LOL!! F-ing libertarians...
The value of sweatshops to the people who work in them is often overlooked, says @CatoInstitute's @JohanKNorberg. #ISFLC17 pic.twitter.com/P4RG2fr0lr
— Cato Institute (@CatoInstitute) February 18, 2017
Saturday, February 18, 2017
The value of sweatshops to the people who work in them is often overlooked
LOL!! F-ing libertarians...
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8 comments:
Hobson's choice. Take it or leave it (and starve).
But not always.
I recall being in Taiwan in the Sixties and a Chinese friend of mine introduced me to a factory owner. On visiting the "factory" I found it was more a sweatshop than and factory, and the "employees" were all children maybe eight to ten years old. The owner was very proud of the fact that if these children were not employed they would be on the street since they would not have been able to afford going to school. He provided schooling for half the day and they worked for the other half.
Similarly in China, smartphones are assembled by hand. The most efficient workers are females 18 to 20 years of age. Typically, these workers work in the assembly lines for two years, living in company dormitories. eating company food and wearing company uniforms. They bank all their wages. At the end of two years they have a dowry.
Desperate people will do desperate things and they will convince themselves that there is opportunity where none exists. It is relative.
I am unable to watch the video, but the title reminds me of the claim that African Americans were better off when they were slaves. Well, slavery did provide them with a job guarantee ......
One of the reasons for New Deal child labor laws, as well as pensions, was to shrink the labor market, the better for prime-age workers.
Frighteningly enough, their party actually won a decent amount of votes in the last election. There's a market for this kind of rubbish I'm afraid.
CatoInstitute's Johan K Norberg used to call himself a neoliberal. Nowadays he's dropped the "neo"and calls himself a "liberal" as it's not in vogue any more. Must be those incompetent lefties fault...
"The owner was very proud of the fact that if these children were not employed they would be on the street since they would not have been able to afford going to school."
at least they would get to learn the street smarts then
However tragic that is a fair point, even if expressed tendentiously.
The tendentious dissembling is then to praise as good exploitation in the sweatshop as there is an even worse alternative.
Impeccably "progressive" Joan Robinson said much the same in a much much better form:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-8m7B0OLXg4C&pg=PA45
«As we see nowadays in South-East Asia or the Caribbean, the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all.»
This makes clear that exploitation in a sweatshop is misery, even if there is something worse.
There is nothing ever achieved by war that could not better have been achieved by peace. There is nothing ever achievd by capitalism that could not better have been achieved by a more humane distribution system. Human beings evolve when they cooperate - so we have to ask ourselves, why is that so hard to understand? In three letters: - 'e.g.o.' It rules the human being ....
The Chosen Ones - John Denver
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