21–30 of 186 posts
Will 3D printers be able to make nice clothes some day?
In the foreseeable future, you really would need a sewing machine as part of it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's extra hard because the poor have less information available to them. When Clojure was released, I saw it as my opportunity to become a real-life Lisp ninja, on a platform in wide deployment. How did Meem see it? Oh, that's right, she didn't. Because she was sewing shirts instead of reading "Beating the Averages."
It's not just information that inhibits the poor. The poor struggle. Daily. In that struggle a truth emerges: Struggle is all you've known, it's what you knew yesterday and it is what you will know tomorrow. For the poor struggle, hardship and despair dull the senses and the reality of the present stretches out before them. There is no future, there is just more of the present forever and ever. What I feel those with…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand the situation with providing jobs to people who may otherwise have to turn to much more terrible means of providing for themselves, but this is where there is exploitation of their situation by companies and as the end user of much of the products, us as westerners (although we may do little to change it). Factory workers are paid the minimum that the company can get away with, even though we could affor…
All companies, in every nation, pay the minimum they can get away with. In nations with no social structure, very little wealth, and no jobs the choice is not government hand out vs minimum wage, but a very low paying job or starvation. It would appear you would rather these children starve then to allow them to work for enough money to feed themsleves, possibly working up and out of poverty over generations. America…
I'm OK with children working in factories if that is the reality of their situation
As someone who's spent his life roughly equally split across Bangladesh and America, I thought I'd provide some perspective. The questions I ask myself about this situation are: 1. Are the lives of the people who work in these factories better or worse as a result of these jobs existing? The answer I end up arriving at repeatedly is that it is a resounding improvement in the lives of almost everyone. RMG factories em…
Yes, you can come up with all the explanation whatsoever you want to how this is a ~local maxima~ of happiness, but the fact is that we live on a much higher one with tons of disposable income and benefit from their work... so it s not a ~global maxima~ (not even close) so we should do better.
What can I say? I'm definitely more to the left than most people in this website but any quietly upvoted defense of child labor sounds like "the slaves had it better than in _x_" or "women were spared _y_" jobs to me when it comes to defending poor social policy. Grown-ass white men getting paid to develop digital toys justifying to themselves why the situation for 9 year old sweatshop workers is good enough. JFC.
edit: in fact, every single reply amongst the first 20 in some ways works to justify the completely bubbled-in mentality of the startup crowd. just running down the topic I see (caricaturized for effect) "social justice types don't understand how rough it is out there, this is good for her!", "ugh, this journalist is endangering the girl!", and "this really puts in perspective all those pesky cultural issues that women, gay people, and minorities keep complaining about".
what the hell is wrong with you all, seriously.
Some challenges:
- Verifying the children that you support through the Watsi-type program already work in this environment (or will soon have to) as a necessity to economically support their families.
- Ensuring that, once you donate money, the children are no longer working in this environment and instead are enrolled in school.
- Other potential pitfalls?
Gee, sure makes America's lame first world problems look, well, lame.
I recall watching people starve to death in Bangladesh when I was very young. Those memories haunt me till this day. It is a form of despair that this 4-day journalist knows nothing about. Aspirations go out the window when faced with hunger. The alternative view is that it's pretty freekin' awesome that this little girl has aspirations at all, beyond being fed (as was the case not very long ago in Bangladesh) Our "first world problems" aren't lame. We have more and more people falling into poverty and a society where social mobility is fast disappearing. Well worth paying attention to if we indeed are a beacon for the world to aspire to.
Will 3D printers be able to make nice clothes some day?
Probably. Then what will happen to these workers?
I don't claim to have any answers, but looking at western history you start to see some similarities.
As someone who's spent his life roughly equally split across Bangladesh and America, I thought I'd provide some perspective. The questions I ask myself about this situation are: 1. Are the lives of the people who work in these factories better or worse as a result of these jobs existing? The answer I end up arriving at repeatedly is that it is a resounding improvement in the lives of almost everyone. RMG factories em…
The way I answer people that say this is: It's not good enough. Yes, you can come up with all the explanation whatsoever you want to how this is a ~local maxima~ of happiness, but the fact is that we live on a much higher one with tons of disposable income and benefit from their work... so it s not a ~global maxima~ (not even close) so we should do better. What can I say? I'm definitely more to the left than most peo…
Fine, you pay for their food, clothes and schooling and we'll close the shops. What do you think of 80 year olds forced to work as Walmart greeters to make ends meet, right in the good ol' USA? The world has problems, sometimes you gotta pick the lesser evil since problems can't be solved by a HN comment or with a finger snap.
Poverty is a such a large and difficult problem. Someone's knee jerk reaction may be to "ZOMG, shut down the factory!" But the factory is providing a _relatively_ better environment than what may other alternatives may provide, such as prostitution.
Part of the problem is that these kids do not need to work; if you look at unemployment levels, it is not like Bangladesh is so poor that kids have to work. According to the CIA world Facebook (iOS spelling correction strikes again): "about 40% of the population is underemployed; many participants in the labor force work only a few hours a week, at low wages" (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...)
Poor grown-ups could do this work, but factories do not want to employ them because they work slower (possibly because they are somewhat disabled after years working as kids; at 80 hours a week without holidays, these kids will have worked more hours by the time they are 25 than a blue collar worker in the rich parts of the world does in his career) and because they are harder to control (and that would get harder once a generation sends its kids to school)
Also, it is not like Bangladesh is full of opportunities for educated people. Whatever you do, it remains a very densely populated river delta with few natural resources (they have oil and gas, but are net importers already).
As someone who's spent his life roughly equally split across Bangladesh and America, I thought I'd provide some perspective. The questions I ask myself about this situation are: 1. Are the lives of the people who work in these factories better or worse as a result of these jobs existing? The answer I end up arriving at repeatedly is that it is a resounding improvement in the lives of almost everyone. RMG factories em…
The way I answer people that say this is: It's not good enough. Yes, you can come up with all the explanation whatsoever you want to how this is a ~local maxima~ of happiness, but the fact is that we live on a much higher one with tons of disposable income and benefit from their work... so it s not a ~global maxima~ (not even close) so we should do better. What can I say? I'm definitely more to the left than most peo…
The comment you're replying is a detailed comment that also states that there should be more done to improve working conditions and wages. Your comment is a rant about how we're a bunch of "grown-ass white men" (thanks for assuming things about me) who bask in our privilege and wealth.
Meta: Is there a label for this kind of derailing, angry comment? I feel like it could be a variant of concern trolling, where the writer pretends to care about the issue at hand but actually tries to redirect the conversation towards ad hominem attacks.