards per hour and markups galore?
I once heard that decimation has come to mean either 90% attrition or 10% attrition. Contrary to popular opinion and Walmart shopping tendencies, it's not actually true that an "order of magnitude" is 10%
I recently ordered a Unicomp keyboard. It's a buckling spring Model M, but comes with windows keys, USB and is available in black. Made in USA for $69. Considering I paid about that for my POS saitek that I need to hammer the "L" key on I don't think $69 for the Unicomp is very much.
Just letting you know, this is what we're competing with. This is what happened when we let the corporations go overseas after we 'freed trade'. They went to nations that don't have standards, filled with people that don't have standards, who slave away in factories run by people that don't have standards. When you let homegrown companies fly the coop for South American, Eastern European, African, or Asian nations, they're doing it for the starving, squalid, and perpetually eager slave laborers.
If you compete with the third world, be prepared to live in it. America and the rest of the West didn't get to where it is by being 'efficient', we got here by having standards. Westerners demand a certain quality of life that the less civilized people of the world are too timid to so much as ask for, much less fight for. They could learn a lot from us. Some of them already have. The rest will have to continue suffering until they begin demanding more. Until then, exploitative corporations will be all too willing to use them as cheap, disposable industrial machinery to keep the cogs of their uncivilized sub-nations whirling. (And to keep funneling away the surplus wealth of the civilized, Westernized world into the pockets of greedy transnational businessmen!)
Do you think your Fearless Leaders have better plans for you? Uncle Barack can't save us.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
There's still several companies that make good mechanical buckling spring keyboards, such as Das keyboards, Unicomp (these guys also make various special purpose layouts, such as terminal keyboards), and others. And there are numerous sites that still sell the IBM model M keyboards.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
It did in the USA, the UK, and every other country that went through a transition from a mostly agricultural to an industrial economy.
And by then, as the cost of labor raises with the working condition, instead of building the same hardware in better conditions, the big companies will relocate their production facilities somewhere else where the cost of producing the parts is even cheaper than everywhere else. Probably in Africa.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
When you have nothing at your disposal (ie: guns or similar), and those that employ you (ie: government) have all the power, how are they to "rise up" against their overlords?
Actually, although the copyright date on the back is 1984, they weren't produced until 1985.
The actual date of production should be listed on the label (for example, mine says "23MAR1988").
A meta key, damn it! Use the term, you are supposedly a techie. and it is shorter too!
"More than 10 million migrant workers lost their jobs in the third quarter of 2008, after falling demand overseas forced the closure of around 670,000 factories, especially in the coastal regions, the ministry said in an earlier report."
Even if you're not union, it motivates business to keep conditions that are far from slave labor.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Besides, I'd think they'd make you sign a contract in blood.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
It's not the speaking chinese as such, but the way we would, hypthetically, have come to do so.
Which could be anything from market domination, cultural imperialism, or, what I'd guess the GP was thinking of, actual war.
We just need Geithner to follow through and just label China as a manipulator.
The rest will take care of itself.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
BTW, if you're looking for a new Type M, made in the Kentucky, go here. There was a story on NPR recently about Unicomp and their versions of the Type M-- they're the only ones making them anymore.
I prioritize the safety and health of humans above getting a $5 keyboard on NewEgg.com. I don't share your heartlessness which places profit above humanity. As a detail, it costs surprisingly little to make sure humans have a decent living, health care, potable water, food security, a safe place to live, and other things these keyboard assembly workers lack.
My problem with paying more is that I have no reasonable assurance that the additional money will get to the workers. I don't trust "trickle down" economics but I'm willing to pay more for the products and services I use so that workers get better treatment. If I said to any distributor or manufacturer to charge me more they might do it. But I think they'll keep everything as it is and then pocket the additional money. Not one penny of my money would go toward improving the plight of abused workers anywhere along the chain that gets me my keyboards.
To me, this is the hard part of an ethical sell on the public. Everyone has a pretty good idea of what a safe working environment is (it's why so many are appalled at the conditions described in TFA), and there's lots of people around the world who can go into well-researched detail to explain more on that (such as Charles Kernaghan's exemplary work; see "The Corporation" for more of his work. It's one of the best movies on this and its relationship to the larger picture of the problem with a system based on satisfying profit-seekers at all costs). As a result, when I watch what the corporate media doesn't want me to read or see, I get lots of talk about what to avoid.
But I don't know of a simple, practical, efficient guide for the consumer looking for computer parts. I need to buy a few USB compatible-with-everything keyboards I can plug in and use without any additional software. Furthermore, I need to have a reasonable understanding that these keyboards were manufactured and shipped without abuse to the workers. Where do I get these?
Digital Citizen
Foreign companies. If we take Lenovo for an example; how do you levy fines on them? They are a Chinese company, after all. You could try to levy against their US division, but the effectiveness of that is probably doubtful.
Very easily. You fine them and don't allow them to sell their products in your country until they have paid the fine. You keep fining them until the workers' conditions improve and you set the fines at such a level that it's cheaper for them to pay their workers reasonably than it is for them to keep paying the fines.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I mean, you ought to be able to just fire keyboards out of a machine for pretty cheap, I would think. why do you need people at all for this?
This is my sig.
Mirror to PDF document on research: http://www.mediafire.com/file/tfimmkmynmy/HIGHTECH_MISERY_CHINA_WEB.pdf
The challenge lies in economics, not in technological ingenuity. Don't you think these chinese entrepreneurs who hire the cheap labor would fire all those low-wage-earners in a flash if there were a more economical way of assembly (robotical etc)?
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
Saw this story about a week ago elsewhere.
National Labor Committee?
Nice breakout piece from an organization with no track record nor probably future.
Too many things don't add up to what is known for certain.
While I don't know for certain any more than anybody else, I content these wannabes know precious little more.
Our research was based on interviews carried out over months in safe locations along with photographs of primitive factory, dorm and cafeteria conditions which were smuggled out of the factory.
