Because the globalized manufacture and trade of stupid worthless shit is the only hope for mankind.

stop rewarding corporations for sending jobs overseas

Full documentary:
http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/568/Mardi-Gras---Made-in-China

Perhaps someone with greater higher sift status can embed it.

The special irony about this film is the stark contrast revolving around the beads themselves.

On the production side, in China, the people are busting their butts to meet quota and quality expectations. They are punished with wage cuts if they fail to make enough beads in a day, or if the beads aren't up to standard. They are confined to a compound and allowed to leave about once a week, if they're lucky. If they're lucky, they make $75 a month.

Contrast that with the Mardi Gras crowd. Each float in each parade throws out a minimum of $500 of beads to the crowd. Most of those beads are thrown away after the party as if they were trash.

There is no clearer example of how the third world suffers in order to maintain the first worlds decadent lifestyle.

Moving this video to rougy's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued - promote requested by peggedbea.

>> ^rougy:
The special irony about this film is the stark contrast revolving around the beads themselves.
On the production side, in China, the people are busting their butts to meet quota and quality expectations. They are punished with wage cuts if they fail to make enough beads in a day, or if the beads aren't up to standard. They are confined to a compound and allowed to leave about once a week, if they're lucky. If they're lucky, they make $75 a month.
Contrast that with the Mardi Gras crowd. Each float in each parade throws out a minimum of $500 of beads to the crowd. Most of those beads are thrown away after the party as if they were trash.
There is no clearer example of how the third world suffers in order to maintain the first worlds decadent lifestyle.


This reminds me of reading about new immigrants coming to American in the early 20th century, looking for employment. Many would end up in cities like New York working for 16+ hours a day, 7 days a week, for pennies a day. And from this adversity there were some amazing success stories, embodiments of the American Dream. Criticize globalization all you want, but having the opportunity to work for a living is infinitely better than having no opportunity at all and starving.

>> ^mentality:
>> ^rougy:
The special irony about this film is the stark contrast revolving around the beads themselves.
On the production side, in China, the people are busting their butts to meet quota and quality expectations. They are punished with wage cuts if they fail to make enough beads in a day, or if the beads aren't up to standard. They are confined to a compound and allowed to leave about once a week, if they're lucky. If they're lucky, they make $75 a month.
Contrast that with the Mardi Gras crowd. Each float in each parade throws out a minimum of $500 of beads to the crowd. Most of those beads are thrown away after the party as if they were trash.
There is no clearer example of how the third world suffers in order to maintain the first worlds decadent lifestyle.

This reminds me of reading about new immigrants coming to American in the early 20th century, looking for employment. Many would end up in cities like New York working for 16+ hours a day, 7 days a week, for pennies a day. And from this adversity there were some amazing success stories, embodiments of the American Dream. Criticize globalization all you want, but having the opportunity to work for a living is infinitely better than having no opportunity at all and starving.


Slave labor! It works!

Yes, because China before 1979 and Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms and trade liberalisation was far better off as a whole than it is now.

>> ^RedSky:
Yes, because China before 1979 and Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms and trade liberalisation was far better off as a whole than it is now.


Yes, because criticizing the fact that the only way most people can live beneath the capitalist rubric is to work like dogs, to produce worthless shit, so that a minority of people can grow filthy rich.

Heaven forbid anybody point that out, or criticize it.

Sorry I bad-mouthed your god, capitalism, which is what it is to you people.

You have come to worship a lifeless system as if it were a deity.

You're presupposing that I think capitalism is perfect, I do not. I think it's deplorable when even the minimum wage, maximum working hours, and various safety regulations mandated in developing countries such as China are not abided to by local businesses. Nothing is black and white though. In some cases it is greedy local businessmen who want to extract additional profit illegally from their enterprise, in other cases it is the incredible competitive pressure from multinationals and that fact that it is either these working conditions or no employment at all.

Imagining your obvious response, you would probably say that we need mandated wages and working standards for all corporations globally under threat of massive fines. Ignoring the fact that is simply implausible, and no country would by themselves agree to this unless everyone else was willing to abide to it, imagine what would happen. The result would be, the least educated and the worst off around the world, the countries with a lack of infrastructure or a particularly stable government will simply be entirely passed up. No corporation would pay them the same as they would for someone marginally more educated, and there is no shortage of impoverished people in the world looking for jobs. So, I ask you, how would they be better off?

