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I am surprised by today's lack of ethics discernment - there is big a difference. Prison labor is compensating for crimes committed against society and other p

by mgh2 6y ago

I am surprised by today's lack of ethics discernment - there is big a difference. Prison labor is compensating for crimes committed against society and other people, while uyghur labor is direct discrimination against an entire minority without probable cause. If they happen to commit terrorism, then yes, those specific individuals' forced labor is justified as debt, but right now they are just labeled as "enemies of the state" because they threaten CCP's interests. This is much like what happened with Nazi Germany or the USSR, even the controversial US Japanese internment camps. In the original thread it was mentioned that Apple fans are brainwashed by the brand, it is obvious from the responses here that this is clearly working...

mike_h 6y ago
Your argument assumes the non-Chinese justice system in question is actually just in its enforcement of the laws and fair in its sentencing. If that system is the US, we can question those assumptions along a few lines: - racial bias in enforcement and sentencing - inhumane prison terms in general - unjust laws e.g. the war on drugs - the failure of the society to provide entire classes of people with sufficient non-criminal routes out of poverty and despair
- Alupis 6y ago
  What does any of this have to do with the Chinese Communist Party literally forcing slaves to pick cotton[1][2][3]? You bring up issues with the US Justice System, and then use that as an excuse to blanket over everything the CCP does? How does that work, exactly? [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/china-cotton-forced-labour/china-accused-of-forcing-570000-people-to-pick-cotton-in-xinjiang-idUSL8N2IV38N https://www.reuters.com/article/china-cotton-forced-labour/c... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china/u-s-bans-cotton-imports-from-china-producer-xpcc-citing-xinjiang-slave-labor-idUSKBN28C38V https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china/u-s-bans-... [3] https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/china-s-forced-labor-cotton-market-dredges-grim-memories-american-n1251563 https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/china-s-forced-labor-cotton-ma...
  - mike_h 6y ago
    I doubt anyone in this thread is arguing that forced labor would be ok anywhere. But hypocrisy is its own destructive force in the world, and there’s a weird meme in Western culture whereby unsavory behavior in China is somehow a sign of evil while the West is somehow more pure. The respective body counts and the number of people in jail (absolute and per-capita) make this highly questionable.
    - Alupis 6y ago
      The article is talking about something very specific. Muslims being forced into labor camps against their will. The US has it's share of problems - nobody sane would deny that. But, what the US does do that the CCP does not is allow the open discourse of it's problems, and to change it's policies if people agree. Even the very numbers that come from the CCP regarding their prison population are extremely suspect - they do not allow independent auditing, and we discover new slave labor camps like the ones in this article nearly every other day it seems. Flatly, the numbers put forth by the CCP are not to be trusted because the CCP has done nothing to make the numbers trustworthy. Bringing things up from the US' past, nearly a century ago or longer, or equivocating paid voluntary prison labor with mandatory forced labor based on religion is flatly wrong.
      - quicklime 6y ago
        > what the US does do that the CCP does not is allow the open discourse of it's problems, and to change it's policies if people agree If this is true in practice, then the US prison labor problem is much more tractable than trying to fix an issue in a far off land where they don't allow open discourse. It wouldn't be a disaster if Americans focused their attention on their many domestic issues first, which they have direct control over. But currently there is very little open discourse in the US about prison labor, especially compared to the amount of discourse about Xinjiang. This doesn't excuse China for the things they are doing wrong.
        Alupis 6y ago
BigJono 6y ago
How does some private company getting labor for 10c an hour benefit anyone but them? It's "compensating" for jack shit. You might have a point if they had to pay minimum wage for each employee to the government to be used on social services.
- h0l0cube 6y ago
  Add to this a perverse incentive to increase the 'labor pool' by corrupting the justice system.
  - riffraff 6y ago
    and the incentive for private prisons to not even try to behave as a "correctional" facilities, since your revenue is tied to having more criminals, not less.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
burrows 6y ago
> Prison labor is compensating for crimes committed against society and other people But the prisoners didn’t commit crimes against “society” they committed them against particular people. Why not force the inmate into indentured servitude under the injured party rather than an opportunistic third party like Walmart?
coldtea 6y ago
>Prison labor is compensating for crimes committed against society and other people Strange how this "just" system getting inmates "compensating for crimes committed against society and other people", ended up with 25% of the world's prison population in a country with a mere 4% of the world's population. Not to mention this 25% seems also racially targeted - predominantly blacks and latinos...
free_rms 6y ago
We manage to imprison 4x as many people per capita compared to China. Think of every bad thing you think and have been told about the big bad CCP and then think that we manage to imprison at 4x their rate. What does that make us?
eyelidlessness 6y ago
Prison slave labor was instituted in the US as a substitute for chattel slavery, and criminalization of Black lives immediately matured around it. It’s certainly a lot less visibly oriented around race relations and a lot more couched in a legalistic framework that fits our system and culture, but there’s a direct line from antebellum slavery to the modern prison system.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

