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An open letter to the media, by Anonymous

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Re: An open letter to the media, by Anonymous

#71

Post by e12e »

skylan_q wrote: post #62
furyg3 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There must be ground rules for the game of capitalism. Market's are awesome at balancing things like price/quality/features. Most consumers can do that, and if they can't, well... caveat emptor. But if the quality is so bad that people die, or are maimed, poisoned, or otherwise injured, we have different rules. Consumers aren't good at this, they aren't experts, they don't have the right information. So they turn to…

These ethical factors are, of course, a trade-off with the others. Sweatshops and child labor are immoral, we will not tolerate that. If we don't tolerate those, then we don't tolerate giving them the best alternative possible. Asking for more would make it uneconomical, and thus, economically destructive.

> If we don't tolerate those, then we don't tolerate giving them the best alternative possible.

Well, if we're talking about giving away stuff, like freedom: How much could we help these people if we gave away, say 15% of the combined military budgets of the EU, Russia, China and the US?

Re: An open letter to the media, by Anonymous

#72

Post by e12e »

e12e wrote: post #70
ck2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of foxconn, this story sadly got buried today http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-07/an-iphone-te... But it is very much worth reading.

Thank you for (re?)posting this. Very interesting indeed (if, sadly, not very surprising).

Although, the article seems a little unclear on the deatails:

"Contracts for Dhong and the other Nepalese men set their base salaries for 12-hour shifts at about $178 per month."

(No matter how you do the math, with no more than two days off a week, that's less than a dollar an hour (edit: I mistakenly wrote day first))

"Another letter explained that the men were getting paid for the rest of January, plus a month. It was a total of about $600 each."

(Almost twice the salary listed above (obviously still peanuts))

edit/addition: "He earns $3 a day for a 12-hour shift inspecting the glue seams on shoes before they’re shipped. It’s about half of the minimum pay he’d been promised in Malaysia. He earns less than $90 per month ..."

Consistent with first statement of salary. Only the 2 months approximately equal to 600 dollars is off.

Re: An open letter to the media, by Anonymous

#73

Post by hawleyal »

raverbashing wrote: post #23
_bfhp wrote: post #9

The following quote is relevant here: “WOULD ANY SANE PERSON think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday, or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons, or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then…

"wah wah wah corporations are bad, growth is bad" Corporations and economic growth are directly responsible for the possibility that this discussion is happening: the internet, cheap and powerful computers, etc Or even better: https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/391943773963304960

And the mass consumption and pollution of the earth. No big deal.

Re: An open letter to the media, by Anonymous

#74

Post by furyg3 »

skylan_q wrote: post #62
furyg3 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There must be ground rules for the game of capitalism. Market's are awesome at balancing things like price/quality/features. Most consumers can do that, and if they can't, well... caveat emptor. But if the quality is so bad that people die, or are maimed, poisoned, or otherwise injured, we have different rules. Consumers aren't good at this, they aren't experts, they don't have the right information. So they turn to…

These ethical factors are, of course, a trade-off with the others. Sweatshops and child labor are immoral, we will not tolerate that. If we don't tolerate those, then we don't tolerate giving them the best alternative possible. Asking for more would make it uneconomical, and thus, economically destructive.

There are many, many more alternatives. Finding them starts with society saying "I am not ok with this, we must stop it, how can we do that?"

From there we get creative. We pay more to implement better working conditions, we provide aid to areas to send kids to school instead of to the factory, etc...

Re: An open letter to the media, by Anonymous

#75

Post by nisa »

skylan_q wrote: post #61
nisa wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's cynical and easy to write from a warm chair in a western country. The problem are the conditions that make sweat-shops the least worst alternative for a lot of people. It's power, money and corruption. There is no financial gain for western corporations or governments to really solve these problems. We profit from the political and economical instability in these countries and therefore from the suffering thes…

The problem are the conditions that make sweat-shops the least worst alternative for a lot of people. It's power, money and corruption. If the least worst alternative is taken away from them, then they have only the next least worst alternative. Asking to take this away is asking to take away the best thing they have. It's easy to write from a warm chair in a western country that people should have better job conditi…

I should have written that in a more neutral way. What I wanted to say is: Our corporations and our governments can and should be held partially responsible for these conditions. I'm not saying that it's only the fault of "evil corp" in the USA or any other western nation but saying it's their problem and sweat-shops are fine is in my opinion not the whole truth.

Re: An open letter to the media, by Anonymous

#76

Post by Zikes »

ch215 wrote: post #22

Defending the Press is almost universally unpopular. However, I think there's a important distinction to be made here. Namely that Martha Gill's piece is comment and not news. Hence it's filed under 'blogs'. Opinion is free to be responsible or irresponsible, informed or misinformed, constructive or destructive but, by definition, it cannot be true or false. I don't see anything wrong with someone expressing an hones…

“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.” ― Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Just because it's filed under "blogs" does not make it above refutation.

