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The $205.4B Gulag

gouldasks.substack.com

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Re: The $205.4B Gulag

#51

Post by camjw »

pryelluw wrote: post #40
rayiner wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing factory workers anywhere to grad students in California is remarkable. Grad students endure the conditions voluntarily. They would have tons of alternative options in the private sector if they chose to do that.

Ok then list just 5 options they have from the tons you claim exist. Go ahead, no hurry. Please make sure to provide factual options that can be corroborated.

Just to clarify, your position is that, without "corroborated" proof to the contrary, you doubt that there are 5 jobs that a graduate student can get with better pay and conditions than a worker in one of these factories?

Re: The $205.4B Gulag

#52

Post by tsimionescu »

BurningFrog wrote: post #34
andsoitis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who decides to make it in China? Who demands that companies be highly highly profitable?

Profitable companies outcompete less competitive ones. No one decided that, it's just a fact.

Actually, a company that accrues a lot of profit could always be outcompeted by one willing to make less profits. Profit is a cost to the company itself, it is only beneficial to shareholders.

On the other hand, it's true that companies with lower costs will tend to outcompete others, so moving to China is sort of dictated by the market.

Re: The $205.4B Gulag

#53

Post by andsoitis »

epistasis wrote: post #47
andsoitis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point to statistics of homelessness and food scarcity amongst university students in California? I would be surprised if it is more than a rounding error, but open to being shocked.

Figure 1 here from the state: https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4014 Homelessness is far higher than a rounding error, it's 5% of UC students, 10% of CSU students, and 20% of community college students. I live in a town with a UC campus, and come across packs of students living in their cars. They do everything they can to have minimal impact and hide from view. It makes me terribly sad, and shocked every time I…

I also found this article: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/18/california-univers...

Re: The $205.4B Gulag

#54

Post by Isamu »

It would be nice to see an article that bothered to explain the situation instead of an easy outrage piece.

Engagement with China has gone very, very bad with Xi Jinping’s regime. He is absolutely the root of the problem and is doubling down in a bid to become Mao 2.

Re: The $205.4B Gulag

#55

Post by jwie »

epistasis wrote: post #15

I'd like to remind people about the terrible working conditions in extremely wealthy places such as California too. Right now, University of California grad students and researchers, who produce a massive proportion of science on the West coast, are on strike. In most locations, it's nearly impossible to pay rent on their stipends. Grad students may be in training, but they are also the source of nearly all the novel…

It’s unfortunate you’re catching heat for this 1000% true comment.

The reality is that Apple systematically robs value, specifically the value delivered by foreign slave labor. This same process occurs in graduate schools across the United States. Universities rob graduate students of the value they deliver to higher education. It’s just done in a white-collar patina with lies instead of force.

The “oh they’re in training” is nonsense. They will not obtain even an adjunct position after a PhD. It would be one thing to have a true apprenticeship with a guaranteed job, but that isn’t how this scam works.

It is all grist for the mill.

Re: The $205.4B Gulag

#57

Post by lasky »

epistasis wrote: post #15

I'd like to remind people about the terrible working conditions in extremely wealthy places such as California too. Right now, University of California grad students and researchers, who produce a massive proportion of science on the West coast, are on strike. In most locations, it's nearly impossible to pay rent on their stipends. Grad students may be in training, but they are also the source of nearly all the novel…

“This is not an identical situation to the delayed bonuses discussed in the article.”

Not even close my friend. I would trust that instinct. People working 6-7 days a week, doing labor, in a factory, in shit conditions. Desperately clinging to each paycheck that comes along.

Vs academic bureaucrats in one of the most Labor sensitive institutions in the world, who can’t afford the Bay Area…? The most expensive region of the US to live in. Not. Even. Close. Just a reminder, employees at UC Berkeley are entitled to a pension after five years.

Police violence against UC Berkeley staff? Seems highly doubtful.

As far as not being able to afford rent in the Bay Area, hard to disagree, that is a real problem that impacts quality of lives in a very negative way. Hopefully, with all the brain power at Berkeley, people begin to more honestly and openly contemplate the actual source and solution to this deep problem in the Bay Area’s housing supply not quite matching demands of UC Berkeley staff. Asking bold questions for a campus like Berkeley like.. what policies and stubborn attachment to specific world views might be contributing to the constriction of such supply and demand conditions?

Re: The $205.4B Gulag

#58

Post by epistasis »

andsoitis wrote: post #53
epistasis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Figure 1 here from the state: https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4014 Homelessness is far higher than a rounding error, it's 5% of UC students, 10% of CSU students, and 20% of community college students. I live in a town with a UC campus, and come across packs of students living in their cars. They do everything they can to have minimal impact and hide from view. It makes me terribly sad, and shocked every time I…

I also found this article: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/18/california-univers...

Hey, that's where I live! Locally, the degrowth community from the 70s has allied with more conservative locals to stop all housing and maintain a firmly anti-university stance that prevents the building of dorms, of housing, and even results in ridiculous stances like trying to cut down on bus service since students use the buses a lot (and therefore cut down on traffic a lot).

I fight as hard as I can against the people causing all the suffering amongst those who aren't super wealthy, but their ability to understand other humans can not see beyond the comfort of their own yards. In contrast, they complain viciously about a building that they can see. A very strange sort of sight.

Re: The $205.4B Gulag

#59

Post by photochemsyn »

andsoitis wrote: post #41
photochemsyn wrote: post #37

I have a fairly unusual history relative to my general cohort in that between high school and college, I spent about two years working in electronics manufacturing and assembly factories (age 17 to 19) in California. I did work like injection-molding cases for devices, cutting cable and crimping connectors for computer cables, and finally, a bit of work in a laser-welding facility for precision components in Silicon…

> Now if you're wondering why there's an epidemic of homelessness and poverty in California, and it's become the state with the largest income gap in the USA, well, that's why. Because companies moved low skill labor elsewhere because it is cheaper there?

As you move up the manufacturing ladder, skill levels rise fairly quickly - and many college graduates would struggle with these jobs, without undergoing a fair amount of training. Laser welding is fairly high-skill - a mixed combination of laser types, gas feeds, high-voltage equipment, compatibility issues with different laser types and materials, etc. Likewise, auto assembly and steel production are fairly high-skill jobs.

Even the developer world has seen this trend - why pay US wages to developers if you can get the same labor at one-fifth the price in India?

The result of course is the minting of more American billionaires, the conversion of domestic property markets into gambling casinos and rental emporiums, and most troublingly, the loss of much technological know-how to other countries. Radio Shack used to provide electronics hobbyists, whose day jobs were simple electronics assembly, with products; that ended and they tried to become a retailer of Chinese-made products before going out of business.

It's basically the story of the greedy investor class who killed the goose that laid their golden eggs.

Re: The $205.4B Gulag

#60

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

Etheryte wrote: post #19
daniel-s wrote: post #11

If employees hate their job so much, can't they just quit?

More often than not, no. Many of these types of factories are intentionally designed to lock workers into a never ending loop, where they're tied in living paycheck to paycheck, often paying rent for a room that's owned by the same company that runs the factory, buying food from a store that's owned by the same company, etc. There are even cases where workers get paid in cash in a custom "currency" operated by the co…

Similar tactics were used in US mining towns in the 19th century:

https://youtu.be/E5VMZqgVzRo

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