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Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

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Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#81

Post by khuey »

vlovich123 wrote: post #56
aussieguy1234 wrote: post #40

There needs to be a law that, for any kind of Chinese seafood to be imported, foreign officials must be allowed to inspect the conditions. They already do it for food safety. When espionage laws make other monitoring impossible, there can be zero trust in these companies to do the right thing. Allow detailed, random inspections, or your imports are blocked and you make no money.

Just to be clear, as outlined in the article both US and UN require inspections and these plants are “certified”. Clearly the inspectors do jack all. On the other hand, I’m curious how these investigators get all these local managers to give them tours of these plants and be so open like that. Like if a stranger shows up at my work and asks for a tour (whether or not it’s media), I’m not just going to give them a tou…

> I’m curious how these investigators get all these local managers to give them tours of these plants and be so open like that.

Bribes?

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#82

Post by jojobas »

woodruffw wrote: post #34
jojobas wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yes, poor people are better off in absolute terms than 200 years ago Not than poor people 200 years ago, than kings 200 years ago. No king of early 1800s could have tropical fruits, antibiotics or an entire library of human knowledge at his fingertips. >Why is income inequality so bad? Does a burger taste any worse if you know someone's having caviar? Also, how would you compare today's wealth inequality with that o…

> Does a burger taste any worse if you know someone's having caviar? Human beings have a fine-tuned sense of inequality and injustice; it's one of the things that makes us self-legislating agents, rather than beasts scrabbling for the top. The burger absolutely does taste worse if you know that it isn't a fair representation of the value of your labor. To make this more salient: your argument would apply to people li…

Well we (and they) know a society can do better than North Korea and it's reasonable to strive for that, but it's not obvious you can do better than the West.

Sure some countries do better others, and one can say higher taxes and social services are the way, but that's still good old capitalism.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#83

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #68
syndicatedjelly wrote: post #42

Government officials carefully select workers to send to China, screening them for their political loyalties to reduce the risk of defections. To qualify, a person must generally have a job at a North Korean company and a positive evaluation from a local Party official. “These checks start at the neighborhood,” Breuker said. Candidates who have family in China, or a relative who has already defected, can be disqualif…

> I don't think I"m ever gonna complain about my job in America again. At the same time, 2024-02-25T18:06:34, 13of40@hn: >> as a hiring manager, I'm not going to waste my time with a candidate whose resume shows them hopping companies every year or two. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39503133

13of40 is one evil fellow. He really is.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#84

Post by jojobas »

hx8 wrote: post #46
api wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiply 30000 a year (a lower end US wage) by the number of people living in what the UN defines as poverty. That’s about two billion. You get 60 trillion dollars a year. That’s close to world GDP. If you gave that out and those two billion people tried to spend it, you’d just get hyperinflation because there isn’t enough supply to match that demand. We have a lot of abundance but not that much. Still fewer people a…

Living on 30kUSD/yr is a lot different in London than it is in Buenos Aires. To set a universal safety net ensuring everyone had adequate food, shelter, education, medical care, transportation etc would be a lot cheaper than 60tUSD/yr.

First, this means, as compared to today, that the results of some people's labor, and a lot of that, are sent to these undeveloped countries, rather than letting them sell it at a price of their choice. Why would they agree to that? Or buying that with tax money, which nobody would agree to either.

Second, as the last few decades have shown, just sending food, medicine and other supplies to these regions just makes more miserable people.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#85

Post by [deleted] »

nimbius wrote: post #77

casual reminder for US readers: this is all pretty common fare in US prisons as well. the 13th amendment to the US constitution does not cover prisoners. As such, most are forced to work, given a token salary to keep up appearances, and punished with solitary confinement if they do not comply. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/05/31/how-the-newest... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_rape_in_the_United_Stat.…

[deleted]

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#86

Post by jojobas »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #73
gsk22 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, poor people are better off in absolute terms than 200 years ago. No one is denying this. The question is more that, given how prosperous we are, and how much capital we have at our disposal, why do we still have so many poor people? Why is income inequality so bad?

Spot on. Saying today's poor are better off than before is a distraction from the questions we should be asking: 1) Why are there so many poor? 2) Why are their ranks increasing? To say something is better than before is not the same as saying it is as good as it could be. And yet no one is trumpeting the latter.

> Why are their ranks increasing?

They're not. Both absolute number and percentage in both "extreme poverty" and just "poverty" have been steadily decreasing since the 70s.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#87

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

aussieguy1234 wrote: post #40

There needs to be a law that, for any kind of Chinese seafood to be imported, foreign officials must be allowed to inspect the conditions. They already do it for food safety. When espionage laws make other monitoring impossible, there can be zero trust in these companies to do the right thing. Allow detailed, random inspections, or your imports are blocked and you make no money.

You dont need a new law. Just work with what you have.

1 raise tariffs on chinese goods.

2 undo massive regulatory red tape on all american industry.

3 enjoy fair trade transparent production of US sourced goods

Thw differential cost between still cheaper chinese goods with heavy tariffs and us good suject to heavy tax rate is more than covered by 3PL, shipping costs and supply chain delays.

You dont need to make productive costs similar all you need is to make producing in US marginally more competitive.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#88

Post by jojobas »

gsk22 wrote: post #76
nemo44x wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poverty is the default state. We shouldn’t ask why we have poor people but rather how can more wealth be generated to have fewer poor people. Our system has redefined what it means to be poor. So much that we’ve forgotten that abject poverty is the default state. We dont need less capitalism but rather more and faster.

There's plenty of wealth. The issue is the concentration of wealth at the top. Since the current system is deeply unfair, I'm not sure why adding additional wealth to the system would make it any more fair. The majority of every extra dollar goes to the ultra rich.

The possibility to attain wealth and pass it on to your offspring has been driven the humanity since before Homo Sapiens.

Removing it brings about the outright terror seen every time it gets removed. Change my mind.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#89

Post by throwaway290 »

khuey wrote: post #81
vlovich123 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear, as outlined in the article both US and UN require inspections and these plants are “certified”. Clearly the inspectors do jack all. On the other hand, I’m curious how these investigators get all these local managers to give them tours of these plants and be so open like that. Like if a stranger shows up at my work and asks for a tour (whether or not it’s media), I’m not just going to give them a tou…

> I’m curious how these investigators get all these local managers to give them tours of these plants and be so open like that. Bribes?

Not necessarily, you just pretend to be a buyer.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#90

Post by throwaway290 »

hx8 wrote: post #41

> To trace the importation of seafood from factories that appear to be using North Korean labor, my team reviewed trade data, shipping contracts, and the codes that are stamped on seafood packages to monitor food safety. We found that, since 2017, ten of these plants have together shipped more than a hundred and twenty thousand tons of seafood to more than seventy American importers, which supplied grocery stores inc…

> How can something like this be allowed into The United States. Are trade sanctions actually bureaucratic yellow tape to get around with middleman shell companies?

Not just US. Did you know that as soon as Russian sanctions began with the latest war escalation, German exports of chips and machinery to Kyrgyzstan rose 900%?

(I'd be the first to say this sounds like a conspiracy but by now even Reuters reported on it)

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