Anyway, my personal interest aside, what I noticed with these figures is how (BY GOSH!) they're making decent money out there in dem der third world countries. In Kuala Lumpur one can almost make $10,000 a year as a programmer. And don't even get me started about how it isn't adjusted for purchasing power parity.
Regardless, the whole point is how I remember back in the late 80's and early 90's being told that American companies were taking advantage of these poor third world laborers and paying them nickels per decade. That you shouldn't buy Nike because they force children with one arm and 3 toes to work 15 hours a day and drink acid for lunch, if they're lucky enough to have a lunch!
Yes, well every country must start somewhere. Last I recall working on the American frontier in the 1820's wasn't exactly up to UN Human Rights Code. And look, within 15 years and billions of dollars worth of FDI, decent jobs with decent pay are starting to show up in the developing world...well maybe not Bolivia or Venezuela, but the developing world that at leasts wishes to progress.
17 comments:
Huh, yeah, I've been having a version of this discussion somewhere else.
Look, outsourceing and offshoring are good things and companies can save money and people can be lifted out of poverty. And, wonderfully, you can pay people a lot less abroad and it makes a big difference to them and everybody comes out right. And thins like child labor aren't quite so bad overseas in that in general the kids have choice between the workshop or the fields; they aren't off to prep school.
But.
When you start on the Nike track, you go goofy (well, actually, bad example: Nike has been shamed into providing schooling and a lot of benefits for its overseas workers. But you know what I mean). The critique people are making of firms using child labor or prison labor or sweatshops isn't an economic one, it's a moral one.
The trope about America's own developing morals is completely bunk, which is why it's weird that even smarter people tend to use it. Look, if you travelled back in time to the 1820's, you might meet a good, kind, decent human being -- who owns slaves. Fine, sure: it's hard to separate out a guy from his time and culture, he's a product of that. Similarly you might g to one of the countries today that still have a slavery tradition and meet someone just a little shady, with a slave. Whereas on the other hand if you meet someone in suburban Illinois, 2006, who is keeping a slave --- _that_ is an odious, subhuman cretin. Similarly if that same decent normal Illinoisan moves off to somewhere like Sudan, and while there decides to keep a slave --- then thou shalt know him for an odious, subhuman cretin. The Sudanese around him have the very real excuse of being products of their culture and time. He does not. This is a real-world thing! I've met decent, humane, generous people in Kuwait who, if they were Americans, I'd consider loathsome for their attitudes about women: as it is, I can accept them as nice people and just try to politely convey and encourage my values.
That's the point about exploiting overseas workers, and why _some_ work does cross the barrier between legitimately using cheap overseas labor, and exploitation. We all accept --- it's part of how our culture values children -- that you don't put a child behind a milling machine, say, or work him sixteen hours in front of a loom in unsafe conditions, and if you found someone operating a factory full of 'em in New York or Berlin, well, that guy is scum. And that's not because of the economic gain to the children -- it's because they're children, and, that's how we value them: that is not an acceptable way for a man to earn his bread. So if instead he goes and opens a full of kids in the same unsafe conditons only in Jakarta, well, he's still scum.
Note that that has the appearance of a double standard! If a Chinese entrepreneur gets his shirts stitched with prison labor, I might try to persuade him differently and I probably won't buy his stuff, but I ain't gonna spit on him: he's a product of his culture and doesn't know better. If on the other hand a Reebok executive makes a deal to get sweats stitched with Chinese prison labor --- him you should spit on! It's fair to judge him by 21st century Western mores.
So you certainly can be accused of exploting overseas workers. That doesn't mean you are going to pay your programmers in Bangalore anywhere near what you pay the ones in San Jose --- pay them the going rate, and, bully for you. Make 'em work a nice forty -five, fifty hours if that's the in thing in Asia this month. But employers who think offshoring is a convenient route for handling their personnel in a way they'd be ashamed to be caught handling them if it were in Jersey --- those guys are scum, and in fact there was a decent amount of that going on in the 80s and 90s.
I'm working on it Sanjay - have no fear.
Hey wow, that's it - putting kids to work in foreign countries must be motivated by someone's desire to abuse children! It can't possibly be anything other than that!
Crap. All crap. It's funny that you want to strike a watered down relativist stance in one part of your rant, then turn around and condemn some Westerner's participation in the culture of the other. I know, I know, you say they "have an excuse" for being how they are, but it's all "hands off" for us. I guess we had better stop wagging fingers at people who abuse those of non-European extraction south of the Mason-Dixon line because, gosh darn, they've got an excuse! It's just how it is there!
Hah! Ok, here's one for you: in our culture, the desire to earn a higher profit is typical, so we have an excuse to pursue that. Since a higher profit can be earned by operating in certain countries... well, damn! Fire up the boiler, we're setting sail for foreign shores! WOOHOO!
Oh, wait, that would be wrong anyway! Therefore, the only proper thing to do is either a) not do business in such places at all, or b) start enforcing certain cultural standards upon the subject population. Sounds craptastic either way, doesn't it? Cultural imperialism has a funny penchant for popping up on the "social justice" side of the aisle.
