I got hired at a Bangladesh sweatshop. Meet my 9-year-old boss [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: I got hired at a Bangladesh sweatshop. Meet my 9-year-old boss [video]

#61

Post by noonespecial » Sat, Oct 12, 2013, 6:48 PM UTC

RodericDay wrote: post #24

L_Rahman wrote: post #16

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…

I'm not sure what solution you might be proposing but it sounds a little like using foreign power (economic or otherwise) to force the factories to close and send everyone back to subsistence farming at the edge of starvation back at their home village dirt-farms until which time in the indeterminate future we can come up with a better solution for them.

It seems like a common refrain in feel good politics. If not perfect, then none at all. It scales terrifyingly well from closing homeless shelters because they don't have approved handicap bathrooms all the way up to chocking off the economic output of entire countries.

Re: I got hired at a Bangladesh sweatshop. Meet my 9-year-old boss [video]

#62

Post by lostlogin » Sat, Oct 12, 2013, 6:48 PM UTC

lemmsjid wrote: post #60

tptacek wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be taking his point too literally. Another way to look at it is, if the owners of factories in Bangladesh were maximally generous and civic-minded, how much could they improve the lives of garment workers? Is the answer "not very much"?

Just taking the details from the original article, the answer is probably 'quite a bit', and probably without a massive economic impact: * Windows * Air conditioning * Chairs (!!) * Fewer hours and more breaks * Disability and health benefits That's a baseline of civilized-ness. In fact, the act of purchasing the labor to install those things would also stimulate the economy. The real answer to why the above don't ex…

I'd argue that heath care for all is a baseline requirement for governments, not businesses. If you run heath care as a business... things happen. However I do agree that in the absence of government action, your solutions are best.

Re: I got hired at a Bangladesh sweatshop. Meet my 9-year-old boss [video]

#63

Post by anotheraccount7 » Sat, Oct 12, 2013, 6:50 PM UTC

L_Rahman wrote: post #16

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…

Woudn't raising the minimum wage mean less factories being built in Bangladesh and there fore more women that need to work the fields and live the old/worse lifestyle?

I know that for instance in China wages have gone up, and now companies are more reluctant to build new factories there.

Re: I got hired at a Bangladesh sweatshop. Meet my 9-year-old boss [video]

#64

Post by notahacker » Sat, Oct 12, 2013, 7:01 PM UTC

thecodeore wrote: post #13

dbond wrote: post #11

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…

The thing about sweatshops is that they could make the same clothes, retailing in the West at the same prices, if they hired adults on a 45 hour weeks with genuinely optional overtime and didn't treat their staff abusively. There would actually be higher employment rather than lower employment in the local economy as a result. In many cases the only people that lose out would be middlemen that earn very well by developing world standards reallocating outsourcing contracts to cheaper factories offering worse conditions. Sure, the fact that economic globalization allows people in poorer countries to earn an income doing work for richer countries benefits them, and it's very difficult for factories and even local governments to unilaterally enforce better working conditions, but that doesn't mean that the people whose best option is working in the garment industry wouldn't on average be better off if retailers actually knew where their clothes were made and regulation was so pervasive internationally and effectively enforced that buyers didn't have the option of getting T-shirts for a cent less from the factory that employed actual slaves.

The evidence so far doesn't support outsourced garment manufacture as being a route to developed country status either.

Re: I got hired at a Bangladesh sweatshop. Meet my 9-year-old boss [video]

#65

Post by L_Rahman » Sat, Oct 12, 2013, 7:03 PM UTC

RodericDay wrote: post #24

L_Rahman wrote: post #16

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…

> 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.

I'm not defending this situation at all. It is unforgivable that factory owners sock away millions of dollars while literally paying their employees pennies. This is not okay. Unfortunately, this is what profit making entities do when they don't have regulations forcing them to do otherwise, hence my argument that any serious improvement in working conditions will require legislation and enforcement from the government.

As for being a "grown-ass white man getting paid to develop digital toys", well let's just say that my dad grew up in an impoverished fishing village in southern Bangladesh and somehow made it to America and raised me a solidly working class family in NY. I'm currently in school thanks to need based financial aid that covers my expenses.

So no, my perspective doesn't come from a background of privilege trying to justify oppression. Things are what they are and I don't think being angry about it solves anything.

Re: I got hired at a Bangladesh sweatshop. Meet my 9-year-old boss [video]

#66

Post by anigbrowl » Sat, Oct 12, 2013, 7:08 PM UTC

noonespecial wrote: post #61

RodericDay wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not sure what solution you might be proposing but it sounds a little like using foreign power (economic or otherwise) to force the factories to close and send everyone back to subsistence farming at the edge of starvation back at their home village dirt-farms until which time in the indeterminate future we can come up with a better solution for them. It seems like a common refrain in feel good politics. If not pe…

That's a pretty weak straw man argument.

Back in the real world, such activists usually would-be trade partners to provide childhood education and regulate working conditions as a condition of market access. As large, wealthy markets, territories like the US and EU have a great deal of leverage in such matters.

Re: I got hired at a Bangladesh sweatshop. Meet my 9-year-old boss [video]

#67

Post by runawaybottle » Sat, Oct 12, 2013, 7:12 PM UTC

L_Rahman wrote: post #16

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…

Good documentary about Bangladesh and the garment industry: http://vimeo.com/6393377

Re: I got hired at a Bangladesh sweatshop. Meet my 9-year-old boss [video]

#68

Post by smtddr » Sat, Oct 12, 2013, 7:12 PM UTC

thecodeore wrote: post #13

dbond wrote: post #11

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…

> America did not just magically start out as a wealthy nation,

[...]

> The idea that we can magically transform these 3rd world nation into 1st world nations is naive at best, The same path America took, is the same path these nations must take.

America isn't a good example. It stomped on so many people to get where it is today. And even right now America only continues to function because of the exploitation & corruption of other countries. Nobody can/should follow America's footsteps.

Re: I got hired at a Bangladesh sweatshop. Meet my 9-year-old boss [video]

#69

Post by lifeisstillgood » Sat, Oct 12, 2013, 7:16 PM UTC

buro9 wrote: post #15

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #10

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…

which may be why terrorism is a predominately educated middle class affair.

But accepting your argument, I cannot give in to nihilism. Take the children out of the factories, put them in school, build libraries, train teachers, and wait twenty years to see a vast difference.

If you are a military dictatorship that uses your twenty years to educate the country and drag it by the bootstraps into the global upwards pastures, you may retire with your ill gotten gains on a beach somewhere with our thanks. Get rich and change nothing I want you hunted down with dogs.

Re: I got hired at a Bangladesh sweatshop. Meet my 9-year-old boss [video]

#70

Post by ericd » Sat, Oct 12, 2013, 7:18 PM UTC

RodericDay wrote: post #56

RodericDay wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm going to reply to my own comment since the reply is brief and general: There's little wrong with Rahman's post in general. There's plenty wrong with the psychological mechanics that led it to quietly bubble to the top. Many people rightly see it as an "authentic" shield or cover for their own apathy. Hurl "slacktivism" my way, I'll call you a Randroid or something (I'm not feeling very inspired). Ultimately via…

No one is saying that this is the best of all possible worlds. Without proposing any solutions that work within the framework of reality, though, all you're doing is basking in your moral superiority.