I'm sorry but even the photos they provided themselves shows facilities mostly as modern as anywhere else in the world (must be the severe punishment for messiness).
Sensationalistic yellow journalism? Can't be.
Again, in the photos provided, the workers seems generally happy with being on candid camera.
They certainly don't seem terribly unhappy.
Contrast with the average UAW auto assembly line worker you see on news clips, the Chinese look positively ebullient.
Workers have to pay for their own medications.
Finally catching up to the west on this account.
Again, I don't know any more than anybody else, but something don't smell all that kosher here.
What do you suppose the justification for these middlemen is?
The only possible explanation is that these middlemen add more value than they cost. For example, HP could order USB cords separately, keyboard plastic separately, assembled PCBs separately, and order an assembly of the keyboard themselves. But how many managers would it take in the USA to do all that, without living in the same time zone and without speaking the language and without understanding local issues? Probably it is a good deal to add another $0.75 to the price of the keyboard for the joy of having an assembled and tested keyboard, in a box, shipped to you, without worrying about all these little details.
They eat dogs.
They eat roaches.
As an option.
Tough luck. Schadenfreude.
And urge them to support the Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act which will put an end to sweatshop labor by insisting that every product sold in the US must have been manufactured in a way that meets minimum standards for worker conditions.
Point out that by not supporting this bill, they are effectively condoning sweatshops. (hey, it worked for George W. Bush and his "if you don't support the invasion of Iraq, you are supporting the terrorists" argument)
I have a photo from inside a factory in Suzhou that says "Strict and Impartial Discipline". Kind of says it all. Who cares if you do something wrong, just discipline everyone regardless...
Sorry to burst your bubble but the usually cherry pick headline doesn't quite tell the story properly.
A helpfull addition might be that this factory is operating illegaly in gross violation of China's labor laws. You may notice if you actually bother to read the original article that several of the factories "rules" are designed to keep the workers in check lest they get word out or any incriminating evidence to the proper authorities.
The owners of this factory know they're breaking the law and have gone to great lengths to hide it which brings us to the draconian measures on their privacy.
As a executive sales rep for a large manufacturer here I can say you're sadly mistaken about the quality and conditions of manufacturing here in China.
The timing of this article, given the "Buy American" clause in the new U.S. federal stimulus package, is very suspicious.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
...the job gets you!
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Miserable freaking bastards. Commie creeps. Getting just what they deserve. Dish it up man!!
Destroy the worlds economy with your damn slave labor. Rot in hell all of ya!!
"self-regulating body"
So how many employees work on making their regulators?
for u to be still alive
I bet they type faster than Data from Star Trek TNG.
Gee, I was thinking plausible deniability was their value add.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I'm with you 100%, perfectly willing to pay not even a quarter, but a buck or two more per gadget to give folks a much better life. I mean a buck or two for a 5-10 dollar keyboard, and proportionally so on up the gadget line. If that means less gadgets, higher prices and a longer wait between "upgrades", I don't care. I'm old enough to have in my hands right now stuff that was considered far out sci fi when I was a kid, so who cares really, it's already way cool enough. We have suck laws about this global trade crap and labor arbitraging to places that have no ..what is a word..just normal human decency about things..
I seriously *doubt* the billionaire bonus babies Cxx class is unaware of these things, these sweatshop conditions, the same guys who looted the world economy to near ruin so they could have gold dust sprinkled on their fancy chow are nickle and diming people to death to get there.
This is the 21st century, sweatshops like this in the article shouldn't exist *anyplace*, for any reason. "Shareholder value" and "maximizing profits" can kiss my ass as an excuse for this sort of slimeball greedy behavior. This current setup is pure serfdom, just a teeny bit removed from outright slavery. Ya, those people can quit, go next door and get the same working conditions at the next factory. If they can pass "green content" laws about electronics, they can pass "minimum non-suck human working condition standards" about manufactured items, and let the prices rise accordingly.
I don't know about "free trade", but "fair to all humans" trade might be closer to a more humane and sustainable type of economy.
We are humans, not ferengis.
Ok then mark me a troll. Do you want a $50 keyboard or do you feel it's merely your moral obligation. Pay for mine too, thanks.
They're putting in 3,240 keys an hour for a measly $0.41. I don't think I could even do half that many in an hour.
The people who ARE the cheap labor will not benefit by being replaced by robots.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The proletarian is being exploited by the bourgeosie.
I don't suppose you're capable of naming both the de-regulations and the increasing regulations that contributed specifically to the mess, are you?
I'll agree with you on the need for good regulation, but to blame this all on de-regulation is as naive as you accuse the other guy of being.
There was no end to government meddling on CEO pay rates, on who banks must loan money to(community reinvestment act), on socializing risks while privatizing profits and any number of other acts. These well-intentioned but ignorant attempts of the government to 'help' business men be 'better citizens' often had disastrous unforeseen consequences, and many of them couldn't be called 'deregulation' by any stretch.
For example, sometime in the 80's they required that CEO pay rates be published, obstinately to shame the companies or outrage shareholders. Instead this lead to open competition in pay rates for CEO's, and CEO pay skyrocketed. Then they changed tax laws so salaries over $1 million dollars couldn't be expensed the same way as any other salary. This lead to bonus programs based on stock price performance, which lead to short term thinking to maximize personal pay.
What else? The Community Re-investment Act. This is a bludgeon used on banks that need any regulatory approval for anything- (opening new branches, mergers, etc.) The long and short of it was that if your mortgage customer base isn't the right shade of tan, your business activities don't get approved, and you can't ever be anything more than a small time bank. Certain racial subgroups have notoriously bad credit (FICO doesn't give a sh*t what your skin color is, they care if you pay), but if your bank doesn't lend to them anyway, you start having problems.
That problem was made significantly worse when racial data was required to be collected from mortgage apps, and then this data was used to gin up cries of racism by groups like ACORN. Tremendous political pressure was placed on banks to overlook legitimate financial records that happened to make certain racial subgroups less viable customers.
