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The $205.4B Gulag

gouldasks.substack.com

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Re: The $205.4B Gulag

#61

Post by googlryas »

epistasis wrote: post #33
googlryas wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of standards are we talking? Can't afford 25th percentile studio apartment in the region? Can't rent and walk to work?

They go without food, and double up and triple up in rooms that they rent. And though homelessness is more prevalent among undergrad students, it also happens to a lot of grad student workers too.

But I'm curious if that is a self imposed condition because they simply can't rent exactly where they want to.

As an example, there was a googler famously living out of a moving truck, because he wanted a short commute and couldn't live right next to the campus in MTV. That was his choice, I don't think anyone would argue google doesn't pay people enough to afford rent.

Re: The $205.4B Gulag

#62

Post by Isamu »

gameshot911 wrote: post #46

I absolutely believe we should strive to improve the lives of all living beings in the world. But purely to provide an alternative perspective and spark some lively conversation, I want to explore a different point of view: No one is forcing these workers in China to take these jobs. The workers willingly choose to take them because they are an improvement over their status quo. The jobs pay more, and offer better be…

>But they can always quit

You’d think, right? But part of the unrest leading to this point were two or three waves of breakouts of employees escaping lockdowns by jumping the fences and pushing past roadblocks set up by local authorities.

Then they started pressuring locals to work there.

Re: The $205.4B Gulag

#63

Post by xyzzyz »

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.

My friend just got a job as a delivery truck driver here in WA. Works 4 days a week, from 4 AM to 2 PM, and makes north of $100k. He tells me that the trucking companies are hiring like crazy. Do you think this is beyond the abilities of grad students?

Re: The $205.4B Gulag

#64

Post by epistasis »

jwie wrote: post #55
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 tra…

Is this heat? The opposition seems very minor, IMHO! After years of fighting for more housing in California my skin has thickened. If I'm not slandered with five different slurs and and accused of at least four different blatant lies delivered with utmost confidence, then it's a friendly conversation IMHO.

Re: The $205.4B Gulag

#65

Post by riskable »

gameshot911 wrote: post #46

I absolutely believe we should strive to improve the lives of all living beings in the world. But purely to provide an alternative perspective and spark some lively conversation, I want to explore a different point of view: No one is forcing these workers in China to take these jobs. The workers willingly choose to take them because they are an improvement over their status quo. The jobs pay more, and offer better be…

It seems to me that this is a straightforward monopsony problem: The workers are already at what could be the best job they can get and yet the conditions are still terrible.

They can get a job somewhere else but it won't be as good. Better to protest/strike at their current job than go somewhere else. Especially when you consider that there's no reason why their current employer can't pay more and improve conditions other than greed.

If there was more realistic competition in the area for workers then the pay and conditions would never have gotten to this point.

Re: The $205.4B Gulag

#66

Post by prewett »

keewee7 wrote: post #28
daniel-s wrote: post #11

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

Many of them have been locked into the factories because of "Corona restrictions" which is just a bad excuse to exploit them.

They aren't being exploited, at least not in the normal way. The Chinese government insists on a zero Covid policy, but they also want to keep the economy running. So you can keep your business running if no one leaves. The alternatives are:

- keep working and earning money, which is why you migrated to the city in the first place. A lot of these migrant workers are bunking it with 4 - 8 other people in one anyway, so it's not like leaving work is some comfy place. But it's more profitable than subsistence farming.

- be locked into your apartment and get no money at all (but still have to pay rent). For the migrant workers who are the manufacturing labor force, that defeats the whole purpose of being in the city in the first place. Besides, they aren't living in comfy apartments.

- the government stop the zero Covid policy so that people can be normal. That's an option anyone but Xi Jinping can take, though.

I've seen some rural villages in Sichuan, and it is definitely subsistence farming. There is not really a feasible way to better yourself besides move elsewhere, so a lot of the parents go work in the city to get a pool of money to improve the lot of their family. Unfortunately, "move elsewhere" is not exactly feasible, either, because of the hukou system, which Mao created to prevent people from moving.

So I'd call it oppression, not exploitation. And it's not the factory owners who are oppressing them, so much as the government. The factory owners are actually providing a means of bettering themselves. (The factory owners might also be exploiting them, but the situation referred to is not an example of that.)

Re: The $205.4B Gulag

#67

Post by lxe »

gameshot911 wrote: post #46

I absolutely believe we should strive to improve the lives of all living beings in the world. But purely to provide an alternative perspective and spark some lively conversation, I want to explore a different point of view: No one is forcing these workers in China to take these jobs. The workers willingly choose to take them because they are an improvement over their status quo. The jobs pay more, and offer better be…

This is a first and the simplest layer of the argument. If "just quitting" was such a great option, what's the point of the entire labor rights movement?

Re: The $205.4B Gulag

#68

Post by xyzzyz »

epistasis wrote: post #49
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.

Perhaps grad student workers should just struggle in silence, due to the difference in their circumstances with other workers. Or perhaps all workers should band together in solidarity due to the commonality of their circumstances.

No, they should just quit if they don’t like it. The reason they don’t is that they are getting extra compensation in the form of status and credential they are working towards, or legal immigration status for many foreign students. It is silly to ignore these and focus exclusively on financial compensation.

As a thought experiment: imagine that these grad students were offered a deal, where their pay is doubled, their job responsibilities are unchanged, but they are removed from the students roll, no longer can qualify for PhD degree (though they can still and in fact are expected to publish just as much as before), and their job title is now “lab technician” instead of “graduate students”. How many of them do you think would have taken the deal? My belief is that basically none of them would consider double the pay to be worth it.

Re: The $205.4B Gulag

#69

Post by epistasis »

lasky wrote: post #57
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…

> Not even close my friend. I would trust that instinct.

Not sure what instinct you are referring to here. And just a reminder that when there's a strike, the people who go out to support are those with the least pay, or those who are already in unions. Trying to split grad students off from the rest of the labor force is not something that I am trying to do, if that's what you are implying.

> Just a reminder, employees at UC Berkeley are entitled to a pension after five years.

This is false, grad students never earn a pension. Grad student researchers are who I'm talking about, the people who are currently on strike.

Even still, what good is a pension if you can't pay rent today?

I bring up grad student workers both because they are currently striking, but also because HN readers are probably more familiar with them, and can commiserate a bit more. It's not work that is as hard on the body as farm work, but desperately needing each paycheck in order to get enough food to eat, in order to pay rent and not end up homeless, living in terrible filthy conditions such as homes with mold, or in in insulated garages, or in sheds behind a primary house, with shared use of the kitchen and bathroom... those sorts of poor living conditions, barely able to be paid for are common.

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