4 ms·

His advice falls in the same philosophical category as... 1/ use children as Labor in 3rd world countries since they are cheaper and more pliable 2/ cheat in

by tsycho 11y ago

His advice falls in the same philosophical category as... 1/ use children as Labor in 3rd world countries since they are cheaper and more pliable 2/ cheat in environmental tests (eg: Volkswagen) 3/ dump toxic waste into poor countries since they don't have environmental protections, and it's cheaper than processing/dispoaing them correctly Basically you can get an edge by doing a lot of ethically wrong things. But should you? And should we celebrate anyone who wins by doing such things?

RyanZAG 11y ago
I don't understand - how does his advice hurt anyone? It seems very benign. He's free to run his business how he wants. 1/ I'm from a 3rd world country. Street children here would give everything they can to get into the work force. They're not allowed to work anymore because companies get too much flak for hiring them. Instead they starve on the street and resort to crime. It's easy to say 'no work for children!' from your comfy home. 2/ Looking after an employee's wife and trying to find Asperger graduates to employ is not illegal. The environmental test cheating is only having a negative effect because it is illegal, dishonest and fraud. None of the things mentioned by Alex are any of those. He's very up front about it - he's giving presentations on it while his employees are present. 3/ Not necessarily evil. A company could pay $100 to dump some waste in their own country with full regulations, or pay a poor country $10 to dump the waste there. If that $10 means better schooling for children there, then I'd say accepting a bit of waste that can be cleaned up later seems satisfactory. It's actually worked out quite well in some countries. Basically - you're applying 'justice' that makes you feel better, and not justice that really solves anything. Making people like Alex stop bringing together teams that create things we use every day isn't helping us.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >1/ I'm from a 3rd world country. Street children here would give everything they can to get into the work force. So, maybe fix that (being on the streets, hungry, etc), instead of fixing the laws against having children work? Starving children (even as young as 10 or less) also willingly have sex with sex tourists for money, in Asia, Africa and elsewhere -- but those pesky laws also forbid them to do so. Instead of proposing we change the laws to enable them to make money this way without issues, how about we fix their situation?
  - cmdrfred 11y ago
    Why not allow them to sell their organs? They wont live long enough to ever require a 2nd kidney.
  - RyanZAG 11y ago
    Not that easy I'm afraid. There's more of them every year. People living in conditions where they need to fight to survive don't have time to worry about the survival of others, which means those who can't survive on their own or provide some benefit to others generally don't get any help. So sure - fixing their situation would be the best! Please come help! We desperately need more real help here. But barring people jumping on planes to come and help, which from experience doesn't seem to happen terribly often, it's better for these children to be able to survive. My point is: you're doing this the wrong way around. First you fix their situation, and then you make child labour and sex tourism illegal. If you do it the other way around, you're just hurting people. You're just condemning children who had no other choice to survive to having no means of survival. Sorry to say it, but it's reality. EDIT: To put it in a more clear example: a village is eating disgusting looking seaweed that tastes horrible because there is no other food nearby. You think nobody should have to eat this seaweed, so you make eating this seaweed illegal so that they can't eat it and offend you. End result? They starve because you didn't provide them with better food before making seaweed illegal.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      >My point is: you're doing this the wrong way around. First you fix their situation, and then you make child labour and sex tourism illegal. And my point is, it's rather the inverse. Legal child labour and an allowed sex tourism industry creates great private interests and political manipulation (legal, developmental, etc) to ensure things do not change. They're neither "short term problem fixers" not "stepping stones to something better", but part of the reason why the people are held down.
      - RyanZAG 11y ago
