Thread: have we outsourced slavery?

20% of the world's population owns 80% of its land and most of those people live in western europe. This has numerous effects because at times natural resources are destroyed to build factories (aka sweat shops) with abysmal working conditions that the native population have no choice but to work at. Also, many farmer in Africa are essentially sharecropping because native Africans often pay rent to some company owned by some British/Dutch/French/German noble to farm their own land. Do we think we've defeated exploited labor just because we don't see it anymore in Western countries?

Originally Posted by Do_It_Like_A_Dude12

... Also, many farmer in Africa are essentially sharecropping because native Africans often pay rent to some company owned by some British/Dutch/French/German noble to farm their own land. ... ?

Do you have some current specific examples of this?

The modern 'civilized' concept of ownership is always foreign to me.

You wave a title and deed in the air and declare that you own land. It's absurd. The land owns you. The land gives you work. The land provides and when they time comes, they land takes you back.

Originally Posted by Do_It_Like_A_Dude12

20% of the world's population owns 80% of its land and most of those people live in western europe. This has numerous effects because at times natural resources are destroyed to build factories (aka sweat shops) with abysmal working conditions that the native population have no choice but to work at. Also, many farmer in Africa are essentially sharecropping because native Africans often pay rent to some company owned by some British/Dutch/French/German noble to farm their own land. Do we think we've defeated exploited labor just because we don't see it anymore in Western countries?

We outsourced 'slavery' if you want to call it that along time ago when discovered it was more profitable to have poor people in their own countries growing or making products for us, inexchange for next to nothing in terms of recompense, than transporting them to and having to feed and clothe them in our own countries to produce or grow our products.
There will always be exploitation, just how bad that exploitation is or becomes is directly down to the consciences of and willingness to act of the good people in the positions of power to do so.

Slavery was never "free labor". If it were "free", then you wouldn't need to feed the slaves or hire a task master to watch them while they work. It was brutal and unkind, but it was never free.

The modern system is more insidious, because the slaves can't run away (there's nowhere to run.) You don't have to flog them or anything when they act up, just fire them. Then they have no food. They'll be back as soon as you forgive them.

If they try to form into a union, then you may need to hire some paramilitary to go shoot some of them to get those ideas out of their heads. For example, in Colombia:

Coca-Cola Accused of Using Death Squads to Target Union Leaders » Colombia Journal

Even worse, we are complicit. It's not like the majority of the people in Western societies are unaware, it's just that it's happening somewhere else - so we lack the motivation to say or do anything about it. I especially love the complacent people, who believe purchasing their fair trade sweaters means anything in terms of the problem at large. You still need all of your electronics, your food, and what have you - that's where your brand loyalty outweighs your "Principled Lifestyle". Even if anyone did care enough to put the effort in, it'd be a hell of a time figuring out what you can and cannot consume. Even then, you're not taking care of the problem - anyone who is beyond this point of trying to make a difference is one of a few dissenting voices among the millions.

But, I will finish my rant with saying what bothers me the most. I think when most people are buying something fair-trade - it's not about doing the objectively "right" thing, it's about feeling good about themselves. Then after, they believe that they've done their part. Then the next time when the subject comes up in the news or whatever other medium they think, "Well not me - I bought a sweater."

People who have it good are not going to go back to working from dawn to dusk in order to provide themselves and their families with the basic needs they require.

Originally Posted by stander-j

Even worse, we are complicit. It's not like the majority of the people in Western societies are unaware, it's just that it's happening somewhere else - so we lack the motivation to say or do anything about it. I especially love the complacent people, who believe purchasing their fair trade sweaters means anything in terms of the problem at large. You still need all of your electronics, your food, and what have you - that's where your brand loyalty outweighs your "Principled Lifestyle". Even if anyone did care enough to put the effort in, it'd be a hell of a time figuring out what you can and cannot consume. Even then, you're not taking care of the problem - anyone who is beyond this point of trying to make a difference is one of a few dissenting voices among the millions.

But, I will finish my rant with saying what bothers me the most. I think when most people are buying something fair-trade - it's not about doing the objectively "right" thing, it's about feeling good about themselves. Then after, they believe that they've done their part. Then the next time when the subject comes up in the news or whatever other medium they think, "Well not me - I bought a sweater."

I think here you've managed to identify the problem, people believing they are solving the worlds problems by just doing something like buying a fair trade product, but I think this is a combination of misleading advertising that can lead people into thinking this way, but also with our politicians that set the agenda for debates and the tone for what we should and shouldn't accept in the world. If the people at the top arn't telling us something is a problem then most people will just think ok well it can't that big a deal.

For things to change we need the people at the top to take responsibility and set the tone so that everybody else can have some opportunity to get involved with doing something to help but also so people actually realise and understand the problem.

What we see time and again though when it comes to politicians priorities is that exploitation in others countries isn't usually very high on their list so there's never really the chance to have a real debate about how we can do our part to change this situation.

Originally Posted by gonzales56

People who have it good are not going to go back to working from dawn to dusk in order to provide themselves and their families with the basic needs they require.

Don't think there's much truth to that, particularly in the US where even wealthy people work very long hours and on average longer hours than poor people. Of course it's somewhat hard to compare some of these things--a poor person might, for example, spend less time as work, but might be cooking traditional meals, or mowing their own lawn, or working on their own truck which is still hard work instead ordering out or paying others.

I don't worry about the problem of people buying cheap stuff. That's just a reflex. The problem is people assigning "hand of god" status to that reflex, and buying into the "free market is infallible" hype.

The public has been consistently voting against tariffs that would make these international borderline slavery practices less profitable. If they weren't profitable, corporations wouldn't use them.

But there's this hype that says cheaper goods guarantees a better economy. Never mind that by eroding wages overseas down to a slave level, you inevitably erode wages over here down to a slave level also. It comes from trying to look at a complicated system from just one direction and then reassure ourselves that we've seen the whole picture. People want to buy into a simple ideology, and what we're witnessing is the result.

Originally Posted by kojax

I don't worry about the problem of people buying cheap stuff. That's just a reflex. The problem is people assigning "hand of god" status to that reflex, and buying into the "free market is infallible" hype.

The public has been consistently voting against tariffs that would make these international borderline slavery practices less profitable. If they weren't profitable, corporations wouldn't use them.

But there's this hype that says cheaper goods guarantees a better economy. Never mind that by eroding wages overseas down to a slave level, you inevitably erode wages over here down to a slave level also. It comes from trying to look at a complicated system from just one direction and then reassure ourselves that we've seen the whole picture. People want to buy into a simple ideology, and what we're witnessing is the result.

Can you qualify that? I'd expect the opposite:

If materials/resources are allocated in an exploitative manner from one place, and then the materials are used to manufacture goods in an exploitative manner in another place - but then the finished goods are sent to the exploiter's territory for distribution, does that not mean the resources and finished goods have changed hands at an unfair price? The monetary value of the gained goods outweighs the cost of production. So would the exploiting nation not, as a whole, receive a monetary/monetary equivalent gain from the transaction as the wealth is not only kept in the exploiter's country, but is actually added to?

What occupation would these "exploited" workers be doing if they weren't working in sweatshops? Subsistence farmers, subject to starvation at the first crop failure? Homeless beggars sleeping on sidewalks? Recruits in some warlord's army?

I don't dispute that conditions are deplorable by our standards. But don't lose track of the fact that for many of these people "sweatshop worker" is a step up from what they did before. Standards in these countries simply are not what we are used to. I do favor making an effort to improve these people's lives. But simply shutting down the factories is virtually certain to make a bad situation worse.

What these people need is education and infrastructure, and ultimately higher paying job opportunities. The trick is to find a way to tax the profits being made to fund these improvements. In the long run, increasing wages in these developing countries will result in increased wages in the developed countries "exploiting" them as well, as it becomes less profitable to outsource labor costs overseas.

This guy says it well.

Edit: Also, danhanegan, you've made some good points - and I am sure there are instances where what you have said is entirely correct, but you are also assuming that it is, for the most part, unlikely for the work and compensation to actually be a step down. Around Lake Victoria fishers used to be self-employed and fished independently - but then the corporations came in, which has forced them to sub-contract as they are unable to compete - this has resulted in them doing the same work for less pay.

So it really goes both ways. In some instances, local business is throttled into submission and then subjugated into the corporate workforce. Then in other instances, work is being offered where there were no opportunities before - but the pay is garbage and sometimes the resources are being taken up without the denizens getting anything in return because their government is corrupt, or the government spends the money on blood-feuds and warfare against rebels (and of course, sometimes it's a little bit of both).

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

Originally Posted by gonzales56

People who have it good are not going to go back to working from dawn to dusk in order to provide themselves and their families with the basic needs they require.

Don't think there's much truth to that, particularly in the US where even wealthy people work very long hours and on average longer hours than poor people. Of course it's somewhat hard to compare some of these things--a poor person might, for example, spend less time as work, but might be cooking traditional meals, or mowing their own lawn, or working on their own truck which is still hard work instead ordering out or paying others.

American people do not work from dawn to dusk to provide basic needs. Those that make minimum wage only need to work a couple hours a day to provide themselves with basic needs.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


1- Most workers in the US ARE slaves, they just dont know it, the chains are disguised as money/credit/loans/interest for which you work, and the Media takes care of the rest to make sure people dont figure it out.
Money is a creation, it is created by law. Banks have swindled people into creating the money
and then charging interest on it. So a good part of your work (which for many is useless for society but simply upholds the monetary system/establishment itself) goes to pay interest on your mortgage and interest on the debt the goverment incured. Anyone that is not outraged, is fooled by the Matrix of Media, Corrupt Politicians and the Economists (modern day clergy upholding the faith in the established order).


