[ale] [Semi-OT] Re: More reasons to adore Microsoft

[Jim Kinney]

You raise some interesting points. I am just too pessimistic about human
behavior when profits are on the line.

Notice I said profits and not jobs.

The profit part will always trump the job part until the job of the profit
maker is on the line. If the American tech companies could get their
products made by 4 year olds working until they died on line so profits
would go up $0.01 per share, they would sub it out 5k layers deep so it
didn't touch them.

In the mid 80's a chemical company in W. Germany had an accident and an
explosion which led to a large leak of (forgotten) nasty chemical into the
Rhine river. It was very bad. It took nearly 10 years for the river to
support life again.

Downstream of that plant, another chemical factory heard of the disaster and
decided to dump their tanks of toxic waste into the Rhine while the upstream
leak was going past.

They got caught. The worker who turned the valves was sent to prison for 2
years. The supervisor who told him to do it got 5 years. The manager who
passed down the order got 7 years. The executive who was in charge of that
entire chain of command got 10 years. The company C-level brass were each
personally fined millions and forced out by the courts and barred from from
holding executive positions in the chemical industry for life. The company
was itself was taken by the courts and sold off to their competitors for
essentially pennies on the dollar. The stock holders got exactly shafted.

The German court did something the US courts are loathe to do - pierce the
corporate veil.

Number of chemical company dumpings since then - 0
Number of accidental dumpings since then - 0 - all of the other companies
put in huge retaining walls and extra layers of barriers so they would NEVER
get clobbered like that. Germany now has one the most eco-friendly chemical
industries in the world. And they are profitiable.

So if we want to stop the gross injustices done by companies for profit, our
courts have grow a spine and shred the corporate veil. Managers make the
decisions and they should be held accountable.

So for the China company issue, we can't change things there. But we can
grab the execs who made the decision to buy from them by the fiscal throat
and shake them like a pit bull. Once they learn that they WILL PERSONALLY be
held accountable in court for the business of their company, they will think
about their options before they sign deals.

If the courts in the Hague had the clout the should have, they would be
hauling in some of these international conglomerates for "crimes against
humanity" charges for the horrendous labor, pollution and corruption
problems they create when they strip a country of it's resources and abuse
the poorest of the poor as slaves.

Lastly, we, American consumers ( I HATE THAT TERM!!!) are ultimately to
blame for lacking the moral, political and intellectual fortitude to not
indirectly support things we wouldn't want our children to do or see or know
about and instead turn a blind eye to the consequences of our consumption
addiction.

</soapbox>

On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 12:37 PM, Michael Trausch <mike at trausch.us> wrote:

> On Thu, 2010-04-15 at 11:56 -0400, Charles Shapiro wrote:
> > Oh boy.  I'll wear asbestos for this.
>
> Maybe.
>
> > You did catch that the young man narrating his terrible story was
> > supporting his entire family with this job, right?
>
> Aye, I did.
>
> > I know that I can choose not to work overtime, but if I don't work
> > overtime, then I am stuck with only 770 RMB [$112.67 per month] in
> > base wages.  This is not nearly enough to support a family.  My
> > parents are farmers without jobs.  They also do not have pensions.  I
> > also need to worry about getting married which requires a lot of
> > money.
>
> Yeah, I caught that.  I haven't finished the whole document yet, but I
> am pretty far past that point.
>
> > What do you suppose they will do if we self-righteously boycott the
> > factory and it closes? It basically sucks to be poor, especially in a
> > poor society. This is not news. I agree that these workers are
> > exploited. I agree that Microsoft is helping to facilitate a cruel and
> > unjust work environment. But what alternatives do these people have?
>
> Alright, so we have the following common ground that I can see thus far:
>
>      * These workers are exploited.
>      * Microsoft uses this factory's exploitation of its workers to
>        produce product.
>      * This exploitation is cruel and unjust, as the word
>        "exploitation" implies.
>      * That we identify this sort of behavior/exploitation as cruel and
>        unjust likely means that we can agree that this is also this
>        behavior is generally "wrong", whether you attribute that
>        "wrong" to ethical incorrectness, moral incorrectness, or both.
>
> As to what alternatives these people have---if the situation stays the
> same as it is currently, they really don't have much of one other than
> to flee their awful environment entirely and take their families with
> them if they can at all.  By not using these factories that do these
> things that causes harm to the factories.  By extension, it causes harm
> to the workers of the factory, temporarily.  The factory will have to
> let people go, or increase production requirements, or perform _some_
> action which is going to cause temporary injury to the workers that are
> there.
>
> However, if there is a downward trend in the use of such labor,
> something will have to change.  That is a certainty.  The places which
> employ such labor would have to make changes to keep their clients.  If
> that translates to higher prices, so be it.  Is it really worth it to
> pay $1 less for a mouse because the people that put it together were
> paid a ridiculously small sum of money to do it?  Isn't it worth it to
> pay more for that mouse to pay for, at the very least, more fair working
> conditions than the labor that is being used there?  I think so.
>
> If everyone thought that way, what would happen?  These shops would no
> longer be profitable.  Therefore, they would no longer operate.  And if
> they did find a way to continue operations by only taking business from
> people/businesses in their own country, then at the very least we can
> say that we aren't perpetuating their means of doing things.  Maybe that
> would then be the appropriate time for a trade embargo or some such
> thing.  I don't know.
>
> What I do know is that the type of argument you present is commonly
> known as "Morton's Fork".  It is like saying, "by buying Microsoft
> products you are encouraging this behavior and therefore causing injury
> to these children; by not buying Microsoft products, you are not giving
> Microsoft money to give to the factory to give to the children and
> therefore causing injury to these children."  It seems to me a somewhat
> naïve view of what possible choices there are in a situation such as
> this.
>
> Ultimately, the other thing that I do know is this:  without any change
> at all, the system continues on.  Will there always be crap like this?
> Probably.  That does not make it right for people to support it, nor
> does the fact that the children and family will have to find other means
> of income (and businesses will have to find other revenue streams) make
> it any more right to support it.  There must be another solution, but
> that solution _starts_ with a firm, "No, that's not the type of thing we
> support," just as it has many times before with many other companies.
>
>        --- Mike
>
> --
> Even if their crude and anticompetitive business practices don't make
> you think about using their software, their use of sweatshops and child
> labor should:  boycott Microsoft like you would any other amoral child
> abuser:  http://is.gd/btW8m
>
>
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness
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