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China and "our standard of living"

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Re: China and "our standard of living"

#91

Post by DanielBMarkham »

iamelgringo wrote: post #90
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

starving children, vs children working 16 hours a day in a tomato field? That's not a good choice to have to make. I'd be careful where you draw the line in your judgment. For instance, the next generation of people will start with a 6th grade education and a minimum standard of living. Their challenge is to move the goalposts further. That's just how the rest of the world did it, in fact, starting off with child and…

Are you trying to say that child labor is a good thing? The point I was trying to make, albeit not too successfully was that it's a difficult situation, and there aren't a whole lot of great options for people in those situations.

I'm trying to say that depending on where you draw the line, you can make all sorts of moral judgments that may not turn out to be true when drawing a line in a different place.

Take the invasion of France in WWII. The Allies killed over 14 thousand French civilians in bombing in preparation for the invasion. Would you say that's a good thing? It's obviously an awful thing, no matter how you slice it.

But looking at the longer picture, sometimes good things come out of bad things. This was the case for the invasion of France, and I believe this is also the case for child labor and sweatshops in third world countries.

That doesn't make bad things into good things, that just means that context is important.

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#92

Post by thwarted »

zimbabwe wrote: post #71
thwarted wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For definitions of luxury where luxury equals utilitarian? This seems counterintuitive, can you give a better example? (not that I disagree).

I guess what I was trying to say is that it depends on what you mean by luxury. I always viewed luxury as whatever took some annoyance off my mind, so having a phone/mp3 player/camera/clock/gaming combo that syncs quickly is a luxury to me. I also really like pretty things that act very responsive, which I consider a luxury since that's not strictly a part of usability. Keep in mind that I won't even wear a watch bec…

That's how I define luxury also. To solidify it a little, I'd say that a luxury is something that may or may not provide utility but that isn't a commodity. Once it becomes a commodity, it's not a luxury anymore. Consider the evolution of telephone features:

1 you can just dial a number, you keep a hardcopy list of phone numbers of common contacts 2 phones get the ability to show caller ID, just the number, not any associated name 3 as part of becoming portable, phones include a simple contact list showing names and numbers that you can select to dial 4 the contact list is used, along with caller ID functionality, to show the name of the caller 5 the contact list gets the ability to store address book style information also, which is not directly related to any other feature of the device (the phone). 6 the contact list is maintained portably outside the device, allowing integration with additional services 7 the phone gains the ability to communicate via IM 8 the contact list is used to store unified information for all contacts, IM and phone, and not have separate lists independently in each phone feature.

At any earlier stage, the later stages seem like luxuries until the majority of devices have that feature; then it's not a luxury anymore, it's a necessity. Who's going to buy a smart phone these days that doesn't have some kind of unified contact list? Not having it would be a major hindrance, but lack of hindrance, utility, doesn't make it a luxury or not.

There's a pop culture definition of luxury, as you point out, like dangly watches, that serve no purpose other than to show off. That's the most baroque kind of luxury. There's also a more pragmatic, utilitarian luxury that is not absolute but changes based on the market and availability. Few people would consider the utility of an indoor outhouse to be a luxury, despite the fact that its main purpose is also served by an outdoor outhouse.

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#93

Post by jodrellblank »

zimbabwe wrote: post #19
whughes wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you couldn't. You spend $10y on a computer or a cellphone made in Germany, it'll still be completely useless within a decade or two. Tech is different .

Tech is only different if you play by the game wherein anything that doesn't abuse a computer's stats is not worth toying with. I'm guilty of playing this game along with everybody else, but at some point we'll realize that we don't need all of what we've got, and we'll start being satisfied with it. Hell, I can see myself sticking with the laptop I've got right now for a decade.

at some point we'll realize that we don't need all of what we've got, and we'll start being satisfied with it.

That's called getting old.

The fun of chasing the new is half (or more) the point.

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#94

Post by cmars232 »

jfoutz wrote: post #31
cmars232 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheap in price, but also quality. The crap we buy today feels like garbage compared to 20 years ago. Maybe I'm getting old, but consumer products today seem watered down and made of the weakest thinnest plastic that the masses will put up with. This applies to consumer electronics, appliances, kid's toys, you name it.

Pop culture disagrees. 22 years ago, Dark Helmet: Out of order? FUCK! Even in the future, nothing works! I'd bet when you think of old stuff, you think of a singer sewing machine or a '57 chevy, stuff that withstood the test of time. well the world was full of crap then too, most of it broke and got thrown away. My toys are more than 20 years old. they are cheap plastic. they aren't even painted, just a few sucky sti…

I'm not saying things 10-20 years ago were great. I'm just saying the plastic feels thinner and flimsier lately.

