>> ^direpickle:

What's a banksy?


http://news.ninemsn.com.au/entertainment/8103700/street-artist-banksy-takes-over-simpsons-intro

The British graffiti icon storyboarded the latest intro to the long-running cartoon, which opens with the town of Springfield scrawled in his distinctive tag.

But as the show cuts to the familiar couch scene, the credits take a dark turn — with a minute-long animation showing dozens of Asian sweatshop workers painting scenes for the cartoon in a filthy warehouse filled with rats, human bones and bio-waste.

Kittens are thrown into a wood chipper to create stuffing for Bart Simpson dolls while a chained unicorn collapses as its horn is used to punch holes in Simpsons DVDs.

The extended sequence was apparently inspired by reports that the show outsources the bulk of their animation to a company in South Korea.

Banksy, whose true identity has never been officially confirmed, is renowned for his political views.

The elusive artist employs guerrilla-style tactics to break into locations before leaving his pieces to be found the following morning.

Examples include drawing a life-sized replica of a Guantanamo Bay detainee at Disneyland and stencilling Israel's West Bank barrier.

In 2008 Britain's Mail on Sunday claimed to have unmasked the mystery artist as 36-year-old former Bristol public schoolboy Robin Gunningham.

I think it's difficult to dispute that you weren't arguing against free trade in your previous post even if that wasn't your intention. The first paragraph seems clearly about it when you talk about being up in arms about your job going overseas, and I think in the second you misunderstand how capitalism works. But anyway, I don't think that we disagree on a great deal then. Like I stated in my original post, I believe in necessary government regulation and oversight in a capitalist economy, preventing deterimental effects like market failure, and financial, environmental or other crises.
>> ^Asmo:

>> ^RedSky:
Well, at this point you're simply arguing against free trade.
Would I be infuriated to lose a job because a firm has chosen to use cheaper labour from overseas? Sure. I go about preventing this from happening by studying about and working in an area that requires technical knowledge that cannot be easily substituted. As a comparison, would you be for sticking to old technologies purely because there are workers only trained in them? Should be have avoided embracing computation simply because previous generations were unfamiliar with them and stuck to letters and typewriters? Obviously given that these factors are mostly out of people's control, specific and unemployment assistance should be and is provided in most highly developed countries. The countries which don't have generous unemployment benefits are usually the ones that simply can't afford them. Typically though, they're the biggest relative beneficiaries of free trade though.
The better question should be, are willing up to give up the drastically lower prices, product variety and willing to scare of businesses who bring employment? Because you can bet that if you restrict companies from laying off workers in favor of cheaper employment overseas, they'll move overseas in droves to countries which do not and you'll have created a self fulfilling prophecy.
Free trade works two ways as well, which people seem to blissfully forget. Where do you think developing countries go to get their technical expertise?
Free trade leads to lower prices not higher profits. When all firms lower their wage costs, this creates the incentive to lower prices and capture more market share. Once one company in an industry does that, everyone follows suit. If that doesn't happen, it's a failure of competition policy and anti-trust and has nothing to do with free trade.
No offence, but I honestly think you should take Economics 101, or at least Wikipedia the basic concepts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand


None taken, but you've become so impressed with your own rhetoric (and wandered off in to free trade) that you've ignored the key element...
Exploitation. Foreign outsourcing was an example of 'free' trade (rather than 'fair' trade). But exploitation wears many coats. Usury rates on credit cards combined with stagnant wages, for example. Or sub prime mortgages for another. Destroying the environment to squeeze the last few drops of resources out.
And this is the core of the penultimate capitalist ideal (as opposed to individual flavours). Accumulate wealth. The more corners you cut, the faster you can accumulate wealth. Then you die and someone else get's it. Yay, you win.
Regulation, fair trade, competition laws etc are all ideals forced upon capitalists because people generally recognise that capitalism without checks = a disaster (BP + gulf, Union Carbide/Bhopal disaster etc). There is nothing wrong with working and expecting fair recompense for your labours but too often these labours aren't honest. They game the system and exploit (there's that word again) not only the workers but the customers as well so the man in the middle can make as much cash as possible.
ps. For the record, I don't have an issue with fair trade and the commensurate rise in prices if quality rises with it. That's the whole point of fair trade, not increasing wages for sweatshop quality.

