So this is a cold and callous sentiment, but perhaps the reason human life is valued so little over there is the same reason anything has value: supply and demand.
Supply and demand don't give value, they just set a price.
Why Stuff From China Is So Cheap
141–150 of 175 posts
Re: Why Stuff From China Is So Cheap
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with that is country borders. If China mandated safety then the factories just move to another country.
Yeah, and the solution is not to only mandate safety standards at your own factories, but to impose a stiff tariff on goods produced in countries without comparable standards (and without meaningful enforcement). Yeah, I know, "free trade," but it is not a fair market if some people are playing by a different set of rules, and we do not want to have a race to the bottom.
Agreed. Then some factory owners will build robots instead (as they're already doing due to wage rises in China) and wipe out any foreign competition along with jobs. It's for their own good, after all.
Re: Why Stuff From China Is So Cheap
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
The question is not whether workers mind being killed or injured. The question is which they mind more - lower pay, unemployment, or an increased risk of injury or death. There are many things we could do to reduce your first world risk of death - mandate that all cars are have a mechanically enforced speed limit of 20mph, for example. We choose not to. Why?
That argument presupposes that people are not facing a real risk of starving to death if they are unemployed. I am not sure that is something that can be assumed. When there is a gun pointed at your head, you do not have a real choice.
Are you saying that the capitalists saved (most of) their lives by giving them jobs?
Re: Why Stuff From China Is So Cheap
#144What I find somewhat disturbing is that americans have to see a video to start to realize that the fact that they want to get cheap stuff means that people have to work in terrible conditions in other parts of the world...
Because before we started buying cheap stuff from them, they lived in an hedonistic paradise?
Re: Why Stuff From China Is So Cheap
#145What I find somewhat disturbing is that americans have to see a video to start to realize that the fact that they want to get cheap stuff means that people have to work in terrible conditions in other parts of the world...
Because before we started buying cheap stuff from them, they lived in an hedonistic paradise?
What I meant is: everybody in the world knows that the fact that you have access to cheap goods means someone is paying for you, the question is why do people need to see a video to understand this, when the rest of the world can figure it out on their own?
Re: Why Stuff From China Is So Cheap
#146The headline is a lie. If you follow the link trail, you'll find that the workers were on a construction site for a municipal biogas facility. If this is the most disturbing thing Matheij has ever seen, then he clearly knows very little about workplace safety. Accidents of this sort happen on a daily basis in the developed world. Outsourcing is the key driver for workplace safety improvements in China. The worst work…
> The headline is a lie.
Because you say so?
> If you follow the link trail, you'll find that the workers were on a construction site for a municipal biogas facility.
Thanks for pointing out the link. Link?
Also, such a facility will be somewhere in the chain of production and it is a fairly good example of the way the typical workplace in China approaches safety: not.
There are a few efforts underway to counteract this, the best one is probably the one initiated by Nokia. But there is nothing in that video that you could not witness in the very large majority of places involved in industry in China, specifically:
- no oversight
- no safety gear
- no safety procedures
- inherently unsafe environment
- not even the basics in place to safely provide power
It's not just corners that are being cut and the western buyers are the ones who have the most power. They are definitely not 'working day and night to make sure that their contractors abide by the labour conditions set out in their contract', that's only a very select few of them.
Yes, outsourcing is a key driver in improving workplace safety in China, but it's a drop on a very hot plate so far, with the few companies that practice this doing it largely in response to some very bad PR.
It simply shouldn't be possible to gain an edge over a competitor by cutting corners (and a lot worse than that, structural abuse is the more correct term). As long as that is a possibility this stuff will continue.
So indeed, keep buying Chinese goods. But demand they're made using a supply chain that insists on a certain minimum level of workplace safety and environmental controls.
The fact that factories/facilities churning out stuff for the locals are even worse is not in any way an excuse to tolerate these conditions.
Re: Why Stuff From China Is So Cheap
#147Hacker News response: "They knew the risks they were taking. They were all expert electricians who fully knew that their pay of almost $10,000/year would compensate them for the risk they were taking. If we started regulating companies like this, pretty soon there wouldn't be any companies and the entire world economy would collapse, people eating people, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and you don't want that, do you? B…
Hacker News certainly seems to lean toward the Libertarian-right. Some of the comments I read regarding regulation (or abolishment of it) is frightening. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5647898
Hacker News certainly seems to lean toward the Libertarian-right.
That's funny, I feel like HN drifts further and further to the (American style) Left with every passing month. It's like a flood of refugees from /r/politics have stormed into the place and set up shop.
I sometimes feel like I'm the only Libertarian left standing. Probably many of the others have just been browbeaten so much lately that they are commenting less. shrug
Re: Why Stuff From China Is So Cheap
#148This post (like many others) completely ignores the fact that these people choose to work in this environment. Statistics show that factory / industrial workers in China are doing better than those who stay in rural jobs. Human development indicators in China have constantly risen since the 1980's [1] and the economy is booming [2]. These sweatshops are horrific to our standards, but to their standards, these are gre…
...and there we go, the proverbial, libertarian "choice".
No Libertarian claims that a world based on Libertarian principles would be perfect, or that nothing bad would ever happen. Pointing out a single instance of a pathology that could happen under Libertarianism is a faint criticism when every other system has it's pathologies as well. In fact, I have never heard anybody refer to China or Bangladesh or the like as bastions of Libertarianism, so it looks like it's the current system whose pathologies we're talking about.
Maybe what China and their ilk need is exactly a dash of good old fashion Libertarian thought.
Re: Why Stuff From China Is So Cheap
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, and the solution is not to only mandate safety standards at your own factories, but to impose a stiff tariff on goods produced in countries without comparable standards (and without meaningful enforcement). Yeah, I know, "free trade," but it is not a fair market if some people are playing by a different set of rules, and we do not want to have a race to the bottom.
Agreed. Then some factory owners will build robots instead (as they're already doing due to wage rises in China) and wipe out any foreign competition along with jobs. It's for their own good, after all.
It is for their own good. Robots are inevitable, better to push them out now and start addressing what they mean for society than pretend they're never coming.
Re: Why Stuff From China Is So Cheap
#150The headline is a lie. If you follow the link trail, you'll find that the workers were on a construction site for a municipal biogas facility. If this is the most disturbing thing Matheij has ever seen, then he clearly knows very little about workplace safety. Accidents of this sort happen on a daily basis in the developed world. Outsourcing is the key driver for workplace safety improvements in China. The worst work…
> The headline is a lie. Because you say so? > If you follow the link trail, you'll find that the workers were on a construction site for a municipal biogas facility. Thanks for pointing out the link. Link? Also, such a facility will be somewhere in the chain of production and it is a fairly good example of the way the typical workplace in China approaches safety: not. There are a few efforts underway to counteract t…
I know people that outsource to china and over the years the conditions have gotten much better because of the skills and IP trade. From talking to people in the industry your ideas seems feasible in theory but not in practice. I talked to people that have had their coffe businesses harmed because they were running "free trade" coffee since the 70s but now they are asked to pay for a license to allow them to put that on the label. It's one thing to talk about the impacts over here but I think for a solution we need to work with people in-country.
Australia is losing one of its car manufacturers as we speak because our cost of producing a car here is 4 times the cost in Asia. One of the highest costs is in labour and OH&S. There is a cost to OH&S.