I don't think school shootings are really any more prevalent now than they used to be, they just tend to get more attention.
"Between 1979 and 1988 there were 27 school shootings. From 1989 to 1998 there were 55 and then they continued to increase from 1999 to 2008 to 66, so there were 148 shootings in the three decades from 1979 to 2008. What’s most disturbing is that in the three years since 2008 there have been 43 shootings, and that’s almost two-thirds of the number of shootings that occurred in the preceding decade." - http://www.salon.com/2012/03/04/inside_the_bully_economy
Of course they should. What do you think the school system is for exactly?
It is for ensuring that society has the adequately knowledgeable citizens that are required for the maintenance of a functional economy, functional democracy, public health etc. A public school system should absolutely not be subject to the whims of parents.
If you believe in the profess of knowledge, it makes no sense to have a previous generation impose limitations on the next.
But the point is that there is no "free market", in China. Therefore, it is disingenuous to argue that workers get exactly what they are entitled to as defined by market forces, and no more. There are other forces at play in China, and some of them crush dissent under the treads of tanks.
The extent to which America's "free market" is dependent on un-free labor undermines its own credibility. You can "believe" in the free market, but as long as countries like China operate, you can not experience one, anywhere.
IIRC, Nike came under fire for sweatshop labor in the early 90s. I think they made some efforts to clean up their act, but my impression of their products is that they remain 90% marketing hype and 10% disposable (but not biodegradable) junk assembled in low wage countries. Granted, that applies to their competitors too.
That last bit is key, IMO. Corporations seem to have responded to the stigma of sweatshop labor by ensuring that all commonly available products are similarly tainted. Consumers, lacking credible mass-market alternatives, have pretty much given up and bought into the inevitability of foreign exploitation and the greater good of corporate profits.
Simultaneously, Americans have seen their own economic security undermined by cheap foreign competition, and IMO are locked in a negative feedback loop where they are increasingly dependent on low priced goods that are priced low by undermining the consumer's earning capacity.
speaking of propaganda, submitter openly admits that a piece of data has been discredited and retracted, but uses it anyway to bash apple.
The retraction of Daisey's dramatized first-hand experiences was accompanied by a thorough vindication of his criticisms.
At best, deniers were left with the arguments such as "child labor is relatively uncommon", "the explosions happened at a different Apple supplier than Foxconn" and "people in some parts of the world are inherently less deserving of compassion and opportunity".
It is also not as if these people are given the chance to learn how the broader business works. They are given narrow tasks and expected to perform them repetitively. They might get a slightly wider perspective as the line is retooled for different products.
It is far more likely that they will be completely burned out by early middle age, possibly afflicted with repetitive stress injuries or other occupational illnesses, and left with no other choice but to step back down.
Different culture, different standards: deal with it.
Still human beings who should have the expectation of equal treatment and opportunity, however inconvenient it might be for my own standard of living. And, yes, I am willing to make the sacrifices.
I'll have an opinion, but I'll base it on other sources.
Good for you. Now note that every other source, including Apple's own reviews of its supply chain, vindicate the gist of Daisey's claim: i.e. that Apple products are made under conditions that no Apple consumer would work in, and most would consider gratuitously harsh (i.e. the cost savings are not justified).
Seriously. Apple and its fans have no problem with Apple being more-or-less synonymous with certain segments of the market (MP3 players, smart phones, tablets). Then, when the market is revealed to be built on controversial business practices, they whine about how they are getting all of the negative attention?
Here is a question: do you feel no obligation to conduct yourself with integrity as long as you can point to someone else who is worse?
So if I yell insults at a group of fans of a rival basketball team, I'm committing a felony punishable by up to ten years in prison? Are you serious?!?
No, because our society does not recognize fans of any basketball team as victims of a historic and conceivably ongoing system of discrimination.
Because there is no law to protect straight Americans from harassment by GLBT Americans. The reason there is no law is because there is no pattern of such harassment.
Hate crime laws do nothing to change that except to unfairly add to some peoples' sentences.
Someone who does not believe that running people over is wrong could similarly argue that vehicular manslaughter laws do nothing to change reckless driving laws other than unfairly add to some people's sentences.