"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
Thomas Jefferson, (Attributed)



"And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies."
Thomas Jefferson -- Letter to John Taylor, May 26, 1816


2- Also people fail to undersand how absurd it is that Civilization is hostage to capitalism/banking system.

What occupation would these "exploited" workers be doing if they weren't working in sweatshops?"

This is a False Dichotomy, its not a choice between "submit to slavery" or "live like a derelict caveman".


Canada is the 30s was not much more developed than many 3rd world countries now. Yet, in a couple of decades, it has built one of the largest mechant fleets in the world (for a relatively small population), built seaways for ships, ports, railways, highways, overpasses, bridges, hospitals, public schools, and public services that were helping everyone (not just crony criminals), WITHOUT SIGNIFICANT DEBT and WITHOUT IMF LOANSHARKING, until the criminal bankers funded/placed/bribed/fooled POLITICIANS in the 70s to start Borrowing money Canada was previously creating, from Banks that did the exact same but charging interest.

Its a scam, a fraud, a crime, but the other aspect that is extremely important to understand is that you dont need to slave away in a nike shoe factory or else live in caveman conditions. People dont know how to organize and have no access to money(as a primitive form of organization) except from those who impose the racketeering model along with it. When Worgl created its own moeny and propered during the Great Depression, the Austrian Central Bank stepped in to stop it. When people like the Chileans vote for someone like Allende or when someone wants to go against the money system, the bankers organize a coup d'etat, assassination, civil unrest, sabotage, civil war, demonizing media campaign, Economic Warfare(sanctions), or Military invasion.

(Dont get me wrong, Money is a bad way of doing it but its the easy way, its what we have been using for centuries, its easy to organize with it without having to think and design a better system, you tell cavemen to use seashells as money and they can run with it. Its intrinsic problems are not apparent in primitive situations, but now in a transition from Industrial Revolution to the Automation Revolution the old system is blatantly outdated. Until a better system, a moneyless system that would be designed and tested (until we find and patch the hole in the Hull), we have to fight to have the people control their own money (interest free national money for national infrastructure investments, and interest free local money for local infrastructure) and prevent fraud and wars as best we can (we need to haul out water by the bucket as best we can).

"Those that make minimum wage only need to work a couple hours a day to provide themselves with basic needs."

In the current corrupt system, a couple of hours of minimum wage work is living in extreme poverty. And you cant compare our basic needs to feudal serfs in the middle ages, we are in the 21st century, we should benefit from centuries of technological improvements, anything less is a symptom of a society systemic failure imo.

You make good points of your own, stander-j. I love the video. "At least we fed the Hippos!"

Originally Posted by gonzales56

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

Originally Posted by gonzales56

People who have it good are not going to go back to working from dawn to dusk in order to provide themselves and their families with the basic needs they require.

Don't think there's much truth to that, particularly in the US where even wealthy people work very long hours and on average longer hours than poor people. Of course it's somewhat hard to compare some of these things--a poor person might, for example, spend less time as work, but might be cooking traditional meals, or mowing their own lawn, or working on their own truck which is still hard work instead ordering out or paying others.

American people do not work from dawn to dusk to provide basic needs. Those that make minimum wage only need to work a couple hours a day to provide themselves with basic needs.

Really?

Want to run this rabbit hole and see where it leads?

I'll take the closest city to me, Olympia WA...which should be in your favor because WA has the highest minimum wage in the nation at $9.19/hr. That's in round numbers $1500/month minus about $150/month for social security+medicare = $1350/month. Average cost of a studio apartment is $700/month. According to USDA an low-cost food bill will run $200/month, he's going to pay a bit more because of location....about $250/month stacking bulk in the corner of his one room apartment and working to prepare meals. If that person is, lets say a 40 year old man, he's going to pay about $300/month for a very basic health care insurance.

He's got about $100/month to spare, still has to pay utilities, his bus pass to work, uniforms, clothing, toothpaste, and is alone supporting no one except perhaps a gecko that's his one and only friend (couldn't resist). He's already in debt or not meeting his basic needs (shelter, food, medical) working full time with minimum wage. Add a child into the mix and he is deeply in the red every month.

Of course what really happens and gets into the OP quite a bit, is in many parts of the nation, large corporations pay minimum wage or just barely above minimum wage--their employees cant' meet their basic needs and you and I end up paying the difference that either keeps them from living under a bridge or trying to provide enough support so their kids have a fighting chance to become someone productive. We in defacto are subsidizing tens of millions of employees rather than enforcing a living minimum wage paid by their employers and letting people figure it out.

Originally Posted by stander-j

Originally Posted by kojax

I don't worry about the problem of people buying cheap stuff. That's just a reflex. The problem is people assigning "hand of god" status to that reflex, and buying into the "free market is infallible" hype.

The public has been consistently voting against tariffs that would make these international borderline slavery practices less profitable. If they weren't profitable, corporations wouldn't use them.

But there's this hype that says cheaper goods guarantees a better economy. Never mind that by eroding wages overseas down to a slave level, you inevitably erode wages over here down to a slave level also. It comes from trying to look at a complicated system from just one direction and then reassure ourselves that we've seen the whole picture. People want to buy into a simple ideology, and what we're witnessing is the result.

Can you qualify that? I'd expect the opposite:

If materials/resources are allocated in an exploitative manner from one place, and then the materials are used to manufacture goods in an exploitative manner in another place - but then the finished goods are sent to the exploiter's territory for distribution, does that not mean the resources and finished goods have changed hands at an unfair price? The monetary value of the gained goods outweighs the cost of production. So would the exploiting nation not, as a whole, receive a monetary/monetary equivalent gain from the transaction as the wealth is not only kept in the exploiter's country, but is actually added to?

This last part seems to be the main question:

So would the exploiting nation not, as a whole, receive a monetary/monetary equivalent gain from the transaction as the wealth is not only kept in the exploiter's country, but is actually added to?

The problem is that it causes problems elsewhere.

In a one-country economy, all the money you pay your workers immediately becomes money the consumers can spend to buy more production. (Because those workers change hats when they go home and become consumers by night. Kind of like Bruce Wayne becoming Batman.)

So as a whole, the country is actually getting all of that production/labor for free. Imagine some guy is selling socks for 5 bucks, and you give him 5 bucks and he gives you some socks. Then he takes those 5 bucks out of the till and gives them back to you.

Another way to look at why it is free is to notice that we're doing all that labor ourselves, for ourselves. It's like if you fix your own car instead of hiring a mechanic to do it. There is a cost in the form of your time, but financially you're breaking even.



Now look what happens if we hire workers in a third world country to do our work for us. Maybe we pay them less during the day when they're wearing their "worker hat", but at night when they put on their "consumer hat", they're that much poorer. The goods were cheaper to make, but there's also less demand for them. At best, you might break even.


But it's worse than that, because in most of these exploitative situations, the USA is running a net trade deficit, so they're not even spending their whole paycheck. That means that demand is getting smaller even faster than the price is decreasing.

You see the problem? If you lower demand by a factor of oh say..... 20 (not sure how I'd want to quantify this...) But the price is only lowered by say .... 10. You see how that could be a problem? We're lowering how much gets spent faster than we're lowering how much we save.

Originally Posted by danhanegan

What occupation would these "exploited" workers be doing if they weren't working in sweatshops? Subsistence farmers, subject to starvation at the first crop failure? Homeless beggars sleeping on sidewalks? Recruits in some warlord's army?

I don't dispute that conditions are deplorable by our standards. But don't lose track of the fact that for many of these people "sweatshop worker" is a step up from what they did before. Standards in these countries simply are not what we are used to. I do favor making an effort to improve these people's lives. But simply shutting down the factories is virtually certain to make a bad situation worse.

Probably what most of them did before was farm work which was - yes - equally exploitative.

Most of the time, I think they just plain live in an unfair system. The factory probably does improve conditions, but it leaves the system intact. Maybe even makes the system stronger.

What these people need is education and infrastructure, and ultimately higher paying job opportunities. The trick is to find a way to tax the profits being made to fund these improvements. In the long run, increasing wages in these developing countries will result in increased wages in the developed countries "exploiting" them as well, as it becomes less profitable to outsource labor costs overseas.

What they need is a fair system. There are plenty of highly educated people coming to the USA because they can't get a decent job in their home country even with their education.

A lot of these countries are run by cartels. It's just that simple. There's a government, but it's a puppet where most of the key officials are either owned outright, or know they'll die if they make a stand, or both.

When the cartel is running things, education isn't going to be rewarded. What is rewarded is being the cousin/brother/son... etc of somebody important in the cartel. I mean: I'm sure it helps. But a brutal and feared enforcer will get paid way more than a highly skilled engineer. Basically he'll be taking the engineer's salary for himself.

If the engineer has a problem with it he can leave - that is he can leave if he's not to valuable. If he's too valuable then he's going have to stay.

@ no one in particular - The important question is the old one: are you part of the problem, or part of the solution, or are you just whining.

Originally Posted by John Galt

@ no one in particular - The important question is the old one: are you part of the problem, or part of the solution, or are you just whining.

People will want their names brand goods and cheap at that.