You haven't addressed my point though, do you disgree that average wages, and living standards were better after 1979 in China?

>> ^rougy:
>> ^RedSky:
Yes, because China before 1979 and Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms and trade liberalisation was far better off as a whole than it is now.

Yes, because criticizing the fact that the only way most people can live beneath the capitalist rubric is to work like dogs, to produce worthless shit, so that a minority of people can grow filthy rich.
Heaven forbid anybody point that out, or criticize it.
Sorry I bad-mouthed your god, capitalism, which is what it is to you people.
You have come to worship a lifeless system as if it were a deity.

@RedSky

You're a very shallow person. I used to like you, but I don't think very highly of you anymore.

You just don't get it.

How would you know if things are better now in China than they were in 1979? Do you live there? Have you lived there? More likely than not, you're going to repeat some happy horseshit that a college professor fed you in Econ 101.

And what exactly made things start getting better in 1979? A change of leadership? "Opening up" the markets?

Instead of seeing the inhuman results of an imperfect system, you make excuses for it.

Instead of asking yourself "is there a better way?" you say "things could be worse."

You're one of them. The borg. The exploiters.

Why don't you tell me how things have gotten better since 1979, and why they've gotten better.

Why don't you give me your sage, first-hand experience with life in China, since you are consistently justifying that a large number of people work like dogs, to make worthless shit, in order to enrich the few.

You know what I fucking hate?

I fucking hate people who try to act as if they're talking about economics when, in fact, they're only talking about capitalism, and usually the most quixotic, pristine examples of capitalism at that.

@rougy

You know, that reminds me of these posters I've been seeing everywhere around Brisbane. They say, "Communism is dead, Capitalism is dying, time for a third way!", leading you on with a sense that if only you were to attend to their gathering, you would be enlightened ... as if to suggest their movement is anything but empty rhetoric and righteous indignation.

I'm still waiting for you to offer that inspiring and brilliant alternative to capitalism that would see developing countries miraculously lifted out of poverty and everyone paid a developed country wage.

Somehow, since I believe I've already refuted what I would expect you to say, I don't think I'm going to get it.

But look, you asked me genuinely about what changed since 1979, so I will provide you with some statistics.

Over the past generation, since launching market-oriented reforms in 1978, China has made impressive gains in overall development. Growth performance - with real annual GDP growth rates averaging at 10% during 1979-2005- - has been correlated with reductions in poverty and with social development.

An estimated 400 million people have been lifted out of poverty within the past 30 years.

At China's official poverty line, the number of poor decreased from 250 million in 1978 (31% of the rural population) to under 30 million in the 2000s (3% of the rural population).

Between 1979 and 2005, average years of schooling in the 15-64 year age group rose from 5 to 9 years and the share of those with junior secondary schooling increased from 15 to 38 percent.

http://www.wpro.who.int/NR/rdonlyres/A1F18401-BE93-44EF-9F76-55DDA2C6E12D/0/hped_en.pdf

China's HDI, which encompasses life expectancy, education, GDP and other factors rose from 0.554 in 1980, to 0.772 in 2009.

Life expectancy at birth improved from 63.2 in 1970 to 73.18 in 2008.

http://bizcovering.com/business-and-society/globalization-and-its-impact-on-china/

Look and by all means point out that access to health care has gone down and inequality has gone up, these are elements that should have been dealt with more directly instead of rapidly liberalising as was the case in Russia as well, but these figures are still irrefutable.

Oh and by the way, I still respect your opinion, but on this I think you're dead wrong.

@RedSky

You lied. Capitalism is perfect to you. You have yet to dare any alternative, hence your perception of perfection.

Dead wrong? I'm dead wrong?

Offer an alternative to capitalism, your capitalism. You can't. You won't.

If you want to make things better for the labor class, then that will lead to inflation according to your model.

The fact is that according the most perfect example of capitalism, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer, and any attempt to modify that paradigm is like dropping a monkey wrench into the gears of a mechanized behemoth.

You don't know shit. You've been conditioned from birth to love capitalism as if it were a god, and you do.