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Weekend Liberty Clip: March 2, 2013

21 comments

Written by Sinclair Davidson

March 2nd, 2013 at 12:00 am

Posted in Liberty Clip

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21 Responses to 'Weekend Liberty Clip: March 2, 2013'

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  1. Oh dear. Which looks better now…seriously? Of course the guy’s absolutely right, but people who are against “sweatshops” are totally impervious to such logic. So the money sweatshop workers make is usually far better than if they were on the farm? Who cares. They are making the optimal choice given their skillset? Irrelevant. The point is that $36 a week is an unacceptable wage to the people railing against such labour. Local conditions in which the factory operates are not considered. The do-gooders in the developed world wouldn’t accept $36 a week for a full time job, so why should anyone else?

    When the whole Nike sweatshop story was breaking hard in the late 1990s, I remember hearing a discussion on JJJ between an employee advocate and a Nike spokesman. The employee advocate wanted Nike to pay people making its products in developing countries the same wage as it would pay workers in the US and provide the same conditions. The Nike spokesman said that if the company paid its factory workers in the developing world the same money it would have to if it manufactured its products in its core markets, it would simply shut down all its developing world plants and manufacture in its core markets. Less transport costs and why not benefit from ‘Made in the USA’ if it costs the same as ‘Made in China’?

    Furthermore, the spokesman said that if developing country factory workers were paid the same as their counterparts in developed countries, this would entice many doctors, scientists, teachers, engineers and so on in those countries to abandon their professions and start making shoes instead, because this paid significantly more. Not that there’s anything wrong with making shoes – it’s all good honest work and there’s nowt wrong with that. That being said, if doctors and so on are abandoning their careers to work in factories making garments, this is clearly not a positive step.

    The employee advocate didn’t care about these arguments one bit, because of sweatshops sweatshops sweatshops. This is the mentality that needs to be grappled with. It won’t change easily.

    Oh come on

    2 Mar 13 at 6:22 am

  2. The people who hate sweatshops are the same one who, when asked the simple question “would you prefer a job at $5 an hour or no job at all” wail and whine and go on about a ‘living wage’ and other nonsense (as though living costs aren’t already tied to wages).

    The concept of paying someone what they are worth is not only foreign to them, they consider it evil. Meaning they believe we should pay people MORE than what they are worth.

    Apparently businesses can survive by maximising costs. Who woulda known?

    MattR

    2 Mar 13 at 8:33 am

  3. It’s the exploitation thing by greedy capitalists that is railed against. No further argument needed, because.

    Biota

    2 Mar 13 at 10:42 am

  4. totally impervious to such logic

    That pretty much sums up any and all arguments faced these days. One side uses logic and reason to argue a case, the other simply ignores them and uses emotions and feelings to argue theirs.

    The sweatshop debate is simple, do the people have a choice to work there? If they do, then the conditions of employment are irrelevant to anyone else. Regardless of the outcomes, the protesters are essentially second-guessing the choices made by the workers which fits nicely with the totalitarian streak of the left, “we know better than you do”.

    Adam Diver

    2 Mar 13 at 11:03 am

  5. The whole wave hill walk off and “equal pay” catastrophe 40 odds years ago worked out the same only the Africans don’t get sit down money.

    Pickles

    2 Mar 13 at 12:03 pm

  6. Of course the guy’s absolutely right, but people who are against “sweatshops” are totally impervious to such logic

    That’s because it feels bad to see the industrial revolution taking place all over again in another country. And it does feel bad, when you see kids working in factories, and you want to stop that by moral pressure, and via that country’s legal system and international pressure, and you manage to do that to some extent. There is a place for moral judgement in any economic system. We don’t allow slavery either, for instance (in part too because it is an economic disaster). But in terms of the labour of adults, this is part of a process, and one not amenable to any feelgood quick fix, which can often only make things worse. Be careful what you wish for, once again, and get out of the way – don’t impede economic development. The labour market of the country in question can then get to work, as it will. If the plentiful and higher paying jobs in factories mean nannies are less available, they will have to start to pay the nannies more.

    Lefty ‘feelgood’ people think the only way to assist a ‘developing’ country is to offer money in ‘aid’ to kleptocrats and send in teams of UN aid workers. That’s worked so well, hasn’t it?

    Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

    2 Mar 13 at 12:10 pm

  7. Union bosses keep their jobs. Why? Suckers keep paying them! Union bosses spend union fees on wine, women and the ALP.

    stackja

    2 Mar 13 at 12:16 pm

  8. Check out the comments on YouTube for this video. Talk about brain dead leftists.

    Mattr

    2 Mar 13 at 12:22 pm

  9. Living a country where child labour is common, I can say that this issue is also much maligned and misunderstood by well-meaning westerners. They claim that, in most countries where child participation in the labour market is high, free primary school care is available.

