High Tech Misery In China 876
theodp writes "Think you've got a bad job? Think again. You could be making keyboards for IBM, Microsoft, Dell, Lenovo and HP at Meitai Plastic and Electronics, a Chinese hardware factory. Prompted by the release of High Tech Misery in China by a human-rights group, a self-regulating body set up by tech companies will conduct an audit of working conditions at the factory. In return for take-home pay of 41 cents per hour, workers reportedly sit on hard wooden stools for 12-hour shifts, seven days a week. Overtime is mandatory, with workers being given on average two days off per month. While on the production line, workers are not allowed to raise their hands or heads, are given 1.1 seconds to snap each key into place, and are encouraged to 'actively monitor each other' to see if any company rules are being transgressed. They are also monitored by guards. Workers are fined if they break the rules, locked in the factory for four days per week, and sleep in crowded dormitories. Okay, it's not all bad news — they're hiring."
Film at 11... (Score:5, Insightful)
Horrible working conditions in China, film at 11.
Sad that this stuff is so common; let's see if it changes over time as the country develops
Fines... (Score:5, Insightful)
Compared to doing what? (Score:5, Insightful)
In return for take-home pay of 41 cents per hour, workers reportedly sit on hard wooden stools for 12-hour shifts, seven days a week. Overtime is mandatory, with workers being given on average two days off per month.
The alternatives being what?
Substinence farming or starving?
Time keeps on slipping, slipping, into the past (Score:2, Insightful)
And "free traders" say we should just "buck up and compete with" slaves. We are slipping backward into the early 1900's. Factory jobs used to pay better than the sales-clerk jobs that are replacing them, but they won't if your competitor is allowed slave labor.
Regulation (Score:3, Insightful)
What we are seeing here, my friends, is capitalism gone wild.
Exactly two ways to avoid this stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Government regulation (and enforcement) setting minimum working conditions.
2) Enthusiastic uptake of some kind of "no humans were exploited in the making of this product" sticker, in the free market.
I've found it heartwarming at work that the younger staff are all hugely in favour of "fair trade" products that purportedly don't exploit poor farmers and farm labourers, mostly as applied to coffee and sugar products. The aggressively seek them out and we have people coming from floors around to our "fair trade only" coffee station. We older folks are "for" this stuff as long as you stick it under our noses, shame us a bit, and it doesn't cost *much* more.
Which it doesn't, of course - that's the pathetic thing about these stories - the conditions in that factory, as opposed to conditions that might not pass muster here but at least wouldn't *disgust* you, are probably scraping $2 off the cost of the $60 "MS Egronomic 4000" keyboard that you could only pry from my cold, dead (non-RSI'd) fingers. I'd be happy to pay $65 if it came with such a sticker...the other $3 paying for the checking and enforcement of the rules from the sticker-issuing NGO.
Re:Fines... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, because if it were a Chinese firm doing this, that would make it okay.
we need a trade embargo (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Compared to doing what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Make it easier to consume locally. Stop rigging the currency to be export-pushing.
Uhhh What about Apple? (Score:1, Insightful)
Why pick on just PC manufacturers, but leave Apple out of it? Remember Apple's keyboards and almost everything else bar XServes are also made in China. Subtle bias against Windows by the Apple crowd?
Seems they can do no wrong for doing wrong.
Re:Damn it.. (Score:5, Insightful)
It cost you $2.99. What the heck do you think?
Re:Film at 11... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the meantime, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
There are plenty of good used electronics peripherals on craigslist and ebay.
Re:Compared to doing what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:1, Insightful)
No, totalitarianism gone wild (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you're seeing totalitarianism gone wild. All of the shitty labor in China is backstopped by the government and its willingness to create political prisoners.
What really sucked about the Olympics wasn't the smog or anything else, it was the media broadcasting the fake news that China is just another free country. And the west sucked it down.
No surprises here (Score:4, Insightful)
We wouldn't be in the mess we're in without it.
Call me a troll or flame me, but there has to be a better way than chasing the profit...
Sustainability perhaps?
Re:Regulation (Score:3, Insightful)
Then he and Larry Flynt couldn't lobby the Chinese government that their keyboard companies were just too big to fail...
Re:Fines... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you want pointless tech gadgets so much you don't care about the consequences of purchasing it?
