Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Searching for the 1 in a billion!
- Thread starter stubeeef
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
It will hopefully mean that chinese workers will get better wages and better general conditions - today all that is at a horrific level... The combination of communist dictatorship and roaring kapitalism that has emerged in China in recent years has not meant any good for the manual labour force. The amount of terrible mine-accidents happening lately are just spectacular examples of this and should be noted that the administrators of mines are not more cynic than the administrators of other industries.
A
A
I doubt this is a problem for unethical Western companies - they will simply move operations to poorer (albeit smaller) countries in the region, like Malasia.
"How much do you make now?"
"I make around $0.03 per hour."
"$0.03??? And who the f*** gave you that raise!!!!!"
Seriously, nice job. Its about time people stand up and say "I want better." They see better things ahead, and won't take crap in the meantime.
"I make around $0.03 per hour."
"$0.03??? And who the f*** gave you that raise!!!!!"
Seriously, nice job. Its about time people stand up and say "I want better." They see better things ahead, and won't take crap in the meantime.
stubeeef said:
I'm all for immigrants coming to this country and working jobs that you, I and a bunch of other people on welfare won't. As long as they don't suck off the government, let em in.
iGary said:
igary, i agree, infact the bracelet I wear from my sig, is a mexican immigrant.
It was a very lame and regretful attempt to lighten things up.
thanks for reminding me.
Regrets
beeef
ps: like the "praying steve" avatar! Part of a personal conversion?
stubeeef said:igary, i agree, infact the bracelet I wear from my sig, is a mexican immigrant.
It was a very lame and regretful attempt to lighten things up.
thanks for reminding me.
Regrets
beeef
ps: like the "praying steve" avatar! Part of a personal conversion?
LOL, no. I still have my own inner Dogma I follow. I just thought it would be a good one to have up since Tiger was released.
It's like Steve saying "Thank God, they'll shut up now!!"
I used to work in the restaurant biz (eons ago) and my latino workers were some of the best employees I had, period. Hard working people, in general.
iGary said:It's like Steve saying "Thank God, they'll shut up now!!"
I used to work in the restaurant biz (eons ago) and my latino workers were some of the best employees I had, period. Hard working people, in general.
LOL
I was a dir of pers for over 600 empl and had the same experience.
Anyone who thought that China was going to stay a sweatshop haven forever was mistaken. It's maturing as an economy just like every other industrialized nation has or will.
There's also a major demographic crunch coming in China. The one-child policy succeeded in slowing population growth, but it created a situation where there aren't nearly as many children for each grandparent and parent now. Many of them will not be able to depend on their offspring for financial support in their later years, as traditionally happens. Add in a surplus of baby boys in some areas and the natural delay of marriage and children that comes with industrialization, and there's a real chance that their job market could get much tighter and social changes could accelerate. Progress has its price.
There's also a major demographic crunch coming in China. The one-child policy succeeded in slowing population growth, but it created a situation where there aren't nearly as many children for each grandparent and parent now. Many of them will not be able to depend on their offspring for financial support in their later years, as traditionally happens. Add in a surplus of baby boys in some areas and the natural delay of marriage and children that comes with industrialization, and there's a real chance that their job market could get much tighter and social changes could accelerate. Progress has its price.
The US is heavily in debt to China, and China are starting to realise that they may noyt see this money back for ages, and are now reluctant to loan it. It's a superpower, and is only going to get stronger.
Hmm. China still has its problems, but it would be a mistake just to dismiss it when it's an important global player, and continues to be.
China does not have capitalism, for that you need strong rule of law and respect for individual rights. What they have is communism with pockets of anarchy.
In any event it's good to see these poor folks standing up for themselves, even if it means fewer cheap goods for us. All the rich countries went through the same pain of gradually lifting the economy through back breaking labor, we are just lucky that it was a few generations earlier that did it for us.
In any event it's good to see these poor folks standing up for themselves, even if it means fewer cheap goods for us. All the rich countries went through the same pain of gradually lifting the economy through back breaking labor, we are just lucky that it was a few generations earlier that did it for us.
