3 ms·

Uhh, excuse me, but the designers didn't expect sweatshops to pop up and waste asian people's lives farming gold. That's what's sad about it, the waste of time

by palish 19y ago

Uhh, excuse me, but the designers didn't expect sweatshops to pop up and waste asian people's lives farming gold. That's what's sad about it, the waste of time. I'm not talking about the people having fun, I'm talking about the people having to work for next to nothing doing something they hate and wasting their time on it.

rms 19y ago
The wage is comparable to other menial jobs in China. I personally would rather farm gold than work 12 hour days in a manufacturing plant. At least you can chain smoke and maybe even listen to music. What's sad is the hundreds of millions of Chinese people that would kill to have a standard of living as high as a city-dwelling gold farmer.
- lupin_sansei 19y ago
  Well said. If there was better work than Gold Farming they would do it. I'm with Milton Friedman in thinking that Sweatshops are a good thing, in that they provide a job for people who've got no place else to work. Remove the sweatshops and they starve.
  - rms 19y ago
    The real problem is that we have an economic system where people would starve without sweat shops. Capitalism has this nasty little problem of all the wealth getting concentrated in the hands of the few and globalization exacerbates the problem. Unfortunately, no one's figured out a better way of distributing wealth.
    - deleted 19y ago
      [deleted]
    - pg 19y ago
      And the alternatives to capitalism have an even nastier problem: absolute instead of merely relative poverty. Incidentally, the Chinese wouldn't starve without sweatshops. They'd be peasant farmers. The reason they work in sweatshops is the same reason workers chose to work in the "satanic mills" of England in 1800: being a peasant farmer is a very hard life.
      - lupin_sansei 19y ago
        Not to mention that wages in the mills were much much higher than in farming.
      - Tichy 19y ago
        I don't know about China, and not about the satanic mills, but as I have recently about the industrial revolution: back then actually it wasn't possible for everybody to be a farmer anymore. On the one hand, there was an enormous population explosion (which had also been encouraged by Feudalism, I think, the "owners" of the people had an interest in owning more people for a while). Then Feudalism was abolished, and nobody took care of the people anymore. hence the poverty and their willingness to do awful work. In that sense, I don't think Capitalism was really to blame. I suspect a similar thing could be going on in China.
        pg 19y ago
        Are you implying that the Industrial Revolution was caused by population pressure? That would be an amazing coincidence, wouldn't it, if jobs in factories appeared at just the moment it "wasn't possible to be a farmer anymore." In fact the history of every country that industrializes is the same. People work on farms till jobs appear in factories, and then they move to the cities-- not because it isn't possible to work on farms anymore, but because it's such a grim life. And incidentally, feudalism was over in England centuries before the Industrial Revolution got started in the late 18th century.
        lupin_sansei 19y ago
        Exactly. The guy above got it back to front. The population explosion was because of the extra wealth from the industrial revolution lowering the death rate due to the end of famine. http://www.mises.org/books/conquest.pdf http://www.mises.org/books/conquest.pdf Feudalism ended in England in the 16th century, hundreds of years before the industrial revolution http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/m0006447.html http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/m0006447.html
    - lupin_sansei 19y ago
      It's a myth that capitalism concentrates wealth into the hands of the few. In reality the opposite is the case: Capitalism is better at spreading the wealth among everyone than any other economic system. Look at the Gini coefficient, the freer the economy (the more capitalist) the less economic inequality there is: http://www.cato.org/pubs/efw/efw2006/efw2006es.pdf http://www.cato.org/pubs/efw/efw2006/efw2006es.pdf http://tinyurl.com/2gd7ue http://tinyurl.com/2gd7ue http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/6/64/375px-Index2006_EFCapita.gif http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/6/64/375px-Index2006_EFCapita.gif Also the gap between rich and poor has been essentially static for the past 50 years, and shrinking since the 80s