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China and "our standard of living"
- InkweaverReview 17y agoAwesome! Fake Steve just gets better and better. ;)
- mistermann 17y agoWow, spot on! Likely not news to anyone here, but I really wonder how many people out there are smart enough to realize how amazingly cheap the stuff we buy is, and really think of where it comes from.
- socratees 17y agoThey're all smart but the government or any one for that matter doesn't give a shit when you're poor. And like he says, people don't worry being exploited as long as it makes their life a little better, just a little better. I hope some awakening happens there but the government won't it let happen.
- roc 17y agoWhy do you think their government is trying so hard to maintain (the appearance of) economic growth? Their ability to maintain the status quo is essentially tied to double-digit economic growth. If their economy slows down to even modest growth they face serious unrest.
- jeffesp 17y agoAnd I wonder how many of those that realize are willing to change their lifestyle based on that knowledge? To be honest, I am not doing my part.
- zimbabwe 17y agoNeither am I. I wouldn't know where to begin; I don't know even if I've got the strength to go without much of what I use daily.
- onreact-com 17y agoI try. I support fair trade wherever I can. Mostly groceries but there is fashion as well and I hope soon more tech products will be available in the near future.
- xenophanes 17y agoWhat do you mean spot on? It's not a serious post. It presents no evidence. He's joking around as usual. edit: i'm seriously being downmodded for saying a post accusing apple execs of conspiracy to commit murder was a joke? and the prevailing view here is we should take that post as an accurate (radical lefty) political statement? and praise it even though it gave no political arguments capable of convincing someone who was unsure?
- cmars232 17y agoCheap in price, but also quality. The crap we buy today feels like garbage compared to 20 years ago. Maybe I'm getting old, but consumer products today seem watered down and made of the weakest thinnest plastic that the masses will put up with. This applies to consumer electronics, appliances, kid's toys, you name it.
- jdbeast00 17y agoAre you saying that products like the iphone are crap? Sure, you can buy the cheapest thing possible from walmart and save money, and sure, it'll break faster than a a higher-quality product. Its called choice. Even the high quality stuff coming out of china, like an iphone, is made much more inexpensively than we could make them in the states.
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- DrJokepu 17y agoActually, I must agree with the parent. While the iphone is really great and stuff, you can bet that everything that's not absolutely necessary and even a bit more has been engineered out of it, in the name of cost-efficiency. Otherwise it would be very expensive and unsuitable for mass production. Because it is a product of mass production, the iphone is definitely not a unique, luxury item even though it's very well designed and marketed as a high-endish phone. The average middle class consumer doesn't really have a lot of choice in this matter, there are differences in quality and price but middle class people can't really afford any product that hasn't been engineered for mass production.
- zimbabwe 17y agoThis is an argument that has quite a bit of nuance to it. I'd argue that the iPhone is a luxury item for certain definitions of luxury, that in fact it is more luxurious than something like a diamond necklace if you use a utilitarian definition of luxury.
- gaius 17y agoIt isn't really, tho'. For product X you could spend $y every year on Chinese-made because it's broken or obsolete, or $10y just once on German qualitat that will last for the rest of your life. We could all own fewer but better things, all made by workers who were decently paid and it would be cheaper. The difficult question is, why do so few people even want that?
- axod 17y agoI expect mainly because in the world of tech, things only have a life of maybe 2 years before they're considered 'old'/'obsolete'/'stupid looking' etc. Memory, megapixels, storage, screen, speed etc are all advancing so quickly that it doesn't make any sense to bother making something that'll last beyond a few years. It would however be cool and responsible to make these devices more environmentally friendly, but that's a hard sell to some. I'm sort of glad I didn't spend the extra on my first MP3 player - 32mb of wonderment.
- gaius 17y agoWe (the West) get a LOT of stuff from China. On a Chinese-made frying pan, for example, the handle is broken in a year, the non-stick coating comes off in a few washes. My (American-made) cast-iron skillet, on the other hand, cost more but I'll never need another. Heck, my grandkids, if I ever have any, could probably still use it...
- Periodic 17y agoI think we make the mistake of thinking everything made in China is cheap. You might be surprised to find out that some expensive and quality items are made in China. Somehow we have come to expect everything made in China to be cheap, though it is more a result of American companies looking for cheaper goods to advertise on the shelf because consumers are not qualified to make an informed decision. The fact is, any labor will be cheaper in China than in the US. This could be factory garment assemblers or traditional metal workers. The cost of living is so much lower over there that even the best costs less from China than from the US.
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- biohacker42 17y agoWell not quite spot on. It did mention that these people were willing to do what ever to get away from the hellish alternative they were born into. But if you blinked you missed it, you missed the most important point: People are doing this voluntarily. Rumors of forced labor are greatly exaggerated. Perhaps somewhere in Burma but in China and India and other places, people do this hard work because the alternative is harder. This is how you work your way up from a very low starting point. England wasn't always a workers' paradise either. Wages in China will rise.
- garply 17y agoThank you for making this point. This happens to be the position on the economic ladder where these people are. A few people are higher, most people are at a level equal or lower to this. In some ways I feel like the tone pieces like this take when discussing Chinese life is condescending. For some people this is just 'work.' Consider using this kind of pity to talk about American blue collar workers - does it seem appropriate?
- neilk 17y agoIt kind of does, when you consider that we're forcing local workers to compete with people who are just desperate to get out of the same crappy apartment with 12 other relatives. Do I owe the local worker a living? Of course not. But we both pay taxes to the same government, and he is getting shafted due to China's MFN status, and I as a professional who can afford iPhones am getting an awesome deal.
