15 ms·

Forced Labor in Malaysia's Electronics Industry

220 points by craigjb 8y ago

notananthem 8y ago
I don't really like how sensationalistic this is, there are way more problems than just forced labor going into manufacturing. Energy used by manufacturing, local waste and pollution that goes unchecked, rampant corruption in factory owners, monopolistic control of the factories, ports, transit of goods, export, shipping, etc. We're a LONG way from freely competitive market and open, transparent regulation would do WONDERS for it.
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git_rancher 8y ago
Does anyone else remember being taught in Econ 101 about globalization and comparative advantage and how great it is? Either the educators didn't know this would happen or it was a campaign to sell the public on the idea. Or maybe it was just bad teaching. I wonder which one it was.
- gue5t 8y ago
  The campaign one.
- debacle 8y ago
  We also learned about externalities, two of the biggest being sociological and ecological.
  - clay_the_ripper 8y ago
    Bingo. Externalities make it sound like just a cost of doing business, which in a hyper capitalist system, the exploitation of human beings is exactly that...
- mbbutler 8y ago
  The "competitive advantage" that many countries offer has always had more to do with their willingness to grind their workers into bone meal than any sort of technological or agricultural capability.
  - ajross 8y ago
    Do they not teach you people about the Cultural Revolution? Those workers were bone meal long before they walked into a Foxconn factory. Inequality is a precondition for exploitive labor practices, not a result of them.
- noobermin 8y ago
  There is an advantage, the advantage is that you don't have to pay the full cost of their labor, you can offset it onto the workers so the price you pay is lower, looking like a savings.
- closeparen 8y ago
  What lives do you think these people would be living if not for globalization?
  - noobermin 8y ago
    The person in the article would most likely still be with her family. She doesn't get a net benefit from her work, she was caught by the system and now cannot leave.
- azernik 8y ago
  I remember my Econ 101 teacher being much more cautious - noting that trade produces benefits on average, and that the benefits everyone iff there is political action to redistribute the benefits; and that fiscal is better than monetary stimulus, but in most Western political systems that's harder to push through. Generally those simple adages are very much spherical-cow observations, with assumptions of rational (i.e. operating in the system's interest) leadership, rule of law, and priced-in externalities; when those professors go from their intro classes to their research they start to account for more of the real-world complications.
  - bgorman 8y ago
    Any econ 101 teacher who goes off script talking about politics shouldn't be taken seriously. My micro and macro classes did not mention political actions at all unless you consider describing the potential actions of the Federal reserve as inherently political.
    - dlp211 8y ago
      Economics is inheritantly political. To not talk about politics in an economy class is to deny reality.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        Or worse, to assume their implied political position as "natural" and everything else as a "distortion".
      - deleted 8y ago
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    - azernik 8y ago
      Any econ 101 class that talks seriously about a) fiscal effects, or b) trade (and hence the usefulness of Pareto-optimal game states) needs to talk about politics, because they are part of the system in question. This professor specifically specialized in the study of recessions, in which government action is essential; and took special interest in the effectiveness of different government interventions. Studying these subjects without talking about policy and politics is like studying security and ignoring human-factors research. I am in fact seriously skeptical about the quality of your econ classes that did not mention the effects of government spending, trade policy, taxation, or price controls.
- ajross 8y ago
  Or maybe it's a complicated subject and the outrageous aggregate wealth increases might plausibly be seen as worthwhile even if they create this kind of localized disaster. Basically: if you want to argue against "globalization" and for a return to, I dunno, the world of the 1960's, recognize that you are arguing for a return to the 1960's, and the 60's were by modern standards a human rights disaster basically everywhere. Progress is good. It's not "all" good, and needs attention and regulation. But ludditism is never the answer. What was that about bad teaching again?
  - opportune 8y ago
    Don't be obtuse. When people talk about going back to the 60s in this context, they are talking about a return to the economic conditions that actually saw a steady improvement of QOL for the working class in the US - namely, organized labor and high marginal tax rates. Shoehorning in the orthogonal human rights abuses is just a distraction.
    - SamReidHughes 8y ago
      High marginal tax rates don't create steady improvement for the working class. They might create a single step of improvement by lowering their taxes, but it doesn't increase the rate of improvement beyond that one jump.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >Basically: if you want to argue against "globalization" and for a return to, I dunno, the world of the 1960's, recognize that you are arguing for a return to the 1960's, and the 60's were by modern standards a human rights disaster basically everywhere. That's one of the more bizarro strawmen I've seen. He doesn't suggest some kind of time travel -- so that we have to take it all, the good and the bad, of an earlier era. In that he doesn't even say anything about going back to an earlier era. He speaks of going back to an earlier practice. Which is what humans who shape their future, as opposed to being taken left and right by some impersonal forces, can perfectly do, without having to adopt anything else. >Progress is good. Progress, outside of technology (which is accumulative), is a myth. History has ups and downs and can go either way. The horrors of WWII were worse than whatever 19th century came up with. American politics, for one, where better in the 60s and 70s than today. And so on....
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- dalbasal 8y ago
  It's a hard one to teach, because everything carries so much baggage. Comparative advantage as they teach it is not a bad idea. It's a long road from that premise to the conclusion that free markets are all you need to know about humans. Migrant workers have been for thousands of years and still are, the most powerless class of people. They have no political power, almost by definition. The levels of minimum standards protection they get make a big difference. I think this is an area that the UN could have done something about, but never did.
- jstewartmobile 8y ago
  The pedagogues might not have been clued in, but their masters certainly knew. If Jim Crow didn't make it abundantly clear, Norbert Wiener spelled it out again in 1950: "Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor."
  - icebraining 8y ago
