Lego in China

[Scott Taylor]

If people cared about human rights, they should speak out against abuses at home, which they might have some power to actually fix. Feigned concern for the plight of people living in foreign countries is in every case just a tool that the military industrial complex uses to justify its expansionist aims.

I agree and its much harder to speak out when the abuses are a 12-hour flight away from us. You can pretend its another culture and therefore doesn't count, or something like that. If the abuse going on is right here in America and being observed directly by Americans, different story (not that we're perfect).

[PwrdOn]

I agree and its much harder to speak out when the abuses are a 12-hour flight away from us. You can pretend its another culture and therefore doesn't count, or something like that. If the abuse going on is right here in America and being observed directly by Americans, different story (not that we're perfect).

It's also much harder to look at problems close to home as being entirely cut and dry, with no room for context or nuance, the way we so often do with events happening abroad. Of course, that won't matter if your goal is just to give moralizing lectures to others to make yourself feel better, without actually ever helping anyone, but let's not be like that.

[Scott Taylor]

It's also much harder to look at problems close to home as being entirely cut and dry, with no room for context or nuance, the way we so often do with events happening abroad. Of course, that won't matter if your goal is just to give moralizing lectures to others to make yourself feel better, without actually ever helping anyone, but let's not be like that.

Well, this is why there are business ethics courses, right? To some degree we as far off observers have to either trust TPTB or not. We don't get to do much more of anything but moralize and criticize unless we happen to own one of the companies involved or work directly for the government agencies involved.

If a Chinese person is ok with their own culture and government, is it our place to change that? Do we compete with other Chinese businesses on their own level, with human rights violations intact? To bring western business practices to China would be disadvantageous, possibly. But maybe not completely ethical? I really don't know.

[PwrdOn]

Well, this is why there are business ethics courses, right? To some degree we as far off observers have to either trust TPTB or not. We don't get to do much more of anything but moralize and criticize unless we happen to own one of the companies involved or work directly for the government agencies involved.

If a Chinese person is ok with their own culture and government, is it our place to change that? Do we compete with other Chinese businesses on their own level, with human rights violations intact? To bring western business practices to China would be disadvantageous, possibly. But maybe not completely ethical? I really don't know.

Remember that most of the human rights violations we associate with third world labor are actually done at the behest of Western companies seeking to maximize profits. Sure, maybe Nike doesn't explicitly demand that its contracted factories work people to death and pay as little as possible, but it's understood by all parties that this is required to get the costs low enough to make a competitive bid, and that if a factory refuses to do this on principle it is easy enough for Nike to simply find another one. China actually used to have very stringent labor protections before it opened up its economy in the late 70s, but dropped them as part of the market-based reforms they implemented in exchange for receiving foreign investment. The idea that China and other third world nations are luring innocent American companies with the promise of cheap slave labor is patently nonsense, and if these companies weren't able to exploit foreign workers like this, they'd just find some way to do it at home just like they did during the Gilded Age.

[Zauriel]

Remember that most of the human rights violations we associate with third world labor are actually done at the behest of Western companies seeking to maximize profits. Sure, maybe Nike doesn't explicitly demand that its contracted factories work people to death and pay as little as possible, but it's understood by all parties that this is required to get the costs low enough to make a competitive bid, and that if a factory refuses to do this on principle it is easy enough for Nike to simply find another one. China actually used to have very stringent labor protections before it opened up its economy in the late 70s, but dropped them as part of the market-based reforms they implemented in exchange for receiving foreign investment. The idea that China and other third world nations are luring innocent American companies with the promise of cheap slave labor is patently nonsense, and if these companies weren't able to exploit foreign workers like this, they'd just find some way to do it at home just like they did during the Gilded Age.

American Companies move out of the country and outsource labor to China for lower taxes, lower wages, less stringent labor laws and less restrictive environmental laws.

Look what happened at Detroit when the car manufacturers start to move their factories somewhere. Its population peaked up to 1.6 million until 1960's and now it is below 700,000 people. Detroit had enough houses for 2 million people, now many of them are abandoned. The city had to demolish some of the abandoned houses. When the Unemployment rate skyrocketed, so does the crime rater.

[PwrdOn]

American Companies move out of the country and outsource labor to China for lower taxes, lower wages, less stringent labor laws and less restrictive environmental laws.

Look what happened at Detroit when the car manufacturers start to move their factories somewhere. Its population peaked up to 1.6 million until 1960's and now it is below 700,000 people. Detroit had enough houses for 2 million people, now many of them are abandoned. The city had to demolish some of the abandoned houses. When the Unemployment rate skyrocketed, so does the crime rater.

If you actually watch your video, you'll see that the main reason the auto industry declined was not outsourcing, but rather that American cars simply were not very good and couldn't compete in the marketplace. And the long history of the Big Three trying to gin up xenophobic sentiment rather than addressing the shortcomings of their product doesn't really need to be regurgitated here. Ironically, a major reason why US automakers rebounded is because they found a very lucrative export market in, you guessed it, Communist China, where American brands still enjoy a much better reputation than they do at home.

As for outsourcing in general, it's absolutely twisted to try and portray American as the victims in this arrangement since it is American companies that sought it out in the first place, they were not being lured there by shady dictators and corrupt officials. Believe it or not, even poor nations don't like seeing their people abused and victimized just to earn some meager wages making cheap disposable crap. However, in most instances they really had no choice in the matter, because typically the US and other wealthy Western countries will demand that countries adopt a range of free market reforms before agreeing to normalize trade relations. So third world countries are faced with the dilemma of either remaining isolated forever, or agree to open up some sweatshops in the hopes that this will allow them to accumulate some wealth and eventually develop their economies in time. Accepting the latter usually ends up being a terrible bargain though, because foreign firms still retain ownership of most of the crucial assets and never allow the locals to acquire any of the technology or expertise that would allow them to eventually compete on a level playing field, and the profitability of low end manufacturing tends to crowd out nearly everything else, meaning that the country ends up stuck in an economic dead end.

And yes, some American workers will have lost their jobs due to this arrangement, but the only reason they had those jobs in the first place was because the rest of the globe had been devastated by WW2 and there was virtually no competition for American firms. The notion that a system where low skilled manual laborers could earn enough on a single income to support comfortable middle class lifestyles was in any way sustainable is just preposterous, and believing that this would somehow happen without government intervention in an economy that practically worships at the altar of the free market is doubly silly.