Re:we need a trade embargo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:we need a trade embargo (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Exactly two ways to avoid this stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Government regulation (and enforcement) setting minimum working conditions.
2) Enthusiastic uptake of some kind of "no humans were exploited in the making of this product" sticker, in the free marke
I've found it heartwarming at work that the younger staff are all hugely in favour of "fair trade" products that purportedly don't exploit poor farmers and farm labourers, mostly as applied to coffee and sugar products.
Agricultural products cannot be considered in the same way that manufacturing or assembling jobs can.
Agricultural products are not nearly as mobile as manufacturing, which can easily be moved to a cheaper country at the drop of a hat. Companies are already leaving Asia and taking their manufacturing to Eastern Europe because labor costs and regulation are at even lower levels.
And despite what you say, consumer study after consumer study unwaveringly shows that consumers are incredibly price conscious. Though there is a market for products that give you the warm fuzzies (fair trade, etc), the vast majority of consumers will buy the cheapest product available, even if the price difference is only a few pennies.
Re:Automate (Score:2, Insightful)
I read a story that quoted a farm automation expert who said it's probably possible to automate many more fruit-picking activities. However, there's no incentive to invest in such technology if the labor rates are low enough.
This is one of the reasons why the Roman empire didn't spark the industrial revolution: slaves were readily available from conquered lands.
Re:Compared to doing what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say subsistence farming is much better than 41 cents/hour in a factory.
Well, either the subsistence-farmers-turned-factory-workers disagree with you or they are unable to get any arable land for subsistence farming ...
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Re:No surprises here (Score:2, Insightful)
Riddle me this, why did the life expectancy of the average American INCREASE after the industrial revolution?
Why did the life expectancy of the average Russian DECREASE after the Bolshevik revolution?
The answer to both questions is the same.
Re:Fines... (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No surprises here (Score:1, Insightful)
"Chasing the profit" only means ignoring morals when consumers stop caring about how their purchases came to exist. rbrander's suggestion of a non-exploitation certification program is great.
If Microsoft buys labor from a company that mistreats its workers, and you give money to Microsoft knowing this is the case, you are supporting the practice and you have nobody to blame but yourself -- not capitalism. If paying someone a reasonable wage to make keyboards makes keyboards prohibitively expensive, an incentive for the automation of keyboard assembly is created. That's how capitalism works. You do what's most profitable.
Re:Well at MY place, (Score:4, Insightful)
The robot costs what it does, getting it delivered costs extra, electricity costs extra, having someone who can fix the machine if needed costs extra... And even automated robots need someone to give it parts, etc...
All compared to a few dollars per day per human. I know I wouldn't buy robots there.
Re:No surprises here (Score:3, Insightful)
China is capitalist? Since when? They have factories and capital, but control over the means of productions is still largely in the hands of the government.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fines... (Score:2, Insightful)
you all forget WE had to go through the same process less thean 100 years ago.
Re:Compared to doing what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not everyone makes the decision, take for instance whole communities relocated by lake created by the three-gorges dam. Many of them were moved to areas so they could be factory workers. They did just fine (and were happier) living off the land.
Re:Film at 11... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, better working conditions aren't retroactive, and the possibility that things will be better in China in a century or so is of no help to the human beings being fucked over right now.
Re:Automate (Score:3, Insightful)
However, there's no incentive to invest in such technology if the labor rates are low enough.
IMHO, that's one of the key reasons in favor of a minimum wage - not because minimum wage helps workers directly (some workers do get paid more but others are out of a job) but because it forces technology to be developed that makes the work more efficient. A worker can be paid a lot more in an economy where pushing a couple buttons makes an entire cell phone than in an economy where a day of banging rocks together results in a few sharp pieces of rock to cut the skin off dead animals.
Re:Compared to doing what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say subsistence farming is much better than 41 cents/hour in a factory.
Let them decide, they prefer to work apparently.
Also keep in mind every country has gone through an industrial revolution.
Western Industrial Revolution had the same horrors: Children working in factories 12 hours a day? Check. Children getting so tired they fall into machinery and die? Check. Grownups working 12 hours/day, 7 days/week? Check.
The thing about China is theirs is going to be over and done with in about 25 years for a total of 35; as opposed to hanging around for 75-100 and morphing into a second industrial revolution.