    This may be true* but the logistics of getting them to school and back each day is often insurmountable. Many people living in remote, mountainous regions may have to travel 20 or 30kms up and down mountains, through dense forests, across fast-flowing bridgeless rivers etc to get from their farms to school. This is simply not feasible for many, who either lack the necessary transport to make the journey or cannot afford the additional fuel a 60km hilly commute would require. The school districts also lack the resources to provide transportation for these students who often come from huge catchment areas. Even if they had the money, it would be a daunting task, considering the terrain.

    So what are these kids going to do? Sit at home and do nothing? No, they go and work and supplement the meagre family income. Yes, it would be great if they could get an education, but this is not going to be possible for the foreseeable future. So, seeing as going to school is not an option, is it better for these children to sit around at home doing nothing, or go to work, where they may well learn skills that could help them in the future whilst adding to the family income? To me, it’s a no-brainer.

    *but not in all, and in some countries government-provided primary school education is free in theory but is not in practice, pricing out the poorest children from the education system.

    Oh come on

    2 Mar 13 at 12:41 pm

  10. You know I don’t think everyone is impervious to the logic of the arguments in the video. For the longest time I too had an issue with the low wages in the developing world, but I actually thought about it some more and the kinds of points made in the video resonated with me.

    I stopped thinking about it from the point of view of someone with a comfortable middle class life in the West and more from the point of view of a poor person in one of these countries. If I were them, would I rather starve or do back breaking work in a factory? Would I rather work myself to death tilling a useless piece of ground for next to no money or work in the city?

    I came to the conclusion that all other things being equal that I would take the higher paying job and try to not have to do it for the rest of my life. That’s the crux of what this video is about. We can be all holier than thou about the conditions in sweatshops or we can accept the reality that for many people they represent a substantially better option for a great many people.

    I think the other point that needs to be made is that we can’t have high wage economies and low prices at the same time. If people who rail against cheap third world don’t like it, would they be happy to pay a lot more than they do currently for nearly everything they buy? I would argue that a great many people would not be happy to do that. If they were, Walmart wouldn’t have been the success it’s been.

    tbh

    2 Mar 13 at 12:48 pm

  11. would they be happy to pay a lot more than they do currently for nearly everything they buy?

    Yes, I thought this too, tbh.

    Having lived for a while in a third world country, I can also agree with OCO about the child labour issue. It is tough when there is no education around, and kids are better off doing something rather than nothing. But where possible, it is a good thing to keep the kids away from long and tedious hours that may also be physically damaging and where the main reason for employing them is because they have small fingers etc, as in carpet manufacture. Education of kids will also help substantially to ‘grow’ the economy by improving the labour market and consumer aspirations of the future.

    I worked weekends as a waitress when I was 13, putting my age up to 15, and I had to carry some heavily-laden meal trays up stairs. There is still quite a lot of ‘child labour’ around in our own society too, with many helping out in familiy businesses etc. I can still get costochondritis (sore chest wall) at times which I think may relate back to strain at this growing period (maybe, could have been some bad Church Hall cheap dance training too). I was pretty proud of being an earner though, so it wasn’t all negative.

    Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

    2 Mar 13 at 3:06 pm

  12. “The employee advocate didn’t care about these arguments one bit, because of sweatshops sweatshops sweatshops. This is the mentality that needs to be grappled with. It won’t change easily.”

    Yes, the advocates always scream “sweatshop” but nobody defines the term.

    Here are my working definitions:
    Sweatshop: a place that pays lower wages than I would want to earn
    Poor: someone earning less than me
    Rich: someone earning more than me
    Greedy capitalist: a business owner who operates a sweatshop

    Now how about translating “sweatshop” into Aussie terms:
    Sweatshop: a mine in WA (iron ore) or Qld (coal)
    Poor: someone earning less than me
    Rich: someone earning more than me
    Greedy capitalist: a mine owner (see Rinehart, Forrest)

    John A

    2 Mar 13 at 4:28 pm

  13. Hong Kong and southern China’s development over the last 40 years are the perfect answer to these complaints.
    It helps that they are a self starter culture with reliance on the family and service for the family integral to their motivations.
    An entrepreneurial friend of mine dealt in crystals from India – you know fairy and angel therapies and all that mullarky.
    Many were made by child labour but the longer she dealt with and visited the factories and talked with the owners the more she saw that this was a real opportunity for street children to get off the street and out of the garbage scavenging business ,have some skills and develop into responsible young people.
    It is intensely jarring for some to have to acknowledge this but the world is big place and many will take any opportunity they can.

    John Cowperthwaite

    2 Mar 13 at 7:36 pm

  14. Having lived for a while in a third world country, I can also agree with OCO about the child labour issue. It is tough when there is no education around, and kids are better off doing something rather than nothing. But where possible, it is a good thing to keep the kids away from long and tedious hours that may also be physically damaging and where the main reason for employing them is because they have small fingers etc, as in carpet manufacture.