Or alternatively, they will want cheap clothing, shoes, etc from stores like Wal Mart (which has refused to sign a deal which would ensure that factory conditions in countries like Bangladesh, where their clothing lines are made, are kept safe and well maintained and actually meet safety standards).

In that case, everyone is a part of the problem.

The solution is simple. Put pressure on the stores that utilise such 'slave labor' by boycotting their stores and flooding them with complaint mails about their choices which see so many die each year in horrendous working conditions overseas.

Shop smart, do your research. Stores like Wal Mart are awful. Aside from the Bangladesh issue, Wal Mart have shown time and again to have no moral standing. One example:

For example, consider one of Kernaghan’s most horrifying exposés: In 2011 he penned a report on Classic, the largest factory in Jordan. Management hired young women from Asia, stripped them of their passports, forced them to work grueling hours for awful pay under a managerial regime that subjected them to routine rape. One woman hung herself in the factory’s bathroom with her own scarf after allegedly being raped at the hands of a manager. The Jordanian Department of Labor, when informed of the abuses, did nothing.


After Kernaghan’s exposé, Kohl’s, Macy’s and Lands’ End stopped doing business with Classic (they represented 8 percent of its export trade), but the factory’s chief customer, Wal-Mart, was unfazed. One serial rapist manager was fired, but many of the other managers accused of rape are still employed there, and women continue to disappear from the factory under highly suspicious circumstances. (Colleagues believe they are being murdered or sold into sexual slavery). According to documents recently smuggled out of the factory, 75 percent of Classic-made apparel is still going to Wal-Mart and Hanes.

If people want to fix the problem, they will need to buy ethically. And sadly, most cannot be bothered to do so.

So we lament slave labor conditions overseas but we won't do anything about it because we like to buy cheap named brand clothes.

Originally Posted by Tranquille

[If people want to fix the problem, they will need to buy ethically. And sadly, most cannot be bothered to do so.

Some of it is simply down to ignorance of the facts. One of the problems with humans is that even the dumbest (or the smartest) can excel at ignorance.

Originally Posted by John Galt

Some of it is simply down to ignorance of the facts. One of the problems with humans is that even the dumbest (or the smartest) can excel at ignorance.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps they do not care. Out of sight is out of mind.

Certainly, when confronted with the horror that was the Bangladesh factory collapse and the 1000+ deaths, people were horrified. And rightly so. But yet, the tornado damage in the US received more coverage in the US.

It would seem that over a thousand people dying in a building used to manufacture clothing for stores and designer brands which are very popular in the West matters less to the West when compared to a tornado that killed just over two dozen people or the Boston bombing and the debacle that ensued from that.

Can you imagine the uproar in the US if a factory had collapsed there because of poor structural support and it is discovered that people were crammed in there to manufacture designer clothes for less than $50 a month?

Originally Posted by Tranquille

It would seem that over a thousand people dying in a building used to manufacture clothing for stores and designer brands which are very popular in the West matters less to the West when compared to a tornado that killed just over two dozen people or the Boston bombing and the debacle that ensued from that.

OK, but why aren't you complaining about the several thousand children that have died from malnutrition or unclean water in the seven hours siince my original post in this thread? Why are you giving emphasis to a single catastrophic event and ignoring the daily routine deaths of these children?

We evolved in small tribes. We survive in large cities by pretending the majority of the inhabitants are not actually human. It works as a stop gap, but in the long run we will grow out of it.

Originally Posted by Tranquille

Shop smart, do your research. Stores like Wal Mart are awful. Aside from the Bangladesh issue, Wal Mart have shown time and again to have no moral standing. One example:

For example, consider one of Kernaghan’s most horrifying exposés: In 2011 he penned a report on Classic, the largest factory in Jordan. Management hired young women from Asia, stripped them of their passports, forced them to work grueling hours for awful pay under a managerial regime that subjected them to routine rape. One woman hung herself in the factory’s bathroom with her own scarf after allegedly being raped at the hands of a manager. The Jordanian Department of Labor, when informed of the abuses, did nothing.


After Kernaghan’s exposé, Kohl’s, Macy’s and Lands’ End stopped doing business with Classic (they represented 8 percent of its export trade), but the factory’s chief customer, Wal-Mart, was unfazed. One serial rapist manager was fired, but many of the other managers accused of rape are still employed there, and women continue to disappear from the factory under highly suspicious circumstances. (Colleagues believe they are being murdered or sold into sexual slavery). According to documents recently smuggled out of the factory, 75 percent of Classic-made apparel is still going to Wal-Mart and Hanes.

I think this highlights the main problem with setting up factories abroad. It consolidates power. When so many employees all depend on one manager for their jobs (instead of many managers in a more decentralized economy - as it was in their villages) that guy has a lot of power to do what he wants.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. In the USA we've instituted safeguards against that power in the form of tort laws. (If a woman is raped by her boss in the USA she can find a lawyer and file a sexual harassment suit or worse -and the owners of that factory will be quaking in their boots.)

It's not right for us to benefit from a system that doesn't have our safeguards in place. It amounts to victimizing those people. It's like accepting drug money and then convincing oneself you are not a drug dealer, just because you didn't actually deal the drugs yourself.

If people want to fix the problem, they will need to buy ethically. And sadly, most cannot be bothered to do so.

So we lament slave labor conditions overseas but we won't do anything about it because we like to buy cheap named brand clothes.

That's like trying to solve the problem of shoplifting by refusing to buy merchandise that gets sold on Ebay or Amazon or Craigslist.

You've got to legislate. It's unrealistic to think crime will stop just because individual people choose not to commit crime.

That approach would only work if you had a 100% homogeneous population of people who are all identical clones of one another who were all raised in identical households. (And even then..... there'd still be some individuality.)

If the population as a whole wants it to stop, they need to get together, and make some laws and forcibly impose their will. It runs against some peoples' notion of "freedom", but the "freedom" to oppress others is not a right.

Having read this whole thread, I recall the irony that many of those employed in government positions in the Yukon take their annual flights (another job perk that most private sector employees do not get) as 'shopping trips' and go outside the Yukon to drop plenty of the coin that could go back into the local economy. In this instance, it is not the jobs that are being outsourced, yet the income from those jobs is going elsewhere.

"I think this highlights the main problem with setting up factories abroad. It consolidates power. When so many employees all depend on one manager for their jobs (instead of many managers in a more decentralized economy - as it was in their villages) that guy has a lot of power to do what he wants. "

I see this through the Money-Hierarchy-Control of Information prism, and agree that power is consolidated though the aforementioned mechanisms.

"they need to get together, and make some laws"

Collaborative e-Democracy might help, because then people could actually get together in a system that is designed to make this easy, in our system (and culture) the barriers are such that people are not likely to come together. It requires a colossal dedicated effort, and the larger the boat that more inertia and harder it is for people's will to affect the giant oil tanker, that's why imo super-continental states should be divided into smaller states with autonomous regions with voluntary cooperative networks instead of authoritarian federal states.

Originally Posted by Tranquille

Originally Posted by John Galt

Some of it is simply down to ignorance of the facts. One of the problems with humans is that even the dumbest (or the smartest) can excel at ignorance.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps they do not care. Out of sight is out of mind.

Certainly, when confronted with the horror that was the Bangladesh factory collapse and the 1000+ deaths, people were horrified. And rightly so. But yet, the tornado damage in the US received more coverage in the US.

It would seem that over a thousand people dying in a building used to manufacture clothing for stores and designer brands which are very popular in the West matters less to the West when compared to a tornado that killed just over two dozen people or the Boston bombing and the debacle that ensued from that.

Can you imagine the uproar in the US if a factory had collapsed there because of poor structural support and it is discovered that people were crammed in there to manufacture designer clothes for less than $50 a month?

Maybe that's because people in the US are responsible for the laws and building codes in the US, but not in Bangladesh. If people in Bangladesh do not want buildings falling on their heads, they will have to do something about the official corruption which allows people to get away with violating their building codes.
Now, your solution is to boycott Bangladesh products. That's not going to help the person who is working for $50 a month. They'll have to take a job that pays even less, if they even find a job.

Originally Posted by Harold14370

Now, your solution is to boycott Bangladesh products. That's not going to help the person who is working for $50 a month. They'll have to take a job that pays even less, if they even find a job.

I think that operates off of a fallacy that their wages are being set by market conditions. More likely their wage is set by their minimum subsistence. Any excess wage that could/would have been paid to them if market conditions were better will get skimmed off the top by their boss, or a government official, or criminals.

If market conditions get worse, their wage will stay at $50.00/day. If market conditions improve, their wage will stay at $50.00 a day. If the price of food goes down, their wage will go down because they're now capable of eeking out an existence on less money.

Their boss/master/whatever's wage depends on market conditions. But theirs is most likely set in stone. What their boss is offering them is the opportunity not to starve to death. That has tremendous value to most people. At least it has value if the same person who's offering it could just as easily take it away.

Originally Posted by John Galt

OK, but why aren't you complaining about the several thousand children that have died from malnutrition or unclean water in the seven hours siince my original post in this thread? Why are you giving emphasis to a single catastrophic event and ignoring the daily routine deaths of these children?

