Slave labor?
For all we know it could be the exact same thing the US does with our prisoner work programs.
So if we’re going to call out China, can we please stop doing it here too?
B-but China bad
Both? Both. Both is good.
Sure, but the sheer number of warcrimes the US has committed in foreign countries, like the 1973 Chilean coup to overthrow the democratically elected Salvador Allende and install a military dictatorship, or the 1965 Indonesian mass killings etc. aren’t even comparable to China, or any other country for that matter.
Not to mention the Palestinian genocide they’re funding right now. At least China handles extremist groups like the ETIM by ‘re-educating’ them and assimilating them into the rest of the country. As fucked up as that is since it’s cultural repression, at least they’re not fucking bombing them.
I’m sure you can Google china warcrimes as well. Assuming you’re not inside the great firewall of China, that is. Let’s not pretend China is good just because US is bad.
Never said they were good. Just that it’s absurd to compare China to the sheer amount of death and destruction the US has selfishly caused, and continues to cause, everywhere in the world for the profit of the ruling class.
as opposed to the exact same thing China does for the profit of their ruling class, but worse
Since Xiaoping’s market reforms, China has nationalized numerous exploitative private companies, decreased working hours to 8 per day, improved working conditions, gotten rid of hundreds of thousands of corrupt officials, purged greedy billionaires like Jack Ma, and built the most extensive high-speed rail and public transport system in the world.
China, with 5x the population of the US, had 121k covid deaths, while the US had 1.2mil. Because the latter prioritizes capital/profit over human lives, while China does the opposite.
These are clearly in the interest of the Proletariat/working class, not the ruling class; China has actively punished the latter.
And all that without overthrowing foreign governments and causing genocides. So how is China even comparable to the US, aside from their economic growth? Has it ever occurred to you that maybe western media tries to show their geopolitical rivals in a bad light, even when they’re objectively better?
If by assimilating them, you mean castrating the men and raping their women, sure
No one asked for a definition of whataboutism.
Have to pay the prisoners a prevailing wage in the USA when working for private businesses.
Edit: You don’t need to pay them the prevailing wage when they are not working for private companies so. If they are cooking or cleaning in the prison or making license plates they make peanuts.
Seems China underpays their prison labourers but they should get paid. Should.
Edit 2: I kept looking and there is a lack of evidence from what I wrote other than the US government saying they get a prevailing wage, nobody seems to give an exact number of what they make. China actually gives a number. 600 yuan a month in 2019. Take that as you will.
That prevailing wage? Most prison laborers in America make less than $0.50 an hour If they’re even paid at all, and are severely punished if they try to take a sick day.
I can’t find anything that specifically says that Walmart, Wendy’s, McDonald’s or any of the other ones pays even minimum wage to prison laborers, but these businesses do get a $2,400 tax credit for each work release inmate they employ. The work release inmates are probably paid a real wage because they count as real people but I have trouble believing they would ever pay more than they absolutely had to for an inmate’s labor.
Thats correct when it’s not private industry. So if they make license plates as that’s government owned they can pay them whatever they want.
I’ll throw an edit in my comment. Thought I made it clear enough.
I suggest you update your information, because there are plenty of inmates working for less than prevailing wage in the US.
It came out a couple years ago that inmates in my state were raising goats and making goat cheese for Whole Foods. The wage for prisoners here is $2/day. There’s a state somewhere to my east where prisoners work at Burger King for similar wages.
Chinese prison labor bad. Western prison labor good.
Chinese prison labor bad.
WesternUS prison labor good.ftfy
I hope this is all part of some psy opp to fuck with the west. I too hope to find a prize sewn inside my clothes and really recapture that cereal box feeling.
It’s that cereal Box feeling Now exclusively with dead ugyhers woop de doo!!!
Despite feeling uneasy, the woman disposed of the card and “thought nothing more of it”.
Who here would actually throw away the ID?
I was talking to a relative about Temu the other day, “How can they sell shit so cheap? Like, there’s got to be slavery involved somewhere.”
Temu and Shein have some of the most absurdly optimized supply chains in the world
Chinese workers are also just more efficient than American ones LOL
Lemmy.ml calling slave labor efficient because it’s Chinese slave labor.
Got to love your patriotism, but maybe dial it back a bit on the justifying slavery.
I use that KES script that has a feature to highlight the instances so I can discern between what’s my home instance content, federated instances and moderated instances. Moderated ones have a red circle in them.
Every time I see a red circle, I know it’s going to be yet another shit take from a lemmy.x user, and it never fails.
deleted by creator
https://github.com/aclist/kbin-kes/
Although this is not going to work where you are at lemmy.world.
