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Folks - this is what we are outsourcing and externalizing. When foreign entities are able to bid for a lot less, and pay a lot less, a lot of it has to do with
by jollybean 6y ago
Folks - this is what we are outsourcing and externalizing.
When foreign entities are able to bid for a lot less, and pay a lot less, a lot of it has to do with the fact that they will not bother with 'end of life' for ships, or getting insurance, or worrying about the lives of people who are 'expendable'.
Those very nice buildings in Dubai come from some nasty labour practices.
If every piece of this puzzle from end-to-end were to have happened in a 'rich country' there'd be legal issues, PR/media, litigation, and a separate kind of bureaucracy altogether, meaning the 'alternative' for a lot of corporations is just 'wash their hands' of it, pay 1/2 the price, and get all the ugly parts 'off the books'.
We are to the point now where we have ample material surplus - we don't need any more 'plastic stuff from China' - it'd be worthwhile to start integrating a lot of 'off the books' stuff into trade deals. Ironically, it would be good for 'them' as well, because in chaotic, quasi-lawless systems it doesn't make sense for participants to invest in anything further ahead than what is in front of their noses (i.e. don't hate the Lebanese shippers for doing the only thing they can do to remain profitable, i.e. don't hate the player, hate the game) ... forcing some degree of transparency and accountability in these systems might raise prices a little bit, but the benefits would likely be immensely positive in the system overall.
It's nice that the story is made personal, about a real individual (think: that Tom Hanks film about someone stuck in international airport limbo) but that's not really the story here is it.
- kevmo 6y agoNasty labour practices... It's just slavery. This poor gentleman was forced into slavery. You're right that this is what we're outsourcing. All of the corporate trade agreements - American manufacturing was shipped overseas, and American labor forced to compete with what is often a modern form of slave labor.
- dzolob 6y agoAnd it was forced to slavery by the same people who took that job out of seas. Greed has no bottom.
- krapp 6y agoYeah but just think of the value being created for shareholders and consumers! /s
- corty 6y agoAnd remember, the company only has a duty to its shareholders to be more greedy!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- andrepd 6y agoExactly. What you need are systems architected in such a way to stop greed and its nasty effects.
- jfrunyon 6y agoAmerican manufacturing was shipped overseas because, i.e. after, American labor was unable to compete. I'm not sure what "corporate trade agreements" means either; corporations don't make "trade agreements". I'm also not sure why everyone takes for granted that America not having as many manufacturing jobs is a bad thing...
- danielheath 6y agoYou mean paid labor couldn’t compete on price with slaves? Color me shocked.
- Godel_unicode 6y agoYes, but also the standard of living in the US that American labor can't really compete on price with anyone.
- water8 6y agoManufacturing is like a ladder. When you outsource the bottom, it’s no different than cutting the rungs of a ladder beneath you. Manufacturing is essential to the wealth and prosperity of any nation.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jfrunyon 6y agoSource? Reasoning? No? So we're back where we started, thanks.
- water8 6y agoThe Source is WW1 and WW2. Germany was the world powerhouse in production not population. Their ability to out manufacture their neighboring countries lead to some pretty horrible things.
- seneca 6y agoWords have meaning, and the meaning of "slavery" is not "a bad situation". Slavery is alive and well in the world, but this story has nothing to do with it.
- gentleman11 6y agoThey appointed him as a forced custodian and imprisoned him on a boat for 4 years by way of forcing him to be its guardian. That is slavery. Could he quit? Did he have any rights or freedoms while in his situation?
- emmelaich 6y agoIf you call indentured servitude slavery, you're not helping - it just lessens the dynamic range of language. It sure doesn't help actual slaves.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> If you call indentured servitude slavery You’re being perfectly accurate; indentured servitude is consistent with both historical understandings of slavery and modern legal definitions; it was certainly distinct from the particular form of chattel slavery that was popular for a few hundred years and fell out of fashion in thr 19th century, and it is useful to be able to distinguish them since they overlapped in time and space, but that particular form of slavery was not the historically dominant form, itself, and it doesn’t make sense to narrow the definition to that particular form. While, certainly, that form of chattel slavery was the most immediate concern for, say, American abolitionists, I think they would see it as badly missing the point and not actually abolishing slavery if indentured servitude had been restored to replace chattel slavery.