    That was a comment on the perils of mechanization/automatization, not globalization: Let us remember that the automatic machine, whatever we think of any feelings it may have or may not have, is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor. It is perfectly clear that this will produce an unemployment situation, in comparison with which the present recession and even the depression of the thirties will seem a pleasant joke. (...) Thus the new industrial revolution is a two-edged sword. It may be used for the benefit of humanity, but only if humanity survives long enough to enter a period in which such a benefit is possible. It may also be used to destroy humanity, and if it is not used intelligently it can go very far in that direction. There are, however, hopeful signs on the horizon. Since the publication of the first edition of this book, I have participated in two big meetings with representatives of business management, and I have been delighted to see that awareness on the part of a great many of those present of the social dangers of our new technology and the social obligations of those responsible for management to see that the new modalities are used for the benefit of man, for increasing his leisure and enriching his spiritual life, rather than merely for profits and the worship of the machine as a new brazen calf.
    - jstewartmobile 8y ago
      Is there a difference, other than what the parts are made of? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Mumford#Megamachines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Mumford#Megamachines
- nitwit005 8y ago
  It's easy to look at how bad things are and lose sight of the possibility that this might be an improvement. Somehow foreigners keep coming, despite the abuses, so either these people are complete idiots who can't figure things out even after decades of being taken advantage of, or things actually work out well for most of them. Keep in mind that the exploitation may be just as bad, or worse, in many of the places these people originate from.
  - chii 8y ago
    "better to be exploited and have food than to be free and starve"
    - zhangjunphy 8y ago
      than to be not free and starve
- Lazare 8y ago
  > Either the educators didn't know this would happen or it was a campaign to sell the public on the idea. Globalisation has resulted in the greatest reduction in human poverty to have ever occurred. The benefits are not uniformly distributed, and there are losers and winners, the losers deserve protection, and the shortcomings should be decried and fixed, sure. But to conclude from the fact that some migrants in one country are having a rough time that globalisation as a whole is a negative thing is errant nonsense; the equivalent of stubbing your toe and deciding that the entire concept of furniture was a mistake. The mere fact you're posting on here makes it clear you're part of the global 1%. As such, you have the luxury of preferring policies that avoid making you uncomfortable. Others face harsher constraints.
  - Avshalom 8y ago
    I mean I guess define globalization because the thing immediately preceding it--colonial mercantilism--was just as global. That rise from poverty coincides with both the death of nominal colonialism and also frankly the rise of Soviet and Maoist communism and the CIA's banana republic crimes in Central and South America. Further "Free Trade" as usually used to characterize Globalisation still doesn't exist in any useful sense even in things like NAFTA which has free trade in the name.
  - ShorsHammer 8y ago
    > Globalisation has resulted in the greatest reduction in human poverty to have ever occurred Correlation ≠ Causation. How can you so easily attribute one to the other? I'd argue advancements in science have done far more to alleviate poverty and suffering rather than lowered trade barriers. It's a common theme worldwide that most of the gains from globalisation have gone to the elites while environmental damage has been externalised.
    - GyYZTfWBfQw 8y ago
      Except there's no advancements in science, or not to this extent as there is in capitalism. You are talking about "advancements in science" as if they are a given in every society: it's not. Capitalism allows us to pursue science, instead of starving to death.
- JDiculous 8y ago
  Macroeconomics is essentially a public relations campaign on behalf of wealthy private business interests.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  Adam Smith explained the downsides of capitalist in the original book on the topic. "Conservative" teachers just prefer to see them under the rug.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  That isn't what comparative advantage is - it is a recognition fo opportunity costs. If you have one country that can grow wheat and cotton better than their northern neighbor who can just grow wheat with lesser yield per acre it would make sense to get as much cotton as they need in the south and trade with the north for wheat because suitable acres not spent growing cotton are a loss in comparison. I know my teaching of the industrial revolution emphasized that things were dirty, nasty, and brutal. There was exploitation of the desperate masses but it was still sadly a better alternative than being killed in a pogrom or starving to death in a famine and eventually after many lives were lost reform arose to shift the balance. While the sort of scamming and defacto debt slavery are unacceptable - they were also unfortunately precedented, especially when desperate people are involved and it become less worth asking 'is it a scam' first. Industrialization is a morally messy process on many levels with no comfortable answers let alone easy ones. Take something like child labor for instance - clearly it is better off to have kids learning and preparing for the coming next stage of the economy instead of toiling or risking injury. However banning it and enforcing it too early perversely leads to increased child prostitution (no pun intended for such a somber subject matter) as they still need money to survive.
  - seaweed 8y ago
    > "If you have one country that can grow wheat and cotton better than their northern neighbor who can just grow wheat with lesser yield per acre..." You're describing absolute advantage, not comparative advantage. Even if country A is worse at growing wheat than country B, it can still gain by specializing in exporting wheat to country B... so long as it's even worse at making other goods.
clay_the_ripper 8y ago
These articles sadden me. As a resident of a developed country with a decent salary I am definitely the beneficiary of the exploitave practices that keep manufactureed goods as cheap as possible. It is sickening to think that my dollars flow to the people and companies that make these practices possible. It doesn’t seem necessary, and is the result of callousness and greed. Whatever your views on capitalism and market forces, the practices that make this kind of exploitation of fellow humans possible are simply not necessary or worth it to save a couple of bucks. Does anyone know what individuals can do to combat this type of thing or have further reading to recommend?
- rayiner 8y ago
  Whatever we do, it cannot be tariffs on countries that manufacture products with slave labor.
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    Sarcasm?
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  Campaign and contribute to people who want to restrict goods to come from places with good labor protections.
- closeparen 8y ago
  Spend a few years as a subsistence farmer in one of these countries. It will both drastically reduce your consumption and give you an understanding of the life you want to force on people to “save” them from exploitation.