>> ^RedSky:

Well, at this point you're simply arguing against free trade.
Would I be infuriated to lose a job because a firm has chosen to use cheaper labour from overseas? Sure. I go about preventing this from happening by studying about and working in an area that requires technical knowledge that cannot be easily substituted. As a comparison, would you be for sticking to old technologies purely because there are workers only trained in them? Should be have avoided embracing computation simply because previous generations were unfamiliar with them and stuck to letters and typewriters? Obviously given that these factors are mostly out of people's control, specific and unemployment assistance should be and is provided in most highly developed countries. The countries which don't have generous unemployment benefits are usually the ones that simply can't afford them. Typically though, they're the biggest relative beneficiaries of free trade though.
The better question should be, are willing up to give up the drastically lower prices, product variety and willing to scare of businesses who bring employment? Because you can bet that if you restrict companies from laying off workers in favor of cheaper employment overseas, they'll move overseas in droves to countries which do not and you'll have created a self fulfilling prophecy.
Free trade works two ways as well, which people seem to blissfully forget. Where do you think developing countries go to get their technical expertise?
Free trade leads to lower prices not higher profits. When all firms lower their wage costs, this creates the incentive to lower prices and capture more market share. Once one company in an industry does that, everyone follows suit. If that doesn't happen, it's a failure of competition policy and anti-trust and has nothing to do with free trade.
No offence, but I honestly think you should take Economics 101, or at least Wikipedia the basic concepts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand



None taken, but you've become so impressed with your own rhetoric (and wandered off in to free trade) that you've ignored the key element...

Exploitation. Foreign outsourcing was an example of 'free' trade (rather than 'fair' trade). But exploitation wears many coats. Usury rates on credit cards combined with stagnant wages, for example. Or sub prime mortgages for another. Destroying the environment to squeeze the last few drops of resources out.

And this is the core of the penultimate capitalist ideal (as opposed to individual flavours). Accumulate wealth. The more corners you cut, the faster you can accumulate wealth. Then you die and someone else get's it. Yay, you win.

Regulation, fair trade, competition laws etc are all ideals forced upon capitalists because people generally recognise that capitalism without checks = a disaster (BP + gulf, Union Carbide/Bhopal disaster etc). There is nothing wrong with working and expecting fair recompense for your labours but too often these labours aren't honest. They game the system and exploit (there's that word again) not only the workers but the customers as well so the man in the middle can make as much cash as possible.

ps. For the record, I don't have an issue with fair trade and the commensurate rise in prices if quality rises with it. That's the whole point of fair trade, not increasing wages for sweatshop quality.

$22,000.00 retail. Probably cost WalMart less than half that in production & shipping, what with their child-labor sweatshops in China that pay workers less than a dime a day.

My question is not about how things play out in theory, it's about how things play out in reality.

I and a few investors decide to take on Wal*Mart. We open a competing store that pays it's workers a fair wage, treats them with dignity, is environmentally conscious and does not subsidize sweatshops. My products are high quality, socially conscious and cost 5 times more than Wal*Mart. I'm out of business in a matter of months. What did I do wrong? Why did the market favor authoritarianism over liberty?

Can you paint me a happier picture that's still plausible?

I don't want to put words in blancos mouth (goodness knows what else has been in there), but I believe the major catalyst for blankfist's politics is anger at paying taxes. Government and democracy is the major focus of his ire. Our political feud is a years-long battle that goes far beyond the subject matter of this video.

He believes the free market is a benevolent, intelligent, almost supernatural force that somehow is able to right all wrongs. Oppressive sweatshops are put out of business by angry citizens who stop buying their products or open their own competing businesses. I've never seen any evidence to suggest the market works like this. To me, it seems to reward low prices at any cost, be it human rights, environmental carnage, livable wages, the exploitation of the 3rd world, squandered resources or otherwise.

I believe the concept of 'the free market' was created to justify greed, selfishness, gross inequity and to absolve the wealthy and big business of all personal responsibility for the part they play in this world. Those with wealth earned it with hard work and ingenuity (or more likely inherited it from their parents); those without are lazy bums who are receiving just desserts for their lack of ambition (or more likely inherited it from their parents). If only those lowly wage slaves would pick themselves up by their bootstraps, they could be the next Bill Gates.

We are pretty much together in our disgust for corporations, but what constitutes an oppressive work environment differs greatly between the two of us.