Who says that I do not complain about the thousands of children who have died due to malnutrition, unclean water, non-existent health care, wars, being kidnapped to become child soldiers and sex slaves in wars. Had this thread been about them, I would have posted about them. However, from the OP, it seems this thread is about the outsourcing of labor to other countries so that we, in the West, can enjoy cheap products and get to lavish ourselves in designer brands while ignoring that the people who are making those products are being paid for less than we get paid in an hour - as their monthly salary. If you would like me to divert this thread off topic and discuss the horrendous state of child welfare around the world, I am quite capable of complaining about them too.

We evolved in small tribes. We survive in large cities by pretending the majority of the inhabitants are not actually human. It works as a stop gap, but in the long run we will grow out of it.

Which is why we will never eradicate slavery or exceptionally cheap and cruel labor and why we will never eradicate the reasons behind thousands of children dying as I type this post.

We will never grow out of it because we are exceptionally selfish and care only about what affects us directly. Case in point:

Originally Posted by Harold14370

Maybe that's because people in the US are responsible for the laws and building codes in the US, but not in Bangladesh. If people in Bangladesh do not want buildings falling on their heads, they will have to do something about the official corruption which allows people to get away with violating their building codes.
Now, your solution is to boycott Bangladesh products. That's not going to help the person who is working for $50 a month. They'll have to take a job that pays even less, if they even find a job.

You misunderstood. My solution is to boycott the companies that refuse to pay any form of proper wage and refuse to even sign on to ensure the safety of their workers overseas, because heaven forbid their staff's safety cuts into their profit margins.

And certainly, you can argue that at least your desire for cheap shirts and underpants and designer clothing allows them to even have a job which pays for around $40 per month and then comfort yourself with the knowledge that their lack of wages stems solely from the Government in Bangladesh, as you have done. However what you fail to realise is that corruption goes both ways and why would the Government risk losing that much income from such companies and kickbacks if they demand a rise in wages and demand safer working conditions for their citizens if doing so will mean that such companies will simply take their labor elsewhere where it might be even cheaper?

Let me put it to you this way. Would you purchase clothing made by child labor in the US?

And then ask yourself, is your answer based on the fact that child labor is illegal? Or is it based on the fact that it is immoral?

And if it is based on the fact it is immoral, why is it therefore moral to purchase clothing made by children overseas and declare it to be okay because they wouldn't be earning any money otherwise or it's their Government's fault for not ensuring their safety?

As with the case of adults. Would you buy clothes from companies that use sweatshops in the US and pay their staff less than $50 per month in the US? And is your answer based on its illegality or the immorality of using what is essentially slave labor?

But it is easy to be selfish and excuse their conditions by blaming it on everyone but the very people who create a market for such goods by purchasing it and thus, deeming it acceptable. Perhaps if people started shopping smarter and not supporting such practices, companies that made their bread and butter from your dosh and forced such conditions on their workers might think twice and ensure their staff's safety and pay them adequately.

Makes me wonder if the Benetton will ever use a Bangladeshi child in their United Colors of Benetton add in their bid to embrace racial equality. Or would that be in bad taste since they see no qualms about using child and slave labor in Bangladesh to make their clothing? Irony, huh?

You see Harold, your argument is like everyone else's. 'It's okay so long as it is over there'.

Originally Posted by Tranquille

But it is easy to be selfish and excuse their conditions by blaming it on everyone but the very people who create a market for such goods by purchasing it and thus, deeming it acceptable. Perhaps if people started shopping smarter and not supporting such practices, companies that made their bread and butter from your dosh and forced such conditions on their workers might think twice and ensure their staff's safety and pay them adequately.

Makes me wonder if the Benetton will ever use a Bangladeshi child in their United Colors of Benetton add in their bid to embrace racial equality. Or would that be in bad taste since they see no qualms about using child and slave labor in Bangladesh to make their clothing? Irony, huh?

You see Harold, your argument is like everyone else's. 'It's okay so long as it is over there'.

I prefer solutions that have a non-zero practical chance of succeeding.

As things stand it's somewhat impractical to keep track of where every item you go to buy was made. Some items only exist in an imported form. Not all items made in the USA say so on their label.

What if I want to buy a book that was printed in a foreign country? What if no copy of that book is available that was printed in the USA? Shall I boycott the whole book? Never read it?

As I have said above, I am not certain that boycotting the abusive corps will result in improved conditions for the workers. But I think, if it can be shown that such a boycott is desirable, it could be made to happen. The key would be getting information to consumers. Websites that track corporate policies and connect the more abusive companies to their product lines could be set up. Dedicated boycott supporters could use something like google sidewiki to mark products on shopping sites as being sourced from abusive companies. Granted, getting the word out to brick and mortar store shoppers would be more difficult. But even losing a large chunk of only online sales is likely to get the attention of most manufacturers.

Originally Posted by Tranquille

[

We evolved in small tribes. We survive in large cities by pretending the majority of the inhabitants are not actually human. It works as a stop gap, but in the long run we will grow out of it.

Which is why we will never eradicate slavery or exceptionally cheap and cruel labor and why we will never eradicate the reasons behind thousands of children dying as I type this post.

We will never grow out of it because we are exceptionally selfish and care only about what affects us directly.

From your last sentence I can deduce two things.

1) You reject the evidence for evolution.

2) You reject the evidence that man has, through evolution, domesitcated himself - a trend that is not required to continue, but for which there are strong environmental pressures.

"Which is why we will never eradicate slavery or exceptionally cheap and cruel labor and why we will never eradicate the reasons behind thousands of children dying as I type this post.

We will never grow out of it because we are exceptionally selfish and care only about what affects us directly."

I disagree, I guess Im optimist.

I think we may be at the dawn of a second renaissance with internet the ideas get bounced around in a virtual global neural network.

We now understand a lot of concepts and aspects of nature and historical human realities. Most of our problems are resulting from the way our societies are organized. The models we live in come out of times when humans were ignorant and primitive, and its hard to change the box, the frame, our society. But I think we will. Some people will imo organize a society based on more recent understanding and new methods, and could spread like wild fire, because the environment is ripe.

Working for Wage, used to make sense before and after the industrial revolution, but we are in the automation revolution, it no longer makes sense because the rate at which tasks are automated is outpacing actual "Functionally useful" new tasks, and instead of reducing the amount of time spent toiling and dramatically reduce the amount of mandatory work to obtain mostly automated services, the current economic system just invents tasks that are functionally useless and unnecessary outside the current monetary/political merry-go-round paradigm. Instead of having vacations, you may eventually find people working as living furniture, living wifi hotspot holder, paid statue in a garden or person hired as a door mat for people that own the automated factories along with corporations producing nothing and just gambling in a casino economy making money from manipulating money. If you eliminated all the useless jobs and jobs related to money, and distributed the functional work left to everyone, people would work 2 or 3 days a week with 7 weeks of vacation a year or something close to that, and would have time to volunteer if they wanted to on automating even more the jobs that are left or working on helping people, research, learning, creating art and so on in their spare time. Lets hope we can figure this our before the 24rd century...


www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp3OhC3NoMk


cheers

Originally Posted by John Galt

From your last sentence I can deduce two things.

1) You reject the evidence for evolution.

I would be insulted if I did not find that sentence so amusing.

The fact that we have these kind of sweatshops and horrific conditions for those workers and have done since industry first came into existence is a clear enough indication that we, as a collective society, are inherently selfish and we will find excuses for this if doing so ensures our own personal comfort and well being.

We will pass the proverbial buck and say that it is the problem of another country or government or state while continuing to tacitly support such practices by continuing to shop in the stores who do this.

Because it benefits us and our small collectives to do so (small collectives I mean our family's, community, etc).

2) You reject the evidence that man has, through evolution, domesitcated himself - a trend that is not required to continue, but for which there are strong environmental pressures.

Since the very notion of industry first began, we have had such working conditions for what would be seen as the lower class.

Man domesticated himself because it was prudent to his survival to do so.

And in doing so, man learned that passing the buck may ensure financial security.

But think about how man has evolved. We do not like to be inconvenienced (such as one person who commented that a simple search for companies that do not use slave labor would be impractical) and we like to make up excuses (such as the too hard basket for solutions that would mean breaking our habits and shopping elsewhere or blaming the government in other countries for allowing such conditions to exist). What we see today is the result of evolution.

Certainly, we can try and claim we are inherently altruistic, however, as I stated above, those factors exist and if we were altruistic, we would have stopped exploiting people's labor to suit our own needs a long time ago. But we have not.

Evolution signifies a change, if one can put it that way. But when it comes to man's morals towards other human beings they do not know, plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Originally Posted by icewendigo

I think we may be at the dawn of a second renaissance with internet the ideas get bounced around in a virtual global neural network.

We now understand a lot of concepts and aspects of nature and historical human realities. Most of our problems are resulting from the way our societies are organized. The models we live in come out of times when humans were ignorant and primitive, and its hard to change the box, the frame, our society. But I think we will. Some people will imo organize a society based on more recent understanding and new methods, and could spread like wild fire, because the environment is ripe.

Unfortunately it's also the "Too much information" - age. People are continually bombarded by more data than they can take in. I think now more than ever in history, people are eager to embrace a simple ideology about everything. The less they need to know in order to act, the more they feel like they're taking action.