Lending standards went down, risk went up.
Add in Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac. With the implicit guarantee of the federal government, but the private collection of profits, risky behavior that yielded short term gain was inevitable, even if that gain was utterly unsustainable.
Lending standards went down, risk went up further.
So, sir, while you and I can probably find common ground on the need for good regulation, and place fault on such esoteric activities as the default credit swap, 'regulation' isn't all that it's cracked up to be.
How incredibly naive you are, if it is your position that well-intentioned government intervention is somehow magically prevented from causing great harm. Government legislators and regulators are mortal, fallible men, no better than those they seek to regulate. They can have a bright idea that sounds great, but when applied, has disastrous unforeseen consequences. Their good intentions cannot make up for the ruin they cause.
Perhaps you will agree with me on this:
Good regulation seeks to manage risk to bearable levels, and bring stability to the market.
Nothing less, and especially nothing more.
Fanciful regulations based on naive notions of 'social justice' got us halfway to the current situation, and deregulation purchased by campaign donations brought us the rest of the way.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Keyboards 'dirtier than a toilet'. Without new keyboards we risk the same consequences as what happened to Golgafrincham after they shipped off all their telephone sanitizers.
There is one keyboard manufacturer left in the US - Unicomp (http://pckeyboard.com). They manufacture keyboard using the tooling and equipment used to make the classic IBM Model M keyboard. Buy one while you still can - they make wonderful keyboards.
"Reform happened because it became economically feasible, thanks to capital investment that increased the productivity of labor."
We would like to think that we ended slavery and nasty labor conditions because we've grown more humane and ethical. The reality is that the wind sail put the galley slave out out commission because it was cheaper to buy and maintain the sails than it is to maintain the slaves. It's cheaper to use machines to use slaves or underpaid workers to mine.
I always laugh at those star trek or scifi shows where some advanced race is using living slaves to work hard labor. It hadn't occurred to the writers that even in the complete absence of ethics, it just makes no sense to use humans to do brute labor.
I would gladly pay more if it means workers are not exploited. But the problem is that no matter how much we pay, those third world employees always end up getting abused. This isn't about our cheap keyboards, it's about corrupt social systems where rich and greedy businessmen have no regard for human life when it comes to making an extra buck.
This kind of problem is better resolved by hanging a few businessmen. The rest of them will fall in line when they work their lives into the cost-benefit analysis.
I did some math on 41 US cents, 80 hours/week, and using the old exchange rate of 8 Yuan to a dollar. That works out to be 1043 YUAN. The factories there provide foods and dorm, so you could say it is about 1500 YUAN / month. From what I know, this is about the pay level for factory workers over there. Office works don't fetch too much more, either. (Experienced engineers can fetch over 100K YUAN in comfortable working conditions and 40 hours work week.) Most of these factories are in Shenzhen where a BigMac or a plate of fried rice costs about 5 YUAN. But an average condo costs about 700,000-800,000 YUAN, that's about $100K, easily beating house prices in many places in the US.
Still flocks of people will work for these factories, because there are simply too many people looking for work. Recently with the economic crisis, even college graduates will apply. As far as I know, nobody forces them to apply for those jobs and they know very well what they will get.
Before you condemn the pay in China, in the U.S., San Francisco bay area, if you don't know English, your pay is usually minimum wage ($8) + equivalent cash pay (no double pay) for OT, often with no break time either. That's about $2000 working 60 hours week. But employers don't provide any housing, food or transportation.
Is the U.S. doing much better? Now, you can make some informed judgment.
As a consumer, how do I know the way a company treats its workers? At the moment, I don't.
I'm betting quite a lot of people would choose goods based on this information if it was readily available (ie. printed on the box).
No sig today...
China's rural population is over 700 million (700,000,000). A fact which remains relatively mis-understood with foreigners who have only experienced China's western-class cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, or viewed the magnificence of the Olympics. The rural population makes the back-bone of China's cheap work-force. These people literally self-sustaining living off the land growing their own rice, pigs, chickens, cows, vegetables, etc. Their homes have no modern-heating nor refrigeration, flooring is minimal, and often roads unpaved. They work in factories so as to accumulate enough wealth to return home, get married and raise a family; or to support their own family members. A lot put much pressure (and money) on their children to do well in school so they can get a desk-job, and find a good husband/wife. So far, China has done a great job in improving their lives. For example a decade ago, the rural population would have been larger by 150 million people. The only way to improve the lives of these people is through the development of China's economy, infrastructure and education system. Over the coming 30 years, many of these factories will be relocated to poorer-countries or automated as the rural population continues to shrink.
I don't mean Capitalism is always bad, few simplistic stances are defendable and I lean more towards Socialistic Capitalism than any Communist doctrine anyway.
But most hardcore republicans forget what we mean Capitalism exploits the mases and attribute our high standards of living to Capitalism alone, when in fact they are sustained by misery elsewhere. You nay sayers have two options:
1. You deny the misery of Chinese workers is due Capitalism because they are not working under Capitalism but some other system, perhaps even Communism! which is an amusing claim because they *are being paid* for working with means of production not theirs to produce a product not theirs, which is exactly the very definition of Capitalism.
If you do this you acknowledge that your luxuries proceed from Communism or whatever you claim China uses.
2. You accept that they are salaried employers under Capitalism, and acknowledge that most Capitalists are miserable.
We can, of course ignore this problem as not or business. But acting smug an then pretending we are never wrong... is just sick.
But... the future refused to change.
I don't get it.
The public always acts horrified that some big company is using products made by these workers make their products. But people also like having cheap keyboards and will preferentially purchase them, causing companies to create these conditions.
If those keyboards were made in a happy and environmentally friendly manner in the US, they would probably cost $100.