You forget to realize that even these conditions are far better than any Chinese would otherwise see. Running, clean water? Dependable food? Shelter to sleep in? They don't get that when they're farming 12 hours a day making barely enough food to survive on.
The other thing-- in the last 20 years, "extreme poverty" has shrunk from 40% globally to 20%*. That's not your humanitarian aid at work, that's American consumption fueling fewer deaths due to water poisoning, hunger, etc. in third world countries/regions. Why would you take that away from them? Until just recently (with the onset of this recession) Chinese were STILL taking trains to the cities to find a new life, new work, and new pay. That's in spite of all these "horrible work conditions" (by our standards, that we erroneously think nobody would want to work under) all over the place. They're welcome to quit their job and return to farming, but I think you miss how bad they have it farming.
This knowledge should cause us to stop and consider what we'd be doing before we start taxing trade with the Chinese.
*Go check out "The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for Us All" by Robyn Meredith. She covers all sorts of things like this and provides sound sources to back them up-- IIRC, there were about 30 pages at the back of this book with nothing but footnotes/sources for statistics like this one.
Re:No surprises here (Score:5, Insightful)
"Capitalism can only work because it thrives on and creates the poor."
Capitalism works great most of the time, but can easily be abused to bring about situations like this. We hear about the fraction of a percent of abusive companies because it's news that sells. We don't hear so much about the greater than 99% of capitalist companies and individuals that provide good, sustainable products and services (for whatever reason).
Seriously, do you think that anybody gives even a tiny little rat's ass that I created a small company's data entry and reporting infrastructure for a reasonable price and included full source code so they wouldn't be locked into me as a sole service provider? Does that sound like news that people will care to spend time or money knowing?
The various news media have long since relied on sensationalism to make money. If you base your world view on what you hear/read from media outlets, it's almost impossible to view the world as anything other than corrupt and beyond redemption. There's a whole other world that doesn't get reported.
Re:Compared to doing what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Say it all you want, but the people who actually have to make that decision seem to have come to a different conclusion.
Yes, the people who decided to incarcerate people and force them to labor as slaves for the profit of the government definitely came to a different conclusion. Slave Labor is good for the government, so it must be good for the people!
A lot of the consumer goods that you can buy at the dollar store or the Wal-Mart are made with straight up slave labor, not even the feel-good two-days-off-a-month forty-four cents a day kind of slavery either. The prison camp for your beliefs or just being inconvenient to society kind of slavery. But honestly, isn't it all slavery?
Wrong, it is the capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Blaming this on the Chinese while still exploiting things is bullshit.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No surprises here (Score:4, Insightful)
There were no "poor" before capitalism? That's news. A thriving middle class is in fact a recent phenomenon, arising at the same time as capitalism.
No we wouldn't... In the same way that there wouldn't be plane crashes if there weren't any airplanes.
You're not a troll at all, you're just willfully ignorant, yet outspoken. Sort of the opposite end of the spectrum of Fox News.
By all means, explain your system that works any better than the current system.
"If there's a new way, I'll be the first in line...but it better work this time." -Megadeth
Re:Film at 11... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sad that this stuff is so common; let's see if it changes over time as the country develops
I'm not sure how big that chance is, as long as union protest run the risk of being overrun with tanks. Let's face it, one of the reasons we've got it better is because workers have the right to vote and the freedom to unionise.
A dictatorship may call itself socialist, but as long as the common worker has no power or freedom, the people in power have no incentive to do anything for them.
This explains why... (Score:4, Insightful)
my 'original' microsoft natural keyboard (bought in 1994, still working just perfectly) cost me $250 or so from what I remember, and the latest natural keyboard 4000 I bought for the office was only $60...
The 'original' says it's made in Mexico, I wonder when the production was moved... I also don't see why keyboards have to be so cheap, it's not like you change it every day: I can totally see myself using this keyboard for another 15 years easily (assuming that in 15 years I can find a ps/2-whatever converter, that is my only worry)
Re:Compared to doing what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Tired, old argument that just doesn't hold. I hate having to hear it over and over again. It isn't "slave labor or starve" situation.