Working for Wage, used to make sense before and after the industrial revolution, but we are in the automation revolution, it no longer makes sense because the rate at which tasks are automated is outpacing actual "Functionally useful" new tasks, and instead of reducing the amount of time spent toiling and dramatically reduce the amount of mandatory work to obtain mostly automated services, the current economic system just invents tasks that are functionally useless and unnecessary outside the current monetary/political merry-go-round paradigm. Instead of having vacations, you may eventually find people working as living furniture, living wifi hotspot holder, paid statue in a garden or person hired as a door mat for people that own the automated factories along with corporations producing nothing and just gambling in a casino economy making money from manipulating money. If you eliminated all the useless jobs and jobs related to money, and distributed the functional work left to everyone, people would work 2 or 3 days a week with 7 weeks of vacation a year or something close to that, and would have time to volunteer if they wanted to on automating even more the jobs that are left or working on helping people, research, learning, creating art and so on in their spare time. Lets hope we can figure this our before the 24rd century...


www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp3OhC3NoMk


cheers

That sounds quite possible to me also. I just don't think it can be done via any kind of anarchy.

The unions fell apart in the 80's because they had to compete against non-unionized industries. There are still many successful unions in Hollywood that haven't fallen apart yet, because Hollywood doesn't have to compete with non-unionized competitors for price.

The Grip union comes to mind, which is mostly workers who hold props during a shoot.

If we would use legislation to prevent competition between privileged and underprivileged workers, then we could create a society composed of only privileged workers. Otherwise competition for "who will accept a crumbier wage?" is going to be the dominant form of competition. Not competition for "who is the most creative?" or "who uses the most efficient production process?". It's all "who can strong arm the peasants?"

In a free market, whatever criteria you set up for competition, is guaranteed to be the result you get. In a free market constrained by the right rules, that can be a good thing.

In an anarchy market, so free it doesn't even need rules, then the market chooses its own basis. So far it has a track record of choosing very poorly. The market has the intelligence of a computer. It's insanely efficient at accomplishing the task you give it, not so good at figuring out what task it ought to be accomplishing.

I dont fully understand, so my comments might be more or less irrelevant/misunderstanding, but I will attempt to share my point of view

"I just don't think it can be done via any kind of anarchy."

I'm thinking more along the lines of a network of communities, where each community (shares a vision of a better future with an alternate socio-economic system that no longer uses money internally) uses Collaborative e-Democracy as a foundation upon which are added transparent open source computer/communication assisted decision making methods (Known Issues, Technical, Preferences) and coordination/priority/volunteering systems. Each community would have its own local code of conduct and organization variant (according to their prefeneces/culture/values) yet collaborate with other communities within the network and interact/trade with organizations outside the network (using money, local money if thats possible).


Unions: Im in favor of Unions from an archaic protection of workers perspective, like a knight in shining armor might be helpful if his intentions were good, and it is certainly better than having workers atomized as individuals (competing to the bottom, as the libertarian slogans of the Fascist "American Liberty League" wanted to foster in the 1930s) but theres nothing a Knight can do about a hellfire missile launched from a drone that's out of sight. What destroyed Unions is not an up front man-to-man local conflict, the opponents controlled legislation(bribing/financing[money] the corrupt intermediary [top-down instead of direct democracy]), as well as the mass media(control information), as well as ownership(money) of corporations(hierarchies). Im all for chucking out water from a sinking boat, which is what Unions can do(or could do), but it does not solve(by itself) the root causes for which they are ineffective at protecting workers against.

"If we would use legislation to prevent competition between privileged and underprivileged workers"

does that mean protective tarifs? What about automation? If factories are fully automated, the workers are out of a "productive" job, and are forced to find any job even if its the new opening in Dick Cheney's garden as a professional statue or Louis the XIV servant costumed silver pee-pot holder. We should be targeting a system/solution where people benefit from automation and get more free time, a work for wage system, even unionized doesnt do that, unless the unions own the factory, but then its not fair for the other workers whose jobs arent automated.

"In a free market constrained by the right rules"

I dont think there is such a thing as a free market, in addition to the environment being not superfluid(physical/logistical constraits), conflicts of interest plague it and eventually you get barriers/collusion/phoney competition/industry associations/cartels/contextual oligopolies/acquisitions/fusions/etc, and on top of that, which ever rules you have will be changed as concentration of power/influence will end up making the rules bypassed by loop holes, undermined and eventually thrown out.

"It's insanely efficient at accomplishing the task you give it"

Im not sure what that means, but not automatically because of conflicts of interests inherent to markets.


my interpretation of what you meant is most probably wrong in a few places

Originally Posted by Tranquille

Originally Posted by John Galt

From your last sentence I can deduce two things.

1) You reject the evidence for evolution.

I would be insulted if I did not find that sentence so amusing.

Damn! I was going for offence, not entertainment.

Originally Posted by Tranquille

The fact that we have these kind of sweatshops and horrific conditions for those workers and have done since industry first came into existence is a clear enough indication that we, as a collective society, are inherently selfish

Two points:

1) And the Cherry Picking Prize of the Month goes to Tranquille. I could easily counter with "the fact that billions of dollars were donated by private citizens and billions more by their governments to address the consequences of the Boxing Day tsunami is a clear enough indication taht we, as a collective society, are inherently altruisitc." Neither statements address the whole picture. The two of them, blended, come closer to the truith.
2) In rejecting that we might/could change from what we are today, to something else tomorrow you implicitly reject evolution. I am fully aware that you accept evolution, yet you fail to see its applicability in this instance.

Originally Posted by Tranquille

Evolution signifies a change, if one can put it that way. But when it comes to man's morals towards other human beings they do not know, plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Pretty much confirms my point. Evolution works, just not on humans and certainly not on human morals. That's your belief and you are mistaken.

Originally Posted by John Galt

Damn! I was going for offence, not entertainment.

You failed!

Two points:

1) And the Cherry Picking Prize of the Month goes to Tranquille. I could easily counter with "the fact that billions of dollars were donated by private citizens and billions more by their governments to address the consequences of the Boxing Day tsunami is a clear enough indication taht we, as a collective society, are inherently altruisitc." Neither statements address the whole picture. The two of them, blended, come closer to the truith.

A horrendous natural disaster which saw countries trying to outdo each other for point scoring after they were criticised for being somewhat stingy while as many at the time pointed out, such as Tony Blair, that over 10,000 die in Africa on a daily basis from AIDS and malaria and little is done about it.

The same with the garment collapse. Everyone rushed to express horror and demand change. And yet, nothing has been done about it and those very people are hardly demanding change in all other countries where cheap labour and sweatshops are the norm.

2) In rejecting that we might/could change from what we are today, to something else tomorrow you implicitly reject evolution. I am fully aware that you accept evolution, yet you fail to see its applicability in this instance.

Of course we can change what we are today. But we deliberately choose not to by passing the buck to others and explicitly supporting organisations that use exploitative labour and then make excuses that they wouldn't be getting paid that amount if it wasn't for their working there, horrendous conditions aside.

We will reject change if it will affect our wallets. Why do you think stores like Walmart continue to contract out to companies that use sweatshops and why do you think they refuse to sign anything that would entail their possibly having to pay some money to ensure the safety of their workers overseas?

Pretty much confirms my point. Evolution works, just not on humans and certainly not on human morals. That's your belief and you are mistaken.

Our morals can evolve and will evolve if we stop being so selfish and deliberately choose to not support stores and organisations which use such forms of labour. But we do not because as even some here have decried:

1) It's not really our problem.
2) It's too hard.
3) Well they wouldn't be earning that low wage if it wasn't for our demand for those goods.

Have you ever heard of Gina Rinehart? She is an Australian mining tycoon and one of the richest people in the world.

Recently in Australia, in a whine about the cost of investing in Australia, she commented that Australian miners and the Government should take note that they need to compete with African miners who are paid $2 per day. Now, you and I know that mining is hardly easy labour. It is dangerous and deadly.

Speaking in video posted on the Sydney Mining Club's website to discuss the recently signed enterprise migration agreement which will allow her to import 1,700 foreign workers for her Roy Hill Iron Ore project, Mrs Rinehart says Australians should not be complacent about the investment pipeline given that African labourers will work for less than $2 a day.

A disgusting statement if ever there was one. The response from the Australian Government was equally astounding:

The fresh comments drew immediate criticism from the Prime Minister.


Julia Gillard says she does not agree Australia is a difficult place to invest and that she has a different view of how workers should be treated.


"It's not the Australian way to toss people a $2 gold coin and then ask them to work for a day," she said.


"We support proper Australian wages and decent working conditions for Australian people.


"We are not going to have wage rates the same as the wage rates in Africa. We're not going to compete on those kinds of cost differentials.


"We're going to compete on our great mineral deposits, our application of technology and high skills to the task. We mine differently than in other countries."

Umm hello!?

How about it's not acceptable to send people down a hole to risk their lives to mine for billionaires for less than $2 a day?

Again, it's okay so long as it's over there and not over here. We just need to evolve beyond what we are now, morally that is.

OK, can we agree on this. You are a pessimist who sees the worst in people, I am an optimist who sees the best in people?

Tranquille,

in my opinion, the problems is not because humans are inherently bad, but because our current monetary and profit based socio-economic system is the environment that shapes these aberrant behaviors. It appears to be unavoidable or "the way it is" because we have lived in such a system since the middle ages (if not since antiquity with kings, feudal hierarchy, money and court room secrecy/intrigues etc), but it does not mean that there are no alternatives(for a long time human flight was "impossible" or "utopian" until the Wright brothers tested prototypes that would eventually become a reality. Its like a water puddle, where you would see the water as a problem, when the reason why water will eventually accumulate and stagnate there is because of the hole in the ground more than because of the water, since with a different environment (slope) you would get a small stream instead.