- emmelaich 6y agoYup, not the dominant form. However I found a curious tidbit the other day; the 1619 ship had indentured servants not slaves. Not to belittle their plight, as they were de facto slaves as soon as they got on the ship.
- kevinmchugh 6y agoAmerican abolitionists very much understood that chattel slavery wasn't the only form of slavery. The text of the 13th amendment indicates as much.
- justinator 6y agoYou just described Capitalism.
- justinator 6y agoDownvote me all you want it's not not true. Rich people don't exist without exploiting the poor; so too with countries. I'm not sorry if you're wealthy and this is hurting too close to home, better live with it if you also want to be so wealthy.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoWe're downvoting you, not because it "hits too close to home", but because we think you're full of baloney. Don't take the downvotes as confirmation that you're right, because they're not.
- lame-robot-hoax 6y agoTrade isn’t zero sum.
- jollybean 6y agoCountries mostly become rich by being highly socially organized, and having a high standard for individual contribution. For example, 'gold' imported by ill-gotten means from some far off land actually provides 0 value in terms of material value creation. Of course 'oil' does, but remember the 'House of Saud' is kept in power by the US not with the promise of US access to 'cheap oil', rather, with the promise it will be sold at full value, on the open market - just not in some kind of strategic/complicated/backwater setup with the then Soviet Union or China. The US didn't 'go in and take all the oil', which they definitely had the power to do. This exemplifies, in perhaps a crude, ham-fisted realpolitik manner the 'enforcement of trust' in systems I alluded to in my original comment: it's actually the US (and ultimately everyone's) interest to uphold fairly basic commercial and humanitarian standards in the long run. And to be fair, these problems are to some extent a function of capitalism, because only 'very large' systems have the opportunity to plan on the generational scale, ergo, there's effectively no commercial enterprise for which the implementation of such standards really matters, that's generally the purview of governments.
- novok 6y agoThe fault here is ultimately with egypt. They were not letting him leave, they took his passport and not even letting him get 'deported' back to his home country. This is not from outsourcing, this is Kafkaesque bureaucracy created by Egypt itself.
- nickff 6y agoIt seems like the court basically enslaved him.
- lmm 6y agoThat's how contempt of court rules generally work in common-law countries, even in the west.
- lolinder 6y agoEgypt definitely has fault here, but the company that owns the ship could have gotten the ship out of there if they cared about him at all. Yes, it might have been expensive, but I would expect a US based company to have rescued him within weeks of this situation starting, not years.
- nickff 6y agoThe article says the parent company is in financial difficulties, and the individual in question was basically being held for ransom (along with the ship). Depending on the ordering of debts (for the company), they may not have been able to compensate the Egyptians. All of that being said, I agree an American company likely would have had this sorted out faster, because the USA tends to deal with bankruptcies and the like very quickly.
- worldsayshi 6y agoSeems to me that corporations owning ships having financial difficulties would be a natural consequence of outsourcing behaviour. You want to outsource risk and responsibilities. So the big companies get rid of their ships and hire small companies on the edge of profitability. I assume it's not always the most sound way to do business but some should get away with it.
- JJMcJ 6y agoRead a story of a ship's captain, stuck on the ship at anchor in New Jersey. There is a mariner's charity in Greater New York that would help out. They would post a bond with ICE and drive the sailor to an airport or another ship. Well, whether 9/11 security or what, they weren't allowed to do this. So the captain had been on the ship for over a year. So, yes, it can happen here.
- busterarm 6y agoSounds interesting. Got a link?
