Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cargill: The Worst Company in the World

stories.mightyearth.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 91 posts

Re: Cargill: The Worst Company in the World

#81

Post by rossdavidh »

blablabla123 wrote: post #62
rossdavidh wrote: post #41

So, this may sound awkward but I'm going to say it anyway: this is what globalization enables. The very fact of sourcing things as elemental as the food you eat, from the other side of the planet (whichever side has the laxest environmental, health, and safety rules), makes this easier. It is easier to live far away from the things your company does, and the people it does them to, if they're on a different continent…

>Moreover, by its very nature globalization enables regulatory arbitrage, so you can live in a country with relatively good EHS rules, and produce in a country with bad or no EHS rules. It could be solved by making transitive EHS rules. I.e. rules that require the source also applying these rules. This is still some kind of rarity but they do exist. For instance for years it has been very difficult/impossible to impo…

I don't think free trade between countries is so likely to foster peace. There are many examples, but "gunboat diplomacy" of the U.S. in Japan, and the Opium War in China, are two that come to mind. Even Russia's invasion of Ukraine was in large part because of the prospect of Ukraine joining the EU.

But, to your main point, most 3rd world countries don't have the resources to enforce or abide by 1st World EHS rules. That's understandable; we didn't have them in the 1st world when we were at those income levels, either. Plus, most of the trade between the 1st and 3rd worlds exists primarily in order to get lower costs, and most of those lower costs are due to the lack of EHS rules; if you eliminate the EHS arbitrage, you eliminate most of the trade. Which is fine by me, but just eliminating the trade directly is much more plausible than somehow forcing 3rd world countries to spend their money on 1st world levels of government regulatory apparatus.

Re: Cargill: The Worst Company in the World

#82

Post by josho »

ggm wrote: post #56
josho wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Globalization isn’t necessarily the problem. It’s the rules surrounding trade that perpetuates the problem you outlined. In some alternate universe we could have free trade laws that enshrined environmental, labor, and other protections into law to benefit all. Instead we have laws that are silent (or with what we almost had under TPP toothless) on protections for anything other than corporations.

Globalization isn’t necessarily the problem. It’s the rules surrounding trade that perpetuates the problem you outlined. Except I believe the lack of rules, and the specific anti-regulatory pressures of modern neoliberal economic rationalists are one of the underlying axioms of globalization as implemented: Its not a coincidence, it was designed into the DNA.

My point is simply that globalization doesn’t have to be a bad word.

Trade between Canada and the US left both countries better off. Largely because we have similar standard of living so neither country was being exploited.

If lawmakers did a better job putting in safeguards into trade laws then globalization wouldn’t be a synonym for exploitation.

I do agree with your point that under current political realities nothing is likely to change. I’m simply hopeful that if enough people become aware of this then policy will eventually shift—rather than respond with a knee jerk cancel all trade reaction that we see today.

Re: Cargill: The Worst Company in the World

#83

Post by chipotle_coyote »

alanbernstein wrote: post #20
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #14

If you're actually interested in reading this report as opposed to struggling through the web presentation, this is the link to the PDF: http://www.mightyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/Mighty-Earth-R... This piece did inadvertently introduce me to Shorthand, which tells me that "the world's most successful digital storytelling teams" are using it to "create simply beautiful stories using" Shorthand's "beautifully simpl…

I've never heard of shorthand before, but it seems fine to me, what's your issue with it? It works fine, and performantly, in desktop Firefox with a moderate amount of adblock/privacy extensions active. It's mostly just text that you can scroll through like any other article. It just has some semi-sticky images and a timeline widget which, to me, only add to the presentation. It's not like they're hijacking the scrol…

It seems fine to me, what's your issue with it?

It performs well enough on my connection, because it's pretty good about playing "load as you go." But it's loading a lot of stuff. By the time I scrolled to the end and read through the entire timeline, this "web page" had loaded over 52M of data.

Speaking of scrolling, I had to scroll both down and to the side at various points to accomodate that "clever" timeline thing. I don't think this sort of approach is particularly user-friendly. It's even worse on mobile.

Mobile! As noted, this site doesn't do well on mobile, and it's not doing badly on mobile in a "Well, all sites are bad on mobile, [shrug emoji]" fashion. It's very clear that the site is trying to demonstrate responsive design: it's not "broken because tiny screen," it's "unpleasant experience because poor design choices." Former Congressman Henry A. Waxman is a lovely fellow, but I don't actually need his image in a partially-transparent overlay taking up nearly half the screen of my iPhone XR when I'm reading his forward. The timeline display is even more annoying on the phone, as it starts with a non-modal "swipe to navigate, OK?" demand. If you get past that, scrolling gets janky, until you move past and get another fixed image which only takes up a third of your screen this time. So yay.

Actually, I'd argue scrolling is kind of janky even on the desktop, in no small part because it's doing all this fancy "here's a picture scrolling up with the text! now it's fixed! now it's scrolling!" Is it pretty? I guess. Would it be less pretty if the images were just, you know, images on the side of the text? Not really, and if you just let a web browser scroll a page without this kind of fluffery, it scrolls really well! Scrolling turns out to be a solved problem! Also, does the picture of Former Congressman Henry A. Waxman need to be that big on the desktop? No. No, Mr. Waxman, it does not.

Last but not least: you know how I mentioned the web page was over 52M of data? The PDF with the same data is only a hair over 36M. It doesn't have a cute scrolling timeline in it, but it does have footnotes. Which the Shorthand web version doesn't. The web version has footnote numbers, but they don't go anywhere -- no links, no popovers.. For a report that has 61 footnotes, this is actually a pretty big fail.

So that's my issue with Shorthand. Thanks for asking!

