Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We are like prisoners... We do not have a life, only work.

nlcnet.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 201 posts

Re: We are like prisoners... We do not have a life, only work.

#141

Post by roel_v »

r0s wrote: post #102
whyme wrote: post #51

NEWS BULLETIN - North Americans benefit from trade practices that reap the rewards in taking advantage of other countries less protected workers. YUP. For those of you that are complaining about how the article is merely story spinning to target Microsoft, I think you're de-sensitized. Comparing the worst places to work in North America to the average place to work in China may make yourself feel better, but it's jus…

We are rich because they are poor. The horror of the problem is only ever counterbalanced for me when other people recognize the macro-feudal nature of our economy.

This is plain false. They become richer because we are rich and let them work. When the tide goes up. all boats rise.

Re: We are like prisoners... We do not have a life, only work.

#142

Post by codexon »

potatolicious wrote: post #130
codexon wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have relatives in Taiwan and you are grossly exaggerating the situation to support your argument. > Okay, my mother worked as a child sweatshop laborer in Taiwan in the 60s, before the country bootstrapped itself out of abject, agrarian poverty, and I take issue with this. Much of Taiwan was poor because of Japanese occupation. Some were rich because of it. That divide is the sole reason Taiwan seemed poor to you.…

> "Tales rebounded of bosses that sat around playing mahjong, harassing female workers, or flying all over the world, while exploited workers worked for their enrichment from 6AM-10PM." It sounds like your beef is with the KMT, not the Japanese - it is true that the Japanese occupation enriched (justly or otherwise) a lot of Taiwanese families, but the ones doing the "sitting around" after the occupation ended were p…

> It sounds like your beef is with the KMT, not the Japanese

The Japanese were the ones who empowered the KMT, and they were the ones who took away the crops. They were so empowered by the Japanese, it took several decades before political opposition could be built against them.

> Then what did it need? Imaginary capital investments in our many fine local delicacies?

It didn't need sweatshops. Taiwan would have recovered by itself with the millions in US aid. Taiwan already had a deluge of capital that was being concentrated and wasted by the Japanese entrenched upper-class.

Sweatshop work was the short term solution for a long term problem. Like I mentioned before, sweatshops quickly disappeared to China as early as the 1960's. How many man-years do you think were wasted in low value trinkets instead of going straight through education and more lucrative industries?

> I'm not sure what I've said that insinuates this.

Most of what you said insinuates this. You claim that sweatshops were necessary to bootstrap Taiwan out of abject agrarian poverty and that all people who were farmers were better off as sweatshop workers.

Re: We are like prisoners... We do not have a life, only work.

#143

Post by [deleted] »

potatolicious wrote: post #16

This article, IMHO, is written by someone who has no idea how things work just about anywhere that's not the industrialized West, and is shocked and appalled that things aren't as awesome as they are in the US of A. It's a also a reminder for those of us who live in such ridiculous comfort and freedom that it can get much, much worse. That being said, I think this article is sensationalist tripe: > "The idea that ‘wi…

[deleted]

Re: We are like prisoners... We do not have a life, only work.

#144

Post by yic »

dkimball wrote: post #37

The defensiveness of some of these comments is unsettling. Inhumane conditions are inhumane no matter where they are, and no matter what the situation is in the society; it is never right to do to one's workers what this article is describing, not even if there's a lot of competition for their jobs. This is the kind of thing that explains why the United States is not lassiez-faire capitalist anymore; and it emphasize…

First of all, this news article has no facts but full of crap opinions. It is very romantic to have the freedom to say what is right and what is wrong, except you don't personally "live" in the situation and it is not your right to decide what is right for others.

>>

Are you saying people are better off being hungry than working hard for food?

Re: We are like prisoners... We do not have a life, only work.