Originally Posted by John Galt

OK, can we agree on this. You are a pessimist who sees the worst in people, I am an optimist who sees the best in people?

You are the first person I have ever met who has called me a pessimist. Since I tend to be overly trusting and expect the best out of people.

Which could be the problem.

Do I want things to change and do I expect people to change? Yes. However past experiences and the current climate tells me that it is not about to change anytime soon.

So perhaps you are right. Perhaps I do see too much of the worst in people. But I do have hope for the best. Not that that matters in the grand scheme of things.

Originally Posted by icewendigo

in my opinion, the problems is not because humans are inherently bad, but because our current monetary and profit based socio-economic system is the environment that shapes these aberrant behaviors. It appears to be unavoidable or "the way it is" because we have lived in such a system since the middle ages (if not since antiquity with kings, feudal hierarchy, money and court room secrecy/intrigues etc), but it does not mean that there are no alternatives(for a long time human flight was "impossible" or "utopian" until the Wright brothers tested prototypes that would eventually become a reality. Its like a water puddle, where you would see the water as a problem, when the reason why water will eventually accumulate and stagnate there is because of the hole in the ground more than because of the water, since with a different environment (slope) you would get a small stream instead.

We value money and goods more than we value human life. And that is probably the root cause.

As long as that continues, people will suffer and what is tantamount to slave labour will continue.

Originally Posted by icewendigo

I dont fully understand, so my comments might be more or less irrelevant/misunderstanding, but I will attempt to share my point of view

"I just don't think it can be done via any kind of anarchy."

I'm thinking more along the lines of a network of communities, where each community (shares a vision of a better future with an alternate socio-economic system that no longer uses money internally) uses Collaborative e-Democracy as a foundation upon which are added transparent open source computer/communication assisted decision making methods (Known Issues, Technical, Preferences) and coordination/priority/volunteering systems. Each community would have its own local code of conduct and organization variant (according to their prefeneces/culture/values) yet collaborate with other communities within the network and interact/trade with organizations outside the network (using money, local money if thats possible).

Individuals would enter those communities, feign idealistic commitment to that community's standards to gain acceptance, and then rob them blind.

If one community had free health care and another didn't, all the sick people would migrate to one community and all the well people would migrate to the other.

If one community had high wages and high price on goods, people would go there to work, and then drive over to the nearby "cheap goods" community to do all their shopping.

For communities that lack any kind of financial system, I'm sure the potential for abuse only increases. Now you'd have people maxing out their allowance for goods and services at one community, getting in whatever equivalent to "debt" still existed, then leaving to the next one.

"If we would use legislation to prevent competition between privileged and underprivileged workers"

does that mean protective tarifs? What about automation? If factories are fully automated, the workers are out of a "productive" job, and are forced to find any job even if its the new opening in Dick Cheney's garden as a professional statue or Louis the XIV servant costumed silver pee-pot holder. We should be targeting a system/solution where people benefit from automation and get more free time, a work for wage system, even unionized doesnt do that, unless the unions own the factory, but then its not fair for the other workers whose jobs arent automated.

I don't see any problem with automation. Computers were supposed to eliminate all the office workers. Instead the number of office workers increased.

There's a temporary loss of jobs whenever a new technology makes a previously viable profession obsolete, but almost immediately the tech leads to the creation of a new kind of job previously unimagined. And the workers displaced from the previous role need only retrain to the new one (which is often similar enough to allow them to migrate without any actual need for further schooling.

"In a free market constrained by the right rules"

I dont think there is such a thing as a free market, in addition to the environment being not superfluid(physical/logistical constraits), conflicts of interest plague it and eventually you get barriers/collusion/phoney competition/industry associations/cartels/contextual oligopolies/acquisitions/fusions/etc, and on top of that, which ever rules you have will be changed as concentration of power/influence will end up making the rules bypassed by loop holes, undermined and eventually thrown out.

The idea of a competitive market with constraints is to structure those constraints in such a manner so there is rarely, if ever, any actual conflict of interest at all.

With the right rules in place, the most profitable course of action would be to hire the most workers at the best wage to produce the highest quality product at the cheapest price while inflicting the least environmental damage.

The trouble is that for that to work, you can't let the players determine the rules. That's got to be left up to the fans. Ask most basketball players if their team should be allowed to foul the other team and they immediately think yes. They're caught up in the game and want every advantage they can get, usually focused too closely on what's immediately in front of them so they fail to see that the other team will get the same advantage anyway ...... making the whole question moot.

The fans have to impose rules like "no steroids". The players aren't going to choose it for themselves.

"It's insanely efficient at accomplishing the task you give it"

Im not sure what that means, but not automatically because of conflicts of interests inherent to markets.


my interpretation of what you meant is most probably wrong in a few places[/QUOTE]

If you can align a person's interests so they don't conflict in the first place, then they'll do exactly what you want with minimal supervision.

Slaves require task masters watching over them because naturally they don't want to work very hard and we're trying to make them. However, if working hard were always rewarded, there would be no conflict of interest. The worker would work as hard as they could regardless of supervision.

"Individuals would enter those communities, feign idealistic commitment to that community's standards to gain acceptance, and then rob them blind.


If one community had free health care and another didn't, all the sick people would migrate to one community and all the well people would migrate to the other.


If one community had high wages and high price on goods, people would go there to work, and then drive over to the nearby "cheap goods" community to do all their shopping.


For communities that lack any kind of financial system, I'm sure the potential for abuse only increases. Now you'd have people maxing out their allowance for goods and services at one community, getting in whatever equivalent to "debt" still existed, then leaving to the next one."

This is a good point. These are valid concerns that require solutions.




Automation:
PACE: The question is do the technologies that suppress massive amounts of jobs create as many jobs within one year. Also note that the pace is important, like if you are deprived of oxygen for 15 minutes and then are given 50 hours worth of oxygen, its too late you are already dead, it doesnt matter the amount of oxygen as much as the flow/timing. A long time ago, it took hundreds of years to develop a new stone cutting technique and it could be learned in a short time, changes were seperated by long periods of time in which these could be digested, but the pace is accelerating, new technologies appear at rate that is nearly exponential. So I dont think we can just say, hey look new jobs are created too, so no problem, at least imo our current corrupt system is ill equiped to optimize people's leisure time and access to products with automation.
AUTOMATED REPLACEMENT: In addition, the jobs that would replace those that are replaced by automation, will increasingly be automated themselves! (or may be non profitable, so the activity may exist without being a comparable revenue source).
SCALE: For example, 3D printers could create employment for hundreds of people, but could cause the suppression of tens of thousands of jobs.
WASTE OF HUMAN POTENTIAL: In addition, there are many people that are unemployed, and that is in a context where automation is suppressed by conflicts of interests(groups that profit from the status quo) and unemployment is concealed by non productive jobs (military, bureaucracy, financial/fiscal/monetary jobs that feed on the casino economy) and concealed by redundant jobs that solely exist in a profit motive environment(cyclical consumption, planned obsolecence, marketing useless shit, waste, etc). A moneless economy would do away with mandatory work in various sectors that dont produce (military, bank monetary casino economy/IRS, etc) useful services, distribute non-automated utility tasks in small amounts of time per month, and provide free custom education and training with the time needed to train.

WORK FOR WAGE FLAW: Dont get me wrong, I am in favor of automation, the problem is not automation itself, but the economic system. If everything was automated, just in theory, the economy would crash, because workers would have no income, to buy the products that are automatically made, this is a fundamental flaw, that was never as problematic in the past, as it is now, and will be in the near future. Our economic system emerged in the distant past, it may have been good enough in the past, but might not be the best in the future.

"in such a manner so there is rarely, if ever, any actual conflict of interest at all. "

You might have Overt Blatant conflicts of interest in mind, I m talking about conflicts of interest that are "inherent" inextricable from the monetary system. I favor the Worgl local money as a transition tool, but even this money which could help bring about prosperity, is not devoid of conflicts of interest, because no money system can be.

"With the right rules in place"

The right rules, is chucking out the water from a sinking ship. It offers a temporay solution that does not fix the root cause of the problem. Money and influence will accumulate, concentrate, and in turn used to leverage advantages, until the "right rules" are circumvented, changed or abolished (at which point the boat is again filled with water and a dice roll away from away from sinking).

"If you can align a person's interests so they don't conflict in the first place"

Yo cant do that, you are thinking of blatant *over the top* "conflict of interest", Im talking about inherent conflit of interest, in which everyone in a monetary system finds himself, because you are in a conflict of interest between yourself and society, because you need money, you will act to obtain it, the conflicts of interest are everywhere, a car salesman is not objective his livelhood depends on selling you a car, pharmaceuticals dont profit from cancer prevention and dont allocate research to preventing the disease from which they rake in billions of dollars, a factory that undercuts competitors by skipping anti-polution is in a conflict of interest it has no incentive to tell the truth, the dealers monkeying around to prevent Tesla from directly selling cars are in a conflict of interest because they see this method as a threat to their making money and paying politicians to subvert the peoples will but the corrupt aspect is not only the OVERT conflict of interest and Corruption that they are paying a politician thats the easy aspect to see but the monetary system's inherent conflicts of interest causes them to want/to see in their interest to prevent this new method instead of saying "great a new method makes my job obsolete neet!", the monetary system leads to the exact opposite behavior, because their personal insterests are perceived to be at odds with the society, the monetary sytem is "inherently" corrupt, imo, and so currupt people do not realize it.

