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Not long ago HN was gushing over how Apple's moves to India and globalization at large was 'uplifting poorer economies'. You can't have uplift the poor without

Not long ago HN was gushing over how Apple's moves to India and globalization at large was 'uplifting poorer economies'. You can't have uplift the poor without human rights in tandem. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23797463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23797463

roenxi 6y ago
The United States, one of the wealthiest and most technologically advanced nations in the history of nations, occasionally has riots and certainly has labour scandals. There are occasional instances of human rights abuse. It can simultaneously be true that globilisation is uplifting poorer economies and also that there is violence breaking out near Bengaluru. Asia has proven to have a repeatable formula for getting wealthy. Working hard & cheaply is a key step.
- h0l0cube 6y ago
  Yeah, but it's not some axiom that globalization uplifts the human rights of poorest of the world. As long as there's a commercial benefit to suppressing human rights, it will be happening somewhere. The only way out of it is global interest of citizens (and hence political motivation, and commercial interest) to uplift human rights.
  - lwansbrough 6y ago
    Unionization is a valid response to oppressive labour policies. Capitalism can coexist with worker rights in a balance. Both employers and unions engage in rent-seeking so it’s a fair trade-off. Globalization doesn’t try to uplift human rights. It only seeks to enrich through free trade. Turns out, enriching people is fairly effective at eliminating human rights abuses. Or at the very least, there’s enough of a correlation that it’s worth repeating.
    - h0l0cube 6y ago
      > enriching people is fairly effective at eliminating human rights abuses By what mechanism does it do that? Everyone who is motivated to make profits has incentive to pay the least possible on payroll and taxation. Human rights empower people to demand higher wages, and any government-sourced provision of quality of life increase taxation. People who's talents align with in-demand skills may have some leverage to increase their wealth and provide a better life for themselves, but without government intervention, that means little for everyone else. Edit: Do agree about unionization - but once again, the right to start or join a union is something that must be enforced by government policy, and voters need to care about human rights for that to occur.
      - roenxi 6y ago
        > By what mechanism does it do that? People choose the best option - so if I have a job doing hard manual labour for $70/hr or desk job that pays $80/hr I'll go do the desk work because it is easier and better paid. But someone needs to do the manual labour, so if literally nobody takes the job on then whoever wants the work done is forced to raise wages or do without. In a practical way, things like the Apple supply chain increase demand for workers, so the equilibrium wage has no choice but to tend upwards. There are more jobs but the same number of people - so if a business wants its job done it has to pay more. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol's_cost_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol's_cost_disease where improvements from high-productivity workers translate into increased wages in other unrelated segments. People get paid more without even necessarily doing anything differently! Then all that adds up to it being difficult to oppress the human rights of wealthy people. They have the resources to fight back.
        h0l0cube 6y ago
        I don't deny that there's a gain for nearly all of the spectrum in, say, China alone, but at the very bottom there's virtual slavery. Globally, this has been persistent (and recorded) for millennia up until the present day. This doesn't go away unless there's incentive for companies to pay them more than they absolutely have to, and treat them better than they absolutely must. There might be some merit to Baumol's cost disease, but I'd wager the studies that support the theory were limited to domestic economies in wealthy countries (orchestras in particular are a weird example because they are propped up often by sponsorship and government arts funding). Even still, consider now the growing wage disparity in the US, a 'wealthy' nation, where people are earning less almost across the board excluding tech, yet a sliver of the population is gaining wealth exponentially. Gained advantages from production efficiencies are being routed by globalisation - the claimed 'uplifting' force for the poor. And on the other end, China had to find slaves from somewhere to fulfil demand at the lower end, and suddenly a bunch of 're-education' camps pop up and commandeer the most politically expendable population as extra human resources.
diebeforei485 6y ago
The only comparison point for the labor practices of Apple's contract manufacturers is China, which does not have a free press. All we know is that conditions were not great, and only very substantial public pressure on Apple led to some improvements.
- h0l0cube 6y ago
  That might be, but how many people tweet about social justice concerns using their iPhones, and yet cast no light on these problems? Globalization on it's own isn't enough to improve human rights as long as there's a commercial incentive to suppress them. People taking an interest, making purchasing decisions, putting pressure on companies, voting in line with these ethics in mind, etc. can have some impact. This idea that we can just sit back and let economics improve quality of life -- at least at the very bottom -- seems a little naive.
MattGaiser 6y ago
> You can't have uplift the poor without human rights in tandem. China. The people in China are undoubtedly economically uplifted. They have ever fewer rights though.
- h0l0cube 6y ago
  Maybe the middle class. As I've said elsewhere, there's a profit-incentive to suppress human rights as this limits the ability for people to demand higher wages. The working poor aren't seeing the uplift, and if they have, the burden has been moved to Uyghur 're-education' camps.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    > The working poor aren't seeing the uplift Psh. This comment is just inaccurate, but not unsurprising given general HN bias on China. 700 million to 7 million working under $2/hr in 25 years, but sure 'no uplift' for the working poor.
  - h0l0cube 6y ago
    Got a mystery down vote on my comment. Just FYI, whimsicalism, I didn't downvote you (or anyone in these comments for that matter). But to answer you, I"m not talking about populations at large being uplifted, I"m talking about what's at the very bottom. I'm also talking about the middle to lower class in the US. The notion that access to human rights will continue to increase monotonically for everyone by default isn't bearing out in the present day, at best, people are trading places across the globe. The mid-West of the US with the upper-middle-class of China, for instance.
    - lazylizard 6y ago
      didnt up or down vote. but just saying. practically all of the 1b people that the un claim have been lifted out of poverty in the last 3 or 4 decades are chinese. in fact. the chinese recently just claimed to have finished the job. apparently the very last village classified as being in poverty there got reclassified.