>> ^blankfist:

"Work for us or we'll kill you" is pretty bad. Do we have conclusive evidence of any US corporations using those sweatshops with prior knowledge? If so, then that's terrible. I say we should launch a persuasive campaign against that.
That aside, private or public, I'm not sure either are devoid of expressing "tyranny". Either there's anarchy where there's a huge chance of individuals (what you euphemistically call private) where people rule themselves. Or there's statism where a government (proven to yield fascism over time) that rules the government, and then there's minarchism that believes in people ruling themselves yet sees that fundamental necessity of government. [this example excludes divine rights and monarchism]
All of those are capable of tyranny. There's no foolproof system. They're all flawed. Show me a better system. Testicle's in your court.


Well, we've talked about Foxconn, which Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and Dell have all admitted to using. There are small pockets of outrage in the press and public, but in general, I think most Americans (and our government) are OK with this kind of exploitation as long as it's done far away and as long as we get all the benefit.

I've heard you mention minarchism before and it sounds nice in the hypothetical, but how do you get the powerful to honor it and not just do as they please? I don't see any mechanism in anarchy or minarchy for suppressing private tyranny.

"Work for us or we'll kill you" is pretty bad. Do we have conclusive evidence of any US corporations using those sweatshops with prior knowledge? If so, then that's terrible. I say we should launch a persuasive campaign against that.

That aside, private or public, I'm not sure either are devoid of expressing "tyranny". Either there's anarchy where there's a huge chance of individuals (what you euphemistically call private) where people rule themselves. Or there's statism where a government (proven to yield fascism over time) that rules the government, and then there's minarchism that believes in people ruling themselves yet sees that fundamental necessity of government. [this example excludes divine rights and monarchism]

All of those are capable of tyranny. There's no foolproof system. They're all flawed. Show me a better system. Testicle's in your court.

I can't write for shit when I'm half cocked with four margaritas in me.

"Work for us or starve" is how sweatshop coercion generally works. "Make trouble and we'll kill you" is another popular sweatshop refrain. This is why sweatshops are set up in places where people are poor, powerless and easy to bully. They have all of the qualities of your worst 'statist' nightmares. Of course, these tyrannies are private, so no big deal, right?

"Qu'ils mangent de la brioche!"

Look, if they're coerced into working at the sweatshop, then I'm against it in a big way. My family comes from the early US mill towns where they tricked people into debt, forced people to live in and buy supplies from the mill town, and then used the local sheriff to ensure no one escaped from there under threat of violence. I'm for free markets not indentured servitude, which is what the mill towns effectively were.

Oh yeah, I forgot I was arguing with Marie Antoinnette. You are probably confusing sweatshops with saunas. Two very different things. Sweatshops are cheap labor facilities set up by corporations to exploit the poor and powerless. They are known for forcing their labor to work long hours for very little compensation under unsafe working conditions. Violence is common and living conditions are filthy and cramped. But please, put it out of your head, I don't want to spoil the dream.

>> ^volumptuous:

Ubuntu?
Yeah, I'll just do that. Because you know, I don't need things like Adobe CS4/5, Logic Audio, Pro Tools, Ableton Live, Max/MSP, Final Cut, Color, Motion, Lightroom and basically every other piece of software I use for my professional and fun purposes.
After scanning around some Ubuntu forums and finding out just what a nightmare it is to run any of my required software, I called a friend @ JPL, and one at Oracle to ask if my summation was correct, and they said "for what you need, Ubuntu makes zero sense". Yep, there you go campion.
Why are we talking about Ubuntu? Oh right, to show that we don't need sweatshops to live our wetern lifestyles. Which for me, (aside from about 1/2 the tech I own) is absolutely true.
I work from home, my GF takes mass transit. We have a massive garden where we get most of our food from. We buy all other food from locally grown, sustainable sources (mostly south central farmers market). We make all of our own cleaning agents, use soap nuts for washing clothes, recycle all water, harvest rainwater, solar dry food, hardly ever use a heater, have no A/C or central air. We use canvas bags to shop with, compost 100% of all food waste, recycle or reuse all plastic/paper/glass etc. Our combined trash for a full month is 1/2 of a normal small plastic bag.
I DO NOT buy Nike products, have never bought anything from WalMart, don't buy fastfood (aside from the ocassional In-n-Out) and we both study the source where all of our merch is made. In this ugly web of global corporate confusion, it's not always easy to find out where every piece of every camera or MIDI controller or PS3 you buy comes from.
It is very easy to "vote with my wallet" although I am not so naive to think it makes a dent on the big picture. But a lot of people would rather just scream "just buy Ubuntu and the world is saved" that's a load of bullshit.