  - saas_co_de 8y ago
    False dichotomy. European imperialism has been creating the conditions that make peasant farming hell for centuries now (and millennia if you count their own people). Every single sweatshop laborer takes a job because it is better than the alternatives, but their range of choices is dictated by imperialist aggression.
acover 8y ago
Is there a way to determine which products use slavery and to what extent? Edit: https://knowthechain.org https://knowthechain.org might work. Don't drink Monster.
- noobermin 8y ago
  I really get skeptical of attitudes like this. It's not enough to just make a conscious decision to not buy them yourself because it won't accomplish much. You need systemic change or significant pressure on the slave shops at the very least.
  - dagss 8y ago
    Getting "systemic change or significant pressure" starts by individuals spreading awareness and campaigning politically, and determining what goods are produced using slave labor is a big part of that.
    - louithethrid 8y ago
      Maybee, that is part of a plan, that gets you nowhere. Because there is limited attention, a exaustion to campaigning and emotions. At some point, when all your actions result in evil- and none of the coices you make seem to put a dent into it- you just give up. I sincerely do no longer believe that the left can ever continue to exist after the cause of its existance has been obliberated.But like all movements, craving for power, this one wont die. So there will always be causes, always be marching, and the wretched of the earth will always wait invain for the help of the freedom front of judea.
  - throwawaymath 8y ago
    Perfect is the enemy of good. Individuals cannot effect systemic change, but they can reduce their own responsibility. In so doing, they might convince others to do so, which can effect systemic change. Changing individual behavior is concrete and demonstrable. It's also harder and requires more of a sacrifice, which is why people don't do it. On the other hand, effecting systemic change is ill-defined and hard to measure. It's a lot easier to attempt (and fail) a monolithic task with no skin in the game than it is to clean up your own side of the street.
duxup 8y ago
Is this perhaps the natural / granted horrific progression to developing? It's not like the existing first world nations just skipped the exploitative or their own gilded age phases. Has anyone made the jump developing without going through such an phase? I'm not trying to justify it, just wondering.
- opportune 8y ago
  It's only "natural" in the sense that this is what capitalist/market-oriented development inevitably causes. It would be just as natural for wealthier countries to simply give poorer countries capital, build infrastructure, teachers, etc. There is actually a lot of left-wing literature on political economics regarding whether capitalism is truly necessary to achieve the transition to an industrialized economy (and this was one of the biggest issues between the Trotskyist and Stalinist factions). The only countries that have skipped this transition, to my knowledge, have been the wealthy oil producing gulf countries. But that is simply because they owned very valuable land
  - rhizome 8y ago
    I think the silent downvotes mean you struck a nerve.
    - cirgue 8y ago
      Arguments about the moral qualities of capitalism v socialism are always an unproductive pissing contest, doubly so on the Internet.
      - opportune 8y ago
        Yes, but in this case I don't think it's unproductive or irrelevant to acknowledge that the problems from the article are rooted in the intersection of political and economic factors
    - duxup 8y ago
      Generally on the internet there is a lot of "that's just capitalism" and then the discussion degrades and it's just a bunch of "that's capitalism too" and you realize you are comparing real world capitalism to someone's theory that is bound by nothing and I'm not sure there is any point in that.
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rectang 8y ago
There will always be capital willing to exploit labor to the fullest extent that it can. But as the poor of the world continue to rise and the global oversupply of labor diminishes, will labor gain enough leverage to end the abuses?
- ISL 8y ago
  In time, yes.
  - jrs95 8y ago
    I’m not so sure. With an ever closer relationship between global capital and governments, and advances in technology that could facilitate incredible levels of surveillance, any form of resistance against the status quo could be shut down far more effectively than it ever could have been in the past.
    - rectang 8y ago
      Yes, this is what I'm concerned about as well. We've entered another gilded age, with skyrocketing inequality. Some argue that's fine so long as all boats are rising. But with incredible wealth disparities come political power disparities, and I don't think it makes sense to acquiesce to relative marginalization even if in an absolute sense things are improving.
  - extralego 8y ago
    It certainly remains to be seen. The consequences of electronic media are unknowable. The scope alone is surely incalculable. Since the mid-20th century, American culture has revealed a notable propensity for sensational hampster-wheel architecture. Possibly not by coincidence, labor has been no match. Media, electronic or not dictate the extents of social functionality through an unknowably complex process. I think it can loosely be illustrated as a culture of preferred data structures in a software design. Redesigning the softare to adapt to a newly preferred data structure will require a radical refactoring. With software, we aim to understand that refactoring in order to implement it, which we do before it goes to production because we are individually punished if we do it after. But when adapting to a new media form, the punishments are expected to be received by society as a whole, and the individuals wasted by the process. Acknowledging the phenomenon depends on a mass of individual comprehensions working together to illustrate the threat. And that's only to acknowledge the the threat exists...
laser 8y ago
There are significant policy failings here that need to be addressed, but assuming that will take a long time or is disincentivized from occurring at all, are there technology solutions that can be built to help these people? At the very beginning of the pipeline, before people emigrate from their home country to find work, do these people yet have access to basic smartphones/internet, or are they simply too poor? What about text messaging? How can information be gotten to people about the actual conditions before they leave, and even more importantly, how can collective information about the good and bad players be made available? In developed countries we have everything from Yelp to Glassdoor and beyond, but what do these underprivileged people use? Are they purely reliant on word of mouth?
voidmain 8y ago
If people could migrate freely around the world to seek work, economists crudely estimate that world GDP would roughly double, and that most of this enormous windfall would go to the poorest people on Earth. There is literally a hundred trillion dollar bill on the sidewalk for bringing together third-world labor and first-world legal systems, capital, and service demand. Instead the first world does its best to wall itself off from economic migrants, because the right fears that migration will threaten their culture and the left fears that migration will threaten the welfare state. As with any prohibition, the economic opportunity gets colonized by criminals. People seeking a better life will be taken advantage of and some of them will even wind up worse off than they started. But the root problem isn't the criminals, and it isn't customers who want cheap electronics. It's the prohibition of migration.