        I'm honestly sorry to tell you this: the experiment didn't work. Turns out when we took away the reason for private interests to be interested in these children, the lives of the children didn't improve. It just means now nobody cares if they die anymore. The situation is unfortunately getting steadily worse as before they had companies keeping them alive for profit, and now they have nothing. I agreed with your point of view years ago. I think everyone did. But the experiment failed. Pretty sad really. Yet another good anecdote on the infamous "don't fix what you don't understand".
nickff 11y ago
I think 2 and 3 make for strong moral arguments (though there are some valid counterpoints), but 1 is a poor example. Child labor is usually the best of a very poor set of options for both the child and their parents, and not allowing the child to work will probably worsen their situation. It may feel like paying children to do work is 'exploitation', but passively forcing them to starve, or suffer the ravages of preventable diseases conveniently out of sight is much worse. If you end child labor by providing a financial incentive for the kids to go to school, I will appluad your achievement, but banning them from working does not necessarily help them.
- cmdrfred 11y ago
  Labor is a matter of supply and demand, if companies are using child labor that must mean there is a large demand for labor (adults would likely be more efficient at the same task) by removing the child out of the labor pool you increase the bargaining power of his parents. I believe that is why it was originally banned in the United States.
  - nickff 11y ago
    You may increase the wages of the parents, but not necessarily by as much as the family has lost; in fact, there could be situations where a village is no longer worth operating in because the total amount of labor available is not enough to support a viable factory. Much of this depends on the elasticity of demand for labor, the manufacturer's alternatives, and the ease of automating a task. Remember that this is not a power game played by a group of companies on the one side and a bunch of laborers on the other; there are many other factors including mechanization, productivity, consumer demand, etc.
    - cmdrfred 11y ago
      > You may increase the wages of the parents, but not necessarily by as much as the family has lost; 1 year out, maybe. 10 years out after the children have had the benefit of education? Dead wrong. Remember also that the local economy scales with prevailing wages. They would experience a period of deflation but that's fine as they have virtually no assets to speak of. > Remember that this is not a power game played by a group of companies on the one side and a bunch of laborers on the other; there are many other factors including mechanization, productivity, consumer demand, etc. In sub $10/day situations mechanization is a tiny factor at best. That machine has to be built in a factory in Germany by highly skilled and expensive engineers it's going to have to be amazing efficient to pay for itself. Then you need skilled labor to work on and maintain it. Adults are more productive than children, and consumer demand would likely go up if you did not use them to produce your goods. The western nations didn't get rid of child labor for altruistic reasons. It's a fools errand.
sremani 11y ago
Thats what the winners at the table did, Walmarts, Nikes, Foxconns etc. have done. The only thing they do is have some nominal QC team and outsource all the stinky stuff to sub-contractors. In US that is how you hire "illegals/undocumented" by Big Ag or Big Logistic. The #4/ to you list, have an structure for "plausible deniability". If you go deep in the supply chain if you will find all the above. I am not condoning his advice, nor do I practice these. But reality is not that pretty.
- RyanZAG 11y ago
  Spot on! Agree completely. Americans have this strange idea lately that all of their companies are squeaky clean when it's really people like Alex that put America on the map. Most of them hide it behind shell companies and lengthy contractor lists. In fact, all of the big name American companies all started out with terrible practices until they earned enough money and enough ire to hide those practices away from the public eye. And judging by my downvotes, far too many people really believe the world is a much nicer place than it is, and where you can really compete without getting a bit dirty yourself.
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    What terrible practices did Google, or even Apple, start with?
    - RyanZAG 11y ago
      Steve Jobs had HR policies very very similar to Alex's.
    - benjohnson 11y ago
      Apple: Running a business in a residential area. Shipping electrical products that were not UL tested for fire hazard. Paying owners in stock rather than taxable income. No diversity in hiring practices. Lead in products without a product recycling program in place. The gist is that you generally have to cut corners somewhere to start up any business unless you already have lots of money.