Yeah, yeah, I know... we go to the emotional appeal of kids getting crushed in machines next. That would suck, that's true. But how about the other frequently ignored reality when this sort of thing is brought up - death or dismemberment by whatever other means. It really is just so bad that some kid might lose a finger working at a paying job instead of dying off for lack of any opportunity at all, isn't it? Starvation is so much more humane, after all. Better to get hacked up by the Janjaweed than get hurt on the job, right?
Yeah, yeah, I know - it's about making them work under conditions that are illegal in the West. Except that it isn't the West, and there are not press gangs putting guns to people's heads and forcing them into the jobs in question. Refer back the cultural imperialism observation for the first half, consider the very real possibility that people enter into "dangerous" factories in the first place because it's less terrifying than whatever other option they have for the second.
Tell me, are the cotton shirts any more comfortable to wear when one knows they weren't made by desperately poor people... who end up suffering and dying anyway for lack of some means through which they could have bettered their lives, because someone on the other side of the world decided to protest their employment on "moral grounds'?
- R.PB
R.PB,
I wouldn't get too worked up over Sanjay. It's what he wants. If you ignore him, he'll just be ranting himself. Otherwise you risk wasting 3 hours articulating arguments that are going to be lost on him or he'll just never admit to.
Have a beer and kiss your wife instead, better use of time.
Here is $10000 income life style in China.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5406900
If this is poverty, I want this type of `poverty' too.
Cappy,
I know, I know. I've spent plenty of time arguing with people online about this and that. And I know that he's got some sort of emotional need that's being fulfilled by coming here and spewing. But like I said elsewhere, I like coming here to read what you've got without wading through sermons and ego pumping. So I figured I'd have a go at making it a bit less enjoyable for him.
Besides, I was having a beer when I was typing that up - I call that multitasking. And I've no wife to kiss. I follow the advice of H.L. Mencken on that one: "He marries best who puts it off until it is too late."
Cheers!
-R.PB
I want to respond to the anonymous who posted the NPR link.
I had a classmate from China give a presentation on China in a Comparative Systems class we had about a month ago. He showed pictures of this same village and said "typical Chinese countryside. Typical village home."
That's a flat-out lie. When the professor interrupted with an "Um, I don't think so..." he and other Chinese classmates were quick to argue "No, life in China is this good for everyone!"
In a place where GDP per capita is something like $1,300 who do you think is building these villages, and the multi-million dollar structures?
It's called government propoganda exactly for people like NPR.
There are millions who live in abject poverty in China. The "typical Chinese countryside" looks NOTHING like that government-built village, and likely never will.
Both your post and mine are completely besides the point of this discussion.
Huh. So, R.PB., you would argue that if a normal Westerner went to a country wehere slavery was accepted, bought a bunch of slaves, and used 'em in a factory, that's fine?
Speaking of odious, subhuman cretins....
Hey JTapp,
Yeah, but I don't think he was implying that it was like that for all Chinese people. He was merely showing what purchasing power $10,000 would have in the orient.
Captain Capitalism, you get my point right way. The post is about purchase power.
Captain, once upon time, you said that debate with low IQ is quite frustrating experience?
Hey, critic, NPR never said whole china countryside is like this. On the same site, it also shows the really poor area too.
Distortion is sign of ??????
Shoter R.PB:
It's OK if I abuse this kid, because he's going to starve otherwise anyway.
How charming. I've been to China, Southeast Asia,the Middle East and India on business. Aaron probably hasn't even hauled his ass to Canada for the maple syrup, but lectures on purchasing power.
R.PB: Here in berkeley there was a big ring of guys who'd bring in poor starving rural Indians and then use them for labor, sexually abusing them and threatening to turn them in to the police. You should hook up! You'd like them. Ass.
Sanjay:
THe slave labor argument is tiresome. It's a straw-man.
Hardly, DI. It's some of what got companies in trouble during the 80's and 90's! You had purchased labor, prison labor (also slave labor), children working in unsafe conditions, and managers beating laborers. That's not a straw man, it's what was (maybe is) happening.
It's also why the "America's values have changed" concept, which you also use, is a bit silly: this is not about what our values _were_, it's about what they _are_. That's why this isn't some kind of cultural imperialism: we're not talking about imposing our values on others, we're talking about imposing them on ourselves.
"Here in berkeley..."
Stop right there. It all makes sense now. He's from the people's republic of berkeley.
Ah, Josh embraces the Aaron technique: "He doesn't agree, so he's a leftist." Idiot. For what it's worth I voted for this (pathetically inadequate) president in 2004 and campaigned for Schwarzenegger. Try again.
Yeah, first he said he was a 17 year old kid. Then he was a business owner that had to make payroll. Now he's a college student.
Regardless of whatever he is, he is a loser.
Keep posting Sanjay, you're making the job of fighting socialism easier.
Dimwit. When did I say I was 17? Or a college student?
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