[foobar2020]

I really don't understand this problem. Why does everybody think people in Asia are forced to do this kind of work? These people would be incredibly poor if not for western companies. Actually most of them would die being children as a result of their poverty: malnutrition, accidents, preventable diseases such as polio or measles.

Go now and check what was China's annual GDP per capita in Mao Zedong times. Just see it. Apparently a lot of people need this kind of basic history education.

Yaron Brook has more knowledge on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwb8m_ZbU-U&feature=youtu.be...

[tootie]

That's not wrong, but it does kinda miss the point. The argument isn't we should stop buying and let them go back to living off the land. The argument is they should be paid a living wage to do work that has value. If the work came back to first-world factories, they'd have to pay at least 10X the wages, so just agreeing to 1.5X or 2X is still a bargain.

[tomp]

The "living wage" is an ill-defined term, because the majority of the population will always be earning just at or above the living wage - and when the general wages rise, so will the costs (of food, rent, transport, ...).

The only way of breaking this cycle is by creating a society of abundance, but even the West isn't there yet, yet alone India/China. The only other thing you can do is earn more, but that only counts if you're earning more than other people, so that you can outbid them (e.g. when buying/renting a flat) while still having enough money to spend/save.

[imron]

This is a really tricky problem though, because what happens when factory jobs bring in more money than those that require further education and training? What you get is people dropping out of school to go and work in those factories, which then only goes on to perpetuate the poverty cycle.

I don't have any good solutions, but I do know the answer isn't as simple as just doubling factory workers' wages.

[tootie]

Nah. That Flappy Bird guy made a small fortune even by first world standards. It drove him insane too.

[imron]

The difference being that the Flappy Bird guy was doing skilled labour (programming) of that sort that is likely to help end poverty cycles.

Compare that to thousands of people dropping out of the education system early to do unskilled factory work because it pays well above average salaries.

Imagine for example you could make $120,000 a year as a programmer, or $200,000 a year doing factory work. Do you think society will produce more programmers or more factory workers?

Imagine what happens a few years down the line when the multinational that owns the factory decides to up and move to another country in order to reduce costs.

[kylebrown]

> Imagine for example you could make $120,000 a year as a programmer, or $200,000 a year doing factory work. Do you think society will produce more programmers or more factory workers?

Say I can make $25k a year as a janitor, or $360k as an anesthesiologist. Is society producing more janitors, or more anesthesiologists?

[imron]

That analogy doesn't fit what I'm saying because an anesthesiologist is a highly skilled occupation and it takes years of specialised training to a gain the qualifications and skills necessary to work in that field.

Flipping it around and you get something closer, e.g. imagine instead a janitor made $360k a year and an anesthesiologist $25k. You'd find society would have a huge shortage of anesthesiologists because why would anyone go through all that training to get a job that pays a fraction of what you could earn cleaning toilets.

You'd also find people dropping out of college to become janitors.

Now ask yourself what happens in developing countries when unskilled factory workers get paid double what you could earn as a university graduate. What happens is that many people decide they would rather work in a factory than go to university.

[mlrtime]

"If the work came back to first-world factories, they'd have to pay at least 10X the wages"

And they might have 100x the living expenses.

[foobar2020]

You need to produce wealth before you consume wealth, at least on the scale of a country.

Only after there is enough wealth available (in form of schools, hospitals, infrastructure, social security system, businesses, know-how, reliable supply chains, etc.) you can jump the poverty barrier by borrowing wealth, through the credit money-creation system. But the prerequisite is a healthy economy.

[wahsd]

And black people benefited from the privilege of being slaves to white, civilized people. amirite?

WARNING: The following is going to cause cognitive dissonance in many people, even among the rather intelligent people here.

Don't fool yourselves, the conditions in Asia under which people make "stuff" for you, which you don't even value, for $0.50 per hour is nothing more or less than slavery. It is the same kind of slavery that you all supposedly despise in American history, the legacy and ripple effects of which are still rather present today. Just because the "company" pays a nominal amount that serves more for accounting purposes than anything else, doesn't make it less than slavery. Just because slavery changed location and a couple of its business processes and clients and logistical systems, does not mean that it is not slavery.

Would it not have been slavery in the south if "workers" had been paid $0.000001 per hour, which is about what $0.50 per hour amounts to in 1855 value?