You want to blame someone? Blame the Chinese government. They are the ones allowing this to occur on their soil and profiting from it. They are willing to poison their citizens (and us) to make a buck.
Who is to say Dell and IBM even have the ability to control the factory conditions? Time and time again the Chinese have demonstrated they'll try to slip cheaper, poisoned products through the system (poisoned dog food, baby formula, baby toys) to profit. The only way this will ever change is if the Chinese government starts caring more about the health of their citizens than they do about the kickbacks they are getting.
Zerg rush. Kekekeke!
"Reality has a liberal bias."
I love that slogan, and I'm going to blatantly rip you off with less remorse than a Wall Street banker.
Seriously, awesome phrase...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
In support of above, I can recommend seeing the 2005 documentary China Blue.
It illustrates exactly these choices.
It hadn't occurred to the writers that even in the complete absence of ethics, it just makes no sense to use humans to do brute labor.
Perhaps they are doing it for the entertainment value? If you see how humans are treating animals, I can fully imagine an advanced race treating humans as slaves. Even if they aren't the pinnacle of efficiency, at least you can beat or shoot them.
This is where I can live with myself and cross the line, don't tell anybody. I sorta jack up the hood and roll a new car under it every once in a while.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
That way we can film it and post it in YouTube!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"The reason Americans lost all the manufacturing job to China was because their government was willing to say, "Fuck worker safety - we can get that work done for $0.40 an hour. You can charge the consumers the same price and make more profit!"
Try corporations, the government *and* consumers.
Or what? Are you seriously suggesting that people did not have an inkling about the bad working conditions necessary to make many items in supermarkets much cheaper?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Yes, yes, I'll be modded as a troll of supreme evil, but... why do you think this must be changed?
Okay, okay. Calm down. Allow me to finish my point.
The USA should not, repeat NOT, mess with other countries. If these countries do weird things without very actively endangering you, you should keep your HANDS OFF them and solve your own problems first. Yes, really. You have lots and lots of very major problems which should be solved, and the happenings in other countries are quite simply none of your business.
As to factory workers being abused: one of you was quite right (I do apologize for forgetting you name) - the thing to do in this case is similar to the coffee problem solution, something like a green BIO-sticker, claiming "This product was produced without abusing anybody". It would raise the manufactoring cost by a small amount, would allow them companies to raise the selling price by quite a bit, would make a lot of people happy, and - actually WORK.
Because I can guarantee you that nothing else really will. The decision to help these people would be made by large monolithic companies, run entirely by people interested in profit for the next two quarters, and nothing else. Show them how to make more profit, and they'll do it. Otherwise, they'll simply pay their PR teams, newspapers and TV stations to spread (fake) good news.
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
50 years ago Chinese were starving to death under the crazied leadership of a charismatic leader.
30 years ago there was no prognosis whatsoever that private enterprise would ever enter China.
20 years ago China was nowhere to be seen as an industrial and manufacturing power.
Now peasants, that would otherwise be jobless, have a job that pays a relatively decent wage (for Chinese standards). The conditions are unpalatable for certain, but this is progress. Once people get more money they will look at employers and make sure they are not abusive.
Certainly Western companies can help with making working conditions better, but to forget where China is coming from is uncultured to be frank.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You should read your Adam Smith. Even without machinery, it usually makes more economic sense to pay for labour than to enslave it. After all, you have to pay for a slave's upkeep, which will not be a dramatically different cost to that of hiring a worker on a living wage. On the other hand, if you 'own' the worker then you have to accept all risks associated with them. A free worker is his own problem.
Slavery is, of course, monstrous ethically speaking. I'm just saying that it makes no sense economically either.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
During wars countries involved normally see an economic contraction.
The only silent case of the opposite is the US: because its geographical location its infrastructure has not been damaged during a war. A taster of what it would be for the US to be actually attacked was 9/11: I didn't see the US economy boom after that (GDP growth fell from almost 4% in 2000 to less than 1% in 2001. And this was a single attack. Imagine the amount of damage countries whose infrastructure is hit suffer).
Another silent case we have is the Soviet Block, they never became an industrial powerhouse, not even an agricultural one, after WWII.
The USSR was pretty much bankrupt by trying to match US's spending the in military, in spite that was the most damaged country in WWII and the country that most contributed to the Allied War effort.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Obviously you don't understand the hardship of working in a rice paddy...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Anybody that has walked today's African streets in stabler countries knows the Chinese are there already.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I have a Selectric I inherited from Professor LaVey, I like to hear the hum. What I want is a glossy B&W of a hot typist in the classic workstation pose. Actually, at the moment, both my old Ms are in the attic right now and I'm using the Little Woman's MS split-deck thing. It's like a slanted fret Rickenbacker, kinda grows on you.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
The US is perhaps the only country in the world that does not commemorate the Chicago Martyrs the 1st of May....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Well, I have seen quite lot of these "concerns", and the short answer is "Yes".
There are labor workers working like slaves in China, as described in the article. And the number of these workers and companies are huge. It is bad. I agree on that.
Don't look at China using the US eye please:
From our (Chinese's) perspective to see it, the positive side is not only "they are hiring", it means more for China. Those labor workers are mainly from the very poor village (farms), very few of them are from the cities. In China, the population from the poor village is still high, much higher than you can imagine (maybe 30% of all 1.4B). They can't earn a living if just working in the farm, they can't raise their kids or support their parents if just working in the farm. Those companies provide them the job, though with very touch condition.
Let me do the math for you:
41 cents per hour means 0.41x12x6x4 = 118 $ = 826 RMB / month. this is the net pay (take-home pay after tax, insurance,..). (this example is a bit low. More often I heard is about over 1000RMB / month.) anyway, you know the value of that in China? It means 800 $ in the US. With that, you can not have a perfect life, you can not afford a car, but you definitely can live (even in big city like Beijing). Furthermore, if they bring the money back to their village, the value is much much more (in some village, 10 US cents is good for a one day expense. i am serious. It is China, don't look at China using the US eye please.) . So this is related to the currency value. 41 cents/hour looks very very low in US. but remember, it's different in China, Its value is more in China, and much much more in the poor village.
