4 ms·

Is it more horrifying than them starving to death though or doing some worse job? I agree the conditions sound horrible, but it's still bringing jobs and money.

Is it more horrifying than them starving to death though or doing some worse job? I agree the conditions sound horrible, but it's still bringing jobs and money. Is making it illegal or uneconomical going to result in a better quality of life for the people that work there and their families?

rad_gruchalski 4y ago
Right? Like those people in China who were so happy to break, split, sort and burn the plastic waste we used to send them back in the day. Why don’t they want it anymore? They should have been grateful. At least they had jobs. Otherwise who knows what they would have been doing! /s
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- zizee 4y ago
  This is not what the grandparent is saying. The typical situation is not that people are forced to do the work. We're not talking about slavery* here. They are doing it because they see it as their "best option". By stopping it, the result is their "best option" is taken away from them, and they have to go do the next "best option". You could keep saying "this is inhuman, let's stop it from happening", but the effect is just making it worse and worse. Instead, better options should be provided. That's the real solution, but it's a whole lot harder to implement than the knee jerk response of stopping an activity. edit to preempt ridiculous interpretations of my words: This is assuming slavery is not the case. If slavery is involved, it is a different situation to what i am talking about.
  - rad_gruchalski 4y ago
    > This is not what the grandparent is saying. The typical situation is not that people are forced to do the work. We're not talking about slavery* here. > They are doing it because they see it as their "best option". By stopping it, the result is their "best option" is taken away from them, and they have to go do the next "best option". Exactly. I know what the gp said. It was the same with those in China. The West didn’t force anybody in China using slavery to take that plastic. They were happily buying it. It was the “best option under given circumstances” for those who were doing it. Whole families built businesses on it.
    - zizee 4y ago
      Oh right, sorry! Ironically I misunderstood what you were saying :facepalm:
rayiner 4y ago
My dad is from near Chittagong. I think it’s a thousand percent better for Bangladesh to do this dirty work to build a real economy of its own, instead of depending on European countries for hand outs. It’s not like america didn’t have kids working in coal mines when it was in an early stage of development.
- NegativeLatency 4y ago
  I think the point is that the corps should have to pay to keep their workers and the environment safe
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - version_five 4y ago
    To me this is first order thinking. If paying to keep workers and the environment safe means developing countries are denied work and resources, is that actually better? The simplistic "dangerous work is bad" analysis doesn't account for the upside compared with not bringing this work to the subcontinent. And the solutions seem to ignore the downside of shutting down or rendering economically unviable the shipbreaking yards. There's certainly going to be a gradual pathway to improving working conditions, but I think it has to be gradual and deliberate, or it's just going to shut the current workers out. More regulation always favors big companies. A bad end point would be where Indian and Bangladeshi shipyards are regulated out of existence and established companies that can do lots of paperwork get to benefit from a regulatory regime that makes them mandatory. That's where is is likely to head when the problem is considered in a shallow way
    - Timon3 4y ago
      This looks deep at one side, and fully ignores the other. Think about the consequences of not improving safety - personally a lot of poor people will be hurt, either resulting in them having to be supported by their family, or more likely simply dying, and structurally you're not encouraging any change in these conditions. By allowing the workers to be made to work in unsafe conditions you'll reduce cost and prices, but you won't have an incentive to develop safer ways to process everything, since the unsafe way is allowed and way cheaper! > More regulation always favors big companies. Is there actual research into this? I see this religiously repeated by a lot of people, but I somehow never see actual data to support it.

rad_gruchalski 4y ago

Right? Like those people in China who were so happy to break, split, sort and burn the plastic waste we used to send them back in the day. Why don’t they want it anymore? They should have been grateful. At least they had jobs. Otherwise who knows what they would have been doing! /s

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
zizee 4y ago
This is not what the grandparent is saying. The typical situation is not that people are forced to do the work. We're not talking about slavery* here. They are doing it because they see it as their "best option". By stopping it, the result is their "best option" is taken away from them, and they have to go do the next "best option". You could keep saying "this is inhuman, let's stop it from happening", but the effect is just making it worse and worse. Instead, better options should be provided. That's the real solution, but it's a whole lot harder to implement than the knee jerk response of stopping an activity. edit to preempt ridiculous interpretations of my words: This is assuming slavery is not the case. If slavery is involved, it is a different situation to what i am talking about.
- rad_gruchalski 4y ago
  > This is not what the grandparent is saying. The typical situation is not that people are forced to do the work. We're not talking about slavery* here. > They are doing it because they see it as their "best option". By stopping it, the result is their "best option" is taken away from them, and they have to go do the next "best option". Exactly. I know what the gp said. It was the same with those in China. The West didn’t force anybody in China using slavery to take that plastic. They were happily buying it. It was the “best option under given circumstances” for those who were doing it. Whole families built businesses on it.
  - zizee 4y ago
    Oh right, sorry! Ironically I misunderstood what you were saying :facepalm:

rayiner 4y ago

My dad is from near Chittagong. I think it’s a thousand percent better for Bangladesh to do this dirty work to build a real economy of its own, instead of depending on European countries for hand outs. It’s not like america didn’t have kids working in coal mines when it was in an early stage of development.

NegativeLatency 4y ago
I think the point is that the corps should have to pay to keep their workers and the environment safe
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- version_five 4y ago
  To me this is first order thinking. If paying to keep workers and the environment safe means developing countries are denied work and resources, is that actually better? The simplistic "dangerous work is bad" analysis doesn't account for the upside compared with not bringing this work to the subcontinent. And the solutions seem to ignore the downside of shutting down or rendering economically unviable the shipbreaking yards. There's certainly going to be a gradual pathway to improving working conditions, but I think it has to be gradual and deliberate, or it's just going to shut the current workers out. More regulation always favors big companies. A bad end point would be where Indian and Bangladeshi shipyards are regulated out of existence and established companies that can do lots of paperwork get to benefit from a regulatory regime that makes them mandatory. That's where is is likely to head when the problem is considered in a shallow way
  - Timon3 4y ago
    This looks deep at one side, and fully ignores the other. Think about the consequences of not improving safety - personally a lot of poor people will be hurt, either resulting in them having to be supported by their family, or more likely simply dying, and structurally you're not encouraging any change in these conditions. By allowing the workers to be made to work in unsafe conditions you'll reduce cost and prices, but you won't have an incentive to develop safer ways to process everything, since the unsafe way is allowed and way cheaper! > More regulation always favors big companies. Is there actual research into this? I see this religiously repeated by a lot of people, but I somehow never see actual data to support it.