691–700 of 820 posts
I hate how American (and European) companies will virtue signal with commercials and campaigns (Apple and Nike come to mind) toting their ESG credentials but then will be doing stuff like this. People fall for it and it really pisses me off. Welcome to marketing. It’s also crazy to me that China isn’t facing more severe backlash for the treatment of the Uyghurs. It’s reprehensible and disgusting.
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Canada has both first past the post voting and a multi party system, so no, it's a deeper structural issue than that.
Let's see. Canada currently has 338 MPs and over 80% (!) of those (278) belong to one of two majority parties. So yes, in theory Canada has a multi party system. In practice this multi party system is severely damaged by the effects of the FPTP voting system. There are mathematical reasons for FPTP to result in two party systems. [0] explains it pretty well. There don't have to be deeper underlying stuctural reasons…
I would suggest you look at the actual examples in the wild, and see if they have FPTP (or party proportional representation, which is essentially FPTP with all the same spoiler effects), and which don't, and see if they match your expectations to any degree better than random chance.
You can prove just about anything in "math" in a vacuum. The recent push for FPTP really strikes me as the kind of wonk stuff that people bend themselves around as a huge fix, when the reality is it empirically doesn't do what people thinks it should do, and comes with it's own problems. It's a lot of wasted political capital for very little if no benefit.
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> We talk about slavery, that ended with state actions. I'm not sure China cares, and accordingly the practice will continue. You're correct, but there's another angle to this than ending the practice: moral complicity. An individual in the antebellum south couldn't reasonably end the institution of slavery in the US, but he could have taken actions that affected the degree he was personally complicit. If he owned an…
The issue is arising from China potentially forcing Uighur people to find jobs 'on their own' lest they be held indefinitely in concentration camps. You can't audit that. You ask every worker and see if they say 'yes' or 'no' to the question "are you working here of your own free will" and see which ones say no with this threat looming over them.
It may even be easier than that. As far as I can tell, this "Lens Technology" company makes phone cover glass, and Apple already deals with Corning to make other glass components, and I'm sure they'd like the business. It looks like none of their Gorilla Glass factories are inside China.
As long as companies Apple are not legally responsible for their supply chain in front of developed countries’ courts nothing will change. In Switzerland a law that would have changed this was recently rejected. Hopefully another country makes the first step.
Cobalt is an essential part of lithium-ion batteries. 70% of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, much of it in forced conditions.
So I guess we have three options: go without lithium-ion batteries, enforce a minimum standard of labor conditions in the DRC by any means necessary, or just try not to think about it too much. Is it any wonder that we picked door number 3?
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> Or did I misread this entire thread? Yes. In fact most of the people you've responded to very explicitly said the exact opposite of what you've interpreted.
Where is that? Can you quote them? We seem to have read different threads apparently...
Sure thing. The most recent comment in this thread not made by one of us was by quicklime, and ended with this line:
> [The lack of open discourse about America's prison slavery problem] doesn't excuse China for the things they are doing wrong.
The one immediately prior to that was by mike_h and started with this:
> I doubt anyone in this thread is arguing that forced labor would be ok anywhere.
I'm not sure how you read either of those statements and extracted "the CCP gets carte blanche to imprison a million people because of their religion, and force them into labor camps".
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Then why aren’t they paid a fair wage? Keep moving the goal post, but these people are being exploited.
Yes, you can indeed continue to move the goal posts, but acknowledge we're far into the weeds and even further from what the article focused on - Religious Slave Labor Camps in China. Why aren't inmates paid a "fair" wage? Well, that's up for debate and I think I'd enjoy hearing pros and cons. Some cons I could think of are: * These are inmates, serving a sentence as punishment for a crime they were convicted of. * M…
You believe the penal experience is the same as "doing nothing"... not rehabilitating one's self... not reflecting... just a pointless exercise. Why not just slit their throats or gas them? They were convicted of a crime after all, right? "Nothing" isn't a punishment, is it? What's the point?
You're a monster who spreads disinformation, and after your profit McConnell repeals section 230, you'll find yourself convicted and incarcerated soon enough. Free living expenses though, right? You're welcome.
As long as companies Apple are not legally responsible for their supply chain in front of developed countries’ courts nothing will change. In Switzerland a law that would have changed this was recently rejected. Hopefully another country makes the first step.
I’d really be curious to see how far we could push this. Cobalt is an essential part of lithium-ion batteries. 70% of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, much of it in forced conditions. So I guess we have three options: go without lithium-ion batteries, enforce a minimum standard of labor conditions in the DRC by any means necessary, or just try not to think about it too much. Is it…
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The USA still allows prison slave labor, so good luck with that. Examples: [1] Whole Foods – This organic supermarket buys artisan cheeses and fishes from companies that employ inmates. McDonald’s – Certain McDonald store items such as cutlery and containers were made in prison. Prisoners also sew their employee uniforms, and they only make a few cents an hour from it. Target – Since the early 2000s, Target has relie…
I am surprised by today's lack of ethics discernment - there is big a difference. Prison labor is compensating for crimes committed against society and other people, while uyghur labor is direct discrimination against an entire minority without probable cause. If they happen to commit terrorism, then yes, those specific individuals' forced labor is justified as debt, but right now they are just labeled as "enemies of…
I have little faith in legal remedies to liberate slaves. Arming them seems the only long-term effective solution. Otherwise the man with the gun will order the slave back to work the second the man in the wig isn't looking. And the man in the wig will remain silent, to avoid revealing his impotence.
Slave labor is inefficient, so perhaps the best way is to topple inefficient slave societies through full-spectrum competition, from military to economic. This pressure incentivizes efficient human resource utilization.
One thing's for sure: Individual Westerner guilt over whether to buy the next iPhone will add zero value.
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I think you're being earnest so I'll dive into this thread for a few more minutes before I go back to work. Because I'm being earnest too: If the West wants to influence internal China policy, it needs either a clear moral high ground for Chinese citizens to refer to, or clear economic upper hand. It doesn't have the latter right now (maybe never will again), and as this thread demonstrates, it doesn't have the forme…
This is laojiao, not laogai, these people haven’t been convicted of any crimes and this is administrative punishment for unharmonious but not criminal behavior and thoughts. The west is held responsible for Chinese behavior by the Chinese themselves. Notice how China was criticizing the west for taking advantage of recycling contracts in China with terms that were too good to be true, and eventually were found to bas…