Making The World's Poor Buy Rich Man's Toys

[Skipjack]

1) the only nearly sure enough bet to make is to push for maximum technological progress to passively lift those sweatshoppers' living standard.
Which in my semi lucid POV is convenient because it's one less dollar going to e.g. China.

I completely agree with that.

[jmc]

We don't need slavery, not since the industrial revolution atleast if all cheap labour dissappeared tomorrow you would see a major push for improvements in robotics maybe one or two years of mild recession (a small price to pay for liberating the world) and then business as usual.

Anyhow a lot of whats made under slave conditions is stuff we massively overconsume (like clothes that get thrown away by somwe every month), other things made under slave conditions include tropical fruits where there has never been a push to automate the harvest of due to cheap labour, worst case scenario, cheap labour dissappears we eat a bit more apples and a bit less bananas, hardly a catastrophe.

Agree with Betruger, people don't want slavery and the main reason products made under slave conditions get sold is because people aren't told they were, if a new government regulation was passed forcing products made in sweatshops to have a label saying: Warning this product was made in a sweatshop by children paid 10p an hour, sales would plummet.

And in anycase fairtrade products are't much more expensive than non-fairtrade products as a lot of the price of the products we buy is transport, advertising, storage etc. with product as often as not not playing the ominant role.

As for making the poor richer and producing net happiness every time a trade happens why not just give them the money for free! We can afford it and there are plenty of unemployed people in developed countries that do nothing who get paid 5 times as much as people in the poorest countries who work 80 hour weeks. I disagree net happiness s produced when someone working their arse off 12 hours a day produces a few pair of shoes for someone else in a richer part of the world. The trickle down principle doesn't work when the poor guy is desperate, the point where supply meets natural demand invariably falls where the wage is just enough to survive and not a penny more.

[MSimon]

The only reason people accept "slavery" in this day and age (not counting abductions) is that it is the best deal they can get. Better than working that little plot of land with a hoe and buckets.

[MSimon]

As for making the poor richer and producing net happiness every time a trade happens why not just give them the money for free!

Because the trade has to happen to create wealth. Just giving people money short circuits that.

[jmc]

Trades only maximize utility when the self-interested parties involved do so of their own volition and have access to all information that is relevant to the pros and cons of the trade.

If you pay me 5 pounds for the priviledge of smashing my car but tell me you'll shoot me if I don't let you, no net wealth as been created (illustrating my first point)

Similarly if I have cancer and you tell me you'll waive a magic wand and cure me so long as I let you blow up my house, I agree to the deal, but it turns out you were lying and after my house has been blown up I die of cancer anyway, no net wealth has been created (illustrating the second point that wealth can be destroyed by a fraudulent trade)


Children neither have freedom to choose, being dependents of their parents, nor do they have the knowledge of the long term opportunity costs of doing minute to minute back breaking labour instead of an education.

Hence child labour can't be described in the normal sense of maximizing utility by allowing individuals to act out of their own volition.

[Diogenes]

Exactly. This is the problem. But then why invent a more efficient machine, if slavery is so much cheaper (and child labour in 3rd world countries is as close to slavery as it gets, only that it is not in YOUR own country).

Everybody's in favor of slavery. No one wants to admit it though. Everyone knows it's wrong, but they just can't bring themselves to forgo the benefits of slavery.

BS.

It's fine to argue semi-platonics like the fact that 1) sweat shops are necessary, or 2) that the critical nuance is between buying some product of a sweatshop employee that's working of his own free will VS one that's coerced, but 2) there's no way to tell what was made by who when you're in a KMart isle, and so 1) the only nearly sure enough bet to make is to push for maximum technological progress to passively lift those sweatshoppers' living standard.
Which in my semi lucid POV is convenient because it's one less dollar going to e.g. China. Whose population includes lots of innocent poor people, but whose regime is crap. So, in the aim that only those nations that most make technology progress for the least proportional humane transgressions get any $$$, that's a dollar better spent.