Hate crimes don't add to some people's sentences. They recognize and punish additional crimes that are committed under some circumstances.
And the concept is flawed. I can think of hundreds of crimes that "terrorize" a far larger group of people than a specific subset of those same people (though I would argue that being terrorized is something you allow to happen, and cannot happen without your consent), and yet they don't have bias protections. Serial killers. Serial rapists. Home invasion, FFS. These things affect everyone equally, and yet we don't have special laws that create a special class of crime based on motive, nor should we.
You don't seem to understand the difference between a group targeted by a historic pattern of discrimination and any random collection of people.
Imaging an enemy agent assassinates the leader of a country. Some might argue that treating that crime any differently than any other murder is illogical and immoral because it treats the value of one victim differently than another. However, most people would realize that even if we agree that all human lives are equally valuable, assassinating a head of state is more than just murder. It is also an assault the entire country, and indeed the international community's integrity. As a practical matter, it calls for more of a response than a random street crime.
It should be obvious that that killing the leader of Lower Slobovia is an especially big deal even though its population of 40,000 is much smaller than an average American city terrorized by a serial killer.
There is no contradiction if you don't assume that companies have a ceiling on output. If a company only wants to produce 100 units and it takes either 4 people working 50 hours a week to do this, or 4 people working 40 hours due to increased productivity thanks to shorter hours, then it would not make sense to hire an additional person.
However, that extra person allows them to increase production at no additional charge over their previous overtime regimen. So for the same investment in labor, their productive capacity can increase 25%, allowing them to increase revenue. If it happens that they are actually paying 40 hours of regular time instead of 40 hours of overtime, then the benefit increases even more.
And with 25% more people employed, there is likely to be demand for that capacity.
The idea that you could end unemployment by spreading the work around assumes that people are fungible -- that they are completely interchangeable -- which they most certainly aren't. While it may sound like a good idea for Craig and Nate to share the job of coding System X, the fact is that Nate is 10X better at programming than Craig is.
In fact, it's arguable whether Craig can even do the job at all.
Maybe Craig is really good at analyzing and distributing workload among more people based on their actual talents. That way, Nate can apply his 10X programming talent to pure programming tasks because he has others backing him up with 10X requirements analysis talent, documentation talent, etc.
I live in Canada, which enjoys universal health care, but working more than 40 hours a week is just a regular part of doing business in certain fields.
Fields where there is significant "competitive pressure" from US based companies?
Me, I'm straight out of college (only a lowly undergrad), making well above average starting wage for a software developer. ..
So you are asserting that the average is below what an newly minted college grad (albeit an exceptional one) can make.
People are always on the hunt for "talented" or "exceptional" this or that. Doling out platitudes (and often little else in the way of compensation) is part of the racket.
So its either race with the rest of the rats in a rigged maze or you are "lazy"?
Personally, I think that America has devalued intelligence, knowledge and hard work to the point that I can hardly blame someone who opts out. The "problem" that the powers that be are struggling with is that they want well-educated, well-trained (on someone else's dime, thanks) employees to work for returns that people of these qualities can figure out don't justify the effort.
So they futz around and do other things, some productive, some not, but that at least match rewards to effort.
Make engineering (or teaching etc.) a job worthy of a quality person's time and you will get an abundance of quality people. Make these careers a drag that requires a tremendous amount of risk and personal investment with the near guarantee that you will be screwed over within 5 years and you will only get people who think they can game the system.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think school shootings are really any more prevalent now than they used to be, they just tend to get more attention.
"Between 1979 and 1988 there were 27 school shootings. From 1989 to 1998 there were 55 and then they continued to increase from 1999 to 2008 to 66, so there were 148 shootings in the three decades from 1979 to 2008. What’s most disturbing is that in the three years since 2008 there have been 43 shootings, and that’s almost two-thirds of the number of shootings that occurred in the preceding decade." - http://www.salon.com/2012/03/04/inside_the_bully_economy
They have a right to work (or not work).
If they think the conditions at Foxconn are too harsh, let them get better jobs!