- yasp 8y ago
  See "We Wanted Workers" by economist George Borjas for a more skeptical treatment of this "hundred trillion dollar bill" lying on the sidewalk.
  - voidmain 8y ago
    I haven't read his book. But Borjas, who is to be clear a bit of an outlier among economists who have studied the problem, has in the papers I've looked at estimated that immigration is (slightly) a net economic negative for the very least skilled workers in the first world. This is nowhere close to saying that the net economic effect of immigration, including the benefits to the immigrants, is negative.
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    - yasp 8y ago
      It's a short and well written book, I'd recommend it if you're interested. One point that Borjas makes repeatedly is that he believes there is a suppression of reporting on the negative impacts of immigration liberalization. He also notes how on several occasions colleagues expressed surprise and dismay that he chose to publish findings that "went against the narrative", out of fear that they could embholden enemies of liberalized migration. Therefore, I would be cautious of drawing much from consensus or deviation therefrom.
ArtWomb 8y ago
Off the coast of Thailand, in international waters, hijacked migrants from Myanmar and Cambodia are conscripted to slave labor aboard fishing trawlers to produce the raw materials required by the multi-billion dollar American canned cat food market. Even massive public support for a boycott would fail to put a dent in the trade. Similar scenarios are playing out among Bangladeshi textile workers, Chilean copper miners, Madagascar vanilla harvesters, and on and on. And that doesn't even consider the global daily traffic in sexual exploitation. Blockchain and DLT actually begins to look like a viable solution to tracing supply chains to their origin transparently and contractually.
badrabbit 8y ago
In any given country,labor laws and human rights are addressed by that country's people and government. This is a local issue. The article makes it clear that multinationals are not directly part of the problem but their supply chain vendors are. What is the expectation here? Should a company headquartered in a different country enforce it's views on labor,hiring practices and human rights on local vendors? With what rights? That is an absurdly arrogant way of viewing the problem. If the local govermnet cares more about economic prosperity than decent treatment of humans then they have every right to do so,it's their country and their people. I don't like it but I have no right to tell someone else how to run their country. It would have been the same way if the tables were turned. Western standards can't be enforced without western prosperity. I think,just maybe,western individuals don't apperciate enough just how much western rights and liberties depend on a stable prosperous economy. In my opinion,the best way to solve this is by aiding the local economy,by giving more work and business to the local vendors/supply chain. The more they prosper,the easier it is for the local working class to demand and get better treatment. There is change and there is sustainable change. Isn't China a good example of how working conditiond have somewhat improved over the past 10years or so?
- deleted 8y ago
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davidzweig 8y ago
Foreign domestic workers (maids) are often treated poorly in Malaysia. http://www.malaysiandigest.com/features/723621-malaysia-can-do-more-to-protect-foreign-maids.html http://www.malaysiandigest.com/features/723621-malaysia-can-...
- stevenwoo 8y ago
  That's merely an extension of what is covered in the article, legal immigrants must pay a commission (two bribes AFAIK to immigrate) go to Malaysia and the visa/legal immigration is tied to the employer who uses that leverage and the debt to force the immmigrant employee into a different arrangement much more advantageous to the employer in tech or fisheries or domestic work. It's seems no different than what we've been reading for years about Abu Dhabi or United Arab Emirates. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/19/nyregion/workers-at-nyus-abu-dhabi-site-face-harsh-conditions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/19/nyregion/workers-at-nyus-... https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/oct/23/migrant-domestic-workers-uae-beaten-abused https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/oct/23/m...
ck2 8y ago
Just a reminder that the US prison labor industry is billion dollar enterprise paying 90 cents per hour - against the constitution, but no-one seems to care. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2017/03/16/prison-labour-is-a-billion-dollar-industry-with-uncertain-returns-for-inmates https://www.economist.com/united-states/2017/03/16/prison-la...
- DuskStar 8y ago
  "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Slave labor performed by convicts might be morally abhorrent, but it isn't unconstitutional.
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walshemj 8y ago
Oh its Malaysia apartheid with a brown face (originally thought they meant china) I seriously looked at a full ride expat job there but after doing some research decided not to. I ended up feeling sorry for Singapore's dictator and the BBC world service report on ethnic rioting that had the line "several dead bodies lying in the street". Also id have had to cut my hair - I have a pony tail
contingencies 8y ago
Perhaps this may be realistically solved through increased automation: no dirty jobs for humans. I visited an Industrial Automation exhibition in Shenzhen last week which was held in conjunction with a Machine Vision exhibition. The number of systems and components available was substantial and the field seems prepared for an explosion: prices for precision gear are low and dropping, young people have increased access to legoesque mechatronic toys, and software knowledge is becoming pervasive.
profalseidol 8y ago
Unless you can afford to retire now. We are all in varying degrees subjected to Forced Labor. We've made many advances in making everything efficient and more abundant. Yet we still work to the death.
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- plaguuuuuu 8y ago
  I'm forced to work, but nobody's forcing me to work 9-5 every weekday. it beats subsistence farming (tilling fields is hard work) or hunting for my food though
  - profalseidol 8y ago
    Good for you. But for most of people in the world. 9-5 is a dream come true. Farming technology has advanced so much that you don't need much manpower to grow food. Yet most of humanity doesn't have access to these technology nor the lands to use. Yet there's so many idle lands and idle factories. So many wasted food and unoccupied houses. Yet many are dying from hunger and homeless. One must wonder why.
rabboRubble 8y ago
This article highlights one reason why I had huge issues with the Trans-Pacific Partnership ("TPP") agreement and more specifically Malaysia's inclusion in the regional partnership. Pro-trade supporters would argue that the US is "great and can out-compete" any country. I would argue that the US workers can not compete with international free labor.