Re: Cargill: The Worst Company in the World

#84

Post by inferiorhuman »

Uhhrrr wrote: post #51
inferiorhuman wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally distracting aside: I've always felt I wish I could walk around a store with a special set of glasses on so I could apply my own personal voting filters Oh it's worse than that. Go to your favorite restaurant (or any restaurant really) and ask if they use kosher salt. If they answer in the affirmative, ask which brand they use. Dollars to donuts it's Diamond brand. Guess who owns Diamond?

Hah - I had to look it up (answer:Cargill). FWIW, it's good salt.

It is good salt, and if memory serves the production method is patented. Even if the production were easy to reproduce, aside from boutique stuff, I typically only see Morton's and Diamond in the stores out here. Boycotting Cargill completely is a monumental task.

Re: Cargill: The Worst Company in the World

#86

Post by the_pwner224 »

dual_basis wrote: post #79
goatinaboat wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's no regulation standing in their way, or the potential profits outweigh the consequences, of course they'll continue their malfeasance Well, yes, but that’s really “if voters and customers are happy” isn’t it? No corporations exist in a vacuum. It’s like Nike making shoes in sweatshops, people moan but buy them anyway. Voters could sort it easily by imposing punitive tariffs on any country that doesn’t comp…

The Nike sweatshop situation is actually a counterexample to your point. People complained and, at least according to what I read, not only did Nike change but they lobbied for legislation to force their competitors to change as well.

Doesn't seem like it.

> People complained and, at least according to what I read, not only did Nike change but they lobbied for legislation to force their competitors to change as well.

They realized their sales would drop unless they started spending more on manufacturing costs - which would decrease profit. Solution? Make all your competitors spend more too. That way we all make less profit, instead of me making less and everyone else taking over the market with their higher margins.

Re: Cargill: The Worst Company in the World

#87

Post by rhacker »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #84
Uhhrrr wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah - I had to look it up (answer:Cargill). FWIW, it's good salt.

It is good salt, and if memory serves the production method is patented. Even if the production were easy to reproduce, aside from boutique stuff, I typically only see Morton's and Diamond in the stores out here. Boycotting Cargill completely is a monumental task.

You know what is GOOD salt.. Costco himalayan pink salt. HOLY crap you will never go back after that. Unfortunately they dropped their tellicherry pepper. I'm still trying to find a replacement for it. But, I'm sure Cargill has its hands on Costco somehow too.

Re: Cargill: The Worst Company in the World

#88

Post by dual_basis »

the_pwner224 wrote: post #86
dual_basis wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Nike sweatshop situation is actually a counterexample to your point. People complained and, at least according to what I read, not only did Nike change but they lobbied for legislation to force their competitors to change as well.

Doesn't seem like it. > People complained and, at least according to what I read, not only did Nike change but they lobbied for legislation to force their competitors to change as well. They realized their sales would drop unless they started spending more on manufacturing costs - which would decrease profit. Solution? Make all your competitors spend more too. That way we all make less profit, instead of me making le…

I mean, that does seem like the optimal outcome, doesn't it? Not only is Nike not using sweatshop labor, but all their competitors are also not using sweatshop labor. Did you want Nike to stop just because they felt bad, but their competitors could continue to use sweatshop labor? As you point out, that would mean that they would be pushed out of the market and we'd just have a new major corporation using sweatshop labor to be mad at.

Re: Cargill: The Worst Company in the World

#89

Post by alanbernstein »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #83
alanbernstein wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard of shorthand before, but it seems fine to me, what's your issue with it? It works fine, and performantly, in desktop Firefox with a moderate amount of adblock/privacy extensions active. It's mostly just text that you can scroll through like any other article. It just has some semi-sticky images and a timeline widget which, to me, only add to the presentation. It's not like they're hijacking the scrol…

It seems fine to me, what's your issue with it? It performs well enough on my connection, because it's pretty good about playing "load as you go." But it's loading a lot of stuff. By the time I scrolled to the end and read through the entire timeline, this "web page" had loaded over 52M of data. Speaking of scrolling, I had to scroll both down and to the side at various points to accomodate that "clever" timeline thi…

Some good points. 52M is an absurd amount of data for this.

I have to disagree on the scrolling behavior. If you think of the goal as just trying to reproduce static printed content, then sure, scrolling is a "solved problem". But this presentation method is actually a meaningful improvement. Photos for an article are probably the least useful example, but imagine reading a technical article, with diagrams that you want to reference multiple times while scrolling through the text. Or a code tutorial, with code blocks on the right and extensive documentation on the left.

This behavior can probably be achieved with 10 lines of JS and CSS, almost certainly not the case here. But despite the ostensible problems with this implementation, the idea is good, and I'd be happy to see this more often. As long as it's performant, responsive, not full of tracking nonsense, etc.

Re: Cargill: The Worst Company in the World

#90

Post by the_pwner224 »

dual_basis wrote: post #88
the_pwner224 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't seem like it. > People complained and, at least according to what I read, not only did Nike change but they lobbied for legislation to force their competitors to change as well. They realized their sales would drop unless they started spending more on manufacturing costs - which would decrease profit. Solution? Make all your competitors spend more too. That way we all make less profit, instead of me making le…

I mean, that does seem like the optimal outcome, doesn't it? Not only is Nike not using sweatshop labor, but all their competitors are also not using sweatshop labor. Did you want Nike to stop just because they felt bad, but their competitors could continue to use sweatshop labor? As you point out, that would mean that they would be pushed out of the market and we'd just have a new major corporation using sweatshop l…

It is a pretty good outcome. Your comment made it seem like Nike pushed other manufacturers to get better labor practices out of a desire to do good (perhaps I am reading it wrong), whereas I think what happened was that a purely-profit-driven corporation acting in its best interest ended up doing something good.
Post reply on HN