by tsycho 11y ago

RyanZAG 11y ago

I don't understand - how does his advice hurt anyone? It seems very benign. He's free to run his business how he wants. 1/ I'm from a 3rd world country. Street children here would give everything they can to get into the work force. They're not allowed to work anymore because companies get too much flak for hiring them. Instead they starve on the street and resort to crime. It's easy to say 'no work for children!' from your comfy home. 2/ Looking after an employee's wife and trying to find Asperger graduates to employ is not illegal. The environmental test cheating is only having a negative effect because it is illegal, dishonest and fraud. None of the things mentioned by Alex are any of those. He's very up front about it - he's giving presentations on it while his employees are present. 3/ Not necessarily evil. A company could pay $100 to dump some waste in their own country with full regulations, or pay a poor country $10 to dump the waste there. If that $10 means better schooling for children there, then I'd say accepting a bit of waste that can be cleaned up later seems satisfactory. It's actually worked out quite well in some countries. Basically - you're applying 'justice' that makes you feel better, and not justice that really solves anything. Making people like Alex stop bringing together teams that create things we use every day isn't helping us.

coldtea 11y ago
>1/ I'm from a 3rd world country. Street children here would give everything they can to get into the work force. So, maybe fix that (being on the streets, hungry, etc), instead of fixing the laws against having children work? Starving children (even as young as 10 or less) also willingly have sex with sex tourists for money, in Asia, Africa and elsewhere -- but those pesky laws also forbid them to do so. Instead of proposing we change the laws to enable them to make money this way without issues, how about we fix their situation?
- cmdrfred 11y ago
  Why not allow them to sell their organs? They wont live long enough to ever require a 2nd kidney.
- RyanZAG 11y ago
  Not that easy I'm afraid. There's more of them every year. People living in conditions where they need to fight to survive don't have time to worry about the survival of others, which means those who can't survive on their own or provide some benefit to others generally don't get any help. So sure - fixing their situation would be the best! Please come help! We desperately need more real help here. But barring people jumping on planes to come and help, which from experience doesn't seem to happen terribly often, it's better for these children to be able to survive. My point is: you're doing this the wrong way around. First you fix their situation, and then you make child labour and sex tourism illegal. If you do it the other way around, you're just hurting people. You're just condemning children who had no other choice to survive to having no means of survival. Sorry to say it, but it's reality. EDIT: To put it in a more clear example: a village is eating disgusting looking seaweed that tastes horrible because there is no other food nearby. You think nobody should have to eat this seaweed, so you make eating this seaweed illegal so that they can't eat it and offend you. End result? They starve because you didn't provide them with better food before making seaweed illegal.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >My point is: you're doing this the wrong way around. First you fix their situation, and then you make child labour and sex tourism illegal. And my point is, it's rather the inverse. Legal child labour and an allowed sex tourism industry creates great private interests and political manipulation (legal, developmental, etc) to ensure things do not change. They're neither "short term problem fixers" not "stepping stones to something better", but part of the reason why the people are held down.
    - RyanZAG 11y ago
      I'm honestly sorry to tell you this: the experiment didn't work. Turns out when we took away the reason for private interests to be interested in these children, the lives of the children didn't improve. It just means now nobody cares if they die anymore. The situation is unfortunately getting steadily worse as before they had companies keeping them alive for profit, and now they have nothing. I agreed with your point of view years ago. I think everyone did. But the experiment failed. Pretty sad really. Yet another good anecdote on the infamous "don't fix what you don't understand".

nickff 11y ago

I think 2 and 3 make for strong moral arguments (though there are some valid counterpoints), but 1 is a poor example. Child labor is usually the best of a very poor set of options for both the child and their parents, and not allowing the child to work will probably worsen their situation. It may feel like paying children to do work is 'exploitation', but passively forcing them to starve, or suffer the ravages of preventable diseases conveniently out of sight is much worse. If you end child labor by providing a financial incentive for the kids to go to school, I will appluad your achievement, but banning them from working does not necessarily help them.

cmdrfred 11y ago
Labor is a matter of supply and demand, if companies are using child labor that must mean there is a large demand for labor (adults would likely be more efficient at the same task) by removing the child out of the labor pool you increase the bargaining power of his parents. I believe that is why it was originally banned in the United States.
- nickff 11y ago
  You may increase the wages of the parents, but not necessarily by as much as the family has lost; in fact, there could be situations where a village is no longer worth operating in because the total amount of labor available is not enough to support a viable factory. Much of this depends on the elasticity of demand for labor, the manufacturer's alternatives, and the ease of automating a task. Remember that this is not a power game played by a group of companies on the one side and a bunch of laborers on the other; there are many other factors including mechanization, productivity, consumer demand, etc.
  - cmdrfred 11y ago
    > You may increase the wages of the parents, but not necessarily by as much as the family has lost; 1 year out, maybe. 10 years out after the children have had the benefit of education? Dead wrong. Remember also that the local economy scales with prevailing wages. They would experience a period of deflation but that's fine as they have virtually no assets to speak of. > Remember that this is not a power game played by a group of companies on the one side and a bunch of laborers on the other; there are many other factors including mechanization, productivity, consumer demand, etc. In sub $10/day situations mechanization is a tiny factor at best. That machine has to be built in a factory in Germany by highly skilled and expensive engineers it's going to have to be amazing efficient to pay for itself. Then you need skilled labor to work on and maintain it. Adults are more productive than children, and consumer demand would likely go up if you did not use them to produce your goods. The western nations didn't get rid of child labor for altruistic reasons. It's a fools errand.

sremani 11y ago

Thats what the winners at the table did, Walmarts, Nikes, Foxconns etc. have done. The only thing they do is have some nominal QC team and outsource all the stinky stuff to sub-contractors. In US that is how you hire "illegals/undocumented" by Big Ag or Big Logistic. The #4/ to you list, have an structure for "plausible deniability". If you go deep in the supply chain if you will find all the above. I am not condoning his advice, nor do I practice these. But reality is not that pretty.

RyanZAG 11y ago
Spot on! Agree completely. Americans have this strange idea lately that all of their companies are squeaky clean when it's really people like Alex that put America on the map. Most of them hide it behind shell companies and lengthy contractor lists. In fact, all of the big name American companies all started out with terrible practices until they earned enough money and enough ire to hide those practices away from the public eye. And judging by my downvotes, far too many people really believe the world is a much nicer place than it is, and where you can really compete without getting a bit dirty yourself.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  What terrible practices did Google, or even Apple, start with?
  - RyanZAG 11y ago
    Steve Jobs had HR policies very very similar to Alex's.
  - benjohnson 11y ago
    Apple: Running a business in a residential area. Shipping electrical products that were not UL tested for fire hazard. Paying owners in stock rather than taxable income. No diversity in hiring practices. Lead in products without a product recycling program in place. The gist is that you generally have to cut corners somewhere to start up any business unless you already have lots of money.