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There are plenty of people who are extremely selective with regards to their outrage on each issue, though.
by wbsss4412 4y ago
There 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.
- atwood22 4y agoWhy is it not ok to align with American foreign policy? I guess you’re implying that Americans are ok benefiting from other forms of labor exploitation? Why does that matter? Going back to the climate change example: everyone benefits from GHG emissions. Allowing arguments to be derailed by “NO U” is a quick way to stifle all discussion. To me, your argument, fully constructed, is: “you can’t care that Uyghur’s are enslaved because America also uses slave labor and American foreign policy is anti-China.” How is that an argument?
- 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.