Posted on 07/28/2013 7:34:27 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Until three years ago I did not believe in magic. But that was before I began investigating how western brands perform a conjuring routine that makes the great Indian rope trick pale in comparison. Now I'm beginning to believe someone has cast a spell over the world's consumers.
This is how it works. Well Known Company makes shiny, pretty things in India or China. The Observer reports that the people making the shiny, pretty things are being paid buttons and, what's more, have been using children's nimble little fingers to put them together. There is much outrage, WKC professes its horror that it has been let down by its supply chain and promises to make everything better. And then nothing happens. WKC keeps making shiny, pretty things and people keep buying them. Because they love them. Because they are cheap. And because they have let themselves be bewitched.
Last week I revealed how poverty wages in India's tea industry fuel a slave trade in teenage girls whose parents cannot afford to keep them. Tea drinkers were naturally upset. So the ethical bodies that certified Assam tea estates paying a basic 12p an hour were wheeled out to give the impression everything would be made right.
For many consumers, that is enough. They want to feel that they are being ethical. But they don't want to pay more. They are prepared to believe in the brands they love. Companies know this. They know that if they make the right noises about behaving ethically, their customers will turn a blind eye.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
>> Admit it: If you aren’t a communist you are a selfish pig.
I’m a selfish pig.
(Hey, just following orders.) :-)
Sunday Feel Bad About Yourself sermon. And that from a wit named Chamberlain. How’s Herr Ribbentrop these days, Mr Chamberlain?
Typical leftist hysterics driven by childish ignorance.
While I feel sympathy for anyone living in a developing nation and experiencing the often brutal “growing pains” of a poverty stricken and rapidly changing economy, banning child labor is one of those liberal feel-good crusades that more often than not ends up causing heaps of ignorant harm.
You see, children have to eat too. Sometimes children may end up being the primary breadwinners in an impoverished family. What do you think happens when some self-righteous limousine liberal comes along and forces out the only honest employers in an area?
Well, for one, you’ll have a lot of starving, out of work children. Two, and this is truly horrible, what we’ve seen from poverty-stricken developing nations where the textile industry has been forced to stop employing children, you typically see a massive spike in child-prostitution.
In the end, human misery and suffering is increased by an order of magnitude simply to make a bunch of comparatively rich liberals feel good about themselves.
Perhaps it would be wiser to actually support the economic development of a nation, by encouraging western nation to import goods from said nation, especially from industries that facilitate further industrialization and advancement of a society.
With sufficient profit that textile mill today may grow into a machine shop in the years to come, and perhaps an assembly-room floor for electronics after sufficient economic and industrial development. Forcing out a nation’s only industry and forcing people to sell agricultural products or their own bodies in order to survive just compounds the human evils involved.
Cheap???
Isn’t the Fed creating new $$$ like crazy?
Compassion is engendered by faith, not government mandates. The left occasionally opens their eyes and say, ‘my gosh, where have Christian values gone?’ Without calling them Christian, of course. Secular morality in their imposed secular world baffles them.
The Guardian= The New York Slimes of London.
From the expired TJIC.com:
…and pretty soon they set up factories here.
…and I was offered a job in one of these factories, doing software engineering.
The pay is $400k/year.
The work week is 20 hours long.
The work environment is far better than I’m used to – great internal decoration, well tended plants, a zen-like water garden near my desk, massages every other day.
…and then left-wing alien “sentient being rights activists” started protesting, because I was being forced to work for less than a quarter of the prevailing wage in Alpha Centauri, and my work hours were twice as long as the legal norms in Alpha Centauri, and I didn’t have every mandatory benefits like “other other year off”, and “free AI musical composition mentoring”.
…and then left-wing alien “sentient being rights activists” wanted to make it illegal for my employer and I to contract with each other at mutually beneficial terms.
…then I would be rip shit that some elitist who had never visited me, or knew of my actual alternatives on the ground presumed to decide that I shouldn’t have this opportunity.
Which brings me to my core point: Chinese factory conditions may not be the exact cup of tea for a San Francisco graphic designer or a Connecticut non-profit ecologist grant writer … but they’re, by definition, better than all the other alternatives available to the Chinese workers (or the factories would find it impossible to staff up).
Butt out, clueless activists.
I’ve thought the exact same for years! These stupid pompous asses would rather have these factories close and put the people out of work than have them work for whatever they’re being paid. To them, no job, if it pays a low wage, is morally superior to working for what they consider to be “slave wages”.
So what do you do? Fire all the children and now they have no income and they die or beg.
Well said
“Unless the author wrote this article completely naked, chances are they were wearing an article of clothing manufactured in an asian sweatshop.”
I worked for a company which had a factory in Vietnam. I was there in the mid-90’s. I guarantee you that most factories owned by companies from other countries ARE NOT sweatshops. For the most part, the sweatshops are the factories owned by the Commies in their own government who do not value their people but only their output. This author is an idiot and has probably never been outside of Britain.
In many of these 4th world hell holes it’s either the sweat shops or the brothels.
CC
Actually, as much as I can, I do, and I can.
My dress shoes (Allan Edmonds) are Made in the USA.
My running shoes (New Balance) are Made in the USA.
My casual shoes (Ecce) are made in Italy.
My hiking boots (Lowa) are made in Slovakia.
My flip flops (Reef) are made in Brazil.
A quick check of my clothes shows pretty much the same. And I don't spend huge amounts of money on clothes and shoes, and my gear is top-notch and lasts a long time.
Dont' paint as an impossible task that which is quite possible.
Yes I like cheap products and why does the author want to impoverish these third worlders by denying them work??
As with many situations there are pluses and minuses here.
The kids work a lot but they and their families also get things that they wouldn’t have a chance otherwise to get. The artificial sheltered life of Western society may be nice in a way, but it also can make Western society arrogant. With China I’d be more concerned about the inhumane way that China enforces its already inhumane and self destructive population policy through things like charting the women’s menstrual cycles right on the company bulletin boards. What nominally Western company believing in Judeo-Christian morality wants to be a party to this?
The author would rather they lie around the hut with hunger pangs.
Slave trade in that they are literally bought and sold and paid no wages or "slave trade" in that their wages are not what you think they should be?
And they forgot how America got to greatness, it wasn’t always through sheltering everyone in sight.
India is growing into a robust economy and has for many years relied on these low paid jobs to keep the economy going. Even though it may be hard for us to imagine working for low wages I am sure if that was the only choice we had we would be grateful for it.
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