Well, I'm going to make the assumption you're from the good 'ole US of A... A country that has allowed itself to breed 281,000,000 and still can't house or feed all of them. Somehow, I don't see the leaders of these "unethical" countries taking a paycut to ensure their workers keep their job at the same pay after everyone stops buying their products. The factory workers will get laid off, and will suffer pay cuts just like everywhere else in the world. The leaders will simply reorganize in order to maintain their profitability. It's called business. It works pretty much the same everywhere in the world. If your production goes down, you cut costs and the fastest way to do that is to reduce your workforce.
What do you consider intelligent and civilized? From the tone of your comment, I believe it's the idea of birth control. Well, then I guess the Pope's disqualified there! Didn't you hear? Birth control is a sin! I beleive the definition of intelligent you want is: b : revealing or reflecting good judgment or sound thought : There's many good reasons for having large families: more children mean more people to share the burden of taking care of you in your 80s, more household income for buying necessities without greatly increasing housing costs (same sex children can share rooms), a greater chance of having male children to carry on the family, etc. How about civilized: b : adequate in courtesy and politeness : I'm kind of at a loss to argue this one... How do you see these countries lacking in courtesy and politeness? From my experience, these countries are generally full of friendly, polite people. In fact, they usually have a very well defined structure for respecting others based on their position in society.
I wasn't asking you to save anyone. I was pointing out the fallacy in the idea of saving them by taking your money away. Go ahead, buy 100% made in the USA, spend $7000US on your bottom of the line P4. Feel good knowing that the $6000 dollar difference is boosting your economy and lowering your unemployment rate.
Ok, so we all stop buying products that have any components made in China. What do all those factory workers do now? And don't tell me they go back to growing rice. How do they earn enough to buy food? To send their children to school? To try to give their children hope at a better life? I'm not trying to justify the actions of those countries leaders, I'm asking how would it affect the lives of the people that are currently factory workers, if that country were to suddenly, say over a period of 2 years, stop exporting anything?
How much do you pay for that new PC that has no third-world-manufactured-components? Not even a resistor. Let's assume $7US per labour-hour (kind of realistic, it's close to what my company pays) to buy something from China. Now let's bring that into a US factory with 100% utilization. Direct labour is about $12US, burden (rent, purchasing, HR, IT) is about another $20, and then a 60/40 split for burdened-labour/markup we have a final cost of $53.33US per labour-hour. Can you still afford to buy the latest MP3 player? How about the computer that your using? Come on, remember how much you paid for it? Now imagine paying 7x that!
I suppose that these are two separate thoughts though. How much are you willing to pay for a relatively ethical product?
Remember that "Made in America" does not guarantee the item was made in America. It means that most of the labour (by dollar value, not hours) that went into the product, came from the United States. For example, most electronic components (resistors, diodes, transistors) are manufactured in countries where labour is cheap, and enviromental and safety concerns are minor. These are then shipped in bulk, to North America, where they are soldered into a printed circuit board, and then assembled into a chassis. Harley does this too. Less and less of a Harley as made in America, it's just assembled in America. So by buying these "Made in America" products, you consume more of the raw components produced in China (Mexico, Taiwan, etc.)
Are you willing to pay a premium for the "Made in America" label? If not, the company will be forced to price it's product competitively. With the ridiculously low (less than $7US per hour including labour, burden, and markup) for offshore manufacturing, American companies can't compete! So the American companies will start to contract out more and more of the work involved in their product. It's the same thing that happens in my company. We have to compete on terms of quality and lead-time (how long it takes between when you order an item, and when it's in your hands). For high-volume standard consumer goods, it just doesn't work. Warehousing a container load from China is just cheaper than building to order.
Here's a question for you though, do you think that by improving the economy in a country, the quality of life in that country improves?
Well, in my job it's common to see C code for almost all our embedded firmware. The only exceptions to this that I've seen is the stuff written in assembly. It's also used to write most of the test software we use. Our department has consciously chosen to limit us to C or VB for development unless you can come up with a truly good reason for using another language. Our department is concerned mostly with testing the products manufactured in our factories. Programming was an interesting little course taught on the side in our electronics courses. From experience we've found that it's easier to train people on one or two languages, rather than have them try to remember (and purchase licenced copies of) VB, VC++, LabWindows, LabView, QuickBasic, HP Vee, Perl... I think that the deficiencies in any language are usually minor. It's more important to build up good techniques and practices like the original author had intended.
The old saying "It's a poor workman who blames his tools." applies here too.
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Try to get your hands on Working effectively with legacy code by Michael Feathers.
