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> There is a lot of dishonesty around Westerners complaining about foreign cheap labor. This is a strawman. You're conflating different groups of people with
by surfpel 4y ago
> There is a lot of dishonesty around Westerners complaining about foreign cheap labor.
This is a strawman.
You're conflating different groups of people with different interests. Some people complain about labor conditions, some people complain that jobs are leaving the country. Almost nobody is "dishonest" about this.
- wbsss4412 4y agoThere are plenty of people who are extremely selective with regards to their outrage on each issue, though.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- atwood22 4y agoSo? Most people's entire existence is predicated on unsustainable consumerism. There is literally too much to care about. If you require that people must care about all issues to care about any issue, then progress won't be made. Maybe that's your intention.
- wbsss4412 4y agoI don’t require everyone to care the same about all issues, that wasn’t my point. My point was people who care about labor rights, shipping jobs offshore, etc are selective about those specific issues. Never said they had to care about other issues.
- atwood22 4y agoThe same type of argument can be made about any specific issue. For instance, labor rights is incredibly broad. I don't think it's a realistic requirement for someone to care about every possible labor-rights issue. It's fine if people want to be selective.
- wbsss4412 4y agoI wasn’t specific enough. My point was that people are inconsistent due to the intersection between their advocacy and their own sense of nationalism. The issues are amplified when they pertain to Americas enemies and lessened when it pertains to Americas Allies.
- tcmart14 4y agoMaybe to help explain what I think you are getting at. A year or two ago, you had senators preaching about how we needed to stop china's slave labor of the uighyurs. Okay, fine, I agree with that. But what about the horrible labor practices American companies rely on in central Africa where there, slavery also exists? The people who say bad China about labor practices have their blinders up to our allies who use the same labor practices. The reality is, if you think a company should not use slave labor in China, you should also thing they shouldnt use slave labor in Africa or Vietnam or any other emerging country/economy/third world country. For a specific example, I did a quick search and Malaysia is one. Malaysia has the same or worst labor practices then China, but no one complains about tech companies relying on Malaysia's poor labor practices. A blog post that talks about it. https://medium.com/swlh/forced-labor-in-tech-c91daf979201 https://medium.com/swlh/forced-labor-in-tech-c91daf979201
- atwood22 4y agoSo your point is that you can’t call out an instance of slavery unless you call them all out? That doesn’t make sense to me. You should be able to highlight an issue without someone retorting “what about X?”, which is literal whataboutism. Everybody is a hypocrite on almost every issue. Take a major issue like climate change. Almost every human in the U.S. and Europe has massively large carbon footprints. Does that mean Americans or Europeans can’t care about climate change? We’re not ideal beings working in an ideal system. We’re flawed being in a flawed system trying to make things a little better.
- wbsss4412 4y agoAgain, the point was never that you have to be perfect, it’s that it’s shouldn’t just happen to perfectly align with Americas foreign policy agenda.
- rowanG077 4y agoThat's the same thing. It's just an arbitrary line in the sand you have drawn where you say if care about these issues but not these you must be dishonest.
- megablast 4y agoEverybody is. Unless there is someone outraged all the time.
- specialist 4y agoOur scarcest commodity is attention.
- upupandup 4y agoThe people complaining on Twitter that foreign cheap labour is being used are writing on devices that were produced by that same labour. Those very same people are the ones that are demanding that we bring those labour back but unwilling to brunt the cost that companies will then pass on to those same customer. It's not a strawman its the reality of Western society, whatever feels wrong is totally and completely detached from any logic or intellectual discussion about why the reality they feel like they are entitled to is at conflict with their own contradictory desires. It is virtue signaling, largely to placate and pat themselves on the back to deflect blame from them, that their consumption, their vote with their money, and unwillingness to pay the true cost, is what creates this situation.
- erichocean 4y ago> but unwilling to brunt the cost that companies will then pass on to those same customer HUGE "citation needed" here. Apple did a study years ago (when Obama was President) and the cost to manufacture iPhones in the US was well under 10% of the total cost, by their own calculations. The cost of labor in China has only gotten worse since then (hence the move to Vietnam in the OP).
- upupandup 4y ago> years ago No longer the case obviously but more importantly, Apple studied themselves and found they were only saving 10% in costs? This makes no sense lol
- lancesells 4y ago10% is many billions every three months. I don't think it's wise or ethical to manufacture in countries that have human rights violations but there's nothing ethical about a corporation.
- sneak 4y agoWhere do you propose that Apple move their Texas plant then? (The US, like China, also runs concentration camps. As far as I can tell there is no country on Earth that uniformly preserves human rights.)
- chrischen 4y ago99% chance the people complaining about labor conditions are doing so on a made in China phone. Let’s be honest, people complaining about labor conditions have a pretty weak understanding of economics and what is actually going on with regards to these factories. China isn’t stupid. They weaken their currency specifically to bring in the cheap labor jobs to lift the poorest to a slightly less poor tier. Unless you realize how poor they started out with it’s hard to appreciate the gains in wealth even if it still looks dirt poor to an armchair labor rights activist.
- tomxor 4y ago> 99% chance the people complaining about labor conditions are doing so on a made in China phone. 99% of everyone has a phone made in China, does this mean it's not possible to complain about the state of the world we live in?
- sneak 4y agoNot while you are literally voting with your dollars to preserve that status quo.
- chrischen 4y agoEspecially when said iPhone assemblers aren't even complaining about their work conditions as much as some clueless American... if one is going to complain, complain about one's own conditions, or something one actually knows about...
- tomxor 4y agoIt's not a vote if there is practically only one option.
- surfpel 4y ago> have a weak understanding of economics Economists hardly understand the economy, so I’d say they’re in good company… Jokes aside, demanding better treatment of workers and onshoring of jobs doesn’t seem as insane as people here are making it seem? This whole thread feels kind of irrelevant.