Think about how much a new keyboard costs. Now, think about how small part of it comes from Chinese labor. There is a lot involved in materials, research, marketing, packaging materials, transportation, cut for the manufacturer, cut for the shops, wages for people in the western countries...
But you could well triple the pay that these companies give to Chinese workers with no notably increase in price. If these Chinese workers would get 1.23 dollars an hour instead of 0.41, you wouldn't really notice it when you buy a product. I could well pay $0.82 more for a keyboard, though the price increase would be a lot, lot less because worker won't spend an hour for one keyboard.
But the companies choose not to because this way they can earn a minimal amount of more money. And why wouldn't they try to do even that when consumers go "Well, at least they employ the poor who would otherwise starve to death!"
Re:Film at 11... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now while I find it plausible the similar scenario of reform may happen in China, I doubt it will happen soon. What has happened to western nations is not necessarily directly transferable to China. But I do believe things may improve, but clearly China's labour conditions are not sustainable, things will change one way or another.
Re:No surprises here (Score:2, Insightful)
How about a system where the bulk of the profits go to the workers instead of to greedy executives who are paid many million dollars a year in great disproportion to their actual contribution?
Re:Fines... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fines... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod up. I'll believe the argument everything will cost magnitudes more once I can buy my sweatshop $2 NBA Baller Official Nike's for anything less than $100. They use Chinese sweatshops to increase profit not to lower consumer costs.
vending machine - not 20 million laborer, please (Score:1, Insightful)
disgusting. what really upsets me - we chose to employ cheap labor instead of making progress in robotics. think you guys: in the past Americans invented a vending machine to distribute Coca-Cola or Pepsi - did not employ 20 million laborers to stay still and hold the cola for you - a vending machine was invented, mmmmk? what's the hell is wrong with us now, why we cannot innovate any more to assemble those damned keyboards?
Re:Fines... (Score:1, Insightful)
Do you want to pay prices for electronics higher by an order of magnitude?
[Citation Needed]
At 1.1 seconds per key that works out to a little over 100 seconds per keyboard. Round up to 2 minutes and round the wage up to 60 cents per hour (from 41 cents). That works out to 2 cents per keyboard.
Paying the workers an order of magnitude more (20 cents rather than 2 cents) would only increase the cost of the keyboard by 20 cents.
But what I really don't get is the mandatory overtime. FTA, they're actually hiring. Why not hire more workers and have normal hours. An exhausted worker is not going to do quality work.
Let's do just a bit more math, assume some company sells 10 million keyboards a years and they pay the CEO 10 million a year. That's a dollar per keyboard. That's 50 times as much per keyboard as the guy that actually did the work of snapping on the keys.
Re:Film at 11... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sad that this stuff is so common; let's see if it changes over time as the country develops
Unfortunately, capitalism seems to have some characteristics of a pyramid scheme, and latecomers to the party don't seem to have much chance.
Re:Compared to doing what? (Score:5, Insightful)
How quaint. You seem to have an odd notion that the people who work 12-hour shifts in horrible factories get to make meaningful decisions about their career paths. Never mind that if you're a subsistence farmer, the Chinese government can seize your land at any time. Or suddenly decide, "Hey, you guys, you're not farmers any more." And if you were born to parents who work in sweatshops...what are you going to do, go out and buy a dozen acres on $0.41/hour?
Re:Fines... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a dishonest argument. The price breakdown of the $10 item must be around $8 onshore (from product management and engineering to warehousing and retail), $1 for shipping and $1 for slave labour and parts.
First, I cannot imagine that onshore blue collar work could not produce the item for $10 or less, considering the white collar counterpart cost $8. Economically, this is still a valid reason for offshoring, as your competition has a retail price per item of $10, while you'll be around $20 and bankrupt. But even if manufacturing onshore cost $80, your arguments fail to account for one thing: cost of living.
If you were to pay the same wages to the Chinese slave as to the onshore unionized blue collar worker, he'd be living like a king. Heck, with their $5 A DAY they (barely) make it. Most probably for as long as they don't get ill, weak, indebted. Suppose they make 100 items a day (probably much more). If they received just 10c per item made, it would double their standards of living. While changing 1% of the retail price. If that buys a "Fair trade" label to the manufacturing company that is correctly publicized, many would buy that instead the keyboards with child blood on them.