Originally Posted by sculptor

Originally Posted by Do_It_Like_A_Dude12

... Also, many farmer in Africa are essentially sharecropping because native Africans often pay rent to some company owned by some British/Dutch/French/German noble to farm their own land. ... ?

Do you have some current specific examples of this?

BBC NEWS | Africa | Who owns the land?

it's everywhere

Originally Posted by icewendigo

"If you can align a person's interests so they don't conflict in the first place"

Yo cant do that, you are thinking of blatant *over the top* "conflict of interest", Im talking about inherent conflit of interest, in which everyone in a monetary system finds himself, because you are in a conflict of interest between yourself and society, because you need money, you will act to obtain it, the conflicts of interest are everywhere,

You need to avoid extremism. Eliminating a conflict of interest is usually better than just trying to heavy handedly impose someone to go where you want.

When that is not possible, then there does need to be a fail safe. Possibly the main problem with the existing money system is that it is short on fail safes. I wouldn't take that as meaning that it ought to be utterly destroyed, because the alternative systems are also vulnerable, just in different areas.

The best answer will most likely be a hybrid of some kind, that incorporates the best parts of every system.

a car salesman is not objective his livelhood depends on selling you a car,

However he does work hard at moving the maximum amount of merchandise through his lot that he can, and at acquiring used cars from every source which he can when the price is low enough to turn a profit.

In a communist dictatorship, if his own wage didn't depend on stuff like that, he might just let the same cars sit there for years unbought, undriven, and rusting to death from sitting for so long. That would waste them, as well as wasting the real estate.

pharmaceuticals dont profit from cancer prevention and dont allocate research to preventing the disease from which they rake in billions of dollars

However, they do profit from curing it and/or making cancer patients more comfortable. Which motivates them to work very hard at those things.

In a communist dictatorship, where their profits/wages did not depend on success at all, maybe they'd just sit around making tweaks to some Asprin. So cancer patients could take designer Asprin to make them feel less pain.

, a factory that undercuts competitors by skipping anti-polution is in a conflict of interest it has no incentive to tell the truth,

People who are breaking the rules of any system will always have no incentive to tell the truth. I would be very surprised if capitalism was uniquely susceptible to this.

the dealers monkeying around to prevent Tesla from directly selling cars are in a conflict of interest because they see this method as a threat to their making money and paying politicians to subvert the peoples will but the corrupt aspect is not only the OVERT conflict of interest and Corruption that they are paying a politician thats the easy aspect to see but the monetary system's inherent conflicts of interest causes them to want/to see in their interest to prevent this new method instead of saying "great a new method makes my job obsolete neet!", the monetary system leads to the exact opposite behavior, because their personal insterests are perceived to be at odds with the society, the monetary sytem is "inherently" corrupt, imo, and so currupt people do not realize it.

Again I don't see how this is the money system's fault.

If this were a communist dictatorship and one division of government was likely to get better funding because it had figured out a way to make the other obsolete, the other division might start a smear campaign to malign the division that was about to out them.

Take money out of the equation and it would still come down to resources. Maybe the first division is going to get sent all of the nation's steel because their plan is better, so the second division starts slandering them to prevent the steel from getting taken away.

Basically if you remove money, there is still a barter system. For a long time many rural communities in the USA made minimal use of actual currency, with most of the transactions being straight up trades between one product and another. A farmer might pay for a doctor's services in eggs, for example.

If you remove barter, then you would also need to remove the very notion of private property. As long as anyone owns anything, it's possible to trade it. A convict in the prison system might trade his shoes for a few packs of cigarettes, for example.

Thanks for your responses Kojax, it helps me realize that I m not sure people will understand what Im saying, it appears more challenging than i thought or maybe there needs to be a digestion period as was the case for me for some aspects (a kind of 'oh, thats what they meant'). Maybe its like trying to describe the stench of a barn to people in the barn that arent aware of it because its ubiquitus unless they get out of the box(barn) and back in, so until then they will assign what you say to something else.The communist dictatorship you use ad a reference is not a good system i agree, because those we know of use a- money (thus mired with what i call 'conflicts of interest' for lack of a better expression, and corrupt), b- are hierarchies, c- engage in secrecy and control of information.

, ~a factory that undercuts competitors by skipping anti-polution is in a conflict of interest it has no incentive to tell the truth,~People who are breaking the rules of any system will always have no incentive to tell the truth. I would be very surprised if capitalism was uniquely susceptible to this.

But there is an incentive of a sort to do something that is bad for society and to lie about it, because the core incentive (the ends) is not to help society at all but to help yourself in a setting that pits you against others that are also not trying to improve society/everyone/you but there own self. Its not only that they break a rules but they poison others for a perceived personal benefit, someone working as a volunteer in a childrens hospital for no money just to do good/help others would not be in a position to benefit from poisoning others to leverage an advantage for himself as is the case with the monetary system (though the harm can take less dramatic forms it can be wasting resources, suppressing tech that would replace you, telling someone that car is just right when you know the brakes are finished, etc, etc, etc)In a moneyless system, people can work on a cure for cancer, why would they waste time on an aspirin? Their motivation will be to find a cure or prevent it because they know someone that suffered and want a cure. Currently Pharma is pushing marketing(as much money is spent on marketing than on developing drugs that can just as well be placebos or drugs whose secondary effects are worse) meds that arent better so they can make money on a patented drug that does the same as a no-longer-patented, making a change they know is useless so they can say its different, in a voluntary moneyless system, people will genuinely work for real improvements and will have no problem revealing that x has this major dangerous secondary effect, there is no incentive to keep anything secret, you can share and make everything accessible and discuss the good and the bad with others.Will be back cheers

Originally Posted by danhanegan

What occupation would these "exploited" workers be doing if they weren't working in sweatshops? Subsistence farmers, subject to starvation at the first crop failure? Homeless beggars sleeping on sidewalks? Recruits in some warlord's army?

I don't dispute that conditions are deplorable by our standards. But don't lose track of the fact that for many of these people "sweatshop worker" is a step up from what they did before. Standards in these countries simply are not what we are used to. I do favor making an effort to improve these people's lives. But simply shutting down the factories is virtually certain to make a bad situation worse.

What these people need is education and infrastructure, and ultimately higher paying job opportunities. The trick is to find a way to tax the profits being made to fund these improvements. In the long run, increasing wages in these developing countries will result in increased wages in the developed countries "exploiting" them as well, as it becomes less profitable to outsource labor costs overseas.

no no no all of those problems exist because of the economic exploitation. Our government has even lost the ability to allow an overseas economy to develop. After WWII Japan developed because we allowed it and set our sights on dominating the Philippines instead. The only reason why China has been able to benefit economically from this sweatshop economy we have and actually profit is because of their enormous work force. If they were able to use their own country's resources imagine the wealth that they would acquire.

Originally Posted by icewendigo

, ~a factory that undercuts competitors by skipping anti-polution is in a conflict of interest it has no incentive to tell the truth,~People who are breaking the rules of any system will always have no incentive to tell the truth. I would be very surprised if capitalism was uniquely susceptible to this.

But there is an incentive of a sort to do something that is bad for society and to lie about it, because the core incentive (the ends) is not to help society at all but to help yourself in a setting that pits you against others that are also not trying to improve society/everyone/you but there own self.

How would you get rid of this problem? Even without money there are still scarce resources. They may not have a dollar sign on them to tell you how scarce they are but you would still have other ways to know.

Does your system allow for private ownership of any kind? Can people still trade? If not everybody has 5 pairs of shoes, but I have 6 pairs, can I trade one of my pairs of shoes to someone else for maybe a hat?

What's to stop someone from greedily hoarding shoes until they're artificially scarce and then trading them for hats, belts, pants, ... maybe even jewelry?

How is a barter system any less susceptible to greed than one that includes currency?

Its not only that they break a rules but they poison others for a perceived personal benefit, someone working as a volunteer in a childrens hospital for no money just to do good/help others would not be in a position to benefit from poisoning others to leverage an advantage for himself as is the case with the monetary system (though the harm can take less dramatic forms it can be wasting resources, suppressing tech that would replace you, telling someone that car is just right when you know the brakes are finished, etc, etc, etc)In a moneyless system, people can work on a cure for cancer, why would they waste time on an aspirin? Their motivation will be to find a cure or prevent it because they know someone that suffered and want a cure. Currently Pharma is pushing marketing(as much money is spent on marketing than on developing drugs that can just as well be placebos or drugs whose secondary effects are worse) meds that arent better so they can make money on a patented drug that does the same as a no-longer-patented, making a change they know is useless so they can say its different, in a voluntary moneyless system, people will genuinely work for real improvements and will have no problem revealing that x has this major dangerous secondary effect, there is no incentive to keep anything secret, you can share and make everything accessible and discuss the good and the bad with others.Will be back cheers

It sounds like you're talking about a system where everybody is affluent.

But, you can't just create wealth by fiat. Shall we go into a poor village and declare: "I order everybody to have enough food, shelter, and health that they don't need to work to get it anymore!!!" "Why aren't you obeying me!?!?!"

On Maslow's Hierarchy of needs, a person who already has food, shelter.... etc.... feels only the desire to grow in other areas, such as love, friendship, or gaining the respect and admiration of others. However you have to get them there first.