Some idiot:
I really don't like that some western "journlist" ignores the big currency conversion (1$=7RMB) when they are talking about this bad companies and 41 cnets/hour. While, on the other hand, they look so closely on the conversion rate, complain the conversion rate is too high and should be 1$=2RMB. This is idiot to me. they don't really know about China, they just want to make anything in China negative.
Reality:
From my once a year trip back to China, I can see clearly the life of the peasants from those villages is improving a lot year by year. The main main reason is not China cuting tax for them, is not China running a stimulas package for them. The reason is they, by themsleves, go the city to work in those "IT" compaines. They should (i agree) earn more and the pay that they deserve is much less. But this is the start, they have started to earn much more money. They have started imporving their life a lot. Those companies are bad, but they are providing oppoturnities.
Talking about China development:
I am not saying those companies are doing the good thing. They are in guilty. China is still in the middle of development, not everything is perfect, especially we are lacking a lot of rules and laws. There are bad companies taking this as an advantage and making huge dirty profit from the poor labor worker. but from my perspective, it is a step of the development. We can not make all the companies to be good ones. There are bad ones existing. But those bad companies are also helping China and helping those poor people to improve their lives, although the companies should improve their lives much better (by providing better pay to them). I believe China is working very hard on making the regulation better to make the poor labor workers earn more and more, and make the whole system more healthy.
Anyway, this is just from my (a native Chinese's) perspective. You (western people) may not understand it, but i want you know what I think.
So you did not buy a cheap keyboard?
Well, gee, thanks mate. Now those people in China will go back to a backwater Chinese province to face destitution.
Buy that fucking keyboard (it is what you are supposed to do as an intelligent economic agent in capitalism) and then join a human rights organization to continue to pester the Chinese government into taking working conditions seriously.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
While I agree with you that it is vitally important not to interfere with the sovereignty of other nations (as the US and even EU often do), at the same time I do not think it is fair to participate in a global economy where everyone can have different rules and standards.
Where the winners are the ones who lower the standard of living of workers. I'm one of the anti-socialist American crackpots, but even I don't like the idea of capitialism grossly exploiting the workers as is the case in most cases of globalization. Even in the cases when the capitalists are from the same third world nation rather than some fat cat in a first world nation I still find it completely unacceptable.
Why bother having a federal minimum wage in the US when we can just hire someone to do it for 1/20th the cost and work around the clock like a machine? I would like to see some sort of standard like you mentioned. Hell I would be happy if we refused to import products unless workers are paid some base pay rate. Poor countries can't afford to pay workers that much? Well they can't afford NOT to pay them if they can't sell their products. I know it's sort of going against my libertarian ideals to enforce pay, but if my country has standards it seems like a sneaky thing to get around those standards by importing from countries that have no standards.
I've been to China, and while there are many cool things about the place, there are also a few appalling things too. When I talked to some people the factory and found out they have children and had to work 10 hours a day, days a week most time (at the factory I was at) it was a little disturbing. When you are away from home 10-12 hours a day means your children have to live with their grandparents (and the cases I saw these were infants and toddlers). That doesn't sound so bad right? But grandma and grandpa are too poor to live near the city, generally they are a 6 hour drive by bus or car. And for some it is even further, one woman's family was a 2 hour plane flight away. Traveling is also expensive everywhere (trains don't go to all the little villages). And this isn't some rare occurence, the factory my company uses is consider a prestigious place to work. A very good job at a good company. But it is still very typically Chinese in the management of employees (think of the model of a primary school. there are students represented by the workers, and the principal represented by the management).
Seeing your kid once or twice a month is insane by my standards. And sorry if I am projecting my lame western culture on everyone, but I'm going to have to demand that workers spending time with their children is not an optional luxury. What is the fucking point of a family if everyone lives apart and alone?
Hunting gathering is hard, thankless and difficult work.
There is a reason why hunter-gatherer societies are generally primitive: they had precious little time to do anything else.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... because the patrioterism self parodies itself for all to see.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It's a good thing America got rid of slavery, well at least out of sight out of mind. No one hears the whip crack in Walmart, but it's cracking.
*DrugCheese rants*
I agree with you, buy quality whenever you can. But sometimes people can't afford quality and are in a position to only buy cheaper goods to get by with.
The big problem though is that people are seduced by "good enough" that is produced in poor work conditions and would rather pay 50 dollars for "good enough" than 500 dollars for quality/fair trade / supporting local businesses. That's how the supermarkets make their money.
I'd like to go with quality every time but I don't have the money to buy a locally built Aston Martin car, have solid oak hand crafted furniture at home and wear Saville Row hand made suits.
So like many people I make compromises.
Spot on. Had slavery just been an ethical issue it would have persisted over a wider area for much longer. That slavery cannot compete with free labour is what killed it. Once the economic argument in favour of the system was gone it came down to ethics and political expediency: both of which were largely in favour of abolition.
These kinds of comments that go along the line "we must stop this" and so on are so ignorant of other people's reality that get to the point of being disgusting.
Believe it or not, people in countries other that yours are not stupid nor masochistic. And tend to choose what they believe it's best for them, no matter how different that may be from YOUR personal choices.
The reality is that yes, working conditions are miserable. But they are not slaves. They may choose not to work in those factories. It is just that the alternatives are so bad (starving to death, for one... yes, that may seem incredible for you that feel STARVING after going 2 hours without a snack, but people DO starve to DEATH)that working in those conditions is actually acceptable!
And what is your solution? Penalize the asses out of the companies that operate this way, so that it becomes unfeasable to maintain operation in those countries, condemning the locals to a fate they had chosen not to have because YOUR WELL FED ASS decided what is best for THEM!
The sheer arrogance is unbelievable...
