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China and "our standard of living"

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Re: China and "our standard of living"

#51

Post by neilk »

biohacker42 wrote: post #27
mistermann wrote: post #3

Wow, spot on! Likely not news to anyone here, but I really wonder how many people out there are smart enough to realize how amazingly cheap the stuff we buy is, and really think of where it comes from.

Well not quite spot on. It did mention that these people were willing to do what ever to get away from the hellish alternative they were born into. But if you blinked you missed it, you missed the most important point: People are doing this voluntarily. Rumors of forced labor are greatly exaggerated. Perhaps somewhere in Burma but in China and India and other places, people do this hard work because the alternative i…

If you saw a drowning person, would you ask them to be your slave forever in exchange for throwing them a life preserver? That's a voluntary exchange too, but you're still a dick for doing it.

Yes, most of these jobs are better than the alternative, namely, starvation in the countryside where there are no jobs. In the worst cases, (not all) these jobs pay so little that the workers can't accumulate capital, can't send their kids to school, etc. And due to the magic of subcontracting, the large Western employers have no long term investment in the country -- they'll pick up and leave when the next country over offers them a slightly better deal.

In Thailand I met a woman who was working for a private museum. She had figured out that her boss had basically made his fortune through selling slaves. Voluntary indentured servitude for several years, sold out of villages. And this isn't just some backwater, Thailand is where a lot of manufacturing is happening lately.

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#52

Post by thwarted »

zimbabwe wrote: post #34
DrJokepu wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I must agree with the parent. While the iphone is really great and stuff, you can bet that everything that's not absolutely necessary and even a bit more has been engineered out of it, in the name of cost-efficiency. Otherwise it would be very expensive and unsuitable for mass production. Because it is a product of mass production, the iphone is definitely not a unique, luxury item even though it's very wel…

This is an argument that has quite a bit of nuance to it. I'd argue that the iPhone is a luxury item for certain definitions of luxury, that in fact it is more luxurious than something like a diamond necklace if you use a utilitarian definition of luxury.

For definitions of luxury where luxury equals utilitarian? This seems counterintuitive, can you give a better example? (not that I disagree).

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#53

Post by domodomo »

mistermann wrote: post #3

Wow, spot on! Likely not news to anyone here, but I really wonder how many people out there are smart enough to realize how amazingly cheap the stuff we buy is, and really think of where it comes from.

I used to work in IT for a Taiwanese manufacturing company that sold to Walmart & Sams Club, with factories primarily in southern China (near Guangzhou).

Spent a fair amount of time in these factories. First thing is, no factory makes everything themselves, it's a huge network of factories and a buddy network of factory managers who supply varying levels of material to one another. That's part of the reason it's difficult to ascertain the true quality of life of workers associated with making a product, because down the line many factories go into making one finished product.

I can say from my own anecdotal experience labor conditions are mixed bag. The light industry factories seemed to have safer conditions, and my companies factories were pretty decent. One iron processing factory I saw down right scary, imagine vats of molten iron at ground level, and operators in bare feet.

One counter-intuitive thing I saw is that workers will often protest not when worked too hard, but when worked too lightly. Many factory workers WANT long hours so they can send more money back to relatives, or increase their personal savings. At least when I was there five years ago, it could be dangerous for a factory to be light on hours, as employees will quit and move to a factory where there are more hours to be paid. With the economic slowdown, this might have changed.

What I'm getting at is it's hard to generalize about labor conditions in China, so saying things like they are all "slave labor" isn't really useful. You have to look at the specific circumstances of that companies manufacturing chain, if you are able.

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#54

Post by biohacker42 »

neilk wrote: post #51
biohacker42 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well not quite spot on. It did mention that these people were willing to do what ever to get away from the hellish alternative they were born into. But if you blinked you missed it, you missed the most important point: People are doing this voluntarily. Rumors of forced labor are greatly exaggerated. Perhaps somewhere in Burma but in China and India and other places, people do this hard work because the alternative i…

If you saw a drowning person, would you ask them to be your slave forever in exchange for throwing them a life preserver? That's a voluntary exchange too, but you're still a dick for doing it. Yes, most of these jobs are better than the alternative, namely, starvation in the countryside where there are no jobs. In the worst cases, (not all) these jobs pay so little that the workers can't accumulate capital, can't sen…

If you saw a drowning person, would you ask them to be your slave forever in exchange for throwing them a life preserver?

How do you suggest we remedy this? The OECD gets together and forces a minimum wage on the developing world?

That might work, but I think the shortest, fastest and simplest way out hell is let their economies grow as fast as they can.