Actually that's why I'm always so adamant about population control. With a small enough population, basic subsistence would be very easy to obtain. That in turn, would move people higher up the pyramid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_

How would you get rid of this problem? Even without money there are still scarce resources. They may not have a dollar sign on them to tell you how scarce they are but you would still have other ways to know.


Does your system allow for private ownership of any kind? Can people still trade? If not everybody has 5 pairs of shoes, but I have 6 pairs, can I trade one of my pairs of shoes to someone else for maybe a hat?

The moneyless system works best (or easier to implement successfuly) in post-industrial automation society we are entering.


Yes people can trade stuff they personally make, although a lot of people will give stuff they make(as hard as it is for some people to imagine) so there will be an overflowing abundance of some creation (music, art, ect), while a great number of volunteers work to provide an array of products and services for personal use for free. People would have access to countless 3D printer designs on various P2P as open source, enabling anyone to produce various objects for free by pressing print, hte same way you can print a color image or a black and white outline for your kids to draw with a priner. Toys, blocks, bols, etc. For electronics, everyone would be able to borrow from the library-equivalent an iphone, etc, like library books you have access to a number that meets your needs and can bring it back to upgraded it to a new model when software upgrades arent enough.


If you want an extra hat, you could turn in one of your 5 hats you use least often and replace it for the new model your looking for without needing to trade with someone that probably already have enough shoes for free. If you have a hat fetish, you could as to have a collector's upgrade so that once every one has the generic number (like a number of books at the library) then you could have some extra hats to fullfill your hat fetish, but this would be allowed once everyone is satisfied, so that you extra hats dont have much trading value.

What's to stop someone from greedily hoarding shoes until they're artificially scarce and then trading them for hats, belts, pants, ... maybe even jewelry?

Well, what is stopping someone from hoarding all the free books at the library? Easy, you have a card that grants you a amount the overwhelming majority of the community find more than enough and you are limited to it. In the case of shoes, you could have a number that is above the average number people usually have as a default value, where you can trade in old shoes for new shoes, then you could ask to increase this value, but getting over this amount would be tallied non-nominatively up to an amount that is deemed unreasonable.
Like an all you can eat buffet, some use more some use less, not everyone would hoard 5 pairs of shoes or more, since anytime they want they can trade in a old pair for a new pair, and you can get more.
The hording reflex would be seen as a primitive reflex. For example, a women from an african tribe can to Canada and has a volunteer lady to show her around, when she got at the supermarket she jumped on meat and bought all she could like a crazy person. But the next day she saw there was just as much meat and food in the supermarket, and was told that everyone takes what they need for the week or for a few days, since you can always get back to the market the next day.

How is a barter system any less susceptible to greed than one that includes currency?

In a system where people get their needs met without money, most of the trading will be hard because the other guy doesnt need it, you might trade gimicks, novelties, collectibles, but very few would poison someone else to get a trinket.
A barter system where peoples basic needs and comforts are being met as a social priority is much watered down in the first place, and then whats left of the watered down verion doesnt have the same corrosive levels for the same reason you cant corrupt a policeman by offering a paper clip.

It sounds like you're talking about a system where everybody is affluent.

Yes, and/or where everyone as common values that place a set of common priorities for the community.

But, you can't just create wealth by fiat. Shall we go into a poor village and declare: "I order everybody to have enough food, shelter, and health that they don't need to work to get it anymore!!!" "Why aren't you obeying me!?!?!"

No wealth requires production, thats why initially you should not start with a poor village, you get to the poor village stage once you have developed to a stage where you have the equivalent of an army (surplus of people beyond whats needed to run society) and this army of builders can go to a poor village that call for assistance and you help them build a infrastructure and production capability of their own.
But as you start off with a moderately affluent community, you can set priorities so that everyones basic needs are met, so the production of novelty dog shit takes a backseat while everyone's being considered. And you make sure all priority tasks are well identified, that training/tutorials/attestation of skill are available for free.
And you cant go to a village thats used to the monetary system and is clueless about a moneyless society, you have to start with people that are interest in it.

On Maslow's Hierarchy of needs, a person who already has food, shelter.... etc.... feels only the desire to grow in other areas, such as love, friendship, or gaining the respect and admiration of others. However you have to get them there first.

Prioritization is required but you can always work on two(multiple) priorities when that is possible with a group where theres more people than required for a given task/goal.

Actually that's why I'm always so adamant about population control. With a small enough population, basic subsistence would be very easy to obtain.

Im not sure about the small population thing, but many people appear to share your point of view and I have not had time to address this issue. Easier perhaps a bit, but I dont think the main challenge resides in the population numbers at this point, imo the scale of issue relevance would be something like ~how we organize and the common value would solve 99% and less population would help with 1% of the problems~.


cheers

Originally Posted by icewendigo

What's to stop someone from greedily hoarding shoes until they're artificially scarce and then trading them for hats, belts, pants, ... maybe even jewelry?

Well, what is stopping someone from hoarding all the free books at the library? Easy, you have a card that grants you a amount the overwhelming majority of the community find more than enough and you are limited to it. In the case of shoes, you could have a number that is above the average number people usually have as a default value, where you can trade in old shoes for new shoes, then you could ask to increase this value, but getting over this amount would be tallied non-nominatively up to an amount that is deemed unreasonable.
Like an all you can eat buffet, some use more some use less, not everyone would hoard 5 pairs of shoes or more, since anytime they want they can trade in a old pair for a new pair, and you can get more.
The hording reflex would be seen as a primitive reflex. For example, a women from an african tribe can to Canada and has a volunteer lady to show her around, when she got at the supermarket she jumped on meat and bought all she could like a crazy person. But the next day she saw there was just as much meat and food in the supermarket, and was told that everyone takes what they need for the week or for a few days, since you can always get back to the market the next day.

We'd need an extreme abundance. We had that in the 1950's, kind of. But then the baby boom hit and peoples' incomes got wiped out by higher rent prices (same amount of land as before, but gobs more people competing for it.) You didn't need an advanced education to afford your own house, with room for a family of 4 or more. By the 1980's that had all changed.

You can solve land problems by building vertically, but those taller buildings cost exponentially more to construct than the 1 floor buildings they replace. Different, much stronger materials, greater liability, more design costs to make sure they're earthquake proof.... etc.

If you look at where an average low wage worker's money is going - most of it gets wiped out by rent from the outset.

How is a barter system any less susceptible to greed than one that includes currency?

In a system where people get their needs met without money, most of the trading will be hard because the other guy doesnt need it, you might trade gimicks, novelties, collectibles, but very few would poison someone else to get a trinket.
A barter system where peoples basic needs and comforts are being met as a social priority is much watered down in the first place, and then whats left of the watered down verion doesnt have the same corrosive levels for the same reason you cant corrupt a policeman by offering a paper clip.

I understand what you're getting at, getting rid of artificial scarcities. Some industries would benefit from this greatly.

But what about the things that aren't artificially scarce? If you look out the window when you're taking a flight over the USA - you pretty much see nonstop farmer fields in every direction. There's not a lot of "untamed wilderness" out there anymore. Where there is, it's usually because conservation laws have been enacted forbidding it to be plowed. Not because nobody has gotten around to it yet.

It sounds like you're talking about a system where everybody is affluent.

Yes, and/or where everyone as common values that place a set of common priorities for the community.

But, you can't just create wealth by fiat. Shall we go into a poor village and declare: "I order everybody to have enough food, shelter, and health that they don't need to work to get it anymore!!!" "Why aren't you obeying me!?!?!"

No wealth requires production, thats why initially you should not start with a poor village, you get to the poor village stage once you have developed to a stage where you have the equivalent of an army (surplus of people beyond whats needed to run society) and this army of builders can go to a poor village that call for assistance and you help them build a infrastructure and production capability of their own.
But as you start off with a moderately affluent community, you can set priorities so that everyones basic needs are met, so the production of novelty dog shit takes a backseat while everyone's being considered. And you make sure all priority tasks are well identified, that training/tutorials/attestation of skill are available for free.
And you cant go to a village thats used to the monetary system and is clueless about a moneyless society, you have to start with people that are interest in it.

If every village had factories set up, the price of oil would be like 10 bucks a gallon instead of just 4. Short of covering the whole landscape in solar panels and/or windmills and/or nuclear plants (presuming we can use substitutes like Thorium so we don't run out of Uranium) - it would be very difficult to keep up with power demands.

Actually that's why I'm always so adamant about population control. With a small enough population, basic subsistence would be very easy to obtain.

Im not sure about the small population thing, but many people appear to share your point of view and I have not had time to address this issue. Easier perhaps a bit, but I dont think the main challenge resides in the population numbers at this point, imo the scale of issue relevance would be something like ~how we organize and the common value would solve 99% and less population would help with 1% of the problems~.


cheers

I don't know why you think that. If all farms were located on very very fertile land, they'd grow lots more food with lots less effort. If all population centers were located near abundant hydro-electricity - we wouldn't have an energy crisis. Or heck, with a small population that all wants to live in sunny California, we could build long distance power transfer systems to get the energy to them from elsewhere - but we'd still be running everything off of hydro.

It's the fact that hydro isn't abundant relative to consumption that prevents us being able to use it to synthesize methanol and buck our dependence on foreign oil.

It's like treading water instead of just lying on your back and floating in the water. The more dead weight you have to carry, the more deliberate effort you have to exert. Recycling for a small population would be less urgent. Sure we'd still do it, but we could waste lots of energy about it. Take all the junk from the landfill and cook it until it gets so hot that all the components separate out.