I think you misunderstand me. It is human nature to want to have others do your bidding. The abstract idea of why others should do something for you never occurs to the subconcious.

People who work while someone else receives the benefits of their labor are slaves. If 100% of the benefits go to someone else, the person is a 100% slave. If the person is allowed to keep 20% of the fruits of their labor, they are 80% a slave. And so on.

It is my thinking that the taxpayers are the slaves to the rulers and the freeloaders. Do the rulers and the freeloaders like this state of affairs ?

YES! They want ever more from the workers. Every year, the same voices call for moving people from minimalist slavery to maximist slavery. We just don't call it that. We want the practice to be regarded as respectable after all.


In any case, the ideas you've mentioned are somewhat similar to some of the ideas put forth by Patrick Buchanan when he ran for President some years back. He advocated tarrifs for third world countries that didn't live up to U.S. standards regarding safety, pollution, labor, etc.

I actually thought this was a very reasonable idea.

[MSimon]

If you pay me 5 pounds for the priviledge of smashing my car but tell me you'll shoot me if I don't let you, no net wealth as been created (illustrating my first point)

I have a better deal. For 5 pounds I'll just wire you up with remote detonated high explosives and make you drive a ways down the road and I'm not paying you for the privilege - you pay me.

You will never make a bad deal again.

Of course when coercion is involved you can hardly call it trade. But my deal will help there too. You will never conflate trade with theft again.

[MSimon]

In any case, the ideas you've mentioned are somewhat similar to some of the ideas put forth by Patrick Buchanan when he ran for President some years back. He advocated tarrifs for third world countries that didn't live up to U.S. standards regarding safety, pollution, labor, etc.


I actually thought this was a very reasonable idea.

Yes it is. If you hate people of the third world. Because if you mandate $4,000 a year worth of health and safety regs on people who make $4,000 a year I think we can safely say that within 6 months or a year we will have a final solution to the sweatshop problem.

[Josh Cryer]

Exactly. This is the problem. But then why invent a more efficient machine, if slavery is so much cheaper (and child labour in 3rd world countries is as close to slavery as it gets, only that it is not in YOUR own country).

"Slavery" is in fact "not much cheaper" in terms of upkeep and raw energy utilization. It's just that as far as money is concerned there's not a big demand for it. We have machines that can now make whole pieces of clothing from cloth, with very little labor input. We don't buy 'em up because they cost a lot of *money* but if you consider what it costs to raise a human to an age adequate enough to make said piece of clothing, and what it costs to keep that person alive, it adds up quickly. The machine is really cheaper, and if there was demand for it, and we continued our innovation and made it cheaper to make the machines, we might not have to rely on sweatshop labor (and our clothes would still be quite cheap, possibly cheap enough to even sell to those third world people at a discount).

Anyway, I actually agree with MSimon, people chose sweatshop jobs because it's the best they can get. This is a no-brainer, though.

[Skipjack]

Anyway, I actually agree with MSimon, people chose sweatshop jobs because it's the best they can get.

Uhm, textile industry?
We built the most efficient machines that one could possibly built for this industry. In fact they were among the first machines of the industrial revolution and have been improved and improved on ever since then.
Yet, the textile industry has almost completely gone from the west. I had a neighbour that worked at a textile factory in my home town. They closed just recently, as one of the last textile factories in Austria. They are all abroad now, in cheap labor countries.
Then of course take the car industry. Chevies are for a large part built abroad now (shows in their really bad quality though). Car manufacturing is one of the most mechanized businesses there is, yet they moved it to China. Strange isnt it?

I also recall (and even I cant believe that), that the first steam engine was invented in ancient Rome, but was never but to any use, "because cheap slaves made it unnecessary".