http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2005/12/images/walton3.gif http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2005/12/images/walton3.gif http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp?sNav=pb&id=859 http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp?sNav=pb&id=859 Yet more proof is in the Economic Freedom index. All rich countries have free economies, and all poor countries have un-free economies: http://www.heritage.org/index/countries.cfm http://www.heritage.org/index/countries.cfm for me that's the smoking gun that capitalism works. http://web.archive.org/web/20060111094731/truckandbarter.com/tb_images/ef_in.gif http://web.archive.org/web/20060111094731/truckandbarter.com/tb_images/ef_in.gif "Unfortunately, no one's figured out a better way of distributing wealth." There are only 2 choices in economics: Capitalism, which is really just people trading freely (and seems to distribute the wealth the best) and communism/socialism, which doesn't allow anybody to trade (and has the worst distribution of wealth). The only other options are systems which are somewhere between, and evidence (from the Economic Freedom index) shows the freer the economy the better off everyone is. Further China isn't particularly capitalist, it's still very heavily socialist: http://www.heritage.org/index/country.cfm?id=China http://www.heritage.org/index/country.cfm?id=China (although that's changing year by year). So if people are starving in China it's not really capitalism's fault. It's also a myth that capitalism causes starvation. In fact there were no famines in the 20th century in any capitalist countries. All the famines were related to Marxism (China, Russia, Ethopia, North Korea etc.) (This has an indepth look at famines through the ages: http://www.mises.org/books/conquest.pdf) http://www.mises.org/books/conquest.pdf)
      - davidw 19y ago
        [ I hesitate to comment, because this is all steering away from 'startups'... ] I think the rebuttal to rms' comment that "Capitalism has this nasty little problem of all the wealth getting concentrated in the hands of the few" is very simply this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_sum_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_sum_fallacy While some kinds of wealth are limited, it's generally not a zero sum game.
Goladus 19y ago
Unskilled wage workers of all sorts have been wasting their days almost exactly in this manner since the industrial revolution. It's worth noting that when Karl Marx wrote "Estranged Labor" the working conditions were much worse. Incidentally, pages 6 and 7 makes it sound as if working in a good RMT outfit is actually fun and challenging. Apart from the exaggerated description of the time and effort it takes to reach the "maximum number of experience points," it's a very accurate description of what it's like to play Warcraft. I'd certainly rather spend 12 hours a day as part of a 40 man team solving Warcraft raid encounters than spending 12 hours a day packing sneakers or something.
lupin_sansei 19y ago
Your comment on wasting their lives implies that there's something better they could be doing. If there was why would they waste their time Gold Farming? Clearly for the people who work at the Gold Farms it's the best paying thing they can find, else they would switch jobs.
mynameishere 19y ago
I'm strongly fighting the urge to downmod your comments, because you seem to "mean well". But "meaning well" is the sort of attitude that leads otherwise intelligent people to turn away from the basic facts of the free marketplace. People want "gold coins" or whatever. So and so wants a job. A middleman arranges for an exchange of "gold coins" for real money by setting up an apparatus of technology, labor, marketing, and sales to allow it. (THIS ISN'T EASY.) Everyone is richer for it, with the possible exception of the people buying the "gold coins" who are high-class cheaters. But the guy who buys a Porsche is an extra-high-class cheater on the dating market, and I'm more worried about him any day of the week. The important thing is: Everybody is free, and it's this freedom (and not the FSF's "freedom") that took Ling or Wang or whoever out of the rice field.
cmars232 19y ago
How is that different than millions of other McJobs out there. They're getting paid to play video games.
- gyro_robo 19y ago
  They're getting paid to FARM in video games. That's very different from "play", which involves significantly more freedom, novelty, joy, and discovery. Not to mention the sheer irony of spending their lives to increment a number in a remote computer representing virtual gold pieces. Not exactly efficient.

