"What The Fuck, China?!" or "Bear Commits Murder/Suicide To Escape Torture"

[Aerozord]

Originally Posted by Sifright

given USA has a population size of nearly 400 millions thats a pretty monstrously large market no longer being supplied you can be sure as shit the companies would switch over rather than lose out on being able to sell product.

edit: Legislation works far faster for this kind of thing.

this is true. For good or ill the US is the single most influential market on the planet. Any company wishing to compete on the global market would be wise to appeal to the American consumer. Which is why I was saying changing the consumers buying habits would have a significant impact. However

Originally Posted by Sifright

If you make a regional law stating all goods sold cannot use x method it doesn't matter what the other nations do their product can no longer be sold in your country.

Thats less true. The law to ban US companies from using a method doesn't mean goods obtained this way cannot be sold here. Otherwise my example of sweatshop manufacturing wouldn't exist. While it is possible to also ban a good being sold that is a different piece of legislation and one that is hard to get passed.

Americans like their freedom to choose, especially when the option you are talking about banning is the cheaper one. Besides this would still allow niche foreign markets to exist. Keep in mind we do have a ban on whaling, but that hasn't stopped it.

[Sifright]

Originally Posted by Aerozord

this is true. For good or ill the US is the single most influential market on the planet. Any company wishing to compete on the global market would be wise to appeal to the American consumer. Which is why I was saying changing the consumers buying habits would have a significant impact. However
Thats less true. The law to ban US companies from using a method doesn't mean goods obtained this way cannot be sold here. Otherwise my example of sweatshop manufacturing wouldn't exist. While it is possible to also ban a good being sold that is a different piece of legislation and one that is hard to get passed.

Americans like their freedom to choose, especially when the option you are talking about banning is the cheaper one. Besides this would still allow niche foreign markets to exist. Keep in mind we do have a ban on whaling, but that hasn't stopped it.

Some one else want to take a crack at just how wrong the above examples are?

I mean off the top of my head the sweatshop china stuff has no laws in the USA stating you can't sell products made by slave labour (which sweat shops basically are).

Reword the laws to be inclusive of how the product is made and you could solve a lot of these problems.

it won't happen because the rich fucks love making enormous amounts of profit off of labour and not having to pay anything to their workers though.

[Aerozord]

Originally Posted by Sifright

it won't happen because the rich fucks love making enormous amounts of profit off of labour and not having to pay anything to their workers though.

And the population likes the cheap prices that labor provides. Its why discount retail that abuses its work force to the limit the law allows flourish while small businesses that dont treat employees as glorified slaves die.

You have a choice and most people are going to choose whats cheap, not whats ethical. It takes all parties to consent in this economy. No one forces these people to buy this crap. We need people to stop giving these companies business. So either they are ignorant, or they just dont care. Regardless of which we have a systemic problem.

I'd rather people refuse to reinforce this behavior than simply make it illegal. I'm thinking about this as an overall problem not situational. To force this change legally would require massive sweeping legal changes. I mean in this one thread how many legally distinct inhumane acts have we named? Not to mention the backlash such a sudden increase in government legislation on the private sector, not only in and of itself but the resulting rising costs.

What you expect them to keep costs down and remove these methods? Yea maybe they will, by maintaining their profits from treating their employees even worse. Someone is gonna pay the cost, and it wont be the consumer or the corporation I assure you of that.

[Magus]

Tangentially, regarding what Aerozord says, I remember a time I was in Wal-Mart and there was this rack of t-shirts advertising they were made of organic cotton and how good this was for the environment. I looked at the label and the cotton was grown and harvested in Pakistan. Pakistan has been known for its use of child labor and child slaves in the cotton industry. So this company was basically trying to appeal to people's better natures to sell shirts made from "organic" cotton picked by wage slaves and child slaves.

[Osterbaum]

Originally Posted by Aero

You have a choice and most people are going to choose whats cheap, not whats ethical. It takes all parties to consent in this economy. No one forces these people to buy this crap. We need people to stop giving these companies business. So either they are ignorant, or they just dont care. Regardless of which we have a systemic problem.

Indeed. The systemic problem we have is that our system encourages companies to cut corners where-ever they can, regardless of ethical or moral considerations. A system that forces a lot of people to buy the cheapest if they want to afford everything, thus in practice depriving them of the possibility to choose a more ethically produced product.

There's a lot to be said about how much effect it would actually have even if people could afford to and knew/wanted to buy the 'more ethical' products. One thing is that it's great for business to be able to sell a more expensive product which basically includes a 'get out of feeling guilty for being a mindless consumer and participating in a culture of explotation' -free card, since you know because like 2cents go to saving something or someone somewhere that makes it all ok. So essentially selling to you, the consumer, the idea of feeling less guilty for being a consumer, together with the product. It's pretty ingeneous really.

[shiney]

You can blame free trade agreements for a lot of this. Low cost of imports + money-hungry capitalist society that prefers profits to morals = oppressed labor in asia.

[stefan]

Originally Posted by Grandmaster_Skweeb

Japan has Ikizuki, dojo tofu, among other things like dancing octopus or dancing fish flakes..forget what either are called.

not gonna even pretend to defend stuff like dojo tofu or the like, but Dancing Squid is one of those things that gets wildly misrepresented by people, as the squid is quite dead by the time it reaches the table. The "dancing" effect is the result of the salt in soy sauce causing still-intact neurons in the muscles to fire, resulting in post-death spasming. There's a video somewhere of someone doing the same thing with frog legs. The trick is that the squid is very freshly killed, but it's hardly the "torture a squid to death by pouring hot soy sauce on it" that some people have claimed it is.