Ask HN: Is is possible live ethically by not supporting sweatshops

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5901446

by quietthrow • 13 years ago

5 6 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Is is possible to buy a phone that is not manufactured in a sweatshop ? is it possible to buy clothes that are not manufactured in a sweatshop ? Would like to hear if the community has any folks that were able to successfully bypass the current system and still maintain a standard of living that one could without bypassing sweatshops.

Also, How did things get so bad ? would like to hear a economist's perspective. Since I feel its partly responsible for the current state of affairs.

notahacker• 13 years ago

Define "sweatshop"

pathy• 13 years ago

How did things get so bad ?

I would probably say that it is better than it has ever been. Looking back in history, child labour was very high until the early/mid 20th century.

According to Wikipedia [0]: The incidence of child labour in the world decreased from 25% to 10% between 1960 and 2003, according to the World Bank.

So we are probably overall better off than before. Sweatshops of varying degrees are unpleasant by Western standards, but they do provide a better (slightly at least) than working on a poor farm. They, if I am correct, appear to be quite effective in quickly increasing the living standards in countries. People do flock to these jobs for a reason - they are (a lot) better than the alternatives.

However, I don't know if it is avoidable to use 'sweatshops'. American Apparel are made, mostly, in American factories if I recall correctly?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labour

gesman• 13 years ago

Sweatshop is more of a political term. Reality is that when kid in poor country has a choice between no job and total misery and some job and some money - he chooses later. No one is killing people for not taking a job.

You, of course have a choice of not buying stuff made in "sweatshop" and rather buying stuff made in a company where very young worker is happy to make some money to bring to his family.

larsonf• 13 years ago

This is going to sound a bit glib, but the problem sort of fixes itself.

Look at China. "Sweatshop" sort of manufacturing has largely left. Now the country has more Rolls Royces and Bentleys sold there vs any other sans the US. Where did those shops go? Well, places like indonesia. But, guess what, those manufacturing outfits have since left and gone to Bangladesh.

The money goes where people will do work for less. Nobody can stop this. But where it does go, it leaves a wake of prosperity. Maybe not for the people themselves--the kids doing the sweating--but for their kids--or really, their neighbors' kids.

Over the last 30 years, 1 billion -- with a 'b'-- people have come out of extreme poverty as defined by international standards. Why? Because people in some countries stopped wanting to do horrible work and others would. And then when those countries stopped wanting to do it, others would.

Guess who is next? Myanmar.

And round and round and round it goes.

This kind of thinking only works if you are ok with generational problem-solving. If not a single person, ever, no matter what, cannot be allowed to not live according to elite Western Standards--then, yeah, it's a problem. Otherwise, international capital flows do the work no single entity or popular movement could ever do:give money to those who actually want it most.

terrykohla• 13 years ago

You don't want to support sweatshops? That is great! That means you're starting to understand how things work and where they come from.

Keep doing your research and you'll soon find that economically speaking, eliminating what you call sweatshops is like trying to eliminate gravity.

Everybody needs to eat and if they refuse to live a dishonest criminal life, they'll take a job no matter how little it pays and that opens up new business oportunity. It's the law of the market and it won't change if you or a little group tries to buy locally because not everyone can afford (even if they are aware) to buy more expensive local products. This is why Wal-Mart has been unstoppable.

Most electronics (computer/cell ph) now a days are manufactured in what you'd call a sweatshop.

How did things get so bad ?

It all depends on the information you consume, bad news vs good news. The opportunities we have now a days are overwhelming, things have never been better (or worse).

VandyILL• 13 years ago

For the phone issue, a company (somewhere in Northern Europe if I remember right) built an android phone using materials entirely from non-conflict areas etc. Not a sweatshop issue, but I would bet a company that is trying to take on that element of the manufacturing process would not opt for a bottom of the line sweatshop.

On another note, many of the issues I have faced while working on my JD have involved looking at supply chains while tackling issues like climate change & corporate social responsibility. There's a lot of research being put into things to track where products are coming from & new standards in things like requests for proposals requiring suppliers to be socially & environmentally responsible. Still, not every business participates in this practice. Partially because of the cost & also because it's hard to demonstrate this type of responsiblity to the consumer. Oddly, there's other companies like Red Lobster which buys 100% of its seafood from sustainable fisheries, but you'll never see a single hint of this in their stores & advertising.

Relating to the concept above, I am working on an idea for a virtual complementary currency that is used to both finance socially responsible companies & steer money through supply chains etc. to other responsible companies. That was a long winded explanation, but just think "Bitcoin meets responsible investing." Another way to imagine it would be to think about trading Certificates of Deposit when buying / selling goods instead of trading cash. The receiver gets something of value, but the fact that it's in a CD means that they cannot break the investment you created without incurring a penalty.

The part that relates to supply chains / sweat shops is that to exchange the currency for its cash value there is a hefty exit fee. This prevents companies you do business with from immediately liquidating the currency and ending the socially responsible investments you committed the currency to. It also opens the opportunity to vary the exit fee depending on how responsible a company is. Thus, you could leave something like an 8% exit fee (like an exit load on a mutual fund) on all businesses, including sweatshops in other countries. But if you find a sweatshop that is treating employees better etc. you could reduce or eliminate the exit fee. Doing this would cause the responsible sweatshops to value the currency more & make it more likely that businesses who accept the currency will seek out these suppliers in their supply chains. So I could go on, but basically the idea is to create entitlements (in the legal sense) through private contracts that cause the currency you spend to flow to more ethical businesses.

I've slowly started exposing my idea to friends to get more input and hoping to turn it into a company. Most of my discussions have been on the investment side of the currency & not the Coasean approach to ethical supply chains. Im also looking to do possibly do an independent study during my final semester of law school this fall that would look into all the legal aspects of securities/banking/financial regulation involving an alternate currency where the deposits finance socially responsible / clean energy companies. There's a ton of ways to do it, but each comes with a different set of legal burdens.

I'm also slowly starting to network through friends to find a possible co-founder for a company based on this idea with the hope of applying to Y-combinator this winter. (I have dabbled w/ programming for fun, but haven't built anything too complex. I also realized that I mostly just liked learning the syntax & solving puzzles so my latest efforts have just been solving Project Euler stuff w/ Haskell for fun but with no intention of using the language in the real world).

For anyone wondering where the companies' profit would come from, it would come from exchanges on the system. Unlike bitcoin's P2P system, this would be a centrally managed currency. This means that the payment systems would also be managed by the company. They would take a small fee for each payment made with the currency system. However, since all payments would have to happen through the company's system, the company could charge a lower rate than square & other competitors (because the company gets to take a fee off of all future transactions instead of just the individual transaction & then passing the cash off to a private individual who is free to use whatever payment/banking system they want.)

Sorry if this was a a bit rambling / not too clear. Didn't want to spend too much time writing this before work.

Ask HN: Is is possible live ethically by not supporting sweatshops

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