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Comment by ikeboy | Hacker News Reader

How is giving people jobs exploiting them again?

I think a way to state this that you can't semantically object to is:

We live in a society in which those who control large corporations argue that it is virtuous to relocate significant portions of the business to locations which are cheaper due to more lax or nonexistent laws protecting workers and/or the environment, and thus consumers back in the US receive the same quality of product but at a lower price thanks to the location-based saving.

This opens up a counterargument that it should just as equally be virtuous to purchase medication from places where the retail price is cheaper due to more lax or nonexistent laws protecting intellectual property claims in pharmaceuticals, by which process consumers back in the US receive the same quality of product but at a lower price thanks to the location-based saving.

After all, protection of workers, protection of the environment and protection of intellectual property are all sliding-scale values; if it's fair for one person to do arbitrage on one of these in order to make money, why shouldn't it be fair for another person to do arbitrage on another?

>We live in a society in which those who control large corporations argue that it is virtuous to relocate significant portions of the business to locations which are cheaper due to more lax or nonexistent laws protecting workers and/or the environment, and thus consumers back in the US receive the same quality of product but at a lower price thanks to the location-based saving.

I don't think this is entirely fair. Some of the lower cost can surely be attributed to lower cost of living in those locations, not necessarily due to more lenient laws.

In that case, it isn't comparable to arbitrage over IP.

By the definition of exploit. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/exploit "to utilize, especially for profit; turn to practical account"

Well that meaning of exploit doesn't have the negative connotation clearly implied above, which requires harm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides

"The suicide rate at Foxconn during 2010 remained lower than that of the general Chinese population at the time as well as all 50 states of the United States."

What is the rate of employers whose practices cause a large group of their employees to jump off their building all at once? I can't remember ever seeing that headline in U.S. papers except referring to China and such. Must be rare here.

I wonder what the rate of mass suicide is in general for "all 50 states of the United States" vs Chinese companies like Foxconn.

>large group of their employees to jump off their building all at once?

Didn't happen at Foxconn. They were all on separate days over a few years. Not sure where you got "mass suicide" from. It's not mentioned in the comment you refer to.

Wait, this was apparently misreported to me although it still says wonders about the situation. It was a threatened mass suicide that led to concessions. Over a dozen did jump to death. And the worst part of what I originally received.... curtailing the suicides by installing safety nets instead of better working conditions... did happen.

So, yes, that's unusually bad with not many in the U.S. that can compare. I'll be interested if you know any companies in the U.S. where over ten people have jumped off one roof with company installing safety nets.

I doubt it'll happen in the US because we don't really have workers dormitories for people to jump from and in the US very few people jump for suicides (~2%) vs guns (~56%), suffocation/hanging (~25%) or poisoning (~11%).

source: http://lostallhope.com/suicide-statistics/us-methods-suicide

Ok, that makes more sense. So, I modify the question to be U.S. workers threatening mass suicide by gun or whatever with a good number at one plant over time. Then, the plant starts taking preventative measures against various suicide equipment instead of investing in working conditions.

This actually has more odds of happening.

You'd probably have to go back a ways to at least the early 1900s I'd guess to get the right combination of horribleness to get that. These days workplace suicides are relatively rare 1-2 per million workers. Also being poor sucks but US workers are waaay more mobile than a rural Chinese person who move into a company town from their home town/village so before they'd get to 'I'll kill myself in protest' they'll probably get to 'I'll change jobs or quit' first.

That's what I'm thinking. Commenter talking like the situation in China and in the U.S. are equal seemed way, way off.

My university started locking the balcony doors of its library building after a suicider jumped off. Nobody complained that they should have provided better studying conditions for students and left the doors open. It seemed like a completely sensible and thoughtful thing to do to prevent more suicides.

I've been inside Chinese factories and they seem just like factories anywhere else. Americans need to stop imagining China as some giant North Korean slave camp. It's got very low unemployment, a huge middle class and quite reasonable working hours, pay and job mobility, especially for young people like those Foxconn workers. Health and safety is a wash though but that's another matter.

It's the Chinese workers telling us all of this. In most democracies, people just say they don't like the job they have or try to get another one. The stuff we hear about Foxconn et al is unusual. The sources are Chinese over there working at such places and/or immigrating here to U.S. to get away from the stuff. So, we figure it's probably true.

Of course, China could always reduce their media censorship so we can get honest coverage of everything. Then, we might know more. :)

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