Nobody in the US and other Western countries live like many Chinese live nowadays.
Many *did* live like that or worse some time in the past (USians very often forget the nature of their apartheid society until quite recently, but let that one pass, and refer to factory conditions in the XIX century. You had riots, killed workers, the full lot).
So capitalism *raised* the living conditions of all those countries in an era where this could not be attributed to colonialism any more.
Now it is doing the same for China, which has been growing at an staggering 8% a year for the best part of the last 20 years, in coincidence with China embracing the capitalist economic model.
But here you are, saying that economic growth in China, contrary to all economic and anecdotal evidence, is actually making people poorer.
Sometimes I just wonder in which alternative Universe some people live...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In developed countries the worst that we will see is 1 in 10 people out of work (note, not necessarily broke), in some countries like Germany the government pays a generous unemployment check to keep skilled people on their jobs for as long as possible. Similar measures exist in other rich countries with the most notable exceptions of the US and UK amongst rich countries, whose response is to impoverish people before helping them.
So everybody? Nah, but lets not allow facts get in the way of a very good lie.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
All the experts say that lack of regulation, not an excess of it, is the governments' (UK,US) most important contributing factor to this unholy mess.
How you are arriving to the conclusion that excessive regulation was a problem is a mystery in par with the best ones Sherlock Holmes had to undo.
Capitalism may be the best economic model (or perhaps is the least bad one, which would be fitting since it normally couples with democratic societies) but that does not mean it is perfect, the simple fact is that the bastards with all their shiny University Diplomas from exclusive universities forgot about the most basic rules of banking or (most damning: and) tried to be too clever for their (and our) own good.
They were so good at creating their financial shit that they bought that same shit from other banks. Really, read about it, people that knew about the securitazation of mortgages actually bought some of them from other banks ...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I reject this argument because it perpetuates the myth that slavery is done for the sake of it rather than because of economics. When people don't understand the real and most likely reasons slavery is done, then it perpetuates the wrong policies that prolong slavery.
What the Chinese are going through today is no different than what the Western world went through at the turn of the 20th century. Fortunately for China, it won't take as long to get out of that phase.
We would like to think that we ended slavery and nasty labor conditions because we've grown more humane and ethical. The reality is that the wind sail put the galley slave out out commission because it was cheaper to buy and maintain the sails than it is to maintain the slaves. It's cheaper to use machines to use slaves or underpaid workers to mine.
An often overlooked downside to slavery is the security issue. Having large numbers of slaves necessitates employing a competent security force to keep them in check. This both costs a lot and it takes workers away from other jobs so they can be troops. There is also the cost of the odd slave revolt to add into the equation.
I always laugh at those star trek or scifi shows where some advanced race is using living slaves to work hard labor. It hadn't occurred to the writers that even in the complete absence of ethics, it just makes no sense to use humans to do brute labor.
It's not impossible that some technological development may make it economically viable to hold slaves. If you have access to cheap food (as we do today) and effective loyalty inducement (brainwashing perhaps, or some sort of mind control) then slavery might be quite viable from a purely economic viewpoint. Slaves simply become highly sophisticated biological machines that eat food instead of oil.
I'll leave it to some sci-fi author to dream up a situation in which one might even argue that slavery is the ethical choice :-)
sigs are hazardous to your health
Honestly, what does SOX have *anything* to do with the current financial crisis?
The regulations that kept separated consumer banking from financial banking (as, guess what, a consequence of the Great Depression) were dismantled by the NeoCons.
Also banking authorities had no idea (admitted by Greenspan and in the UK by the head of the Bank of England) what many of the financial instruments based in bad mortgages were, or how it came that these things could be traded several times without any real transmission of wealth.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You keep erecting those nice strawmen...
Regulation is not central planning, it is an alarm system.
Banks do something idiotic: a bell rings somewhere, the banks are fined heavily, their actions corrected, and then it is business as usual.
San limits are imposed in how they work, new financial products are properly scrutinized before allowing them to be traded, international cooperation ensures that everybody knows when these instruments become available with a list of perceived strengths and weaknesses.
There are many things that can be done that have absolutely nothing to do with central planning.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It never makes sense to use humans for harsh labor if you have technology. Try digging trenches in the field for 14 hours and you'll see what I mean. The work done by a single earth mover for the purposes of mining is more than what 10,000 humans can do.
The funny thing is that it is the labor unions that reject advances in technology. Take the longshoreman for example trying to ban the use of technology like RFIDs and advance bar coding. They see technology as a threat just like they won't allow non-union labor to touch anything. If you recall the "Grapes of Wrath", it was the tractor and driver that was vilified because it took work away from people who didn't have jobs.
You should read your Adam Smith. Even without machinery, it usually makes more economic sense to pay for labour than to enslave it. After all, you have to pay for a slave's upkeep, which will not be a dramatically different cost to that of hiring a worker on a living wage.
Surely this must be an equation that changes over time. In the modern West I am sure that if you feed your slaves some nutrient gloop and provide them with highly volume-efficient housing ("2 cubic meters should be enough for anyone") it's going to be a smaller economic outlay than paying modern Western salaries.
On the other hand, if you 'own' the worker then you have to accept all risks associated with them. A free worker is his own problem.
Yes, the invested capital problem probably remains.
Also, from a capitalist viewpoint, the quality of the capitalist system will tend to increase with the number of free actors within the system that contribute their own preferences into the economy. Slaves will presumably have no money, no possessions and have no input into the economy outside of their job assignment. Their lack of contribution to the market place is therefore a cost to the economy as a whole, as compared to a situation in which they were free citizens.
An example of this last is Roman agriculture. It was largely staffed by slaves and remained essentially unchanged through centuries. Had it been staffed by (semi-)free peasants, vastly improved ploughs, mills and irrigation systems may have occurred under the Romans rather than in the subsequent dark ages.
sigs are hazardous to your health
I am safe. My current keyboard is an original IBM PS/2 and from the current condition it is in it will survive at least its 30th birthday. And no. I don't miss the windows and multimedia keys.