Bottom line: life in the third world is dirt cheap. The equivalent would be to have slaves onshore doing slave work for $500 full time job. The retail price would not magically double or triple, let alone almost decuplate if you paid living wages to the workers. (1)
(1) I sense a Broken Window in this argument, but I can't make it make sense numerically.
Re:Complications was: Fines... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fines... (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes. I would prefer to pay a once-every-10-years purchase of 200 dollar for my keyboard, rather than 20, if that means I get a keyboard that isn't made by slaves.
Re:Film at 11... (Score:5, Insightful)
Buy quality, and buy it once.
Buy crap, buy it new every year.
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You compete with this. (Score:2, Insightful)
If you compete with the third world, be prepared to live in it. America and the rest of the West didn't get to where it is by being 'efficient', we got here by having standards. Westerners demand a certain quality of life that the less civilized people of the world are too timid to so much as ask for, much less fight for. They could learn a lot from us. Some of them already have. The rest will have to continue suffering until they begin demanding more. Until then, exploitative corporations will be all too willing to use them as cheap, disposable industrial machinery to keep the cogs of their uncivilized sub-nations whirling. (And to keep funneling away the surplus wealth of the civilized, Westernized world into the pockets of greedy transnational businessmen!)
Re:we need a trade embargo (Score:4, Insightful)
its not even about about inability to repay china loans.
what has us by the balls is that we've GIVEN AWAY our manufacturing. manuf, today, IS FREEDOM. but we forgot that and so we suffer since we are no longer independant.
a huge great nation like the US once MADE things. I go thru old electronics 'junk stores' and find many really old things that say MADE IN USA on them. the quality is still there to see and in fact, many people seek out the older US-made parts and devices.
but we gave that way. we can't build things in the US anymore. we are DEPENDANT on china. we are stuck.
I wonder if obama sees this? bush certainly didn't - he didn't lift a single finger to detach us from the stranglehold of china. if anything, we created MORE sweatheart deals with chinese manuf's over the last 8 years.
formula for fixing the econ: rebuild our local manufacturing of electronic parts (goodbye chinese 'bad electrolytic capacitors'!), put americans back to work and regain some self respect in this country. stop throwing money at rich bankers, making them even richer. stop throwing money at the entertainment 'industry'. REBUILD AMERICAN MANUFACTURING. its the only way to break free of chinese economics.
once the US leaves china (if that could ever happen) you'd see a whole bunch of changes happen in china. they'd have to!
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Re:Wrong, it is the capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
History repeats it self. (Score:5, Insightful)
It did in the USA, the UK, and every other country that went through a transition from a mostly agricultural to an industrial economy.
And by then, as the cost of labor raises with the working condition, instead of building the same hardware in better conditions, the big companies will relocate their production facilities somewhere else where the cost of producing the parts is even cheaper than everywhere else. Probably in Africa.
Re:Film at 11... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Unfortunately, better working conditions aren't retroactive, and the possibility that things will be better in China in a century or so is of no help to the human beings being fucked over right now."
They are still doing vastly better than most Chinese through history. This is the price of progress, and considering Chinas condition in 1948 the country has made amazing progress.
We cannot compete with them unless we drop our wages and join economic battle the old-fashioned way. There is nothing we can do they cannot do cheaper.
Re:No surprises here (Score:3, Insightful)
Blame regulation all you want; garden variety irresponsibility and genuine ignorance are what got us where we are. Regulation can only deter and punish stupid people for doing stupid things, but they're still goddamn morons and they're still going to prove that fools and money are like oil and water. If a person doesn't know how the market works or has no idea where their money is going to go or where it's coming from each step of the way, they have no business participating in the financial system, much less running it.
It's all well and good until mass idiocy pulls the rug out from under all of us, but if we wrote laws against Unconscionable Acts of Dumb you'd need a prison with its own zip code to handle it all. Laws are written and enforced under the assumption you can actually make an inroads against people doing stupid shit that negatively impacts the greater whole of society, but in times like this their efficacy in that endeavor becomes questionable.
Re:Compared to doing what? (Score:1, Insightful)
and you got proof of anything you just said which is relevant to the story and in date?
Didn't think so..