220 points by craigjb 8y ago

I don't really like how sensationalistic this is, there are way more problems than just forced labor going into manufacturing. Energy used by manufacturing, local waste and pollution that goes unchecked, rampant corruption in factory owners, monopolistic control of the factories, ports, transit of goods, export, shipping, etc. We're a LONG way from freely competitive market and open, transparent regulation would do WONDERS for it.

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git_rancher 8y ago

Does anyone else remember being taught in Econ 101 about globalization and comparative advantage and how great it is? Either the educators didn't know this would happen or it was a campaign to sell the public on the idea. Or maybe it was just bad teaching. I wonder which one it was.

gue5t 8y ago
The campaign one.
debacle 8y ago
We also learned about externalities, two of the biggest being sociological and ecological.
- clay_the_ripper 8y ago
  Bingo. Externalities make it sound like just a cost of doing business, which in a hyper capitalist system, the exploitation of human beings is exactly that...
mbbutler 8y ago
The "competitive advantage" that many countries offer has always had more to do with their willingness to grind their workers into bone meal than any sort of technological or agricultural capability.
- ajross 8y ago
  Do they not teach you people about the Cultural Revolution? Those workers were bone meal long before they walked into a Foxconn factory. Inequality is a precondition for exploitive labor practices, not a result of them.
noobermin 8y ago
There is an advantage, the advantage is that you don't have to pay the full cost of their labor, you can offset it onto the workers so the price you pay is lower, looking like a savings.
closeparen 8y ago
What lives do you think these people would be living if not for globalization?
- noobermin 8y ago
  The person in the article would most likely still be with her family. She doesn't get a net benefit from her work, she was caught by the system and now cannot leave.
azernik 8y ago
I remember my Econ 101 teacher being much more cautious - noting that trade produces benefits on average, and that the benefits everyone iff there is political action to redistribute the benefits; and that fiscal is better than monetary stimulus, but in most Western political systems that's harder to push through. Generally those simple adages are very much spherical-cow observations, with assumptions of rational (i.e. operating in the system's interest) leadership, rule of law, and priced-in externalities; when those professors go from their intro classes to their research they start to account for more of the real-world complications.
- bgorman 8y ago
  Any econ 101 teacher who goes off script talking about politics shouldn't be taken seriously. My micro and macro classes did not mention political actions at all unless you consider describing the potential actions of the Federal reserve as inherently political.
  - dlp211 8y ago
    Economics is inheritantly political. To not talk about politics in an economy class is to deny reality.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      Or worse, to assume their implied political position as "natural" and everything else as a "distortion".
    - deleted 8y ago
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  - azernik 8y ago
    Any econ 101 class that talks seriously about a) fiscal effects, or b) trade (and hence the usefulness of Pareto-optimal game states) needs to talk about politics, because they are part of the system in question. This professor specifically specialized in the study of recessions, in which government action is essential; and took special interest in the effectiveness of different government interventions. Studying these subjects without talking about policy and politics is like studying security and ignoring human-factors research. I am in fact seriously skeptical about the quality of your econ classes that did not mention the effects of government spending, trade policy, taxation, or price controls.
ajross 8y ago
Or maybe it's a complicated subject and the outrageous aggregate wealth increases might plausibly be seen as worthwhile even if they create this kind of localized disaster. Basically: if you want to argue against "globalization" and for a return to, I dunno, the world of the 1960's, recognize that you are arguing for a return to the 1960's, and the 60's were by modern standards a human rights disaster basically everywhere. Progress is good. It's not "all" good, and needs attention and regulation. But ludditism is never the answer. What was that about bad teaching again?
- opportune 8y ago
  Don't be obtuse. When people talk about going back to the 60s in this context, they are talking about a return to the economic conditions that actually saw a steady improvement of QOL for the working class in the US - namely, organized labor and high marginal tax rates. Shoehorning in the orthogonal human rights abuses is just a distraction.
  - SamReidHughes 8y ago
    High marginal tax rates don't create steady improvement for the working class. They might create a single step of improvement by lowering their taxes, but it doesn't increase the rate of improvement beyond that one jump.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >Basically: if you want to argue against "globalization" and for a return to, I dunno, the world of the 1960's, recognize that you are arguing for a return to the 1960's, and the 60's were by modern standards a human rights disaster basically everywhere. That's one of the more bizarro strawmen I've seen. He doesn't suggest some kind of time travel -- so that we have to take it all, the good and the bad, of an earlier era. In that he doesn't even say anything about going back to an earlier era. He speaks of going back to an earlier practice. Which is what humans who shape their future, as opposed to being taken left and right by some impersonal forces, can perfectly do, without having to adopt anything else. >Progress is good. Progress, outside of technology (which is accumulative), is a myth. History has ups and downs and can go either way. The horrors of WWII were worse than whatever 19th century came up with. American politics, for one, where better in the 60s and 70s than today. And so on....
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dalbasal 8y ago
It's a hard one to teach, because everything carries so much baggage. Comparative advantage as they teach it is not a bad idea. It's a long road from that premise to the conclusion that free markets are all you need to know about humans. Migrant workers have been for thousands of years and still are, the most powerless class of people. They have no political power, almost by definition. The levels of minimum standards protection they get make a big difference. I think this is an area that the UN could have done something about, but never did.