Capitalism certainly exists throughout China (most notably in Shanghai) , and is certainly not a pure Communist country in the way that it was with Mao.
wowser said:
They have a highly competitive market economy, but that is not capitalism. Capitalism starts with "life, liberty and the pursuit of hapiness" i.e. individual rights. Competition is not the heart of Capitalism, it is only a side effect of the fact that each person owns their own life, and some people choose to do the same thing.
What they are doing over there is taking that side effect and implementing it as a primary, without bothering to put in place the strong legal base of individual rights from which it comes. Their system is nothing like America's.
In America we have a market, but it is a side effect of a certain moral position (individual rights). They don't give a cr*p about the individual, they see the market economy as a way to increase government revenues.
That's true if you look at capitalism as an ideologyrather than an economic system, which I suppose in many ways it is. However, don't forget that people living in Europe often enjoy a much higer standard of life than most Americans. I haven't got much against capitalism, but there should be a limit to it.
Eventually, China won't be a source of cheap labor anymore. Unfortunately, there are other places to go. For instance, most of Africa is in such horrific shape economically that many people there would work on wages that merely prevented them from starving to death. The problem with Africa is that the economic instability is coupled with massive political unrest. But eventually super-poor countries like Uganda, Somalia etc could largely replace China in the "sweatshop" sector. North Korea would also be a canidate if/when the dictatorship is overthrown. Don't forget the 'Stans either - countries like Turkmenistan would gladly accept foreign money if the State Department allows it. There's always some cash-strapped government willing to go in for this kind of "development".
wowser said:
I don't know that "capitalism" has a precise definition and there are certainly different variations of it. The United States and Japan are both capitalist countries, but their economic systems are certainly different.
No nation has ever been a "pure Communist country" in the sense that it's ideological founders envisioned it. China under Mao (like the Soviet Union under Stalin) was a totalitarian state that enslaved workers and brutally repressed dissent. Mao directed the killing of more of his own people than any leader in the history of the world, and did it in the NAME of communism.
China right now could better be described as an authoritarian-capitalist hybrid: more economically free than the state-run economy it used to have, but not capitalist in the way the West uses the term. South Korea and Taiwan used to be like that too, but have since moved toward more democracy. Hopefully China will too.
wowser said:
Actually, Maoism is a political system unto itself. It contains elements of Communism but things like the "Cultural Revolution" are almost totally unrealtedt to the thinking of Marx. As aloofman pointed out, it is really just a totalitarian state - run by an obsessive idealogue.
If you've kept up in the news recently you may hear North Korea referred to as having a "Stalinist" government. Here again we see that even in Russia Marx's ideas failed to come to fruition. The USSR under Stalin was a dictatorship, purely and simply. Look up "Stalinism" or Maoism".
OT: A grim quiz question for history buffs: Who, through bad decision-making, sociopathic paranoia, megalomania or pure cold bloodedness is responsible for the deaths of the most innocent people?
A. Adolf Hitler
B. Josef Stalin
C. Mao Zedong
Between the three they have accounted for over 80-100 million innocent lives, excluding the 20-odd million dead combatants of WWII, half of whom were Red Army.
Lord Blackadder said:
Yes, Maoism was Mao's interpretation of Marx, which was actually quite differnt from Marxism. Hoiwever, Lenin's Russia was pretty darn close to a tru Communist state. It didn't work all that badly in the early years, either. I don't mean to rubbish your answer, Lord, but I have done both courses on Russian 20th century history and 20th century Chinese history. Also, as you pount out, dictators can come from any extremist political belief.
I would pick answer 'Stalin' from your list of choices.
Wdlove - I'm not quite sure what you are getting at.
wdlove said:
China also executes something like 90% of all the officially condemned prisoners in the world. Does that mean they know how to "deal" with crime? To imply that China has it over the United States in the area of dealing with one's neighbors is pretty whacked.
wowser said:
Enlighten me as to how Lenin's USSR was anything like a worker's paradise. I've never seen any proof that the average Soviet's life improved between the the start of the Bolshevik revolution and Stalin's takeover. What went right there?