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#55

Post by biohacker42 »

neilk wrote: post #48
garply wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for making this point. This happens to be the position on the economic ladder where these people are. A few people are higher, most people are at a level equal or lower to this. In some ways I feel like the tone pieces like this take when discussing Chinese life is condescending. For some people this is just 'work.' Consider using this kind of pity to talk about American blue collar workers - does it seem a…

It kind of does, when you consider that we're forcing local workers to compete with people who are just desperate to get out of the same crappy apartment with 12 other relatives. Do I owe the local worker a living? Of course not. But we both pay taxes to the same government, and he is getting shafted due to China's MFN status, and I as a professional who can afford iPhones am getting an awesome deal.

Do you owe anything to the people who are just desperate to get out of the same crappy apartment with 12 other relatives?

The local vs remote worker argument works when there's something inherently preferable about the local worker, like you and him are cousins or form the same tribe, or something like that. But nationalism aside, isn't everybody entitled to the same opportunities?

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#56

Post by caffeine »

Ardit20 wrote: post #16
mrshoe wrote: post #12

This exposes the truism that there is always a standard of living continuum in society. In a different era there were Kings and Lords and Peasants. Now we have Europeans and Americans and Chinese and Indians. If globalization can succeed at improving the standard of living for those at the bottom of the continuum, it will have to be at the expense of those at the top. It's a zero sum game.

Unless of course technology can improve things. I doubt the Chinese have the technology we do.

The Chinese make the technology we do. But we make new stuff. So, the race is on. (That said - go to your local research university's Bioengineering department and tally up the various races. China's going to pwn us. Bad.)

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#57

Post by [deleted] »

biohacker42 wrote: post #54
neilk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you saw a drowning person, would you ask them to be your slave forever in exchange for throwing them a life preserver? That's a voluntary exchange too, but you're still a dick for doing it. Yes, most of these jobs are better than the alternative, namely, starvation in the countryside where there are no jobs. In the worst cases, (not all) these jobs pay so little that the workers can't accumulate capital, can't sen…

If you saw a drowning person, would you ask them to be your slave forever in exchange for throwing them a life preserver? How do you suggest we remedy this? The OECD gets together and forces a minimum wage on the developing world? That might work, but I think the shortest, fastest and simplest way out hell is let their economies grow as fast as they can.

[deleted]

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#58

Post by reedlaw »

neilk wrote: post #48
garply wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for making this point. This happens to be the position on the economic ladder where these people are. A few people are higher, most people are at a level equal or lower to this. In some ways I feel like the tone pieces like this take when discussing Chinese life is condescending. For some people this is just 'work.' Consider using this kind of pity to talk about American blue collar workers - does it seem a…

It kind of does, when you consider that we're forcing local workers to compete with people who are just desperate to get out of the same crappy apartment with 12 other relatives. Do I owe the local worker a living? Of course not. But we both pay taxes to the same government, and he is getting shafted due to China's MFN status, and I as a professional who can afford iPhones am getting an awesome deal.

Competition is driving down prices. Tariffs and minimum wage laws are just ways of redistributing wealth. If there were no tariffs or minimum wage laws, there would be more healthy competition which would raise the world's standard of living, not just local workers.

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#59

Post by omouse »

mrshoe wrote: post #50
zimbabwe wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it zero sum? I'd make you a bet that right now, more people are living happily than ever did in the past. The bar constantly rises.

It's zero sum at any given moment, but you are correct that the sum constantly increases. It's similar to the stock market in that way.

Look up the definition of Zero-Sum:

In game theory and economic theory, zero-sum describes a situation in which a participant's gain or loss is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the other participant(s). If the total gains of the participants are added up, and the total losses are subtracted, they will sum to zero.

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#60

Post by oconnor0 »

jfoutz wrote: post #32
jdbeast00 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that products like the iphone are crap? Sure, you can buy the cheapest thing possible from walmart and save money, and sure, it'll break faster than a a higher-quality product. Its called choice. Even the high quality stuff coming out of china, like an iphone, is made much more inexpensively than we could make them in the states.

It's worse than that. The cheapest thing possible from walmart is still better than average, and probably better than the best from 20 years ago. Plastic drinking cups now were anodized aluminum. 10 times the price, and make you crazy. Find a (new) t-shirt from 1989 and wash it 50 times. how much did that color change? how many holes are in it? Bet that walmart shirt is holding up fairly well. I'm not a walmart fan,…

Eh, I have yet to have good luck & longevity with WalMart clothes.

Edit: Not that I have examples from the 80s or 90s to compare with.

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