61–70 of 232 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no guaranteed minimum income even in developed nations (not even with those huge debts). Most likely thing to happen is that those sweatshops will become automated and the population will have to drop to pre-industrialisation levels.
I've never been a big fan of the "it would be OK if they all just went away" line of thinking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that they're exploited. Cambodia's economy is just really, really inefficient. Food prices in Cambodia are really high (ep 4), higher even than in Berlin [0] by 21%, not to mention Eastern Europe (2+ times Warsaw's prices, 4x if you shop around). The sad thing is, the wages in sweatshops won't go up much. Sooner or later automation will advance to the point where even $3/day for sewing garments will be too h…
with regards to the numbeo figures: these are pretty offset by the high price of Milk, Bread, Cheese, Apples, Wine - all of which are non-native foods and would have to be imported to Cambodia (and which wouldn't be part of an average diet there). In fact, most of the foods there are non-native - potatoes? No-one's eating these either. Local food types (rice, noodles, veg, SE Asian fruits) are ridiculously cheap in C…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no guaranteed minimum income even in developed nations (not even with those huge debts). Most likely thing to happen is that those sweatshops will become automated and the population will have to drop to pre-industrialisation levels.
I've never been a big fan of the "it would be OK if they all just went away" line of thinking.
The BBC did their own version of this in 2008 called Blood Sweat and T Shirts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood,_Sweat_and_T-shirts The gimmick was that most of the kids were ludicrous pampered upper middle class fashion students with no sense of perspective, or at least the programme was edited to portray them as such. Much of the entertainment came from watching them subjected to backbreaking labor while their s…
Really, we all know life is not fair, but to go all way there to just cry and moan seems rude
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sweatshops as a necessary evil has been a hallmark of the ideology of capital ever since 19th century Britain. The 1844 book by Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England , basically a report on the sweatshops of the time, was a huge influence on Marx. From the preface: > Having, at the same time, ample opportunity to watch the middle-classes, your opponents, I soon came to the conclusion that you are righ…
The argument here is that the middle class acts in self-interest while feigning sympathy for the working poor. Maybe so, but the argument neither affirms nor denies the necessity or utility of sweatshops.
Something that bothers me is the fact that even though they have cried on the show and said that they were going to do something to help, if you search for them on the internet, its clear that they aren't doing anything about it! Even the girl who has a fashion blog, she is still writing about the trademarks that use this kind of abusive job to make their clothes...
Something that bothers me is the fact that even though they have cried on the show and said that they were going to do something to help, if you search for them on the internet, its clear that they aren't doing anything about it! Even the girl who has a fashion blog, she is still writing about the trademarks that use this kind of abusive job to make their clothes...
This is probably the normal animal/human reaction: to react only when something is hurting you right now. If you take the pain away, the motivation vapors. This is one of the design flaws of the human mind inherited from animals that causes procrastination and lack of willpower.
I'm reminded of the Simpsons episode where Homer believes he's going to die after eating the poisonous part of fugu. He changes his habits to embrace the remaining part of his life. After it's miraculously revealed that he'll survive, he professes to continue with the ideal of seizing life. This was an instructional scare to never take your life or those around you for granted. Yet, the final shot of the episode is him sitting on the couch watching TV like a drone.
So, I remember seeing this on Reddit a few weeks back. Some commenters mentioned that sweatshops are a necessary evil for developing nations. It's better to have a shitty job than to have the alternative of being jobless and resorting to theft/prostitution for sustenance. How true is such an argument?
So, I remember seeing this on Reddit a few weeks back. Some commenters mentioned that sweatshops are a necessary evil for developing nations. It's better to have a shitty job than to have the alternative of being jobless and resorting to theft/prostitution for sustenance. How true is such an argument?
There's a good arc in NPR's Planet Money that touches on this angle. Not necessarily the need for this labor, but how the work travels around developing nations and what it means. I forget the title, but the series is essentially how they design a T-Shirt for the show, then follow how it's made; from the cotton harvesting up to the final shipping container hitting the US. It should be easy to locate.
So, I remember seeing this on Reddit a few weeks back. Some commenters mentioned that sweatshops are a necessary evil for developing nations. It's better to have a shitty job than to have the alternative of being jobless and resorting to theft/prostitution for sustenance. How true is such an argument?
There's a good arc in NPR's Planet Money that touches on this angle. Not necessarily the need for this labor, but how the work travels around developing nations and what it means. I forget the title, but the series is essentially how they design a T-Shirt for the show, then follow how it's made; from the cotton harvesting up to the final shipping container hitting the US. It should be easy to locate.