Realize this, you are supporting and benefiting from slavery, for the same reasons that the south looooooved slavery; because it meant they didn't have to earn their income, benefits, and advantages of a privileged life built on exploitation.

[murbard2]

Slavery is a legal or economic system under which people are treated as property. It has nothing to do with wages. Slaves under ancient Rome could earned wages and sometimes bought themselves out of slavery. In the U.S. for a variety of reasons, including no doubt racism, slaves were treated far worse.

The argument you're making "wage-slavery" is an old one. What is the difference between a slave and someone who earns so little and has so few employment options that he is completely dependent upon his employer?

Or, phrased another way, what good are negative rights, when pragmatically, only what you can do really matters.

Well, pragmatically, empirically, there is a tremendous difference. People allowed the freedom to chose their employment, even at very low wages, systemically tend to rise out of poverty and enjoy better lives. Look at the history of Taiwan for instance. In contrast, systems built on the philosophical underpinnings you defend have plunged people into misery and starvation.

[pluma]

> Slaves under ancient Rome could earned wages and sometimes bought themselves out of slavery.

Not just that, in some cases slaves could actually be better off than some free citizens at the time. Although I doubt this kind of vertical mobility was particularly common.

And of course, absolutely speaking, a first world citizen today living in poverty is still far better off than a rich nobleman a few hundred years ago. It's the unequal distribution we find unfair, not merely the individual situation.

[wahsd]

What exactly is it that you didn't understand about the concept that just because something does not fit into your predetermined categories and classification does not make it any less the same effect or outcome. Not matter what shape, form, or process; your type of slavery, underpaying people for work..... it's all exploitation by different names and flavors.

[pagnotta]

At have been living in China for 8 years, have visited dozens of factories, speak fluently Mandarim and Cantonese, and I have never heard about someone working for 0.5 USD an hour...Actually I saw a salary like that mentioned in my Chinese Language book, but that book was written in the 70's. Vietnan is another story, they may very well work for something like that, but life is much cheap there. All considered, I think the situation in Asia, for the poorest, is much better than in my home South America, and may be better than at US ghettos (there are no guns around here, there is less domestic violence, less addiction, less bullying, less discrimination) I have seen slavery in the deep South America, but not yet in Asia.

[tomp]

Given that most black Africans (AFAIK) were sold into slavery by other Africans, it's not a given that their lives were better in Africa than they were later in America.

[rmxt]

Even if that is true, that does not make the forced migration and continued subjugation of slaves in the American South through the 19th century any less deplorable. Slavery is slavery. Your implicit acceptance of the "lesser of two evils" for something as serious as slavery is disturbing. We aren't even talking about the "hidden" conditions of working poor in foreign countries, we are talking about institutions that have visible cultural, economic, and social ramifications in present day America.

EDIT: I hate to use Wikipedia [0] as a substitute for substantive discussion, but your point seems to toe the line of being a false dilemma. The power/money elite in both the 19th century and the 21st century clearly have more options then just: leaving slaves in Africa/having very bad working conditions in Asian fields and farms on one hand, and bringing slaves to America/having marginally better working conditions in Asian factories, on the other hand.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

[tomp]

>disturbing

Be disturbed then. It's possible, and in my view necessary, to rationally compare two non-optimal alternatives, even if an even better alternative is both possible and probable. As Aristotle allegedly said, "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." And discussing a concept doesn't imply accepting/endorsing it.

[rmxt]

While one might be able to give a fair and balanced take on "non-optimal alternatives," I frankly believe that a bad idea, or at least bad historiography, doesn't deserve a very big seat at the table of discussion. You paint the argument as a contrast of two, and walk away from the conversation: that's not a very rational, nor fair, comparison.

...while we are quoting Aristotle:

"Since then some men are slaves by nature, and others are freemen, it is clear that where slavery is advantageous to any one, then it is just to make him a slave." [0]

Clearly "entertaining thoughts without accepting them" isn't enough on it's own to lead to sound, just and fair policy-making or historical narratives.

[0] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6762/6762-h/6762-h.htm#link2H...

[retr0grad3]

You should probably be going on more than just AFAIK. The Atlantic Slave Trade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Africa#Atlantic_slav... was a complex issue that evolved economically as a consequence of agriculture demands.