- biohacker42 17y agoDo you owe anything to the people who are just desperate to get out of the same crappy apartment with 12 other relatives? The local vs remote worker argument works when there's something inherently preferable about the local worker, like you and him are cousins or form the same tribe, or something like that. But nationalism aside, isn't everybody entitled to the same opportunities?
- domodomo 17y agoI used to work in IT for a Taiwanese manufacturing company that sold to Walmart & Sams Club, with factories primarily in southern China (near Guangzhou). Spent a fair amount of time in these factories. First thing is, no factory makes everything themselves, it's a huge network of factories and a buddy network of factory managers who supply varying levels of material to one another. That's part of the reason it's difficult to ascertain the true quality of life of workers associated with making a product, because down the line many factories go into making one finished product. I can say from my own anecdotal experience labor conditions are mixed bag. The light industry factories seemed to have safer conditions, and my companies factories were pretty decent. One iron processing factory I saw down right scary, imagine vats of molten iron at ground level, and operators in bare feet. One counter-intuitive thing I saw is that workers will often protest not when worked too hard, but when worked too lightly. Many factory workers WANT long hours so they can send more money back to relatives, or increase their personal savings. At least when I was there five years ago, it could be dangerous for a factory to be light on hours, as employees will quit and move to a factory where there are more hours to be paid. With the economic slowdown, this might have changed. What I'm getting at is it's hard to generalize about labor conditions in China, so saying things like they are all "slave labor" isn't really useful. You have to look at the specific circumstances of that companies manufacturing chain, if you are able.
- wsprague 17y agoThat is one of the best posts I have ever read.
- mrshoe 17y agoThis exposes the truism that there is always a standard of living continuum in society. In a different era there were Kings and Lords and Peasants. Now we have Europeans and Americans and Chinese and Indians. If globalization can succeed at improving the standard of living for those at the bottom of the continuum, it will have to be at the expense of those at the top. It's a zero sum game.
- Ardit20 17y agoUnless of course technology can improve things. I doubt the Chinese have the technology we do.
- caffeine 17y agoThe Chinese make the technology we do. But we make new stuff. So, the race is on. (That said - go to your local research university's Bioengineering department and tally up the various races. China's going to pwn us. Bad.)
- zimbabwe 17y agoHow is it zero sum? I'd make you a bet that right now, more people are living happily than ever did in the past. The bar constantly rises.
- mrshoe 17y agoIt's zero sum at any given moment, but you are correct that the sum constantly increases. It's similar to the stock market in that way.
- omouse 17y agoLook up the definition of Zero-Sum: In game theory and economic theory, zero-sum describes a situation in which a participant's gain or loss is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the other participant(s). If the total gains of the participants are added up, and the total losses are subtracted, they will sum to zero.
- jpwagner 17y agoI really hope one day we learn that FSJ = SJ.
- s3graham 17y agoLearning NP = P is more likely.
- myth_drannon 17y agoI'm posting two very interesting blog posts about China factories and its "bio-robots" but it's in Russian :( May be try google translate... Mices and headphones: http://sergeydolya.livejournal.com/55293.html http://sergeydolya.livejournal.com/55293.html Sony and Panasonic factories: http://sergeydolya.livejournal.com/55924.html http://sergeydolya.livejournal.com/55924.html
- Ardit20 17y agoOf course we do not care man. It is not like the Chinese gave us the wealth. We invented stuff, we traded with other countries and shared our knowledge, they decided to close up, to live in some island, and now that they are opening up they will have to start at the bottom no. You may ask whether the birth lottery is any fare and I do not know about that one really, it is, it goes really deep and it effects everyone, but being a practicalist, although this one event may be unfortunate, until the Chinese government opens up fully and adopts our values, there is not much we can do really. So stop crying and start working on making those super cool macs cheaper :)
- stavrianos 17y agoIt's obvious the birth lottery isn't "fair". It's just as obvious that fairness is irrelevant.
- sofal 17y agoThis applies to the food industry as well, like how we get our meat. We'd be better off if the things we buy were responsibly produced and priced. It's hard to know what we can do about it besides voting with our dollars and educating others.
- c0nsilience 17y agoWhile the story had some decent points to it, the ending was a really horrible cop out and cowardly way to accuse the young man of stealing an iPhone. Even if it is true.
- bbot 17y agoHey, let's do impressions. I'm c0nsilience. I fail to understand obvious satire, and am frequently confused by very simple things in every day life. If only some incredibly handsome man could leave a very sarcastic comment explaining how I failed to Get It, that would surely solve everything.
- c0nsilience 17y agoI understand satire, you moron. But I also understand when someone is trying to veil an accusation with satire and 'fiction.' The irony, you dolt, is that you failed grasp that idea.
- onreact-com 17y agoSoon enough when there is no manufacturing left elsewhere China will capitalize on their monopoly and the rest of the world will have to work 7 days 80h+ shifts to make a living.
- ErrantX 17y agoThere is no message in this post, no "good points" (to a point). Clearly the writer has no experience of Chinese culture or has ever really been there (I know its satire - but the point is to make a point, no?). Considering cultures in Asia/Africa (possibly even South America) from a Western perspective will always lead you to draw conclusions such as "slave labour" and "abuse". Now, I'm not going to deny for a moment that such things do go on - but not in quite the same way and on the scale certain people wish to imagine. Anecdote from my university course: our dept. was open 24/7 (even on Sundays if you had a special pass). I would regularly walk past the lobby at 1am and see the Chinese continget (there were many on my course) still working there. We tried to get some to come to a pub once and they didnt really get the whole relaxing/chilling out thing. It was an interesting insight into the culture - and when I was lucky enough to travel in some of the less well known areas of Asia you see it in even more detail. Greater thabn 40hr weeks are not borne out of the manufacturers getting more out of the labour. It is borne out the culture (and, yes, they took advantage of it).