Now, I do think that making things in the country, with efficient machines, could be almost as cheap, or at least as cheap over all as having them made in sweatshops abroad. But, even if it is a few cents cheaper per car, those shareholders will rather have it produced by children in Malaysia. They completely ignore the lack of quality work that they get, but oh well. Even countries like the Czeck republic can demonstrate that cheap labor does not necessarily mean a good deal. Toyota is paying the price for that now and IMHO they deserve it.[/quote]

[Josh Cryer]

The US is a service country now-a-days. We have long since lost our leadership in that vein. It is unfortunate.

[Betruger]

Everybody's in favor of slavery. No one wants to admit it though. Everyone knows it's wrong, but they just can't bring themselves to forgo the benefits of slavery.

BS.

It's fine to argue semi-platonics like the fact that 1) sweat shops are necessary, or 2) that the critical nuance is between buying some product of a sweatshop employee that's working of his own free will VS one that's coerced, but 2) there's no way to tell what was made by who when you're in a KMart isle, and so 1) the only nearly sure enough bet to make is to push for maximum technological progress to passively lift those sweatshoppers' living standard.
Which in my semi lucid POV is convenient because it's one less dollar going to e.g. China. Whose population includes lots of innocent poor people, but whose regime is crap. So, in the aim that only those nations that most make technology progress for the least proportional humane transgressions get any $$$, that's a dollar better spent.

I think you misunderstand me. It is human nature to want to have others do your bidding. The abstract idea of why others should do something for you never occurs to the subconcious.

People who work while someone else receives the benefits of their labor are slaves. If 100% of the benefits go to someone else, the person is a 100% slave. If the person is allowed to keep 20% of the fruits of their labor, they are 80% a slave. And so on.

It is my thinking that the taxpayers are the slaves to the rulers and the freeloaders. Do the rulers and the freeloaders like this state of affairs ?

YES! They want ever more from the workers. Every year, the same voices call for moving people from minimalist slavery to maximist slavery. We just don't call it that. We want the practice to be regarded as respectable after all.


In any case, the ideas you've mentioned are somewhat similar to some of the ideas put forth by Patrick Buchanan when he ran for President some years back. He advocated tarrifs for third world countries that didn't live up to U.S. standards regarding safety, pollution, labor, etc.

I actually thought this was a very reasonable idea.

It's a bad choice of words. 5% slave? What? Maybe I'm a half full glass guy, but if you're less than 50%-something, the single word that characterizes you isn't that something anymore. As for "slave", you're not a slave if you willfully choose to do something. Slavery is coercion. You don't coerce someone who willfully accepts the terms of labor, whatever the labor. The coercion might've happened when you broke his will and made him give up trying to do something better (e.g. studies).

It is human nature to want to have others do your bidding. The abstract idea of why others should do something for you never occurs to the subconcious.

I don't buy it. What evidence do you have that this trend is natural, irreversible, and impercievable ("never occurs to subconscious")? I don't want others doing my bidding and don't want to do theirs. I want my own labor and my own fruits. I have zero interest in directing others outside of specific cases of purposeful consent like executive hierarchy, business.

Also have to agree with MSimon. Can't add to people with no other choice but sweatshop duty yet another burden like tarrif. I don't see a way out of the rock&hard place for those people. The only solution I see is what I said earlier.. Technological progress to raise their quality of life.

[Diogenes]

In any case, the ideas you've mentioned are somewhat similar to some of the ideas put forth by Patrick Buchanan when he ran for President some years back. He advocated tarrifs for third world countries that didn't live up to U.S. standards regarding safety, pollution, labor, etc.


I actually thought this was a very reasonable idea.

Yes it is. If you hate people of the third world. Because if you mandate $4,000 a year worth of health and safety regs on people who make $4,000 a year I think we can safely say that within 6 months or a year we will have a final solution to the sweatshop problem.

I think his point was to protect American workers from unfair trade practices of foreign countries. The idea that this might adversely impact people in other countries was of no real concern to him.

The thinking is that we owe more allegiance to our countrymen than to those who are not.

It has nothing to do with hating people of other countries. It has to do with caring about the people in your own country.