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#95

Post by neilk »

potatolicious wrote: post #64
neilk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you saw a drowning person, would you ask them to be your slave forever in exchange for throwing them a life preserver? That's a voluntary exchange too, but you're still a dick for doing it. Yes, most of these jobs are better than the alternative, namely, starvation in the countryside where there are no jobs. In the worst cases, (not all) these jobs pay so little that the workers can't accumulate capital, can't sen…

Modern, first-world standards cannot be applied to the third world - I am a prime example of this. I owe my life to child labor and sweatshop labor, allow me to explain. My family is originally from Taiwan, and both of my folks grew up when Taiwan was still an inconsequential tropical island consisted mostly of fishing villages and a hodgepodge government-in-exile. Both of them are beneficiaries of the "abusive" prac…

I agree that, of all the radical philosophies, global capitalism is the one that is providing real change in the Third World. And personally, I am more flexible on concepts like child labor and safety standards. Subsistence farming is hazardous to your health too, and people ought to be able to make a choice on what's best for their future.

With one caveat -- as long as there are well-enforced laws that protect the rights of workers to organize or protest, and a strong local government that isn't powerless with respect to foreign companies, that can direct investment to make permanent upgrades in local conditions. Taiwan obviously got it right, somehow -- I don't know the history. Perhaps you can enlighten me, but maybe it's due to their democratic assembly and their strategic relationship with the West.

Other places in the world seem to be getting a worse deal -- often due to the deficits of the local government or culture, I'll admit. But globalization also seems to move a lot faster than it did, with less commitment to the host countries. If it takes literally just weeks to set up light manufacturing somewhere else that's just a little bit more desperate, how does a place like Cambodia hold onto the little gains they've made so far? I'm not an expert in that country either but I hear they've had serious problems with that.

Anyway, I have to bow to your superior understanding of the realities, but I just don't think that my microwave ovens or cans of cola had to be paid for with so much misery. It just doesn't seem like this is truly required.

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#96

Post by neilk »

biohacker42 wrote: post #55
neilk wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It kind of does, when you consider that we're forcing local workers to compete with people who are just desperate to get out of the same crappy apartment with 12 other relatives. Do I owe the local worker a living? Of course not. But we both pay taxes to the same government, and he is getting shafted due to China's MFN status, and I as a professional who can afford iPhones am getting an awesome deal.

Do you owe anything to the people who are just desperate to get out of the same crappy apartment with 12 other relatives? The local vs remote worker argument works when there's something inherently preferable about the local worker, like you and him are cousins or form the same tribe, or something like that. But nationalism aside, isn't everybody entitled to the same opportunities?

Uh, what? We are in the same tribe. That's what being a citizen of a country is supposed to be about. We're all paying into the same government, through sales or income taxes they tend to take a similar bite whatever the income level. Even if you regard local solidarity as mere sentimentalism, there are very pragmatic reasons for me to be concerned about the welfare of my neighbors -- crime, public health, and so on.

I live in San Francisco. When the big earthquake hits and someone has to pull me out of the rubble, they won't be outsourcing that job to the Philippines. It'll be some guy who lives near me, probably the kind of guy with a broad back and an unironic mustache, who has to make do with underemployment since all the local jobs seem to be for douchebags with iPhones.

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#97

Post by neilk »

biohacker42 wrote: post #55
neilk wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It kind of does, when you consider that we're forcing local workers to compete with people who are just desperate to get out of the same crappy apartment with 12 other relatives. Do I owe the local worker a living? Of course not. But we both pay taxes to the same government, and he is getting shafted due to China's MFN status, and I as a professional who can afford iPhones am getting an awesome deal.

Do you owe anything to the people who are just desperate to get out of the same crappy apartment with 12 other relatives? The local vs remote worker argument works when there's something inherently preferable about the local worker, like you and him are cousins or form the same tribe, or something like that. But nationalism aside, isn't everybody entitled to the same opportunities?

Also: it sounds like you are advocating a sort of internationalism. That would be fine with me, as long as we had similar rules for global labor as we do for global capital.

Free trade agreements are negotiated painstakingly to make the treatment of investments uniform across countries. In the process, they usually accord some special treatment to professional classes. I myself am a beneficiary of such rules -- as a Canadian professional, I can skip across the border to the USA with just a little bit of documentation.

We don't have anything equivalent for labor. This seems to me to be a great omission, if not an outright scam. Even after free trade between the US and Canada and Mexico, we don't allow workers to cross borders. Nor do we have uniform standards for the treatment of labor like we do for capital, either.

It seems to me to be deliberate -- they want the workers to be stuck with the local situation, and they want local governments to compete on lowering benefits and labor standards.

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