Re:What if... (Score:1, Insightful)
being willing to pay more for a product doesn't mean the manufacturer is going to pay the workers more to produce it. i thought you obama types knew this.
Re:Compared to doing what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop rigging the currency to be export-pushing.
The United States has been pushing the Chinese government to do just that for years now. In fact, that was why Clinton opened up trade relations with China in the first place, as a carrot to encourage monetary and social policy changes (which has failed completely btw). Good luck convincing the thugs in charge of the Chinese Politburo to give up their fat profits made on the backs of their pool of slave labour. Whenever foreigners criticise them they respond with something like, "you must learn to respect our ways" and if one of their own citizens criticises them then they are thrown in prison and forgotten (indefinite detention, its not just a GITMO thing).
Re:No surprises here (Score:2, Insightful)
Would that be a world of make belief, with pixies and leprechauns and magic frogs with funny little hats?
I need practical sources of good places to shop. (Score:5, Insightful)
I prioritize the safety and health of humans above getting a $5 keyboard on NewEgg.com. I don't share your heartlessness which places profit above humanity. As a detail, it costs surprisingly little to make sure humans have a decent living, health care, potable water, food security, a safe place to live, and other things these keyboard assembly workers lack.
My problem with paying more is that I have no reasonable assurance that the additional money will get to the workers. I don't trust "trickle down" economics but I'm willing to pay more for the products and services I use so that workers get better treatment. If I said to any distributor or manufacturer to charge me more they might do it. But I think they'll keep everything as it is and then pocket the additional money. Not one penny of my money would go toward improving the plight of abused workers anywhere along the chain that gets me my keyboards.
To me, this is the hard part of an ethical sell on the public. Everyone has a pretty good idea of what a safe working environment is (it's why so many are appalled at the conditions described in TFA), and there's lots of people around the world who can go into well-researched detail to explain more on that (such as Charles Kernaghan's exemplary work; see "The Corporation" for more of his work. It's one of the best movies on this and its relationship to the larger picture of the problem with a system based on satisfying profit-seekers at all costs). As a result, when I watch what the corporate media doesn't want me to read or see, I get lots of talk about what to avoid.
But I don't know of a simple, practical, efficient guide for the consumer looking for computer parts. I need to buy a few USB compatible-with-everything keyboards I can plug in and use without any additional software. Furthermore, I need to have a reasonable understanding that these keyboards were manufactured and shipped without abuse to the workers. Where do I get these?
Re:Film at 11... (Score:4, Insightful)
Every country that has established exploitative labour has never just changed as the country 'er' the minority rich and greedy developed. It has always resulted in extreme violence and in modern times armed conflict. Trade laws need to be implemented that so that a tax is placed upon goods that are produced under conditions that are illegal in the country for whom the goods are intended, you can not have free trade without fair trade.
The reality is the only way to allow conditions to improve peacefully in countries like China is to force the issue via legislation, either pay for better, less polluted and safer conditions, equal to what is mandated in your own country and the conditions under which you and your industries are forced to compete or, pay the tax equivalent.
Re:Compared to doing what? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd say you'd need six of those to feed you, your wife, and the one child you're allowed.
As those people work 12 hours a day, they'd still have 24.60RMB left. Actually enough for some variance in the diet, provided their rent doesn't exceed, say, 500RMB per month.
I'm pretty sure those worker's families have a, in a material sense, much better life than they could have by relying on subsistence farming, but of course they're giving up one family member for it, and there is no job security whatsoever. These factories often rely on a few customers, and are even more susceptible to market changes than those in developed countries, where no week goes by without one shutting down.
Re:History repeats it self. (Score:4, Insightful)
Bingo. So the process, over time, does in fact improve living quality worldwide, because it always creates employment among the poorest on Earth (as they are the ones that are cheapest to employ).
Of course, it also decreases the quality of life in the richer countries by decreasing the amount of employment available in them. This is why I find anti-globalisation protesters so charmingly hilarious - what they are in fact arguing for is to employ fewer poor people and more rich people, which I'm pretty sure isn't what they think they're arguing for.
Re:Well at MY place, (Score:3, Insightful)
That's bullshit, the humans can do more important stuff and you get the productivity of both the robots and the humans.
Sure if you want crap jobs not worth shit and stop development ...
But most people like getting more for less and "improving life" (if you see more items as better life.)
