741–750 of 820 posts
Traditionally slavery was an alternative to death for the conquered. I'm morbidly curious what the effects of all Western corporations banning slave labor would be. I doubt it would result in liberation. Would working conditions for the slaves worsen when they worked for local, lower-margin factories instead? I can't imagine them improving. I have little faith in legal remedies to liberate slaves. Arming them seems t…
Traditionally slavery was an alternative to death for the conquered. I'm morbidly curious what the effects of all Western corporations banning slave labor would be. I doubt it would result in liberation. Would working conditions for the slaves worsen when they worked for local, lower-margin factories instead? I can't imagine them improving. I have little faith in legal remedies to liberate slaves. Arming them seems t…
Isn’t that what’s already happening though? One might even say that this neoliberalist take is precisely what brought about the current situation. For producers in the market to be competitive, they must (over)optimize for profit. One of the best ways to do that is by reducing cost. One of the best ways to reduce cost is by employing cheaper labor (“efficient human resource utilization”, you said), and to do that, tech companies must outsource to manufacturers located in poor countries with weak state institutions where the transacting parties can get away with slavery.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's see. Canada currently has 338 MPs and over 80% (!) of those (278) belong to one of two majority parties. So yes, in theory Canada has a multi party system. In practice this multi party system is severely damaged by the effects of the FPTP voting system. There are mathematical reasons for FPTP to result in two party systems. [0] explains it pretty well. There don't have to be deeper underlying stuctural reasons…
Which is also true of Australia which has had instant runoff voting for nearly a century. I would suggest you look at the actual examples in the wild, and see if they have FPTP (or party proportional representation, which is essentially FPTP with all the same spoiler effects), and which don't, and see if they match your expectations to any degree better than random chance. You can prove just about anything in "math"…
No, not really. If you look at Australia's parliament, you'll see that even though Labor and Liberal are the biggest party, they 'only' make up 60% of the seats. That's not really good, but it's a far cry from Canada's 82% (or the US's 99%)
> I would suggest you look at the actual examples in the wild
That's a very good suggestion. I actually already did that and I can assure you not using FPTP results in much more and smaller parties.
Examples:
- Ireland (STV)
- Northern Ireland Assembly (STV)
- Papua New Guinea (IRV)
> The recent push for FPTP
Do you mean 'against FPTP'? Because I can assure you that I'm not pushing for FPTP at all.
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Two wrongs don’t make a right—hold every last one of them accountable, don’t excuse human rights abuses by anyone just because someone else has also committed abuses.
I didn't mean it as whataboutism. I meant it as we should look at it as a global issue. Very easy to throw stones at the .
It would be nice to be able to force companies to take responsibility for crimes happening in their supply chain. I think this is the only way to prevent willful blindness. Otherwise the profit motive of the whole will always override the morality of the individual.
We should also improve whistleblower protections so that instead of just relying on hearsay and vague accusations we can actually have solid proofs of wrongdoing. Unfortunately, especially in tyrannical dictatorships like China this is very unlikely, given that even a 'democracy' like the US is struggling with those.
That said; I don't that China as a whole is a developing nation anymore. There are big chunks of the country that might still be 'developing', but as a whole China is very much an industrial superpower.
As long as companies Apple are not legally responsible for their supply chain in front of developed countries’ courts nothing will change. In Switzerland a law that would have changed this was recently rejected. Hopefully another country makes the first step.
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Where's the cia when you need them to topple a dictator who oppresses with slave labor
You usually cannot "topple" a rogue regime, unlike a civil government. Dictators almost always have secret police, and domestic espionage agencies in every corner. This is why I do not subscribe to notion that Western spies are trying to stage revolutions in repressive regimes for a simple reason that they can not.
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That doesn’t really scale. Minerals are where they are in the earth’s crust, and at some point we need to go to DR Congo if we want enough cobalt to go around. Especially if we want stuff like electric cars. And that’s just one example of one mineral. There is the notion of the “resource curse” —countries rich in natural resources often stay poor because why develop a modern economy when you can just become a warlord…
Where's the cia when you need them to topple a dictator who oppresses with slave labor
I'm pretty sure they're stirring up trouble in xinjiang also. Pitting ethnic minorities in hard to defend mountainous border regions against central government is a standard divide and conquer empire tactic. The British Empire used it a lot in Asia, for instance.
Traditionally slavery was an alternative to death for the conquered. I'm morbidly curious what the effects of all Western corporations banning slave labor would be. I doubt it would result in liberation. Would working conditions for the slaves worsen when they worked for local, lower-margin factories instead? I can't imagine them improving. I have little faith in legal remedies to liberate slaves. Arming them seems t…
> perhaps the best way is to topple inefficient slave societies through full-spectrum competition, from military to economic. This pressure incentivizes efficient human resource utilization. Isn’t that what’s already happening though? One might even say that this neoliberalist take is precisely what brought about the current situation. For producers in the market to be competitive, they must (over)optimize for profit…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where's the cia when you need them to topple a dictator who oppresses with slave labor
You usually cannot "topple" a rogue regime, unlike a civil government. Dictators almost always have secret police, and domestic espionage agencies in every corner. This is why I do not subscribe to notion that Western spies are trying to stage revolutions in repressive regimes for a simple reason that they can not.
Most of Latin America had had a US backed coup at some point in its history. Many very successful. Pinochet, etc.
To the tune of Childish Gambinos "This is America": This is globalism This was always the point of offloading to other countries. Less regulations, lower wages, less powerful workers and workers unions, and higher profit margins. Ross Perot was right but nobody listened to him. Apple isnt unique, and this isnt the first time. Its systemic. So tired of the trope of accusing anybody critical of globalism of being an is…
You seem to want to kill flies with nuclear weapons. The vast majority of third world workers benefit from free trade and freely choose the jobs it produces. Protectionism sentences people far poorer than you to far worse economic lives. Taking away Apple assembly jobs doesn’t increase third world wages or worker protections, it makes them worse. Those workers are consigned to work back in brutal rural jobs that not…
Source? Especially for the second statement.
They don't benefit from free trade, free trade is the reason why they are exploited and their countries kept in poverty. And how can you say that they freely choose their jobs if the only alternative they have to ridicolous wages and low safety jobs is to starve?