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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."
They don't automate because it's cheaper to pay someone 41 cents an hour than it is to buy the machine.
I would say subsistence farming is much better than 41 cents/hour in a factory.
Gone!
Dunno about where this factory is, but everywhere I've been in China, 41 cents (3 yuan) doesn't buy you much...
"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."
How incredibly naive you are.
The Austarlian banks have weathered the crisis without great trouble, no bailouts needed so far. Why? Because they were reregulated in the 90's, not allowed to make up silly investment viehicles that lead to disaster.
Hate to bring reality to your shiny libertarian ideals, but as you should well know reality has a liberal bias.
Good regulation would have prevented the problem as it did in Australia. No ammount of rationalization and false analogies you make will change that.
Honestly, I cannot believe you really think reducing regulation would magically fix the banking crisis. Like the bankers will suddenly become honest.
Jeezus!
You need to realize that the improvement of working conditions in the West in the 19th and early 20th centuries wasn't some sort of natural outgrowth of industrialism. It came about because the people in those societies became appalled at the conditions and government stepped in and forced companies to improve these conditions. The 40 hour work week wasn't created by some natural economic change of events...it came about because the government forced it on companies.
The cake is a pie
I don't know why this myth continues to persist. We, in the USA, manufacture a whole ton of crap. In fact, we're still tops in the world for manufacturing output!
Indeed, corrupt government officials in China have for years been selling arable land to developers and corporations to expand the megacities they now have. As such, substinence farming is no longer an option for millions of Chinese, not because they think slave factory life would be better. Of course, as with most other third world countries (especially those who live under the illusion they're not 3rd world) there is a small group of elite Chinese (proportionally speaking, about 100m out of 1.5bn approx) who hoard and control the wealth, land and means of production. Those are the folks who are sustaining an unsustainable lifestyle, those are the folks who can wake up "the sleeping dragon" like in Tianamen, and those are the folks the Communist Party lives in terror of.
And the Brazilian banks are among the most profitable in the world now and also weathered the crisis without any bailout. Also very regulated.
-- SouNerd.com
China has a highly corrupted political system that maintains dominance by censoring all forms of media and keeps the people in check through brutal police state terror tactics. There is little hope there of unions forming or a citisen driven government.
I beg to differ. Did you know there are over 200 protests per day across China? Mostly over corrupt government officials seizing land and selling it for a hefty profit to corporations. There are also several protests related to labor. A month or so ago one of them go into the news, 200 people at a bicycle factory laid off so they took their bicycles, laid them down across the road, and protested blocking all traffic. It's estimated for the government to maintain control they're going to need at least 8-10% growth each year until they can get some of these things sorted out. You see that happening? Nope. So there are going to be more riots, more protests, and they're going to be far too widespread for the Communist party to control. They're already being worked to the bone just holding the power they've got; they're getting dragged kicking and screaming into democracy. No, labor conditions will definitely be improving in the future as they move to more capital intensive, skilled forms of labor and the workers unionize. Just like Great Britain.
Your rant on sustainability is typical; China freely admits this won't be sustainable; they just want us to give them a little time to get everything in order. It's catching up to them, in the next 5-10 years they're going to _have_ to start thinking environmentally, pressure from Americans or not, because their rivers are becoming so polluted. They're installing ESP's on their Coal plants, and will be moving to nuclear eventually-- until then there is plenty of coal. I don't care if you think global warming is a problem; we have clear archeological evidence that the climate isn't nearly as stable as all the scientists-paid-for-by-Al-Gore-and-other-global-warming-doomsdayers would have you believe. Please explain the existence of the medieval British grape/wine industry, the medieval Viking coastal settlements (with everything including agriculture) in Greenland, and numerous other examples that would have been, and even are in recent times, impossible. Sustainability was a great idea-- until the shills took over and turned it into a religious sect of masochists that can't stand to see anyone enjoying life.
We owe them a lot of money, and at any time they could call that debt in on us, and presumably (if they wanted to and probably could) ship us off to China to work in their factories
Presumably what they own is a ginormous quantity of US Treasury bonds. The way in which they could "call in" that debt is by putting them all out for sale on the market but this would depreciate their value to such an extent they would have to be idiots to actually do it. Sure, it would cause some trouble for the US but chances are it would hurt China about as much - they would rather hang on to them and sell them off gradually so they actually get paid something for them. As for debt the US needs to pay out in $$$ when it comes due, well, it's debt in dollars and the recently politicized Federal Reserve will surely be happy to print however many dollar bills are needed to pay off any debt the govt decides it needs to get rid of (perhaps there would even be an Inflation Czar). To call the US' situation wrt international debt "sweet" is a gross understatement. The difficult part isn't to service their debt, the difficult part is to do it in such a way that the USD remains the international currency of choice afterwards.
sigs are hazardous to your health
As I already posted a little ways up, capitalism requires a mechanism to try to ensure that the rights of the individual are not infringed. This is a necessary component. If you do not have this mechanism, you do not have capitalism.
Please check your dictionary (or Wikipedia, if you trust it enough) for the definition of "capitalism". Yours seems to be way off from what everyone else means by that word. For example, Franco's Spain was quite certainly capitalist, and so was Pinochet's Chile (and many would say that so was Third Reich). Going back in history, most European countries have transitioned to capitalism before (sometimes long before) they have transitioned to democracy.
If what you say is that capitalism can be very messy without democracy, then I can wholeheartedly agree, and, indeed, China is a prime example of that. But it's called "capitalism" regardless of that.
Note that people in China don't seem to fully own their own labor(they are forced to work overtime and are forced to stay in the factory if they break the rules)
You misunderstand what it means. They own their labor in a sense that they're free not to work in the factory, and they're free to decide where to work. They are not really forced to stay at any moment - they can just quit their job if they do not want to.
Examples of people who do not own their labor are slaves and bonded peasants - serfs.
nor are their rights protected by a "limited regulatory framework."
You missed a critical word there: "private rights and property relations are protected by the rule of law of a limited regulatory framework". In other words, the right to own property, and the right to work for whoever they want - and both are there in China (they may not have much choice of employer in practice if there's only one in the region, but this is different in that the law still does not require them to work at a specific place, as it did in e.g. Soviet Union). This doesn't imply rights such as freedom of speech & assembly, or political freedom.