jstewartmobile 8y ago
The pedagogues might not have been clued in, but their masters certainly knew. If Jim Crow didn't make it abundantly clear, Norbert Wiener spelled it out again in 1950: "Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor."
- icebraining 8y ago
  That was a comment on the perils of mechanization/automatization, not globalization: Let us remember that the automatic machine, whatever we think of any feelings it may have or may not have, is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor. It is perfectly clear that this will produce an unemployment situation, in comparison with which the present recession and even the depression of the thirties will seem a pleasant joke. (...) Thus the new industrial revolution is a two-edged sword. It may be used for the benefit of humanity, but only if humanity survives long enough to enter a period in which such a benefit is possible. It may also be used to destroy humanity, and if it is not used intelligently it can go very far in that direction. There are, however, hopeful signs on the horizon. Since the publication of the first edition of this book, I have participated in two big meetings with representatives of business management, and I have been delighted to see that awareness on the part of a great many of those present of the social dangers of our new technology and the social obligations of those responsible for management to see that the new modalities are used for the benefit of man, for increasing his leisure and enriching his spiritual life, rather than merely for profits and the worship of the machine as a new brazen calf.
  - jstewartmobile 8y ago
    Is there a difference, other than what the parts are made of? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Mumford#Megamachines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Mumford#Megamachines
nitwit005 8y ago
It's easy to look at how bad things are and lose sight of the possibility that this might be an improvement. Somehow foreigners keep coming, despite the abuses, so either these people are complete idiots who can't figure things out even after decades of being taken advantage of, or things actually work out well for most of them. Keep in mind that the exploitation may be just as bad, or worse, in many of the places these people originate from.
- chii 8y ago
  "better to be exploited and have food than to be free and starve"
  - zhangjunphy 8y ago
    than to be not free and starve
Lazare 8y ago
> Either the educators didn't know this would happen or it was a campaign to sell the public on the idea. Globalisation has resulted in the greatest reduction in human poverty to have ever occurred. The benefits are not uniformly distributed, and there are losers and winners, the losers deserve protection, and the shortcomings should be decried and fixed, sure. But to conclude from the fact that some migrants in one country are having a rough time that globalisation as a whole is a negative thing is errant nonsense; the equivalent of stubbing your toe and deciding that the entire concept of furniture was a mistake. The mere fact you're posting on here makes it clear you're part of the global 1%. As such, you have the luxury of preferring policies that avoid making you uncomfortable. Others face harsher constraints.
- Avshalom 8y ago
  I mean I guess define globalization because the thing immediately preceding it--colonial mercantilism--was just as global. That rise from poverty coincides with both the death of nominal colonialism and also frankly the rise of Soviet and Maoist communism and the CIA's banana republic crimes in Central and South America. Further "Free Trade" as usually used to characterize Globalisation still doesn't exist in any useful sense even in things like NAFTA which has free trade in the name.
- ShorsHammer 8y ago
  > Globalisation has resulted in the greatest reduction in human poverty to have ever occurred Correlation ≠ Causation. How can you so easily attribute one to the other? I'd argue advancements in science have done far more to alleviate poverty and suffering rather than lowered trade barriers. It's a common theme worldwide that most of the gains from globalisation have gone to the elites while environmental damage has been externalised.
  - GyYZTfWBfQw 8y ago
    Except there's no advancements in science, or not to this extent as there is in capitalism. You are talking about "advancements in science" as if they are a given in every society: it's not. Capitalism allows us to pursue science, instead of starving to death.
JDiculous 8y ago
Macroeconomics is essentially a public relations campaign on behalf of wealthy private business interests.
fjsolwmv 8y ago
Adam Smith explained the downsides of capitalist in the original book on the topic. "Conservative" teachers just prefer to see them under the rug.
Nasrudith 8y ago
That isn't what comparative advantage is - it is a recognition fo opportunity costs. If you have one country that can grow wheat and cotton better than their northern neighbor who can just grow wheat with lesser yield per acre it would make sense to get as much cotton as they need in the south and trade with the north for wheat because suitable acres not spent growing cotton are a loss in comparison. I know my teaching of the industrial revolution emphasized that things were dirty, nasty, and brutal. There was exploitation of the desperate masses but it was still sadly a better alternative than being killed in a pogrom or starving to death in a famine and eventually after many lives were lost reform arose to shift the balance. While the sort of scamming and defacto debt slavery are unacceptable - they were also unfortunately precedented, especially when desperate people are involved and it become less worth asking 'is it a scam' first. Industrialization is a morally messy process on many levels with no comfortable answers let alone easy ones. Take something like child labor for instance - clearly it is better off to have kids learning and preparing for the coming next stage of the economy instead of toiling or risking injury. However banning it and enforcing it too early perversely leads to increased child prostitution (no pun intended for such a somber subject matter) as they still need money to survive.
- seaweed 8y ago
  > "If you have one country that can grow wheat and cotton better than their northern neighbor who can just grow wheat with lesser yield per acre..." You're describing absolute advantage, not comparative advantage. Even if country A is worse at growing wheat than country B, it can still gain by specializing in exporting wheat to country B... so long as it's even worse at making other goods.