By Christmas I wanted to buy a MS keyboard. I went to the shop and by looking at them I realized the poor quality they have (the same can be said about Logitech, Dell, HP keyboars). In my opnion a Mitsumi keyboard available on the market 15 years ago and costing 5$ had probably better mechanics than any keyoboard on the market with a price between 50-150$. Let's not talk about the mechanics of the IBM keyboards during the early '90s. It was more pleasant to press a key on one of those old keyboards then on any of these good looking ones.
Probably these working conditions explain why...
half of my coworkers have two jobs, so the idea of 'overtime' and 'weekends' do not exist anymore. So much for the 1900s and the labor movement.
oh, they also barely make their rent and food payments... and have an extremely hard time saving any money. and yes, some of them have college degrees.
welcome to reality, slashdotters.
In times past we imported our slaves.
Now, we find it is cheaper to leave them in their native lands.
That is about the only difference.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I wish Chinese regime considers implementing Maslow's hierarchy of needs in their Governance.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
Sounds like they are ripe for a Communist revolution. (That's sarcasm by the way, just in case you are Big Brother and recording all this.) Unregulated Capitalism is as evil as unregulated Finance. Unregulated anything is evil.
Sqreater
E Proelio Veritas.
I suppose everybody in China should OWN a hand gun.
An armed society is a POLITE society. And it is not FEAR that keeps us polite -- it is RESPONSIBILITY.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
i work for fifteen dollars an hour, and another twenty dollars an hour in the form of retirement benefits, health insurance, paid-time-off accrual, tuition re-imbursement, and free coffee and doughnuts. and i am nowhere near as productive as any one of the poor shmucks in tfa. not even close. no commercially viable thing has ever been produced as a direct or indirect result of my "work". i am a leech, in fact, to any company still bloated enough to employ the likes of me.
and look at what i do with my compensation. for every fifteen dollars per hour i earn, if you will, i spend at least thirty. i have loans against my home, which i do not own, as well as every other asset i can borrow against (at any rate of interest, as i am inept and cannot fathom recursive percentages). my doctors make up symptoms and refer me around and prescribe, subscribe, me to an absurd array of over-priced substances. i spend my paid vacation in far-off hvac-equiped places, impulsively buying all the dull things which shimmer, and subsequently keeping them in my garage. and the school i attend takes my tuition, along with my payment for a place to park, and returns to me a degree in futility: a vague comprehension of business processes, arbitrary and proprietary, having nothing at all to do with the understanding of organic theory, but instead with mundane point-and-clicking, not at all dissimilar with tfa.
here's to the great red-white-and-blue opium addict finding herself tossed into the mucky alley-way, her credit unwelcome.
Simple solution: Buy cheap, and put the $$ you saved into supplying food to starving people in other countries. You have no guarantee that by buying the more expensive keyboard you are actually helping someone get out of those sweatshops, but by giving the difference to non-profit causes who reach out to these people, you are guaranteeing that your money gets used to help them, and doesn't simply get pocketed by the rich business owners.
Before commenting on the Bible, please read it first
The reason why the US and others were able to break out of the system China is in is because of several factors.
1. National strikes - not permitted in a communist china.
2. a series of major accidents that shames politicians into acting on behalf of voters. For example, a fire in a dress factory in NYC with lots of deaths got the media involved and the public reacted to the events. NYState legislature responded by passing fire codes for workplaces. Not possible in China as there are no legislatures that respond to the public and the media is state controlled.
3. Bloodletting - the strikes in America got very bloody and threatened the owners of the factories themselves.
5. the entire country of china depends on keeping labor cheap. During the US labor strife, production was local or national, there was not nearly the extent of global development there is today. Supply chains weren't that built out. Now, everything is built in four places, assembled in two and sold everywhere at once. The world would need to invent china if it didn't exist. This allows a nondemocratic government international support for keeping its system that way.
Man, there are some really naive people here, who will obviously believe what they want to believe so that they can remain guilt-free the next time they buy 6 pairs of socks for a quid.
Buy Apple:
1. They have demonstrated that they will investigate and correct any serious allegations of human rights abuse at factories that create their iPod. Contracts with suppliers stipulate humane working conditions and pay. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod#Allegations_of_worker_exploitation for a summary and additional citations.
2. They have long demonstrated a commitment to environmentally sound products and processes. See http://www.apple.com/environment/ for lots of information and time lines.
3. Their newish flat, aluminum keyboards have been called the best keyboard ever.
Buy Unicomp:
1. They make the notorious Customizer, a.k.a. IBM Model M, on the same machines the originals were built on in Kentucky in the U.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicomp for information about the company and http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/keyboards.html to buy the product.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
"
I always laugh at those star trek or scifi shows where some advanced race is using living slaves to work hard labor. It hadn't occurred to the writers that even in the complete absence of ethics, it just makes no sense to use humans to do brute labor.
Not necessarily so.. the advanced race factory owner probably considered the capital costs of getting some automated manufacturing set up, operated and maintained and then looked at the cheap plentyful and compliant human labour and decided..no brainer, I'll pay someone 41 cents per hour and but not when there is no work for them to do.
This should serve as a warning to liberals and labor rights activists.
If you want America to be competitive on the global market, you need to emulate China.
Cut American workers' wages to that of China, and eliminate workplace safety laws, or America will be left behind.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Like it or not, these working conditions are a great improvement for the people working there. Otherwise, they would simply choose not to work in such conditions and find a better job instead.
What are the consequences of forcing better labor conditions? By putting restrictions on the employer, the jobs that were barely profitable will be cut. By raising the bar, the poor people who need these jobs end up being hurt more.
The best way to help them is let this situation happen. Over time, the economic situation of these workers will have improved. They can afford to be out of a job for a few weeks and be more picky about their next job.
