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

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

#121

Post by wildgift »

L_Rahman wrote: post #65
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…

> 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 soc…

I wouldn't be surprised if the regulations exist but aren't enforced. What these workers need is power to enforce the laws... and in the absence of adequate laws, to marshal enough popular force to create agreements that are better than what laws might exist.

As first-worlders, it's our moral duty to support people who work to help create that power for the factory workers.

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

#122

Post by next89 »

tptacek wrote: post #117
Retric wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#1 Quitting does not mean you never look for another job or quit on the first day etc. It means when you perceive working for said factory is not worth it you do something else. #2 Having a large labor supply suggests the job is competitive. However, even if that's the case having people constantly quit increases training costs. The point of all of this is industrialization tends to follow a path where people move fr…

You are begging the question. The reason factory workers in poor rural countries put up with no windows, ventilation, or air conditioning is that the alternative is subsistence farming. Suggesting that they quit in protest is almost cruel. China has absolutely not moved past the first rung of this ladder. The majority of the Chinese population lives in abject rural poverty.

It's actually about a 50/50 split between rural and urban [0]. This means that the Chinese urban population nowadays is 150% of the total Chinese population in 1950[1]. So now that the facts are on the table, what is your point?

[0] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-17/china-urban-populat...

[1]http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=chinese+population

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

#123

Post by chrischen »

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…

1. Are the lives of the people who work in these factories better or worse as a result of these jobs existing?

Are the benefits short-term or long-term? Foreign demand for the products and short-term uplifting in quality of life is artificial, and could in fact serve to hurt the development of the country in the long-term. For example, high availability of low-paying jobs could distract the country from focusing on education. People might start optimizing for the current situation, by preparing kids to work in the factory as young as possible, instead of realizing that education and investment in human capital is the only way to long-term lift oneself out of poverty.

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

#124

Post by CamperBob2 »

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…

I'm just a young cloudy-headed incipient leftist, what do I know?

Not as much as you would if you wrote a bit less and read a bit more.

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

#125

Post by nandemo »

Natsu wrote: post #57
beering wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is just your angry knee-jerk reaction so you can feel good about taking the moral high-ground, and you're scrambling to find the negative in every comment. 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 ba…

Have you ever worked in a factory? I used to. They squeeze you as hard as they can, constantly. Most of the people have no leverage to push back. While having money is better than having none, that doesn't mean everything is ok and you can just ignore the way the workers get abused. In the US, you can push back at things like unsafe conditions with threats of OSHA. I doubt there's any such thing in Bangladesh, but it…

Well, the original comment by L_Rahman is saying basically that. Except that it's phrased more like "while not everything is ok and you cannot just ignore the way the workers get abused, you also have to to consider that having money is better than having none".

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

#127

Post by amirkdv »

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 would add a minor footnote, namely the only part of the story that can be concievably considered morally relevant to us: what can be done here? And by "here" I mean the countries to whose jursidiction these multinational giants belong.

Just take the recent Supreme Court ruling [1] that made it even harder than it already was to sue corporations for human right abuses overseas. The ruling is already being used as precedent [2] to dismiss overseas abuse charges.

[1] "Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co." http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/10-1491_l6gn.pdf

[2] "Al Shimari v. CACI et al." http://ccrjustice.org/ourcases/current-cases/al-shimari-v-ca...

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

#128

Post by lemmsjid »

hepek wrote: post #80
lemmsjid wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're ignoring the fact of globalization. Corporations and their consumers are getting more and more sophisticated at targeting and exploiting the countries with the worst labor laws. Multi national corporations are getting more sophisticated at evading scenarios where particular host countries (i.e. post-industrial nations) attempt to curb their exploitation. This is a real and scary problem. It is not without prec…

I'm getting this feeling that globalization works for everybody but the working man. If borders were open to labor migration as they are to capital/corporations I bet the situation would be much better. Borders nowadays exist only for the lowest of classes. In a globalized economy borders seem like a mechanism of opression. Just my 2c.

Agreed. It reminds me of one of the lessons of capitalism--how Henry Ford increased the wages of his workers so that they could buy his cars, thus benefiting them and himself. He did so because he didn't have a sufficiently large body of consumers for his goods. This is seen as an example of how capitalism is ultimately motivated to uplift all people to consumer status.

The problem is when the chain of supply and demand grows longer and longer (i.e. covers more distance in terms of culture, national borders, multinational markets, etc), as it does today. In the modern era, what if Henry Ford's factory was in a third world country? There would be no shortage of first world consumers of Ford's products, so in that scenario there is no capitalist incentive to raise the workers' wages. Especially since the first world consumers are buying the products for the very reason that Ford is paying wages impossibly below first world pay scales.

This scenario is also not without precedent, for what it is is the isolation and exploitation of one population in favor of another population, which is a colonialist scenario (as opposed to a Marxist scenario where classes are stratified in a single society). In such a scenario, nothing capitalistically motivated will come to the aid of the exploited population until a very long chain of supply and demand has been unwound.

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

#129

Post by javajosh »

jdotjdot wrote: post #103
javajosh wrote: post #96

I've emailed the author asking how I can pay Meem to go to school. I think I can outbid the sweatshop. I'll let you know how it turns out.

I can't decide how I feel about this. On the one hand, I love the initiative you're taking here and the drive you have. Reading the article, my immediate thought was "that's terrible"--whereas yours was "What can I personally do about this right now?" On the other hand, I remain unconvinced that directing resources simply to the people and charities that come my way through the media is the best way to distribute the…

I probably would have felt the same way as you even a year ago. But then it started to feel like I was always waiting to be "effective" and never actually doing anything. If every human on this planet who could just adopted one other random person on this planet to look out for, wouldn't the world be a much better place?

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

#130

Post by allochthon »

noonespecial wrote: post #72
anigbrowl wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On the surface I agree completely. Right down to the level of when I'm standing in the WalMart thinking about whether to buy that fair-trade coffee or not. In practice, that solution doesn't work so well. Usually the goods wind up simply taking a longer boat ride through a country with looser standards before winding up in the US/EU. The fundamental problem is Bangladeshi. It requires a Bangladeshi solution. High-min…

I agree. Change has to be organic. You can't simply put in place some ideal thought up in the Bay area in Bangladesh overnight without there being major disruption and unintended consequences. Bangladeshis have to work through the situation, with outside parties providing assistance when it is requested.
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