[Diogenes]

Exactly. This is the problem. But then why invent a more efficient machine, if slavery is so much cheaper (and child labour in 3rd world countries is as close to slavery as it gets, only that it is not in YOUR own country).

"Slavery" is in fact "not much cheaper" in terms of upkeep and raw energy utilization. It's just that as far as money is concerned there's not a big demand for it. We have machines that can now make whole pieces of clothing from cloth, with very little labor input. We don't buy 'em up because they cost a lot of *money* but if you consider what it costs to raise a human to an age adequate enough to make said piece of clothing, and what it costs to keep that person alive, it adds up quickly. The machine is really cheaper, and if there was demand for it, and we continued our innovation and made it cheaper to make the machines, we might not have to rely on sweatshop labor (and our clothes would still be quite cheap, possibly cheap enough to even sell to those third world people at a discount).

Anyway, I actually agree with MSimon, people chose sweatshop jobs because it's the best they can get. This is a no-brainer, though.

I have an acquaintance who works in water engineering. He told me of his experiences working on a water treatment plant in China. He said that every morning at the plant, an army of workers would show up to install light poles along the entrance road to the plant. They dug holes by hand, and then used about 40 workers with ropes and bambo poles to erect the light poles. Upon noticing that the plant had a digger derrick machine, he asked one of his Chinese colleagues why they didn't use it instead of all the people. He pointed out that it would be far simpler and cheaper to do the job with that one machine and 3 or 4 workers, than to use that vast army of people and their crude tools.

The Chinese colleague responded, "Then what would all those people do ?"

[Diogenes]

[It's a bad choice of words. 5% slave? What? Maybe I'm a half full glass guy, but if you're less than 50%-something, the single word that characterizes you isn't that something anymore. As for "slave", you're not a slave if you willfully choose to do something.

Who willfully chooses to pay taxes?

Slavery is coercion.

Taxes is coercion.

You don't coerce someone who willfully accepts the terms of labor, whatever the labor.

People must work to stay alive. In the real world, food and shelter doesn't come handed on a government platter.

The idea that the Government should take the fruits of one mans labor and give it to another wouldn't be coercion if they asked the laborer for his permission to do this.

They don't, so it is.

The coercion might've happened when you broke his will and made him give up trying to do something better (e.g. studies).

I have turned down much work because when the taxes are assessed, I lose all incentive to perform the work at the resulting price. I remember years ago when I used to work overtime. I realized that I barely received 10 cents on the dollar for overtime work.

The rulers force me to either give them an excessive amount of my money, or don't work. Either way, they are forcing and coercing.

It is human nature to want to have others do your bidding. The abstract idea of why others should do something for you never occurs to the subconcious.

I don't buy it. What evidence do you have that this trend is natural, irreversible, and impercievable

I said it was natural. I didn't say it was irreversible. As for imperceptible, That is only to people who are not aware of it.

("never occurs to subconscious")? I don't want others doing my bidding and don't want them doing mine. I want my own labor and my own fruits. I have zero interest in directing others outside of specific cases of purposeful consent like executive hierarchy, business.

This is a CONSCIOUS decision on your part. When babies are born, they are the most selfish thing in the universe. They want food. They want Warmth. They want their diaper changed, and they want it NOW!!!!!! "The abstract idea of why others should do something for you never occurs to a baby (or the subconscious)."

As people mature, they grow in understanding and most people realize that it is a symbiotic relationship we have with others. You do things for them, and they will do things for you. Suppressing our natural instincts is one of the necessities for civilization.

Also have to agree with MSimon. Can't add to people with no other choice but sweatshop duty yet another burden like tarrif. I don't see a way out of the rock&hard place for those people. The only solution I see is what I said earlier.. Technological progress to raise their quality of life.

Yeah, it sucks. But why would you have more obligation to people in other nations who don't abide by or respect our laws and customs than you would to your own people?

It really isn't fair to make free Americans compete in the labor market against imprisoned or enslaved third worlders.