roenxi 6y ago

The United States, one of the wealthiest and most technologically advanced nations in the history of nations, occasionally has riots and certainly has labour scandals. There are occasional instances of human rights abuse. It can simultaneously be true that globilisation is uplifting poorer economies and also that there is violence breaking out near Bengaluru. Asia has proven to have a repeatable formula for getting wealthy. Working hard & cheaply is a key step.

h0l0cube 6y ago
Yeah, but it's not some axiom that globalization uplifts the human rights of poorest of the world. As long as there's a commercial benefit to suppressing human rights, it will be happening somewhere. The only way out of it is global interest of citizens (and hence political motivation, and commercial interest) to uplift human rights.
- lwansbrough 6y ago
  Unionization is a valid response to oppressive labour policies. Capitalism can coexist with worker rights in a balance. Both employers and unions engage in rent-seeking so it’s a fair trade-off. Globalization doesn’t try to uplift human rights. It only seeks to enrich through free trade. Turns out, enriching people is fairly effective at eliminating human rights abuses. Or at the very least, there’s enough of a correlation that it’s worth repeating.
  - h0l0cube 6y ago
    > enriching people is fairly effective at eliminating human rights abuses By what mechanism does it do that? Everyone who is motivated to make profits has incentive to pay the least possible on payroll and taxation. Human rights empower people to demand higher wages, and any government-sourced provision of quality of life increase taxation. People who's talents align with in-demand skills may have some leverage to increase their wealth and provide a better life for themselves, but without government intervention, that means little for everyone else. Edit: Do agree about unionization - but once again, the right to start or join a union is something that must be enforced by government policy, and voters need to care about human rights for that to occur.
    - roenxi 6y ago
      > By what mechanism does it do that? People choose the best option - so if I have a job doing hard manual labour for $70/hr or desk job that pays $80/hr I'll go do the desk work because it is easier and better paid. But someone needs to do the manual labour, so if literally nobody takes the job on then whoever wants the work done is forced to raise wages or do without. In a practical way, things like the Apple supply chain increase demand for workers, so the equilibrium wage has no choice but to tend upwards. There are more jobs but the same number of people - so if a business wants its job done it has to pay more. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol's_cost_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol's_cost_disease where improvements from high-productivity workers translate into increased wages in other unrelated segments. People get paid more without even necessarily doing anything differently! Then all that adds up to it being difficult to oppress the human rights of wealthy people. They have the resources to fight back.
      - h0l0cube 6y ago
        I don't deny that there's a gain for nearly all of the spectrum in, say, China alone, but at the very bottom there's virtual slavery. Globally, this has been persistent (and recorded) for millennia up until the present day. This doesn't go away unless there's incentive for companies to pay them more than they absolutely have to, and treat them better than they absolutely must. There might be some merit to Baumol's cost disease, but I'd wager the studies that support the theory were limited to domestic economies in wealthy countries (orchestras in particular are a weird example because they are propped up often by sponsorship and government arts funding). Even still, consider now the growing wage disparity in the US, a 'wealthy' nation, where people are earning less almost across the board excluding tech, yet a sliver of the population is gaining wealth exponentially. Gained advantages from production efficiencies are being routed by globalisation - the claimed 'uplifting' force for the poor. And on the other end, China had to find slaves from somewhere to fulfil demand at the lower end, and suddenly a bunch of 're-education' camps pop up and commandeer the most politically expendable population as extra human resources.

diebeforei485 6y ago

The only comparison point for the labor practices of Apple's contract manufacturers is China, which does not have a free press. All we know is that conditions were not great, and only very substantial public pressure on Apple led to some improvements.

h0l0cube 6y ago
That might be, but how many people tweet about social justice concerns using their iPhones, and yet cast no light on these problems? Globalization on it's own isn't enough to improve human rights as long as there's a commercial incentive to suppress them. People taking an interest, making purchasing decisions, putting pressure on companies, voting in line with these ethics in mind, etc. can have some impact. This idea that we can just sit back and let economics improve quality of life -- at least at the very bottom -- seems a little naive.

MattGaiser 6y ago

> You can't have uplift the poor without human rights in tandem. China. The people in China are undoubtedly economically uplifted. They have ever fewer rights though.

h0l0cube 6y ago
Maybe the middle class. As I've said elsewhere, there's a profit-incentive to suppress human rights as this limits the ability for people to demand higher wages. The working poor aren't seeing the uplift, and if they have, the burden has been moved to Uyghur 're-education' camps.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  > The working poor aren't seeing the uplift Psh. This comment is just inaccurate, but not unsurprising given general HN bias on China. 700 million to 7 million working under $2/hr in 25 years, but sure 'no uplift' for the working poor.
- h0l0cube 6y ago
  Got a mystery down vote on my comment. Just FYI, whimsicalism, I didn't downvote you (or anyone in these comments for that matter). But to answer you, I"m not talking about populations at large being uplifted, I"m talking about what's at the very bottom. I'm also talking about the middle to lower class in the US. The notion that access to human rights will continue to increase monotonically for everyone by default isn't bearing out in the present day, at best, people are trading places across the globe. The mid-West of the US with the upper-middle-class of China, for instance.
  - lazylizard 6y ago
    didnt up or down vote. but just saying. practically all of the 1b people that the un claim have been lifted out of poverty in the last 3 or 4 decades are chinese. in fact. the chinese recently just claimed to have finished the job. apparently the very last village classified as being in poverty there got reclassified.