Of course they should. What do you think the school system is for exactly?
It is for ensuring that society has the adequately knowledgeable citizens that are required for the maintenance of a functional economy, functional democracy, public health etc. A public school system should absolutely not be subject to the whims of parents.
If you believe in the profess of knowledge, it makes no sense to have a previous generation impose limitations on the next.
Yes, and the USA is a free society.
That's what the bumper stickers say, anyway.
But the point is that there is no "free market", in China. Therefore, it is disingenuous to argue that workers get exactly what they are entitled to as defined by market forces, and no more. There are other forces at play in China, and some of them crush dissent under the treads of tanks.
The extent to which America's "free market" is dependent on un-free labor undermines its own credibility. You can "believe" in the free market, but as long as countries like China operate, you can not experience one, anywhere.
IIRC, Nike came under fire for sweatshop labor in the early 90s. I think they made some efforts to clean up their act, but my impression of their products is that they remain 90% marketing hype and 10% disposable (but not biodegradable) junk assembled in low wage countries. Granted, that applies to their competitors too.
That last bit is key, IMO. Corporations seem to have responded to the stigma of sweatshop labor by ensuring that all commonly available products are similarly tainted. Consumers, lacking credible mass-market alternatives, have pretty much given up and bought into the inevitability of foreign exploitation and the greater good of corporate profits.
Simultaneously, Americans have seen their own economic security undermined by cheap foreign competition, and IMO are locked in a negative feedback loop where they are increasingly dependent on low priced goods that are priced low by undermining the consumer's earning capacity.
speaking of propaganda, submitter openly admits that a piece of data has been discredited and retracted, but uses it anyway to bash apple.
The retraction of Daisey's dramatized first-hand experiences was accompanied by a thorough vindication of his criticisms.
At best, deniers were left with the arguments such as "child labor is relatively uncommon", "the explosions happened at a different Apple supplier than Foxconn" and "people in some parts of the world are inherently less deserving of compassion and opportunity".
Not only CEOs can believe in the free market.
China is not a free society, so the "free market" is inoperable.
It is also not as if these people are given the chance to learn how the broader business works. They are given narrow tasks and expected to perform them repetitively. They might get a slightly wider perspective as the line is retooled for different products.
It is far more likely that they will be completely burned out by early middle age, possibly afflicted with repetitive stress injuries or other occupational illnesses, and left with no other choice but to step back down.
raising up a billion people from poverty to the same level as the lowest American worker would devastate the sociological balance of the world
This "balance" is achieved by keeping billions in a state of devastating deprivation.
Your "hope" ignores the fact that this is all going on in China, which is not a free society. It has a very heavily vested interest in the status quo.
Different culture, different standards: deal with it.
Still human beings who should have the expectation of equal treatment and opportunity, however inconvenient it might be for my own standard of living. And, yes, I am willing to make the sacrifices.
Like a military coup that seizes all the resources, decides you'll work in a mine.
Well, its a good thing that China isn't a country where the government owns everything and has a track record of military crack-downs on dissidents.
The real problem is that these factories, operating under very poor conditions, drive down prices by competition.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963
You can't sell iPad's for $500 and make a profit without hiring cheap slave labors.
This is almost certainly not true. The estimated additional labor cost starts at as little as $10 per unit.
China's cheif advantage is not their cheap labor. It stems from their decision to invest in a flexible high-tech manufacturing ecosystem.
I'll have an opinion, but I'll base it on other sources.
Good for you. Now note that every other source, including Apple's own reviews of its supply chain, vindicate the gist of Daisey's claim: i.e. that Apple products are made under conditions that no Apple consumer would work in, and most would consider gratuitously harsh (i.e. the cost savings are not justified).
Seriously. Apple and its fans have no problem with Apple being more-or-less synonymous with certain segments of the market (MP3 players, smart phones, tablets). Then, when the market is revealed to be built on controversial business practices, they whine about how they are getting all of the negative attention?
Here is a question: do you feel no obligation to conduct yourself with integrity as long as you can point to someone else who is worse?
So if I yell insults at a group of fans of a rival basketball team, I'm committing a felony punishable by up to ten years in prison? Are you serious?!?
