Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans • Hacker News Board

Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#61

Post by eru » Sun, Jan 10, 2010, 6:49 PM UTC

ilkhd2 wrote: post #49

mtts wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think that is in any way comparable to a country like North Korea (essentially one huge prison camp) or countries in Africa such as Guinee or Congo where maybe a hundred or so people are fabulously wealthy and the rest of the population doesn't have nearly enough to eat, your sense of perspective is, I would say, seriously out of whack.

You know what, as I mentioned in other posts - inequality in USA is already as bad as in Africa and is rapidly approaching South American's numbers. Of course bottom line is not as bad as in Africa, but quality of life for poors is already totaly incomparable with Europe. So from the point of view of Africans or Brazilians - yes USA is not that bad. From Canadian/European point view - USA is rather troubled place.

Thanks for giving a bit more background and some nuances. If you were fleshing this out a some more (and give more sources), this could get interesting.

By the way, how do you account for the number of people willing to emigrate to the US, if it's such a bad place?

Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#62

Post by ilkhd2 » Sun, Jan 10, 2010, 10:00 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #61

ilkhd2 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what, as I mentioned in other posts - inequality in USA is already as bad as in Africa and is rapidly approaching South American's numbers. Of course bottom line is not as bad as in Africa, but quality of life for poors is already totaly incomparable with Europe. So from the point of view of Africans or Brazilians - yes USA is not that bad. From Canadian/European point view - USA is rather troubled place.

Thanks for giving a bit more background and some nuances. If you were fleshing this out a some more (and give more sources), this could get interesting. By the way, how do you account for the number of people willing to emigrate to the US, if it's such a bad place?

What kind of numbers you want? GINI (inequality index)?: ok http://mapscroll.blogspot.com/2009/04/is-us-becoming-third-w... That the poors are doing here worse than anywhere else in developed world: obvious from the GINI.

How do I account number of people willing to immigrate: 1. It is way,way easier to move to USA, than anywhere else in developed world. 2. Proximity of Latin American/Carribean countries, which are verrry bad. And you do not need an expensive ticket from Haiti for example. Just find whatever floating and have a free ride.

Now how you account for that: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/the-real-high-tech-... ?

Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#63

Post by m_eiman » Mon, Jan 11, 2010, 6:21 AM UTC

ilkhd2 wrote: post #50

m_eiman wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention that little thing called "war".

... with Middle East, that already cost 3*10^12 $??

I'd say that that war is a lot worse in Middle East than it is in the US. Not speaking from personal experience, but having a $5000 dollar bomb dropped on you and/or your relatives seems like it'd be worse than paying for it.

Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#64

Post by snan » Fri, Jan 15, 2010, 4:02 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #59

whughes wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't say you were just stupid, or that you were wasting your money. He said fair trade was evil . That means it's not so easy as saying "if you don't like it, don't buy it." Ignoring evil is not good, even if other people are doing the evil. "If you don't like murder, don't murder people" won't stop other people from committing murders. You're free to have your own opinion on whether fair trade actually is evil,…

With a bit of goodwill, you can read the ilkhd's comment as: If all participants are in there voluntarily, it can't be evil; and you are free to ignore it. I do not like the `fairtrade' stuff for the same reasons as w00pla, but since nobody's forced to participate (as opposed to agricultural subsidies and tariffs), I do not mind other people engaging in this. Fair trade is free trade where people in the developed wor…

Right, even hough that’s a bit of a simplification.

It’s not necessarily “paying more”, looking at the clarified conditions as services (even though of course there’s overhead, and possibility of corruption, in the labeling and certification process).

Imaging some item, let’s say jeans. You can get just jeans from company A, with an unknown profit margin or middlemen, or you can get jeans from company B together with information and conditions on production.

If these conditions were a service you were charged explicitly for, of course the company B jeans would be more expensive than the ones from company A. That’s not necessarily the case, however, since there might be unknown expenses for the consumer involved with company A (like, say, higher profit margins).

Or, for that matter, the jeans from company A could be every bit as “fairly” produced, just you don’t know about it. Nothing says that the labeled (“B” in the example) ones would be more expensive, disregarding the labelling/certification overhead.

Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#65

Post by rthj » Wed, Jan 20, 2010, 4:59 AM UTC

w00pla wrote: post #29

lsb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair Trade keeps the Triangle Trade alive and well. If you want to change things and help developing nations, make sure those developing nations have added most of the value. For example, you can buy fair trade chocolate bars, with beans bought from Ecuador at a "fair" price, whatever that means. But then the bars are made in Switzerland, or France, and the European country adds much of the value, and keeps much of t…

Fair trade is a first World scam. What fair trade does is mandate the price of certain commodities. This in effect negates the biggest advantage of developing countries (cheap labour) and allows the products to be manufactured in developed countries at a "fair" price. Fair trade, along with agricultural subsidization is some of the most evil things that developed countries do.

Ok, so a coop or factory in a "3rd world" country needs to pay around $5k to a European organization to get this certification for this Fairtrade thing. It seems to me this just continues the racist attitude North America and Europe have toward certain countries. I'm sure not every factory or coop in the "3rd world" takes advantage of its workers. Maybe the "3rd world" should come up with some type of similar program for U.S. farmers to prove they didn't exploit migrant farm workers. I won't even go into all the stupid problems that occur when you create an artificial floor price for a product.