Your Daily Dose of Happy Facts

[Bruno]

that would be interesting to hear directly from them.
interestingly, when i started googling to find out how to contact them, much of the results are articles discussing how Foxconn has halted hiring of employees as part of its move to replace all its workers with robots.
so, i guess we can stop worrying about slavery there soon!

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"Funny" story... There is a racist (islamophobic) local newspaper that is found in about half of the Chinese buffets in my town. I had a conversation with the guy behind the counter about it, and he argued that most of the things you read about China in American newspapers isn't actually true. Slave labor camps, the government killing people and sending their families the bill for the bullet... all that is just made up by the American propaganda machine.

So, nothing to worry about, everybody. Everything is fine. I heard it from a very reliable source! 

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Makes me sad

That is really, really sad. And the thing is, how would our lives suffer if we didn't buy the piece of shit plastic gewgaws that is made by the people in labor camps? Or if we paid twenty times as much for work made by workers paid a decent living wage for their region? Not at all, really.

If most Americans had an obvious (ie no work needed on their part) option, I think they would choose to pay more for something else or not buy something with a label "WARNING: This product comes from slave labor". I don't think people intentionally support this shit to support their el cheapo Halloween prop addiction. However, many Americans are lazy and can't be arsed to read the fine print on anything important, let alone do research on shit plastic gewgaws (love that phrase).

As long as companies can sell slave made products without obvious warning stickers, as long as international governments use hand slapping and tsk tsk'ing instead of hardcore sanctions, then this shit will continue. FFS, most people don't check the ingredients of what they stick in their bodies, they sure as hell aren't gonna research McSpooky's Halloween Decorations.

It used to be that one could judge a nation on how they treated the weakest in their care. In the modern world economy, the philosophy must change to how the nation deals with the treatment of the weakest in the care of those they trade with.

I think it's unfair and also a bit piggish to say that "people are lazy" because they buy what's on the shelves. This same argument came up in the thread about ingredients labels, and I am going to just stop right here and call bullshit on it.

Reasonable people do not assume there is sugar in their ravioli. Reasonable people do not assume they need to jump through hoops to buy products that are not made by slaves.

Jaded, cynical people do. We may be jaded and cynical for very good reasons, but that doesn't make normal, reasonable people inferior or stupid or lazy because they DON'T walk around all the time assuming  that THE WORLD IS FUCKED AND THEY'RE TRYING TO FUCK US.

I dunno, maybe I'm just too jaded and cynical 

But, your right, in all honesty, I have no idea how even a cunning, jaded, paranoid consumer could research every product they buy to verify it wasn't made from slave labor... I would imagine that there are many products where even the people who focus on this don't know have components that are products of slave labor. I shouldn't have called it laziness as much as an impossible task given the currently available information, assuming that the consumer would even take the time to research it if the information were available.

OK. So, now that I've gotten that off my chest, let's talk about your real point, which is that we cannot rely on the "Free Market" to protect us from slavery and exploitation, or even, for that matter, from being poisoned. As long as the "Free Market" exists, with its highest goal of MORE PROFITS, there is going to be a powerful, well-backed push toward manufacture and sale of the most cheaply-made consumer goods possible, with the highest profit margin possible. That push has led to nearly the complete eradication of high-quality consumer goods.

The consumer end isn't going to fix this, because that would be relying on the "Free Market" to fix itself. Not going to happen. Only political pressure will fix it, and political pressure will only come to bear if there is a generalized social shift away from free market capitalism.

Exactly, and I like thata you say "Free Market" as opposed to Capitalism. Capitalism, in and of itself, isn't necessarily evil... the implementation of it, in the US and moreso in countries with 0 oversight, is the real problem.

Well, we know what we can't do. So, the question returns to what we CAN do.

We really only have one tool at our disposal, because we don't have money. We can communicate. We can try to shift social perception. We can post flyers, put stickers on products on store shelves (how about small, unobtrustive stickers that say "Proudly made with slave labor!"?) and talk to our friends and neighbors about how we support sanctions. We can talk about sanctions not against countries that supply slave labor conditions, but against companies that exploit them. We can try to associate the Free Market™ with slavery. Posters, stickers, taglines that say "FREE MARKET SLAVERY". We can try to make memes. Images of a child in shackles that say "Free me from the Free Market".

There ARE things we can do. People are talking about it, and that's a sign of hope. What won't work is throwing up our hands and saying "There's nothing I can do!"

Excellent points!

To continue the thought above on Capitalism... there is nothing inherent in the private ownership of capital goods and the means of production that eschews a philosophy of personal and social responsibility. That is, there could be a successful free market, if the society implementing it had an expectation of responsibility along with the ownership. Its the concept of corporations that MUST produce the greatest profit at any expense, that is our failure... and that is a philosophical failure, not necessarily an economic one.