#145

Post by eru »

enneff wrote: post #139
potatolicious wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite what you might think, I'm no Ayn Rand-quoting objectivist ;) What I do think is that this article makes much ado about nothing - sweatshop labor permitted my parents' generation to pull themselves out of poverty, get educated, and get white collar jobs - in fact my mother and all of her siblings eventually all got white collar, comfortable desk jobs. What we're looking at is a country in a natural evolutionar…

"sweatshop labor permitted my parents' generation to pull themselves out of poverty, get educated, and get white collar jobs " That may have been possible in the 1960s, but it's certainly not going to happen for 99% of these workers now. There is way more menial, blue-collar labour to be done than white-collar work, and there are less jobs than there are people already.

Anything to support your argument?

Re: We are like prisoners... We do not have a life, only work.

#146

Post by eru »

krschultz wrote: post #96
potatolicious wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite what you might think, I'm no Ayn Rand-quoting objectivist ;) What I do think is that this article makes much ado about nothing - sweatshop labor permitted my parents' generation to pull themselves out of poverty, get educated, and get white collar jobs - in fact my mother and all of her siblings eventually all got white collar, comfortable desk jobs. What we're looking at is a country in a natural evolutionar…

Taiwan is not the counterexample to this article to prove that China needs the sweatshops and they are excusable because the ends justify the means. First you overestimating the extent to which the sweatshops in Taiwan are the cause of its progress and ignoring what other factors were involved. There are plenty of countries in the world teaming with sweatshops, few are growing into Taiwan 2.0 What are those other fac…

> 1) It is a smaller country.

So if you carved up China into smaller countries, that might help?

Re: We are like prisoners... We do not have a life, only work.

#147

Post by Agile_Cyborg »

They are only low-class minions who should be lucky their carcasses aren't rotting in the hot sun from starvation.

There will be countless others to fill the positions of the broken, lazy, despondent, and worthless who've tottered on to other production facilities.

Since when has this level of human deserved even a cursory notice, much less an in-depth ethical analysis of how they labor?

Re: We are like prisoners... We do not have a life, only work.

#148

Post by eru »

devinj wrote: post #124
tokenadult wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

who do they pass the buck to to lift themselves out of these conditions? To whoever has the best comparative advantage, as economics has always worked. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

Actually, no, that's not how economics has always worked. Mercantilism was very popular before free market capitalism came along.

Mercantilism was popular as a normative system. But that doesn't make it a good description.

Re: We are like prisoners... We do not have a life, only work.

#149

Post by gridspy »

barmstrong wrote: post #140

They are not prisoners for the simple reason that they can quit at any time. If they choose to stay at the job it means it's because they want to - by definition they want the money more than they want to leave the job, otherwise they'd leave. If anyone wants to go there and provide better opportunities to lure these workers away from Microsoft, they are free to do so. There is a market for labor just as with any oth…

When they quit they are fined 15 days wages. Because they rarely leave the compound they don't have the chance to foster opportunities outside the factory.

Re: We are like prisoners... We do not have a life, only work.

#150

Post by codexon »

potatolicious wrote: post #125
illumin8 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother-in-law worked in a factory in Taiwan in the 1960s. They didn't believe in providing ear protection to their workers and the loud machinery caused her permanent hearing loss in both ears that she still suffers from to this day. She can only hear out of one ear with a hearing aid, and her family has to shout at her just to barely communicate. Apparently you have no idea how bad it really is there. Here in the…

> " They didn't believe in providing ear protection to their workers and the loud machinery caused her permanent hearing loss in both ears that she still suffers from to this day." My mother lost a segment of her right middle finger, and my grandfather eventually died of hazardous substances breathed in during his work. My father survived a chlorine tank breach by a hair - a low wall was the only thing between him an…

This sounds like the old "walking uphill bothways" tripe to me:

My father/mother/uncle lost a limb/eyeball/lung and were happy about it too, so they shouldn't even complain.

Sweatshop trinkets are not a requirement for industrialization or lucrative economies.

Post reply on HN