by mgh2 6y ago

mike_h 6y ago

Your argument assumes the non-Chinese justice system in question is actually just in its enforcement of the laws and fair in its sentencing. If that system is the US, we can question those assumptions along a few lines: - racial bias in enforcement and sentencing - inhumane prison terms in general - unjust laws e.g. the war on drugs - the failure of the society to provide entire classes of people with sufficient non-criminal routes out of poverty and despair

Alupis 6y ago
What does any of this have to do with the Chinese Communist Party literally forcing slaves to pick cotton[1][2][3]? You bring up issues with the US Justice System, and then use that as an excuse to blanket over everything the CCP does? How does that work, exactly? [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/china-cotton-forced-labour/china-accused-of-forcing-570000-people-to-pick-cotton-in-xinjiang-idUSL8N2IV38N https://www.reuters.com/article/china-cotton-forced-labour/c... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china/u-s-bans-cotton-imports-from-china-producer-xpcc-citing-xinjiang-slave-labor-idUSKBN28C38V https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china/u-s-bans-... [3] https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/china-s-forced-labor-cotton-market-dredges-grim-memories-american-n1251563 https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/china-s-forced-labor-cotton-ma...
- mike_h 6y ago
  I doubt anyone in this thread is arguing that forced labor would be ok anywhere. But hypocrisy is its own destructive force in the world, and there’s a weird meme in Western culture whereby unsavory behavior in China is somehow a sign of evil while the West is somehow more pure. The respective body counts and the number of people in jail (absolute and per-capita) make this highly questionable.
  - Alupis 6y ago
    The article is talking about something very specific. Muslims being forced into labor camps against their will. The US has it's share of problems - nobody sane would deny that. But, what the US does do that the CCP does not is allow the open discourse of it's problems, and to change it's policies if people agree. Even the very numbers that come from the CCP regarding their prison population are extremely suspect - they do not allow independent auditing, and we discover new slave labor camps like the ones in this article nearly every other day it seems. Flatly, the numbers put forth by the CCP are not to be trusted because the CCP has done nothing to make the numbers trustworthy. Bringing things up from the US' past, nearly a century ago or longer, or equivocating paid voluntary prison labor with mandatory forced labor based on religion is flatly wrong.
    - quicklime 6y ago
      > what the US does do that the CCP does not is allow the open discourse of it's problems, and to change it's policies if people agree If this is true in practice, then the US prison labor problem is much more tractable than trying to fix an issue in a far off land where they don't allow open discourse. It wouldn't be a disaster if Americans focused their attention on their many domestic issues first, which they have direct control over. But currently there is very little open discourse in the US about prison labor, especially compared to the amount of discourse about Xinjiang. This doesn't excuse China for the things they are doing wrong.
      - Alupis 6y ago

BigJono 6y ago

How does some private company getting labor for 10c an hour benefit anyone but them? It's "compensating" for jack shit. You might have a point if they had to pay minimum wage for each employee to the government to be used on social services.

h0l0cube 6y ago
Add to this a perverse incentive to increase the 'labor pool' by corrupting the justice system.
- riffraff 6y ago
  and the incentive for private prisons to not even try to behave as a "correctional" facilities, since your revenue is tied to having more criminals, not less.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

burrows 6y ago

> Prison labor is compensating for crimes committed against society and other people But the prisoners didn’t commit crimes against “society” they committed them against particular people. Why not force the inmate into indentured servitude under the injured party rather than an opportunistic third party like Walmart?

coldtea 6y ago

>Prison labor is compensating for crimes committed against society and other people Strange how this "just" system getting inmates "compensating for crimes committed against society and other people", ended up with 25% of the world's prison population in a country with a mere 4% of the world's population. Not to mention this 25% seems also racially targeted - predominantly blacks and latinos...

free_rms 6y ago

We manage to imprison 4x as many people per capita compared to China. Think of every bad thing you think and have been told about the big bad CCP and then think that we manage to imprison at 4x their rate. What does that make us?

eyelidlessness 6y ago

Prison slave labor was instituted in the US as a substitute for chattel slavery, and criminalization of Black lives immediately matured around it. It’s certainly a lot less visibly oriented around race relations and a lot more couched in a legalistic framework that fits our system and culture, but there’s a direct line from antebellum slavery to the modern prison system.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]