I really like the idea of stickers... I also think it could go further. Examples:

http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/seafoodwatch.aspx

http://www.free2work.org/

If there were a simple and useful way for consumers to determine the human cost of products, I think many people would use it. I'm imagining a phone app where you shoot a barcode, which returns information from a database on what is known about the product and how its created. Sure, some products aren't going to be identified correctly in the beginning, but as the system grew, as more investigations happened... even as more companies complied with audits... there would be an easy way for consumers to get a rating on the product they're thinking of buying.

It wouldn't be perfect, but it coculd at least help inform the public about what is known or unknown about what they're thinking of purchasing.

I haven't given it much thought, it just kinda popped into my head when I read your post.

Good Job, Nigel   

[Juana]

I'm not sure I agree with the idea that capitalism isn't inherently bad, or at least on the macro level like H&M, Levi, Wal Mart, et al. Capitalism at the micro (local/regional) level does require that business owners not treat their employees like shit because employees have the actual ability to leave them high and dry, and it's easier to trace the supply chain/have an ethic supply chain, but gigantic corporations like Apple and friends have to bow to the market in certain ways that smaller businesses can't and when workers start demanding humane treatment/a living wage, well, they can just pick up and leave.
Or at least that's what I would argue.

I would be all over the Free Market Slavery thing. I'm going to be doing some shopping soon, and if I can't get away from slave goods, I may as well use their ubiquity to this thing's advantage.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Capitalism is not inherently bad, it's a system. Resource/status/power hungry primates implementing capitalism, however? I can't see it ending up any other way.

Our standard of living has, historically, always depended utterly on slavery. Capitalism dresses it up to look like not-slavery but it's essentially the same. What the primates running the show haven't realised is that, largely due to technological advances, it's probably possible nowadays to keep our slaves reasonably healthy and allow them a good quality of life.

This has already happened to the serf classes but we're still clinging to the old style of slave husbandry. We're just doing it more efficiently now and tarting it up a bit so we can pretend it's not slavery.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Our standard of living has, historically, always depended utterly on slavery.

Actually, I addressed this.  It got buried, though.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Our standard of living has, historically, always depended utterly on slavery.

Actually, I addressed this.  It got buried, though.

I don't doubt it. TBH I've only been skimming this thread, killing time, between LOBB installments. Whenever slavery gets mentioned I'm kinda cynical. Are people really that naive that whenever a fundamental part of our economy is highlighted through some outrage-piece on apple or whatever, they respond by tweeting their discontent, using an iPhone that they were complaining about the price of yesterday?

This conversation always makes me kinda facepalmy. I get very devils advocate in it. "I wish they'd stop wasting all this money on pr trying to convince us it's not slavery, my iPhone would be half the price if they dropped the bullshit!"

If I get a disgusted look from the guy in the Nike trainers, I feel depressingly smug.

[Pergamos]

I really like the idea of little stickers that say "proudly made with slave labor" or simply "made by slaves"  They should be fairly unobtrusive and look like they are promoting a sale or something similar so that they are not immediately noticed and removed by employees.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I really like the idea of little stickers that say "proudly made with slave labor" or simply "made by slaves"  They should be fairly unobtrusive and look like they are promoting a sale or something similar so that they are not immediately noticed and removed by employees.

Hmmm.  I could do something with that.

[LMNO]

I'm really liking these ideas.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm not sure I agree with the idea that capitalism isn't inherently bad, or at least on the macro level like H&M, Levi, Wal Mart, et al. Capitalism at the micro (local/regional) level does require that business owners not treat their employees like shit because employees have the actual ability to leave them high and dry, and it's easier to trace the supply chain/have an ethic supply chain, but gigantic corporations like Apple and friends have to bow to the market in certain ways that smaller businesses can't and when workers start demanding humane treatment/a living wage, well, they can just pick up and leave.
Or at least that's what I would argue.

I would be all over the Free Market Slavery thing. I'm going to be doing some shopping soon, and if I can't get away from slave goods, I may as well use their ubiquity to this thing's advantage.

Sounds like you might be conflating capitalism with "Free Market capitalism", AKA corporatism? Noting wrong with capitalism (well... there are arguments to be made about it being a self-limiting economic system, but that's for later) but unfettered capitalism leads inevitably to consolidation and tyranny. It's built into the system.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I love all the brainstorming going on in this thread... really good ideas surfacing! I really think we can develop these into something that will make an impact, if only in shifting public perception away from "FREE MARKET IS GOOOOOOOD".

[Pergamos]

For the stickers, how do the sticker appliers know something is made with slave labor?  Do we look for "made in China" or particular products?  Or something else?

[LMNO]

If you look upthread, there's a "truism" that almost everything a conglomorate corporation produces is in some way connected with slave labor.  Which should mean everything not made by a small, local company is fair game.

[P3nT4gR4m]

For the stickers, how do the sticker appliers know something is made with slave labor?  Do we look for "made in China" or particular products?  Or something else?

LOL - pick an item off the shelf. If it's not in a plain brown wrapper, feel safe to assume.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm actually going to pick a couple of products and dig a bit.