by palish 19y ago

rms 19y ago

The wage is comparable to other menial jobs in China. I personally would rather farm gold than work 12 hour days in a manufacturing plant. At least you can chain smoke and maybe even listen to music. What's sad is the hundreds of millions of Chinese people that would kill to have a standard of living as high as a city-dwelling gold farmer.

lupin_sansei 19y ago
Well said. If there was better work than Gold Farming they would do it. I'm with Milton Friedman in thinking that Sweatshops are a good thing, in that they provide a job for people who've got no place else to work. Remove the sweatshops and they starve.
- rms 19y ago
  The real problem is that we have an economic system where people would starve without sweat shops. Capitalism has this nasty little problem of all the wealth getting concentrated in the hands of the few and globalization exacerbates the problem. Unfortunately, no one's figured out a better way of distributing wealth.
  - deleted 19y ago
    [deleted]
  - pg 19y ago
    And the alternatives to capitalism have an even nastier problem: absolute instead of merely relative poverty. Incidentally, the Chinese wouldn't starve without sweatshops. They'd be peasant farmers. The reason they work in sweatshops is the same reason workers chose to work in the "satanic mills" of England in 1800: being a peasant farmer is a very hard life.
    - lupin_sansei 19y ago
      Not to mention that wages in the mills were much much higher than in farming.
    - Tichy 19y ago
      I don't know about China, and not about the satanic mills, but as I have recently about the industrial revolution: back then actually it wasn't possible for everybody to be a farmer anymore. On the one hand, there was an enormous population explosion (which had also been encouraged by Feudalism, I think, the "owners" of the people had an interest in owning more people for a while). Then Feudalism was abolished, and nobody took care of the people anymore. hence the poverty and their willingness to do awful work. In that sense, I don't think Capitalism was really to blame. I suspect a similar thing could be going on in China.
      - pg 19y ago
        Are you implying that the Industrial Revolution was caused by population pressure? That would be an amazing coincidence, wouldn't it, if jobs in factories appeared at just the moment it "wasn't possible to be a farmer anymore." In fact the history of every country that industrializes is the same. People work on farms till jobs appear in factories, and then they move to the cities-- not because it isn't possible to work on farms anymore, but because it's such a grim life. And incidentally, feudalism was over in England centuries before the Industrial Revolution got started in the late 18th century.
        lupin_sansei 19y ago
        Exactly. The guy above got it back to front. The population explosion was because of the extra wealth from the industrial revolution lowering the death rate due to the end of famine. http://www.mises.org/books/conquest.pdf http://www.mises.org/books/conquest.pdf Feudalism ended in England in the 16th century, hundreds of years before the industrial revolution http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/m0006447.html http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/m0006447.html
  - lupin_sansei 19y ago
    It's a myth that capitalism concentrates wealth into the hands of the few. In reality the opposite is the case: Capitalism is better at spreading the wealth among everyone than any other economic system. Look at the Gini coefficient, the freer the economy (the more capitalist) the less economic inequality there is: http://www.cato.org/pubs/efw/efw2006/efw2006es.pdf http://www.cato.org/pubs/efw/efw2006/efw2006es.pdf http://tinyurl.com/2gd7ue http://tinyurl.com/2gd7ue http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/6/64/375px-Index2006_EFCapita.gif http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/6/64/375px-Index2006_EFCapita.gif Also the gap between rich and poor has been essentially static for the past 50 years, and shrinking since the 80s http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2005/12/images/walton3.gif http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2005/12/images/walton3.gif http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp?sNav=pb&id=859 http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp?sNav=pb&id=859 Yet more proof is in the Economic Freedom index. All rich countries have free economies, and all poor countries have un-free economies: http://www.heritage.org/index/countries.cfm http://www.heritage.org/index/countries.cfm for me that's the smoking gun that capitalism works. http://web.archive.org/web/20060111094731/truckandbarter.com/tb_images/ef_in.gif http://web.archive.org/web/20060111094731/truckandbarter.com/tb_images/ef_in.gif "Unfortunately, no one's figured out a better way of distributing wealth." There are only 2 choices in economics: Capitalism, which is really just people trading freely (and seems to distribute the wealth the best) and communism/socialism, which doesn't allow anybody to trade (and has the worst distribution of wealth). The only other options are systems which are somewhere between, and evidence (from the Economic Freedom index) shows the freer the economy the better off everyone is. Further China isn't particularly capitalist, it's still very heavily socialist: http://www.heritage.org/index/country.cfm?id=China http://www.heritage.org/index/country.cfm?id=China (although that's changing year by year). So if people are starving in China it's not really capitalism's fault. It's also a myth that capitalism causes starvation. In fact there were no famines in the 20th century in any capitalist countries. All the famines were related to Marxism (China, Russia, Ethopia, North Korea etc.) (This has an indepth look at famines through the ages: http://www.mises.org/books/conquest.pdf) http://www.mises.org/books/conquest.pdf)
    - davidw 19y ago
      [ I hesitate to comment, because this is all steering away from 'startups'... ] I think the rebuttal to rms' comment that "Capitalism has this nasty little problem of all the wealth getting concentrated in the hands of the few" is very simply this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_sum_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_sum_fallacy While some kinds of wealth are limited, it's generally not a zero sum game.

Goladus 19y ago

Unskilled wage workers of all sorts have been wasting their days almost exactly in this manner since the industrial revolution. It's worth noting that when Karl Marx wrote "Estranged Labor" the working conditions were much worse. Incidentally, pages 6 and 7 makes it sound as if working in a good RMT outfit is actually fun and challenging. Apart from the exaggerated description of the time and effort it takes to reach the "maximum number of experience points," it's a very accurate description of what it's like to play Warcraft. I'd certainly rather spend 12 hours a day as part of a 40 man team solving Warcraft raid encounters than spending 12 hours a day packing sneakers or something.

lupin_sansei 19y ago

Your comment on wasting their lives implies that there's something better they could be doing. If there was why would they waste their time Gold Farming? Clearly for the people who work at the Gold Farms it's the best paying thing they can find, else they would switch jobs.

mynameishere 19y ago

I'm strongly fighting the urge to downmod your comments, because you seem to "mean well". But "meaning well" is the sort of attitude that leads otherwise intelligent people to turn away from the basic facts of the free marketplace. People want "gold coins" or whatever. So and so wants a job. A middleman arranges for an exchange of "gold coins" for real money by setting up an apparatus of technology, labor, marketing, and sales to allow it. (THIS ISN'T EASY.) Everyone is richer for it, with the possible exception of the people buying the "gold coins" who are high-class cheaters. But the guy who buys a Porsche is an extra-high-class cheater on the dating market, and I'm more worried about him any day of the week. The important thing is: Everybody is free, and it's this freedom (and not the FSF's "freedom") that took Ling or Wang or whoever out of the rice field.

cmars232 19y ago

How is that different than millions of other McJobs out there. They're getting paid to play video games.

gyro_robo 19y ago
They're getting paid to FARM in video games. That's very different from "play", which involves significantly more freedom, novelty, joy, and discovery. Not to mention the sheer irony of spending their lives to increment a number in a remote computer representing virtual gold pieces. Not exactly efficient.