Re:Film at 11... (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you figure the massive destruction of war "helped" them do anything? Seems to me they had to waste a lot of resources just to get back to where they started in the first place.
China should, theoretically, be able to pull themselves up even faster than Korea or Japan, if they wanted to, because they're not starting from scratch.
Re:Fines... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seeing as 111.1 seconds to put a 101 key keyboard together has a labor cost of just 1.2 cents and will sell for anywhere from $3-$100 depending on the brand, model, and store it is sold in the labor cost is a tiny piece of the price.
You could easily pay the same workers $7 per hour and the labor cost per keyboard would only go up by about 20.4 cents a unit. I would be willing to pay an extra quarter for a keyboard knowing the work was done in humane conditions and the guy making them got a 1700% raise.
Re:Film at 11... (Score:3, Insightful)
Compare the lifestyle of a US citizen from the '40s and one from today, then a Chinese worker from the '40s to today, and you'll see the Chinese worker has made a heck of a lot more progress.
Playing catch-up is in many ways easier than maintaining your lead.
Re:10% of a dim bulb (Score:2, Insightful)
Obviously it must be a decent amount of money locally if people are willing to put up with the working conditions.
No, that is not obvious.
What is obvious is that the amount of money is better than most alternatives locally.
There was a time in Russia when men were used to haul barges along the Volga river because it was cheaper to use men than horses: horses had to be fed; men didn't. The rate of pay was not enough to properly feed the men.
Yet men took the job even though it meant slowly starving to death because the alternative at that time and place was starving to death quickly.
Re:Well at MY place, (Score:1, Insightful)
When the choice is that or starve, it's slavery. Being born an American doesn't mean you're automatically a more deserving person; why not try a little empathy once in a while?
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No surprises here (Score:4, Insightful)
You simply ignore the fact that it works almost everywhere else neatly dont you? I guess you dont like the facts interfering with your faith.
We re regulated, and our banks survived without a dollar from the taxpayer so far. How is it working out for the US- $100 billion so far!
Yeh I can see how well that works.
Libertarians are as delusional as the religious.
Flat tax system, you must be joking.
The only people whom benefit from a flat tax system are the rich.
Exactly, it's economically feasible to be humane (Score:5, Insightful)
We would like to think that we ended slavery and nasty labor conditions because we've grown more humane and ethical. The reality is that the wind sail put the galley slave out out commission because it was cheaper to buy and maintain the sails than it is to maintain the slaves. It's cheaper to use machines to use slaves or underpaid workers to mine.
I always laugh at those star trek or scifi shows where some advanced race is using living slaves to work hard labor. It hadn't occurred to the writers that even in the complete absence of ethics, it just makes no sense to use humans to do brute labor.
Re:No surprises here (Score:1, Insightful)
The swindle was only possible because of deregulation; only the dumbest people, namely you, are calling for even more deregulation.
Re:Well at MY place, (Score:3, Insightful)
All bad joking aside, it really is horrific when you see these working conditions. However, there seems to be a great demand for jobs like this, as the alternative is working yourself to death on a farm. The fact that all those uneducated, unskilled laborers come to the factories in new busloads every day drives the price way down.
It's not really that much different to how it used to be in Europe, it's just that we had about 150 years to further develop ourselves. Sucks for current-generation Chinese, but their grandchildren can bask in luxury we won't be seeing in that age.
Rant your way... (Score:4, Insightful)
These kinds of comments that go along the line "we must stop this" and so on are so ignorant of other people's reality that get to the point of being disgusting.
Believe it or not, people in countries other that yours are not stupid nor masochistic. And tend to choose what they believe it's best for them, no matter how different that may be from YOUR personal choices.
The reality is that yes, working conditions are miserable. But they are not slaves. They may choose not to work in those factories. It is just that the alternatives are so bad (starving to death, for one... yes, that may seem incredible for you that feel STARVING after going 2 hours without a snack, but people DO starve to DEATH)that working in those conditions is actually acceptable!
And what is your solution? Penalize the asses out of the companies that operate this way, so that it becomes unfeasable to maintain operation in those countries, condemning the locals to a fate they had chosen not to have because YOUR WELL FED ASS decided what is best for THEM!
The sheer arrogance is unbelievable...