    Fair enough. I would rather see kids at school than having to work too, but we have to accept that in some situations working might actually be more to their benefit. The more money families in these situations can make, the better the lives they can make for their kids and thus they would be able to send their kids to school to help get them out of poverty. The point made earlier about us being a little uncomfortable seeing the next round of the industrial revolution happening before our eyes is a good one. It’s necessary for the development of poorer countries but we may not like watching it.

    tbh

    2 Mar 13 at 11:43 pm

  15. In many, more remote parts of the globe such as Africa, much of Asia and South America, primary schools – even when primary education is free – is literally impossible for many millions of students to get to. Then there are other problems such as the Hukou rules in China which restrict migrant children from attending the schools in the area their parents are currently working in (usually one of the big cities). These kids often end up in ad hoc affairs of extremely variable quality – the others don’t go to school at all.

    Then there are countries such as India which claim to have free universal primary school education for all, but in practice due to corruption at the school or local bureaucratic level, this is often not the case. So the poorest cannot afford to attend.

    There are some unfortunate people – and I’m talking about the very poorest in the world – who are so poor and their existences so marginal that their children would be better off earning an income for their family rather than going to school – in that the family cannot afford to feed and clothe an ‘idle’ pair of hands.

    These people often live in isolated areas serviced by poor to impassable transport links, far from the capital cities where the well-funded NGOs like to decamp. Delivering aid to these unfortunate folk is a hugely difficult, timeconsuming, costly affair. It’s not surprising that the NGO workers tend to focus on the low hanging fruit instead.

    Oh come on

    3 Mar 13 at 4:41 am

  16. What the speaker is suggesting is not right. The reason being that someone with little power can become a slave and he is advocating anarchy and corruption. These do not bode well with me.

    To the commenters above you seem to be a little off the issue and talking about low wages not illegal wages and other issues such as child labour.

    kelly liddle

    4 Mar 13 at 12:38 am

  17. Kelly it’s you that hasn’t comprehended what is being discussed.

    Infidel Tiger

    4 Mar 13 at 12:51 am

  18. IT
    I totally comprehend. He suggested that sweatshops which I assume to mean places paying illegal wages (he implied this but did not state it) should not be touched and also that so long as no force is used everything is ok. A starving person will actually work for food and agree to anything including long term servitude so he or she can eat now. A country with no rule of law is not one that I want to invest in, I do not want to own sweat shops or pay corruption money. Having said this it is possible that companies I have shares in do have sweatshops or contract out to sweatshops but I actually doubt the first and the second is possible and if they did I hope the police would shut them down causing a loss to me. I would not knowingly invest in such things though. Shutting down sweatshops will not reduce the amount of work available in fact it might increase it if in general the country is seen as a rule of law country therefore can attract more capital.

    kelly liddle

    4 Mar 13 at 1:21 am

  19. Kelly a child in Asia offered a job in a factory for $2 a day is on easy street compared to the alternative. Far from being slavery that kid finally has a future that doesn’t involve eating dirt and starring in a Bob Geldof film clip.

    You only have to look to China to see how these things work. The Chinese peasants who escaped the countryside to work in factories manufacturing rubber dogshit are now middle class families looking to start Jim’s Mowing Franchises. The same people that did jobs that used to pay $2 a day are now demanding and getting wage increases. Thanks to that shitty sweatshop they have savings, a house and educated kids. As a result manufacturing is moving on to the next destination – Africa. This is a good story or at least it should be.

    Infidel Tiger

    4 Mar 13 at 1:38 am

  20. IT
    I indirectly pay $2 per day and that is not sweatshop that is legal, unless you dissagree with my definition depending on country of course. You seem to be talking about low wages again. China doesn’t have that many sweatshops as a percentage of course, India comes to mind. The countries with larger numbers of sweatshops have higher unemployment and lower wages due to rule of law problems.

    kelly liddle

    4 Mar 13 at 2:12 am

  21. IT
    You are talking about low wages again not sweatshops unless you dissagree with my definition. I am pretty sure I would be paying $2 per day indirectly to someone and if not then a higher income like $2.50. A child offered a job, do you know what you are talking about? Loanshark/sweatshopowner/mafia buys child is more like it. China’s success is as a result not of sweatshops and they have relatively few of them compared to a country like India where the wages are a half or less. There is a direct relationship to the number of sweatshops and the unemployment rate and income levels due to rule of law. Foreign investors like a country where they think there is rule of law, think of JC he could probably indirectly employ a much larger number of people than me but he says he does not trust a country like Thailand. Gaining his trust which would mean doing things like closing down sweatshops etc. would be far better.

    kelly liddle

    4 Mar 13 at 2:32 am

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