clay_the_ripper 8y ago

These articles sadden me. As a resident of a developed country with a decent salary I am definitely the beneficiary of the exploitave practices that keep manufactureed goods as cheap as possible. It is sickening to think that my dollars flow to the people and companies that make these practices possible. It doesn’t seem necessary, and is the result of callousness and greed. Whatever your views on capitalism and market forces, the practices that make this kind of exploitation of fellow humans possible are simply not necessary or worth it to save a couple of bucks. Does anyone know what individuals can do to combat this type of thing or have further reading to recommend?

rayiner 8y ago
Whatever we do, it cannot be tariffs on countries that manufacture products with slave labor.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  Sarcasm?
lotsofpulp 8y ago
Campaign and contribute to people who want to restrict goods to come from places with good labor protections.
closeparen 8y ago
Spend a few years as a subsistence farmer in one of these countries. It will both drastically reduce your consumption and give you an understanding of the life you want to force on people to “save” them from exploitation.
- saas_co_de 8y ago
  False dichotomy. European imperialism has been creating the conditions that make peasant farming hell for centuries now (and millennia if you count their own people). Every single sweatshop laborer takes a job because it is better than the alternatives, but their range of choices is dictated by imperialist aggression.

acover 8y ago

Is there a way to determine which products use slavery and to what extent? Edit: https://knowthechain.org https://knowthechain.org might work. Don't drink Monster.

noobermin 8y ago
I really get skeptical of attitudes like this. It's not enough to just make a conscious decision to not buy them yourself because it won't accomplish much. You need systemic change or significant pressure on the slave shops at the very least.
- dagss 8y ago
  Getting "systemic change or significant pressure" starts by individuals spreading awareness and campaigning politically, and determining what goods are produced using slave labor is a big part of that.
  - louithethrid 8y ago
    Maybee, that is part of a plan, that gets you nowhere. Because there is limited attention, a exaustion to campaigning and emotions. At some point, when all your actions result in evil- and none of the coices you make seem to put a dent into it- you just give up. I sincerely do no longer believe that the left can ever continue to exist after the cause of its existance has been obliberated.But like all movements, craving for power, this one wont die. So there will always be causes, always be marching, and the wretched of the earth will always wait invain for the help of the freedom front of judea.
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  Perfect is the enemy of good. Individuals cannot effect systemic change, but they can reduce their own responsibility. In so doing, they might convince others to do so, which can effect systemic change. Changing individual behavior is concrete and demonstrable. It's also harder and requires more of a sacrifice, which is why people don't do it. On the other hand, effecting systemic change is ill-defined and hard to measure. It's a lot easier to attempt (and fail) a monolithic task with no skin in the game than it is to clean up your own side of the street.

duxup 8y ago

Is this perhaps the natural / granted horrific progression to developing? It's not like the existing first world nations just skipped the exploitative or their own gilded age phases. Has anyone made the jump developing without going through such an phase? I'm not trying to justify it, just wondering.

opportune 8y ago
It's only "natural" in the sense that this is what capitalist/market-oriented development inevitably causes. It would be just as natural for wealthier countries to simply give poorer countries capital, build infrastructure, teachers, etc. There is actually a lot of left-wing literature on political economics regarding whether capitalism is truly necessary to achieve the transition to an industrialized economy (and this was one of the biggest issues between the Trotskyist and Stalinist factions). The only countries that have skipped this transition, to my knowledge, have been the wealthy oil producing gulf countries. But that is simply because they owned very valuable land
- rhizome 8y ago
  I think the silent downvotes mean you struck a nerve.
  - cirgue 8y ago
    Arguments about the moral qualities of capitalism v socialism are always an unproductive pissing contest, doubly so on the Internet.
    - opportune 8y ago
      Yes, but in this case I don't think it's unproductive or irrelevant to acknowledge that the problems from the article are rooted in the intersection of political and economic factors
  - duxup 8y ago
    Generally on the internet there is a lot of "that's just capitalism" and then the discussion degrades and it's just a bunch of "that's capitalism too" and you realize you are comparing real world capitalism to someone's theory that is bound by nothing and I'm not sure there is any point in that.

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rectang 8y ago

There will always be capital willing to exploit labor to the fullest extent that it can. But as the poor of the world continue to rise and the global oversupply of labor diminishes, will labor gain enough leverage to end the abuses?

ISL 8y ago
In time, yes.
- jrs95 8y ago
  I’m not so sure. With an ever closer relationship between global capital and governments, and advances in technology that could facilitate incredible levels of surveillance, any form of resistance against the status quo could be shut down far more effectively than it ever could have been in the past.
  - rectang 8y ago
    Yes, this is what I'm concerned about as well. We've entered another gilded age, with skyrocketing inequality. Some argue that's fine so long as all boats are rising. But with incredible wealth disparities come political power disparities, and I don't think it makes sense to acquiesce to relative marginalization even if in an absolute sense things are improving.
- extralego 8y ago
  It certainly remains to be seen. The consequences of electronic media are unknowable. The scope alone is surely incalculable. Since the mid-20th century, American culture has revealed a notable propensity for sensational hampster-wheel architecture. Possibly not by coincidence, labor has been no match. Media, electronic or not dictate the extents of social functionality through an unknowably complex process. I think it can loosely be illustrated as a culture of preferred data structures in a software design. Redesigning the softare to adapt to a newly preferred data structure will require a radical refactoring. With software, we aim to understand that refactoring in order to implement it, which we do before it goes to production because we are individually punished if we do it after. But when adapting to a new media form, the punishments are expected to be received by society as a whole, and the individuals wasted by the process. Acknowledging the phenomenon depends on a mass of individual comprehensions working together to illustrate the threat. And that's only to acknowledge the the threat exists...

laser 8y ago

There are significant policy failings here that need to be addressed, but assuming that will take a long time or is disincentivized from occurring at all, are there technology solutions that can be built to help these people? At the very beginning of the pipeline, before people emigrate from their home country to find work, do these people yet have access to basic smartphones/internet, or are they simply too poor? What about text messaging? How can information be gotten to people about the actual conditions before they leave, and even more importantly, how can collective information about the good and bad players be made available? In developed countries we have everything from Yelp to Glassdoor and beyond, but what do these underprivileged people use? Are they purely reliant on word of mouth?

voidmain 8y ago

If people could migrate freely around the world to seek work, economists crudely estimate that world GDP would roughly double, and that most of this enormous windfall would go to the poorest people on Earth. There is literally a hundred trillion dollar bill on the sidewalk for bringing together third-world labor and first-world legal systems, capital, and service demand. Instead the first world does its best to wall itself off from economic migrants, because the right fears that migration will threaten their culture and the left fears that migration will threaten the welfare state. As with any prohibition, the economic opportunity gets colonized by criminals. People seeking a better life will be taken advantage of and some of them will even wind up worse off than they started. But the root problem isn't the criminals, and it isn't customers who want cheap electronics. It's the prohibition of migration.