"While on the production line, workers are not allowed to raise their hands or heads, are given 1.1 seconds to snap each key into place, and are encouraged to 'actively monitor each other' to see if any company rules are being transgressed. They are also monitored by guards."
Tired of all this? Become a guard.
If you have access to cheap food, you can simply arrange to pay some of the wage as food. It doesn't change the underlying economic situation at all.
Remember, your workers don't really want coloured pieces of paper with numbers on them, they want food/clothes/houses/televisions/cars/blow/hookers. Money simply makes the logistics of this all a lot easier for everyone involved; however, it is quite possible to receive some or all of the compensation in some other form than money.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Take a look at the level of state control or power in the bloody days of the union movement in the west (say, 1915-1950 or so,) in terms of how much muscle the state could use to break a strike.
Now compare that to what the current thugs in charge in China are capable of.
Yes, federal troops and police and private agencies like the pinkertons were used to put down strikes with violent or coercive means, but the powers of the state at the time are _nothing_ compared to what China is capable of now.
When it comes to suppressing dissent, the Chinese are a powerful state, with virually nothing that they can't or won't do.
Look, people like Eugene Debbs were imprisoned, but they weren't imprisoned (in secret), kept in isolation, and tortured, followed by selling his organs for transplant.
That makes the idea of workers demanding better working conditions um, iffy at best.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
The seem to wear out at the crotch after only a year or two. My Utilikilts have proven to be far more durable.
You have to pay a little bit extra for someone of quality not made by slaves, but it's worth it in the long run.
BTW, I'm using a Model M I bought from Supashed (at the refuse station) for NZ$3. It's outlasted my Omnikey 101, though the numeric minus key is a bit stuffed after I banged the keyboard upside down on the desk like a cricket bat once too often, shaking the dandruff out. I take it apart and clean it evener it starts to look or feel grubby.
A Model M is nowhere as robust as a EMP hardened grenade-proof military keyboard[1] I once encountered or the great 7 kilogram cast iron 3278 terminal keyboard I used to use at work. It's good enough for me, though.
----
[1] It was sleek and tough like a broadsword. You could do a lot more than merely bludgeon someone to death with it.
Blancmange
My point was that quality costs so I picked some lovely over the top examples. Also I was emphasising purchasing local. Quality costs, and I agree with you, most people don't give a damn about quality or ethics and buy cheap.
Aston Martin - used to produce their cars 5 miles from where I live, now a bit further away at Gaydon (50 miles or so?). Very nice cars. Actually I have a 42 year old Singer Gazelle which runs very nicely.
Suits - I work in a university so normally relaxed dress but sometimes I have to wear a suit for meetings. You don't get much respect from some people for turning up in a geek tshirt. I agree it's the person inside that matters but you can't fight the world on this one every day and get business done. It comes with the territory.
I find it ironic given the title of this whole thread that you suggest "t-shirts are cheap" as a solution - doh! where do you think the tshirts and jeans are made and under what working conditions?
...but lately eminent domain is being used for such causes as strip malls, private golf courses, hardware stores and car dealerships. The justification for this has been the laughable "These businesses will pay more taxes than you do, so this seizure is in the public interest..."
What's truly frightening is that a few courts have been going along with this nonsense.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/28680.html
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
If only you ever care to read the wage break down list. The monthly food and boarding cost is only $39.17, and the $247.83 is the pure take home pay. That's money the workers can send home buying fertilizer or pay for the kids' education.
The food and room may look miserable to your lazy a$$ but that's about the same as our middle school dorm and it's not particularly miserable in China standard. Could be a lot better than many of those workers' home. Care to compare to Mumbai's slum seen in the movie? I'd say it's not bad at all.
If you really care about their working condition and would like to pay them $25 per hour, how about open up your labor market and let them earn the comparable as yours?
"The foreman decides when they wake up,
when they eat, and when they go to the bathroom.
The foreman decides when it's time
to let them go to bed at the end of the day."
The pollution is bad, just like in a war zone.
Well military recruits can still be sent to one.
Police (here in Australia) walk around - in the
post-bushfire charred remains of home - to search
for bodies of the deceased.
Life & work is hard...
I grant, of course, that soldiers & police
get much better salaries & living conditions
(when away from work), so there's no comparison.
Just reminding you of some of the (few) similarities...
People who willingly become slaves deserve it. They're despicable and are driving our wages down because of their lack of human self respect. My ancestors would've rather died than put up with that BS.
If you have access to cheap food (as we do today) and effective loyalty inducement (brainwashing perhaps, or some sort of mind control) then slavery might be quite viable from a purely economic viewpoint.
If you have access to cheap food, you can simply arrange to pay some of the wage as food. It doesn't change the underlying economic situation at all.
Ah, yes, the company store - the civilized man's slavery. Again, if you can manage to pull off this particular variant of slavery light then you might very well find it profitable - so long as you have an inexpensive way of keeping your workers in check (the aforementioned brain washing etc.).
Free workers will tend to want the greenback so they can decide what to buy for food themselves. Any less than this is moving towards serfdom which itself is the penultimate stop on the train ride to slavery.
sigs are hazardous to your health
There's more information on this here: http://tinyurl.com/bctrq3
Nothing a good [4 billion] bullets couldn't fix. OR, maybe someone should "excise" the boardrooms of IBM, Lenovo, ....?
. After all, you have to pay for a slave's upkeep, which will not be a dramatically different cost to that of hiring a worker on a living wage.
Thomas Sowell mentioned that just before the civil war, southern employers would hire Irish workers for jobs that were too dangerous to risk a slave. Slaves were expensive.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
As long as Chinese companies offer products for a lower price, deliver on-time, and provide acceptable quality, American companies will continue to buy from them.
If those Chinese companies refuse to invest in technology instead of slave labor, the Chinese workers eventually will rise up and not take it anymore. The prices will go up and hi-tech American, Japanese, or Korean companies will be supplying them again.
Be patient, Capitalism does work.