- chiph 6y agoIt happens fairly frequently. The owner runs into financial difficulty and the creditors seize the ship. The crew can't leave because they aren't allowed to abandon it, as well as not having a visa to enter the US to get to the airport, nor the money for airfare home. The locals usually donate food & supplies to the crew. https://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/story/how-a-charleston-pizza-shop-delivered-12-pies-to-the-crew-stuck-on-board-a-cargo-ship-in-the-harbor https://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/story/how-a-charleston-p...
- silly-silly 6y agoI'm slightly confused, if the owner can't afford to deal with the costs, they obviously dont have the financial ability to penalize the individual NOT to abandon ship. That level of cognitive disconnect surely can't be held up as valid in any legal system that has greater cognitive ability to do 'connect the dots drawings'.
- protoman3000 6y agoUltimately it’s a tragedy of commons situation and in these instances the only solutions are rigorous regulation or internalization of the costs of externalities. Both won’t happen, because the politics behind it are also a tragedy of commons.
- dredmorbius 6y agoNit on economic dynamics: more a Greesham's Law circumstance (bad or no regulation drives out good) than a tragedy of the commons (uncontained resource allocation leads to global overuse). They're similar, but have some significant and relevant distinctions.
- protoman3000 6y agoI knew Greshams law in scope of bad money driving out good money. Can you please elaborate more?
- dredmorbius 6y agohttps://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2h63fp/is_greshams_law_a_special_instance_of_a_more/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2h63fp/is_gres...
- Ar-Curunir 6y agoErr here in the United States you have people pissing in bottles and bags because they can't take a break without missing targets. The West is not immune to predatory hiring and employment practices.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- peteretep 6y agoI have pissed in a bottle before out of expediency, but I've never spent several years stranded on a ship without power, company, etc, out of free will. Conflating the two seems weird.
- Klinky 6y agoDo you piss in a bottle on a daily basis as part of your job? Comparing peeing in a bottle [a few times in your life] for expediency compared to doing it on the daily, seems to be its own conflation.
- peteretep 6y agoIf my current workplace offered me a 15% raise in exchange for forgoing toilet breaks and pissing in a bottle for the next year, I would go for it. I'm sure there's a number for which I'd agree to be stranded on a boat off the coast of Egypt without power, but I suspect it's closer to 15x my salary. As I understand it, this makes the latter 100x worse than the former.
- Klinky 6y agoNo, you'd need to compare the actual job that requires you to piss in a bottle, along with its salary, not your current job with a 15% bonus tacked on. Also people don't sign up to be abandoned on a ship, they're not told of that possibility, until it happens. They signed up to be merchant marines or seaman, not prisoners of ghost ships. Just because you find getting bit by a dog more palatable than falling into a pit of snakes, doesn't make getting bit by a dog okay or acceptable.
- jimbob45 6y ago>Folks - this is what we are outsourcing and externalizing. I doubt that you could find even one person on here who wouldn't support a blanket ban of outsourcing/externalization tomorrow.
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- pmiller2 6y agoExactly! And I know hardcore capitalist apologists who would say it was his free choice to agree to be legally bound. If you ask me, that’s some next level mental gymnastics, redefining the term “free choice.” But, there are those who disagree with me, and I expect you’ll see some of them show up to react to my comment.
- pmiller2 6y agoSee! They found me! Lol. Predictable. I guess the "marketplace of ideas" is inefficient these days.
- TheButlerian 6y agoYou win the reward: Clown post of the day!
- ryanlol 6y ago> Those very nice buildings in Dubai come from some nasty labour practices I’ve spent the past few months taking a deep dive into the Dubai real estate market. Excluding some villas, there are maybe 2 or 3 “very nice” buildings. Many look nice on the outside, but rarely on the inside.
- goodpoint 6y agoResponsibility should go together with power. Who has the power to push for better working conditions, transparency and accountability? Let's see: - A sailor from poor a countries - A customer from a wealthy country - A cash stripped shipping company from a poor country - A successful and massive company from a wealthy country - A billionaire owning such company - A politician in the same country