yasp 8y ago
See "We Wanted Workers" by economist George Borjas for a more skeptical treatment of this "hundred trillion dollar bill" lying on the sidewalk.
- voidmain 8y ago
  I haven't read his book. But Borjas, who is to be clear a bit of an outlier among economists who have studied the problem, has in the papers I've looked at estimated that immigration is (slightly) a net economic negative for the very least skilled workers in the first world. This is nowhere close to saying that the net economic effect of immigration, including the benefits to the immigrants, is negative.
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  - yasp 8y ago
    It's a short and well written book, I'd recommend it if you're interested. One point that Borjas makes repeatedly is that he believes there is a suppression of reporting on the negative impacts of immigration liberalization. He also notes how on several occasions colleagues expressed surprise and dismay that he chose to publish findings that "went against the narrative", out of fear that they could embholden enemies of liberalized migration. Therefore, I would be cautious of drawing much from consensus or deviation therefrom.

ArtWomb 8y ago

Off the coast of Thailand, in international waters, hijacked migrants from Myanmar and Cambodia are conscripted to slave labor aboard fishing trawlers to produce the raw materials required by the multi-billion dollar American canned cat food market. Even massive public support for a boycott would fail to put a dent in the trade. Similar scenarios are playing out among Bangladeshi textile workers, Chilean copper miners, Madagascar vanilla harvesters, and on and on. And that doesn't even consider the global daily traffic in sexual exploitation. Blockchain and DLT actually begins to look like a viable solution to tracing supply chains to their origin transparently and contractually.

badrabbit 8y ago

In any given country,labor laws and human rights are addressed by that country's people and government. This is a local issue. The article makes it clear that multinationals are not directly part of the problem but their supply chain vendors are. What is the expectation here? Should a company headquartered in a different country enforce it's views on labor,hiring practices and human rights on local vendors? With what rights? That is an absurdly arrogant way of viewing the problem. If the local govermnet cares more about economic prosperity than decent treatment of humans then they have every right to do so,it's their country and their people. I don't like it but I have no right to tell someone else how to run their country. It would have been the same way if the tables were turned. Western standards can't be enforced without western prosperity. I think,just maybe,western individuals don't apperciate enough just how much western rights and liberties depend on a stable prosperous economy. In my opinion,the best way to solve this is by aiding the local economy,by giving more work and business to the local vendors/supply chain. The more they prosper,the easier it is for the local working class to demand and get better treatment. There is change and there is sustainable change. Isn't China a good example of how working conditiond have somewhat improved over the past 10years or so?

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davidzweig 8y ago

Foreign domestic workers (maids) are often treated poorly in Malaysia. http://www.malaysiandigest.com/features/723621-malaysia-can-do-more-to-protect-foreign-maids.html http://www.malaysiandigest.com/features/723621-malaysia-can-...

stevenwoo 8y ago
That's merely an extension of what is covered in the article, legal immigrants must pay a commission (two bribes AFAIK to immigrate) go to Malaysia and the visa/legal immigration is tied to the employer who uses that leverage and the debt to force the immmigrant employee into a different arrangement much more advantageous to the employer in tech or fisheries or domestic work. It's seems no different than what we've been reading for years about Abu Dhabi or United Arab Emirates. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/19/nyregion/workers-at-nyus-abu-dhabi-site-face-harsh-conditions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/19/nyregion/workers-at-nyus-... https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/oct/23/migrant-domestic-workers-uae-beaten-abused https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/oct/23/m...

ck2 8y ago

Just a reminder that the US prison labor industry is billion dollar enterprise paying 90 cents per hour - against the constitution, but no-one seems to care. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2017/03/16/prison-labour-is-a-billion-dollar-industry-with-uncertain-returns-for-inmates https://www.economist.com/united-states/2017/03/16/prison-la...

DuskStar 8y ago
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Slave labor performed by convicts might be morally abhorrent, but it isn't unconstitutional.
- deleted 8y ago
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walshemj 8y ago

Oh its Malaysia apartheid with a brown face (originally thought they meant china) I seriously looked at a full ride expat job there but after doing some research decided not to. I ended up feeling sorry for Singapore's dictator and the BBC world service report on ethnic rioting that had the line "several dead bodies lying in the street". Also id have had to cut my hair - I have a pony tail

contingencies 8y ago

Perhaps this may be realistically solved through increased automation: no dirty jobs for humans. I visited an Industrial Automation exhibition in Shenzhen last week which was held in conjunction with a Machine Vision exhibition. The number of systems and components available was substantial and the field seems prepared for an explosion: prices for precision gear are low and dropping, young people have increased access to legoesque mechatronic toys, and software knowledge is becoming pervasive.

profalseidol 8y ago

Unless you can afford to retire now. We are all in varying degrees subjected to Forced Labor. We've made many advances in making everything efficient and more abundant. Yet we still work to the death.

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plaguuuuuu 8y ago
I'm forced to work, but nobody's forcing me to work 9-5 every weekday. it beats subsistence farming (tilling fields is hard work) or hunting for my food though
- profalseidol 8y ago
  Good for you. But for most of people in the world. 9-5 is a dream come true. Farming technology has advanced so much that you don't need much manpower to grow food. Yet most of humanity doesn't have access to these technology nor the lands to use. Yet there's so many idle lands and idle factories. So many wasted food and unoccupied houses. Yet many are dying from hunger and homeless. One must wonder why.

rabboRubble 8y ago

This article highlights one reason why I had huge issues with the Trans-Pacific Partnership ("TPP") agreement and more specifically Malaysia's inclusion in the regional partnership. Pro-trade supporters would argue that the US is "great and can out-compete" any country. I would argue that the US workers can not compete with international free labor.