Ubuntu. If you need it, write it. That's how Linux works.

I used to dislike sweatshops and avoided with open disdain any company that used them. Then I realized I love my goddamn Nikes. Fuck off and sweat, motherfuckers.

Kidding. Though I do think the majority of "sweatshops" in underdeveloped and poor countries give better working wages than laborers in those areas typically receive. To us, $5 a day is impossible to live on, but over there that may be a decent wage when adjusted for their economy.

As for @volumptuous claim that Ubuntu cannot handle the software he uses, he is correct, but only because there isn't a market for it - if people chose Ubuntu all that software would be created for it. But Ubuntu isn't sexy like Mac, and all of volumptuous' low fat soy latte sipping, Prius driving, Sig bottle drinking, iPhone calling, Oliver Peoples glasses wearing, carbon credit buying, The Standard in Downtown going, CNN text alert receiving, CFL bulb using, Obama Biden bumper sticker having friends use Mac because they're the "in" thing here in LA.

I know I could google, and I will, but what are your tips for making your own cleaning products as I'm quite interested in doing that.

In reply to this comment by volumptuous:
Ubuntu?

Yeah, I'll just do that. Because you know, I don't need things like Adobe CS4/5, Logic Audio, Pro Tools, Ableton Live, Max/MSP, Final Cut, Color, Motion, Lightroom and basically every other piece of software I use for my professional and fun purposes.

After scanning around some Ubuntu forums and finding out just what a nightmare it is to run any of my required software, I called a friend @ JPL, and one at Oracle to ask if my summation was correct, and they said "for what you need, Ubuntu makes zero sense". Yep, there you go campion.

Why are we talking about Ubuntu? Oh right, to show that we don't need sweatshops to live our wetern lifestyles. Which for me, (aside from about 1/2 the tech I own) is absolutely true.

I work from home, my GF takes mass transit. We have a massive garden where we get most of our food from. We buy all other food from locally grown, sustainable sources (mostly south central farmers market). We make all of our own cleaning agents, use soap nuts for washing clothes, recycle all water, harvest rainwater, solar dry food, hardly ever use a heater, have no A/C or central air. We use canvas bags to shop with, compost 100% of all food waste, recycle or reuse all plastic/paper/glass etc. Our combined trash for a full month is 1/2 of a normal small plastic bag.

I DO NOT buy Nike products, have never bought anything from WalMart, don't buy fastfood (aside from the ocassional In-n-Out) and we both study the source where all of our merch is made. In this ugly web of global corporate confusion, it's not always easy to find out where every piece of every camera or MIDI controller or PS3 you buy comes from.

It is very easy to "vote with my wallet" although I am not so naive to think it makes a dent on the big picture. But a lot of people would rather just scream "just buy Ubuntu and the world is saved" that's a load of bullshit.

Ubuntu?

Yeah, I'll just do that. Because you know, I don't need things like Adobe CS4/5, Logic Audio, Pro Tools, Ableton Live, Max/MSP, Final Cut, Color, Motion, Lightroom and basically every other piece of software I use for my professional and fun purposes.

After scanning around some Ubuntu forums and finding out just what a nightmare it is to run any of my required software, I called a friend @ JPL, and one at Oracle to ask if my summation was correct, and they said "for what you need, Ubuntu makes zero sense". Yep, there you go campion.

Why are we talking about Ubuntu? Oh right, to show that we don't need sweatshops to live our wetern lifestyles. Which for me, (aside from about 1/2 the tech I own) is absolutely true.

I work from home, my GF takes mass transit. We have a massive garden where we get most of our food from. We buy all other food from locally grown, sustainable sources (mostly south central farmers market). We make all of our own cleaning agents, use soap nuts for washing clothes, recycle all water, harvest rainwater, solar dry food, hardly ever use a heater, have no A/C or central air. We use canvas bags to shop with, compost 100% of all food waste, recycle or reuse all plastic/paper/glass etc. Our combined trash for a full month is 1/2 of a normal small plastic bag.

I DO NOT buy Nike products, have never bought anything from WalMart, don't buy fastfood (aside from the ocassional In-n-Out) and we both study the source where all of our merch is made. In this ugly web of global corporate confusion, it's not always easy to find out where every piece of every camera or MIDI controller or PS3 you buy comes from.

It is very easy to "vote with my wallet" although I am not so naive to think it makes a dent on the big picture. But a lot of people would rather just scream "just buy Ubuntu and the world is saved" that's a load of bullshit.