An S.O.S. in a Saks Bag
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Here in the UK, we have a criminal justice system that isn't without fault, but is one of the best in the world. We make extensive use of "forced labour", both in the community and in prison. British prisoners are required to participate in work or training activities, or face the withdrawal of privileges - fewer visits and phone calls, less free association time and so on. There is no significant history of corruption or malpractice in the use of prison labour here and there is broad consensus that requiring prisoners to engage in productive activity improves prison discipline and aids rehabilitation.
From my perspective, it seems that the issue is clearly of degree rather than of type. The issue is of broader prison welfare, not the specific issue of prison labour. To castigate the Chinese penal system as "modern day slavery" us fundamentally unhelpful. The article has a tone that borders on hysteria, with no real global context or reference to the use of prison labour outside China.
There are clearly major human rights issues in the Chinese penal system, but I think we should specifically address those issues directly. The use of torture and capital punishment is considered unambiguously wrong in the developed world, and the abolition of these practices in China, the US and the Middle East is of utmost priority. Frankly, I think that the article is a covertly ideological attack on China, part of a broader trend of commentary that seeks to dismiss Chinese industrial growth as merely the result of the oppression of labour rather than of good governance and well-managed economic development.
I question this as well. But I dont think anyone should be forced or required to work. If you want to sit and rot in a jail cell so be it but if you want to work then you should be allowed to. Even if you dont get a normal wage.
>British prisoners are required to participate in work or training activities, or face the withdrawal of privileges - fewer visits and phone calls, less free association time and so on.
This is where the US differs, they treat most prisoners like dogs at the pound. I dont think the US prison system is rehabilitating anyone and its probably the reason we have so many repeat offenders. We arent leaving them better off than when they came in. In fact most of the time they are in a much worse position when they leave.
Now we are outsourcing all of our prisons to corporate prisons run by 3rd parties who treat the prisoners even worse.
http://www.iaprisonind.com/store/c/31-Plastic-Bags.aspx http://www.iaprisonind.com/store/c/77-Miscellany.aspx
Oh yaa, he says he's not guilty. I'm sure it would be hard to find a prisoner in a US prison who says he's not guilty.
In fact some judges in the US freelance in sending innocent people to jail, in exchange for the kickbacks they get - http://articles.philly.com/2014-02-05/news/47009400_1_ciavar...
Americans just love moralizing and pointing their fingers at other countries for the exact same things they do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
It does not detract from, or even relate to, the subject of the article in any way.
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EDIT: Following downvote, to make it clearer:
1. yes we should not have slave labor in America either, and yes some people are wrongfully imprisoned, and yes we use prison labor. The legal process is probably better in the United States than in China, but that does not mean the American legal process should not be improved. None of this has anything to do with the subject of the article, and does not excuse it in any way. Besides, the New Yorker is a private magazine - the article could be Chinese just as easily, and you would not have to change any of the language in it.
2.
Oh, except for the fact that there is freedom of speech to publish it in the United States (even if the subject of it were American prison labor) whereas it's doubtful if the Chinese are even allowed to read the present New Yorker article, let alone publish it if they had written it themselves. In America, the New Yorker, I, you, or anyone are free to publish a similar article on American prison labor.
Here are a few:
https://www.google.com/search?q=american+prison+labor+site%3...
I'd be interested to hear from those with more direct experience whether this guess is true. Is this article accessible in China? Would a Mandarin translation be censored? Would a native equivalent be publishable? And culturally, is there embarrassment at using prison labor?
I guess the issue here(why you're being downvoted) is that what is described in the letter and in other accounts of prison factories in China is nowhere near prison labor here in the US.
While this is completely unrelated to the subject matter, I admire the New Yorker's insistence on keeping the diaeresis alive.
SOS is a case in point. SOS is just SOS. It is most definitely not S.O.S.
SOS is a Morse Code prosign. Like all prosigns, it doesn't stand for the individual letters. The letters are just a way of writing out the sound. SOS definitely doesn't stand for "Save Our Ships" - it was first introduced in Germany!
In Morse code, the letter S is "dit dit dit" and the letter O is "dah dah dah". When you send individual letters, you pause in between. So if you were sending the individual letters S O S, or a word that happened to be spelled "sos", you'd send "dit dit dit <pause> dah dah dah <pause> dit dit dit".
But that's not how you send SOS. You run it all together: "dit dit dit dah dah dah dit dit dit".
The same is true for other prosigns such as AR which means "end of message". The letter A is "dit dah" and the letter R is "dit dah dit". But you don't send AR as "dit dah <pause> dit dah dit". It's "dit dah dit dah dit".
If someone sent me the individual letters A and R with the pause in between, I wouldn't recognize it as an end of transmission. I'm listening for the entire sound of "dit dah dit dah dit". It's really more like a big long "letter" of its own.
Prosigns are customarily written with a bar above the letters to show that they are connected without a pause. Of course, that's not always possible, but they definitely are never written with dots between the letters.
Except in New York, where they love the periods no matter how wrong they are!
The idea that it's actually one large, composite letter makes a lot of sense (just like certain letter sequences in strings like \n or \0).
Doesn't that make you stop and think? Programming has that potential. Sure you can exploit and rob and do horrible things with it as well, but what other profession has the potential to let society have the potential of sustainable affordable riches for all WITHOUT this kind of murder for gain (for that's what it is, part of the life of others taken by force to obtain riches)
Now, I can go get a computer more powerful than a Cray for $200 & put it in my pocket; not to mention that I can also talk to other people on it.
We're on the shoulders of giants right now, my friend. And in kind, work being done today will give the programmer the capacity to replace cheap, forced labor with cheaper robots.
The overarching issue is that OP's self-aggrandizing tech utopian gibberish ignores the fact that giving masses of people access to cheap consumer goods will require revolutions in many areas that have little to do with programming. 3D printers are going to be of limited usefulness without advances in materials science. Their reliance on plastics is going to become untenable given the continuing increasing price of petroleum. Etc.
Outside engineering, it will require major advances in social and political systems. Without such advances, 3d printers will put everyone out of work, and all the benefits will go to those who own the means of producing those robots. Moreover, 3D printed robots don't make metals and plastics out of thin air--those have to be mined out of the ground and those deposits are often in countries quite hostile to each other.