[pluma]

It was also partially a race/tribe issue. White people like to forget that "blacks" actually aren't simply one big homogeneous group, especially not in Africa -- neither ethnically nor culturally. Just look at the Rwandan massacre for an example of ethnic clashes.

[danielweber]

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/19...

Bad jobs at bad wages beat no jobs at no wages.

This doesn't mean the western world shouldn't push back at all. There are things very cheap for the employer that can provide a lot of safety benefits to the worker. But imposing Western-style labor standards and wages today would put these places out of business, harming the laborers.

[pluma]

The problem isn't that people have no jobs, the problem is that people have no money.

This is a fundamental difference some people seem to find hard to understand. It's not vital to reduce unemployment, it's vital to reduce poverty. Reducing unemployment is merely an attempt to achieve that end.

Yes, a job presents a way to modify your income and a good job is a job that provides you with a way to influence your income via your performance (i.e. if you become better at it, you get more money or can switch to a job that pays more), but the problem poor people have isn't that they don't have jobs, it's that they don't have money -- whether they don't have money because they don't have an income or don't have money because their income is consumed by their essential expenses doesn't make any difference, other than that if they already have a job they don't have the option of simply getting a job to make more money.

In that regard having a job that barely covers your expenses and doesn't provide any financial mobility is almost worse than not having a job: if you don't have a job, at least you have the theoretical possibility of improving your situation by getting one.

[mixedbit]

These people are exploited by being paid a minimal wage, because they have no other way to survive, but to take sweatshop jobs. The Grapes of Wrath illustrates this mechanism well.

[foobar2020]

That is right, and what is the alternative? Suppose China had never opened their borders to foreign investments. What would these people do? I think I know the answer, just look at the following life expectancy graph:

http://www.china-profile.com/data/fig_WPP2008_L0_M.htm

[mixedbit]

The alternative is to fairly share profits with the people that make goods. This could be enforced by the legal system, as it was successfully done when slavery was banned.

[foobar2020]

I believe that the free market decides what kind of profit sharing is fair.

You are always welcome to raise money for poor people, as well as help them in any other way. Even Bill Gates does that, with quite a success.

[pluma]

Implying a free market is interested in fairness.

The two things are entirely orthogonal. Fairness is a moral judgement. Free markets are inherently amoral (not immoral) and tend to optimize for profits (with a bias towards short-term profits). That's not good or bad, it merely is.

Raising money for poor people, except for the tax and marketing benefits, is a bad economical decision -- the benefits are at best ultra-long-term and very unpredictable. No matter what you think about the Gates Foundation, they're not doing good things for economical reasons. If its only purpose was financially benefiting Bill Gates, he should fire his financial advisors.

The free market didn't get Europe out of the Industrialisation, civil rights (and labour laws) did. Regardless of what you think about modern unions[0], they played a huge part in empowering labourers enough that they could negotiate to improve their working conditions. Without organizing in unions, striking would have been economical suicide for any individual labourer.

[0]: I personally think that unions are antiquated in most industries in Europe and North America today, especially when most of the strikes seem to involve middle-class jobs and those who are worst off often don't have any means to unionize or strike (e.g. people who work at temp agencies that are treated as free contractors legally even if they are not financially independent). But that's a different topic altogether.

[ashark]

> I believe that the free market decides what kind of profit sharing is fair.

Oh, this is too bold a statement to be tossed out so casually! What sort of fairness does this concern?

[mixedbit]

The free market wouldn't outlaw slavery.

[danielweber]

Average wages in China have tripled over 8 years. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/wages Whatever they are doing, they should keep it up.

[JoeAltmaier]

Wait - average wages a decade ago were like a dollar a day. So tripling that sounds like something I guess. I'd like to see something like parity for wages doing the same work anywhere on the planet. That would be progress.

[danielweber]

> I'd like to see something like parity for wages doing the same work anywhere on the planet

I'd like a pony.

Saying, in the year 2015, that wages should be the same anywhere on the planet is telling poor countries with no infrastructure "fuck you, got mine." Because the only reason someone opens a factory in Cambodia or China instead of South Carolina is because of the low wages. That is those countries' competitive advantage.

If a worker in Cambodia costs $10 an hour and a worker in America costs $10 an hour, there is no reason to build a factory in Cambodia. They have poorer infrastructure, little to no respect for IP, and the stuff is now a world away from its customers.

