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It's very sad that Lang Long had to go through all the brutal hardship, and it is overwhelmingly tragic for him and his sisters to be in such a horrible misfort
by rynprkr9 11y ago
It's very sad that Lang Long had to go through all the brutal hardship, and it is overwhelmingly tragic for him and his sisters to be in such a horrible misfortune. I came to the U.S. around the age of ten and worked as a night-shift cleaner for parking lots, cleaning up people's feces and urine on the floor of a business complex, getting hit by maggot filled trash bags when trying to pack them into dumpsters, grocery store / restaurant cashier and sweeper, and suffered from depression after parents got divorced, and later in life was devastated after my father committed suicide, in several occasions planned out in detail my own suicide but was too scared to go through with it, but whenever I read articles like these I feel that what I went through was nothing.
Although I'm buried in debt now, I'm glad I had the opportunity to go through university and study the sciences which guided me in taking the proper direction in life - the U.S. is definitely one of those few places in the world where opportunities are far more accessible.
My initial reaction to these types of articles is filled with empathy and sorrow and hope that people like Lang Long will have better future, but to be honest and be for real, in certain aspects, and in current era, we depend (in many cases we're not even aware of it) on the labors of people around the world in unfortunate circumstances so that we can benefit from them - the ugly side of this is... that the world is... an unforgiving place - there's gotta be someone out there doing the dirty work for someone else, I'd imagine that even the sea-slave traffickers themselves are trying to survive no different than Lang Long is, albeit in this particular case, they're brutal and inhumane.
I hope for a day when all slaves are treated humanely or slavery completely abolished, and for the day humanoid machines or drones will take the place of humans (in more efficient way) in back-breaking work so that criminals like the traffickers will have less incentives to kidnap and put vulnerable people into inhumane slavery.
- chaostheory 11y agoI imagine this is why organizations like these exist http://kiva.org/ http://kiva.org/ http://watsi.org/ http://watsi.org/ Microloans and micro donations really improve lives in the 3rd world.
- jhaglund 11y agoExcept that's not really true. http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-05-30/new-research-indicates-microloans-dont-solve-poverty http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-05-30/new-research... http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/01/do-microloans-really-help-the-poor/384877/ http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/01/do-microloans-really-...
- jotm 11y agoIt helps some, though to alleviate poverty, "micro-donations" would be a better choice. Not many businesses succeed and if people who have nothing have to give back the money, they're pretty much fucked. It's kinda like the credit situation in the west - most people are in debt to some bank.
- chaostheory 11y agoThe articles you cite doesn't really disprove my comment. > But what about the lending organizations on the ground—should they close up shop? Karlan says no. They're doing exactly what they promised to investors: making money and creating some good while they’re at it. For instance, the studies also found that, in Mexico, microcredit helped women pay off their debts. Besides my main point is that yes things suck, but we can always find ways to either fix it or make it suck less and less over time. I'm not stuck on any particular solution.
- anonmeow 11y ago>the ugly side of this is... that the world is... an unforgiving place - there's gotta be someone out there doing the dirty work for someone else Much uglier side is that our stupid culture hinders automation of human labor. We could automate 90% of physical labor with previous decade's technology if it were a political agenda (meaning will to optimize lifestyle around machine labor thus ditching expectations of interacting with retail and salesman employees when buying products etc). It's just that overwhelming majority of people are ok with current state of things as they are either because they have won the lottery of being in 1st world and with money or because they work like biorobots in the rest of the world and don't have time to think.