Is 28 deaths the level at which we get concerned?
Well, I'm going to make the assumption you're from the good 'ole US of A... A country that has allowed itself to breed 281,000,000 and still can't house or feed all of them. Somehow, I don't see the leaders of these "unethical" countries taking a paycut to ensure their workers keep their job at the same pay after everyone stops buying their products. The factory workers will get laid off, and will suffer pay cuts just like everywhere else in the world. The leaders will simply reorganize in order to maintain their profitability. It's called business. It works pretty much the same everywhere in the world. If your production goes down, you cut costs and the fastest way to do that is to reduce your workforce.
What do you consider intelligent and civilized? From the tone of your comment, I believe it's the idea of birth control. Well, then I guess the Pope's disqualified there! Didn't you hear? Birth control is a sin! I beleive the definition of intelligent you want is: b : revealing or reflecting good judgment or sound thought : There's many good reasons for having large families: more children mean more people to share the burden of taking care of you in your 80s, more household income for buying necessities without greatly increasing housing costs (same sex children can share rooms), a greater chance of having male children to carry on the family, etc. How about civilized: b : adequate in courtesy and politeness : I'm kind of at a loss to argue this one... How do you see these countries lacking in courtesy and politeness? From my experience, these countries are generally full of friendly, polite people. In fact, they usually have a very well defined structure for respecting others based on their position in society.
I wasn't asking you to save anyone. I was pointing out the fallacy in the idea of saving them by taking your money away. Go ahead, buy 100% made in the USA, spend $7000US on your bottom of the line P4. Feel good knowing that the $6000 dollar difference is boosting your economy and lowering your unemployment rate.
Ok, so we all stop buying products that have any components made in China. What do all those factory workers do now? And don't tell me they go back to growing rice. How do they earn enough to buy food? To send their children to school? To try to give their children hope at a better life? I'm not trying to justify the actions of those countries leaders, I'm asking how would it affect the lives of the people that are currently factory workers, if that country were to suddenly, say over a period of 2 years, stop exporting anything?
How much do you pay for that new PC that has no third-world-manufactured-components? Not even a resistor. Let's assume $7US per labour-hour (kind of realistic, it's close to what my company pays) to buy something from China. Now let's bring that into a US factory with 100% utilization. Direct labour is about $12US, burden (rent, purchasing, HR, IT) is about another $20, and then a 60/40 split for burdened-labour/markup we have a final cost of $53.33US per labour-hour. Can you still afford to buy the latest MP3 player? How about the computer that your using? Come on, remember how much you paid for it? Now imagine paying 7x that!
I suppose that these are two separate thoughts though. How much are you willing to pay for a relatively ethical product?
Remember that "Made in America" does not guarantee the item was made in America. It means that most of the labour (by dollar value, not hours) that went into the product, came from the United States. For example, most electronic components (resistors, diodes, transistors) are manufactured in countries where labour is cheap, and enviromental and safety concerns are minor. These are then shipped in bulk, to North America, where they are soldered into a printed circuit board, and then assembled into a chassis. Harley does this too. Less and less of a Harley as made in America, it's just assembled in America. So by buying these "Made in America" products, you consume more of the raw components produced in China (Mexico, Taiwan, etc.)
Are you willing to pay a premium for the "Made in America" label? If not, the company will be forced to price it's product competitively. With the ridiculously low (less than $7US per hour including labour, burden, and markup) for offshore manufacturing, American companies can't compete! So the American companies will start to contract out more and more of the work involved in their product. It's the same thing that happens in my company. We have to compete on terms of quality and lead-time (how long it takes between when you order an item, and when it's in your hands). For high-volume standard consumer goods, it just doesn't work. Warehousing a container load from China is just cheaper than building to order.
Here's a question for you though, do you think that by improving the economy in a country, the quality of life in that country improves?
Well, in my job it's common to see C code for almost all our embedded firmware. The only exceptions to this that I've seen is the stuff written in assembly. It's also used to write most of the test software we use. Our department has consciously chosen to limit us to C or VB for development unless you can come up with a truly good reason for using another language. Our department is concerned mostly with testing the products manufactured in our factories. Programming was an interesting little course taught on the side in our electronics courses. From experience we've found that it's easier to train people on one or two languages, rather than have them try to remember (and purchase licenced copies of) VB, VC++, LabWindows, LabView, QuickBasic, HP Vee, Perl... I think that the deficiencies in any language are usually minor. It's more important to build up good techniques and practices like the original author had intended.
The old saying "It's a poor workman who blames his tools." applies here too.