[Dirlewanger]

They're being exploited, and their governments are doing nothing to stop it. You want change? It starts with those who are allowing it. Modern muckraking only goes so far.

[yabatopia]

It's not only about the low wage they getting, or GDP per capita, there's also the working and living conditions you have to consider. They don't have holidays, can't take a vacation, don't have insurance at work, no sliding hours, no personal input whatsoever. Their whole life is determined by work, with virtually zero change of improvement within their generation. Maybe, just maybe, they can save a little for the education of one child. The next kids are toast. Low wages are one thing, but it's even worse if you have to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year for it.

[mrottenkolber]

Ouch... this is, uhm, Cambodia not China.

Industrial revolution is a term coined by developments in Europe, based on the ability to industrialize domestic production. Living in a third world country in today's globalized world is not the same thing as living during European-style industrialization. The wealth difference between first and third world citizens is kind of like the wealth difference between a farmer and a prince in the 17th century.

I have to strongly disagree with this Yaron guy, between breeding efficiency and survivability there is still a need for a species-appropriate life. Yup that's right, you don't keep a tiger in a cement floor cage and you're not supposed to keep humans in factories either.

Consider Greece's state motto: "Freedom or Death". E.g. the anti-thesis to this Yaron guy, implying that survival by itself is not freedom.

As a counterpoint, Brazil's state motto: "Order and Progress". That one could suit Yaron I guess.

So, without wanting to debate if history as it is was yielding benefits or heading in the wrong direction, I have to express that there is a humanitarian baseline that a modern human being might want to keep in mind. And it's not about GDP or child survival rate. There is no point in breeding children who will become shallow hulls, so depraved from their rightful habitat that they can not be recognized as actual humans.

A human sings songs, dances, paints, crafts, thinks, dreams and loves.

[xxxyy]

China is just an example of a somehow comparable country that has risen pretty high.

And regarding being a human: it is kind of hard when you have not eaten for three days, and your parents worry more about your baby brother that has just contracted measles. Maybe he will live. Maybe not. Maybe the rest of the family catches the disease.

[cllns]

"If you're poor, stop being poor."

from http://bit.ly/1AnVNuh about 5:30

[pluma]

I want one of those foam fingers with "We're #37!" on it.

[SnacksOnAPlane]

Measuring how much good we've done by how much GDP has increased is so incredibly flawed. Most days I feel like I'd rather be living in a small village, hunting and growing my own food and not participating in any kind of a global economy. Even if I might die from a preventable disease or an accident.

Do you really think these sweatshop workers are actually happy? They certainly aren't getting to the higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This "they should be happy for what they have" meme is revolting to me. People are not cogs in a machine and they shouldn't be treated that way, and we shouldn't gloss over this dehumanization by saying that if GDP is increasing then life is getting better.

[john61]

With boycotting these goods and reporting this issues we can actively improve the situation for those people now. In Mao Zedong times we could do nothing.

[guac]

We could and did do something. We opened up trade. That improved and continues to improve their situation immensely.

You're advocating we now do the opposite.

[dragonwriter]

> We could and did do something. We opened up trade. That improved and continues to improve their situation immensely.

One problem I see here is that people like to analyze things in terms of absolute conditions, but there is plenty of research that the subjective experience of suffering is more driven by relative conditions within an environment than absolute conditions. This is important in this context, because neoliberal trade definitely has improved aggregate economic measures in many LDCs, has in many cases improved the absolute condition of even the worst off, but has pretty much everywhere vastly increased the gulf between the rich and the poor, and in many cases done so in a way which reinforces pre-existing ethnic and class divides.

[pluma]

In other words, being poor is (subjectively) worse when everyone is rubbing in your face what you can't (and never will be able to) afford.

[pas]

No, he advocates for a selective pressure of sorts, but of course the problem is, you don't really know when something is made in a fair-shop or in a sweat-shop.

The certification and transparency NGOs and their programs are helpful, but not as cost effective and thus a friction on capital transfer. (However, as others have hinted at the important things, such as increasing equality and promoting internal redistribution - better domestic markets, which are things that should be practically forced out of the situation, because that's not really a natural outcome of the blind capital accumulation race.)