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Temu, at least, is just a dropshipper. Temu itself doesn’t have any supply chain. The vendors that sell through Temu do.
Well, not doing anything is pretty efficient.
Why wouldn’t they be more efficient? If I mess up at my job, they don’t execute me for it.
Definitely Primark 2.0.
You want to know why China is so absurdly cheap for everything? This is part of the reason why. I wonder how many prison mining camps, prison garment/textile camps, etc. Are operating with the sole goal of keeping costs as absolutely rock bottom as possible. China is making a killing by undercutting the global market on costs for just about everything.
I don’t remember what it was called, but I seem to recall there being some sort of documentary or movie or something of the likes about someone here in the US who found a note from a prisoner in their brand new pack of Christmas lights (or some similar holiday product).
Edit: a word.
Prisoners prop up global powers.
Forced prison labour is the foundation of a number of economies, including the US’. It’s explicitly not prohibited in the Constitution.
China can’t use prison labour to undercut global markets because they have a smaller prison labour pool than their key economic competitor (the US).
I don’t believe that. Chinas prison stats are around 1.69mil (which is oddly on par with the US - per capita not taken into consideration). However, per the Global Slavery Index, there’s an estimated 5.8 million people enslaved there. And we know that there were over 1 million Uyghur Muslims, and we really don’t even know the extent to which that is happening either.
I’d be willing to bet that there’s a lot more slave/prison labor going over there than even we realize.
Do they count extreme work hours as effective slavery? If so, then I wouldn’t be surprised at all if China has more “slavery”. If not, then you’ll have to quantify your numbers as well. If they’re including things that are only effectively slavery, then both countries have millions upon millions more than either of those stats, so where the line is drawn makes all the difference.
Company towns are effective slavery.
This post has so many controversial aspects:
- There are no real numbers from china, how many people are actually imprisoned or what even means imprisoned. For example the Uyghurs are not Prisoners in Prison but “Citizens in reeducation camps”- what is a lie. Pictures show they are indeed imprisoned . China is fudging these numbers like the economy numbers at a grand scale.
- China is able to force people to work in certain regions or cities. They have a complex system on how to channel work by prohibiting living-, healthcare- and pensions-systems to citizens based on their location and citizens need to apply for changes to these systems to be able to work in other regions.
- China - as an authoritarian regime - can force every prisoner to work if they deem it useful. The US has different rules for penal labor, but not make prisoners work like china. The US has a much different landscape.
- China undercut every good, in every sector (except some high tech sectors) based on their vast (forced) workforce but also in the strategic sense. They act like Uber (or is Uber acting like China?) in the sense, that their strategy in the last 4 decades was to undercut e.g. Steel-Production for their own advances, but also to cripple the industries in the US and the West in general to come out as the sole supplier for these products and services to then control the prices (like Uber). The US Steelworker Industry is practically gone by now. They did the same with raw-materials and lately with Solar, where they undercut the European (German) markets, to cripple it and control the production/income/spread.
Tell it to the 13th Amendment:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction
Coincidentally, those convicted parties are predominantly Black.
Person A: it’s bad that China is bad.
Person B: OMFG but USA bad too!
Like, do you actually think this is a real defense for China’s behavior? Or are you just blustering because you understand there is no defense and that hurts your world view?
The OP claimed China has a competitive edge from prison labour. I disproved that statement.
Not really. Because China’a numbers are demonstrably false. It’s the good old “you can’t prove it’s happening if we just don’t count them” logic.
You can disprove China’s numbers… How, exactly?
Yeah let’s focus on Chinese prison labour, ignoring the US’s much higher incarceration rate, and the literal genocide they’re funding right now.
Yeah let’s focus on Chinese prison labour
Since that’s what we’re talking about right now, yes, let’s.
I can boycott regatta and American prison made licence plates at the same time. I have many other talents besides.
Can you do anything about the genocide on natives that your tax dollars are funding right now?
what?
The US sends $3.3bil to Israel every year, and has sent a bonus $14.5bil 2 months ago.
Not what we’re talking about, but you should be writing to your reps about this. Most people just feel bad and move on. Actually writing a letter will get attention
I’m not a USian (un?)fortunately but I appreciate the sentiment.
Me either, but my government is an ally to the US and also contributes their own aid to Israel, so it applies to me. Assuming you’re in a democracy, it’s very likely you have some stake (even small) in the genocide.
Even boycotting goods produced on occupied land is a small step anyone can take.
criticising other countries is banned if you were born in the wrong country
Two things can be bad and you can discuss both of them. Let’s not lose our sights on something because something else is worse.
Are US prisoners risking their lives to tell the world what’s happening to them?