Re: An open letter to the media, by Anonymous

#77

Post by enriquepablo »

raverbashing wrote: post #46
dasil003 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But you can't have the internet without equipment, without servers built by guess who? Corporations. Take that away: no internet. Now you're the one strawmanning by painting it as corporations existing or not existing. It's not a binary issue. A corporation is just an organization of people with a specific legal status. There will always be organizations of people. However, I don't think we need to confer the right…

"However, I don't think we need to confer the rights of personhood to a corporation even though they don't have the same responsibilities or vulnerabilities. Similarly, it doesn't need to be the case that corporations should be able to extract value from the commons at the expense of the poor so that the privileged upper-middle class can have the cheapest possible gadgets." Good, I agree with that. But the issue with…

> But the issue with cheap gadgets goes both ways. Chinese factories allow people in India and other 3rd world countries to have a cheap (read: affordable) mobile phone.

And why people in 3rd world countries cannot afford expensive mobile phones? Because corporations have robbed them the value of their labour, or the environment where they live... You just seem to be confortable with the status quo, and making excuses.

Re: An open letter to the media, by Anonymous

#78

Post by VikingCoder »

raverbashing wrote: post #38
VikingCoder wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"wah wah wah monarchy is bad, empire is bad" The British government is directly responsible for the possibility that this discussion of "taxation without representation" is happening; colonization, trade, etc. Sometimes when you stand on the shoulders of giants, you realize that the old ways were lousy. America as it is today wouldn't exist without slavery and Native American genocide. I'm not comparing Capitalism to…

"but I am saying the form of argument you used is ridiculous, because I can use the same argument to defend awful things." Except you just used a straw man. Of course it's ridiculous then. "America as it is today wouldn't exist without slavery and Native American genocide." Of course not. But those things went away, and the USA is still there. But you can't have the internet without equipment, without servers built b…

Take corporations away?

Did you even bother to read a single word I wrote?

I'll repeat myself: Maybe the current system is TOO excessive, and should be reigned in, in some ways

People like you, who paint reformists like myself as Communists who are anti-capitalism really, really piss me off.

I think capitalism is great, but the edges are rough and could use some attention.

Re: An open letter to the media, by Anonymous

#79

Post by ewzimm »

raverbashing wrote: post #38
VikingCoder wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"wah wah wah monarchy is bad, empire is bad" The British government is directly responsible for the possibility that this discussion of "taxation without representation" is happening; colonization, trade, etc. Sometimes when you stand on the shoulders of giants, you realize that the old ways were lousy. America as it is today wouldn't exist without slavery and Native American genocide. I'm not comparing Capitalism to…

"but I am saying the form of argument you used is ridiculous, because I can use the same argument to defend awful things." Except you just used a straw man. Of course it's ridiculous then. "America as it is today wouldn't exist without slavery and Native American genocide." Of course not. But those things went away, and the USA is still there. But you can't have the internet without equipment, without servers built b…

Of course not. But those things went away, and the USA is still there.

Those things have absolutely not gone away. There are between 57,000 and 63,000 slaves in the USA right now according to the Walk Free foundation: http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/findings/#studies

This is a 91% decrease from the first census of 1790, in which there were 694,280 slaves. However, we are no longer a young isolated nation with limited imports. We now have access to the work of almost all the world's 29.8 million slaves. We have outsourced slavery. That's nearly a 4300% increase in available slave labor since the first census.

Native American genocide is ongoing. Communities are cut off from access to resources like water that is pumped directly through their land. They are forced into extreme poverty and unhealthy conditions that cause rampant diabetes and substance abuse. The Native American suicide rate is nearly 400% the national average, and we are cutting mental health services.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs is so corrupt they had their entire Internet access revoked. They were destroying generations of records of ownership in an ongoing campaign to rob native people of their wealth. See Cobell v. Norton.

Under existing treaties, Native Americans should own an enormous amount of the country. Instead, their land is leased or sold on their behalf to government and corporations for little to nothing at the expense of native people. Government funding for native services is continually cut, particularly health care.

According to Eloise Norton, the government owes Native Americans $176 billion. They did reach the largest settlement in US history for $3.4 billion, but that doesn't nearly make up for the ongoing native extermination campaign carried out by the US government.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2005/09/accounting-coup-...

Re: An open letter to the media, by Anonymous

#80

Post by Anonheadlines »

Great Work my brothers and sisters at Yan It is indeed an outrage how they spread liez about us to get the world against us. we will cont To expose justice and light on there corrupt world and Make action many more times Our fight is far from over they cant ignore us forever seeing many more have came to join us after Nov 5 and will cont to do so with each passing day --- @AnonHeadLines
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