No, because our society does not recognize fans of any basketball team as victims of a historic and conceivably ongoing system of discrimination.
The likely answer would be no.
Because there is no law to protect straight Americans from harassment by GLBT Americans. The reason there is no law is because there is no pattern of such harassment.
Hate crime laws do nothing to change that except to unfairly add to some peoples' sentences.
Someone who does not believe that running people over is wrong could similarly argue that vehicular manslaughter laws do nothing to change reckless driving laws other than unfairly add to some people's sentences.
Hate crimes don't add to some people's sentences. They recognize and punish additional crimes that are committed under some circumstances.
was his room private? he was sharing it with ravi no less..
Many dorms have restrooms shared among many students. Are they fair game for video surveillance by any of those students?
And the concept is flawed. I can think of hundreds of crimes that "terrorize" a far larger group of people than a specific subset of those same people (though I would argue that being terrorized is something you allow to happen, and cannot happen without your consent), and yet they don't have bias protections. Serial killers. Serial rapists. Home invasion, FFS. These things affect everyone equally, and yet we don't have special laws that create a special class of crime based on motive, nor should we.
You don't seem to understand the difference between a group targeted by a historic pattern of discrimination and any random collection of people.
Imaging an enemy agent assassinates the leader of a country. Some might argue that treating that crime any differently than any other murder is illogical and immoral because it treats the value of one victim differently than another. However, most people would realize that even if we agree that all human lives are equally valuable, assassinating a head of state is more than just murder. It is also an assault the entire country, and indeed the international community's integrity. As a practical matter, it calls for more of a response than a random street crime.
It should be obvious that that killing the leader of Lower Slobovia is an especially big deal even though its population of 40,000 is much smaller than an average American city terrorized by a serial killer.
There is no contradiction if you don't assume that companies have a ceiling on output. If a company only wants to produce 100 units and it takes either 4 people working 50 hours a week to do this, or 4 people working 40 hours due to increased productivity thanks to shorter hours, then it would not make sense to hire an additional person.
However, that extra person allows them to increase production at no additional charge over their previous overtime regimen. So for the same investment in labor, their productive capacity can increase 25%, allowing them to increase revenue. If it happens that they are actually paying 40 hours of regular time instead of 40 hours of overtime, then the benefit increases even more.
And with 25% more people employed, there is likely to be demand for that capacity.
The idea that you could end unemployment by spreading the work around assumes that people are fungible -- that they are completely interchangeable -- which they most certainly aren't. While it may sound like a good idea for Craig and Nate to share the job of coding System X, the fact is that Nate is 10X better at programming than Craig is.
In fact, it's arguable whether Craig can even do the job at all.
Maybe Craig is really good at analyzing and distributing workload among more people based on their actual talents. That way, Nate can apply his 10X programming talent to pure programming tasks because he has others backing him up with 10X requirements analysis talent, documentation talent, etc.
I live in Canada, which enjoys universal health care, but working more than 40 hours a week is just a regular part of doing business in certain fields.
Fields where there is significant "competitive pressure" from US based companies?
Me, I'm straight out of college (only a lowly undergrad), making well above average starting wage for a software developer. . .
So you are asserting that the average is below what an newly minted college grad (albeit an exceptional one) can make.
People are always on the hunt for "talented" or "exceptional" this or that. Doling out platitudes (and often little else in the way of compensation) is part of the racket.
So its either race with the rest of the rats in a rigged maze or you are "lazy"?
Personally, I think that America has devalued intelligence, knowledge and hard work to the point that I can hardly blame someone who opts out. The "problem" that the powers that be are struggling with is that they want well-educated, well-trained (on someone else's dime, thanks) employees to work for returns that people of these qualities can figure out don't justify the effort.
So they futz around and do other things, some productive, some not, but that at least match rewards to effort.
Make engineering (or teaching etc.) a job worthy of a quality person's time and you will get an abundance of quality people. Make these careers a drag that requires a tremendous amount of risk and personal investment with the near guarantee that you will be screwed over within 5 years and you will only get people who think they can game the system.