Inside China's SLAVE labor toy factories

[Sapiens]

SANTA'S WORKSHOP - Inside China's SLAVE labor toy factories*ONLY A SHORT SEGMENT IN THE BEGINNING HAS ENGLISH SUBTITLES, THE REST IS SPOKEN ENGLISH*

SANTA'S WORKSHOP takes you to the real world ... all » of China's toy factories. Workers tell us about long working hours, low wages, and dangerous work places. Those who protest or try to organize trade unions risk imprisonment.

Low labour costs attract more and more companies to China. Today more than 75% of our toys are made in China. But this industry takes its toll on the workers and on the environment.

The European (and American) buyers blame bad conditions on the Chinese suppliers. But they say that increasingly hard competition gives them no option. Who should we believe? And what can you do to bring about a fairer and more humane toy trade?

[Tulpen]

Re: Inside China's SLAVE labor toy factories

The truth will set us free.

[Sapiens]

Re: Inside China's SLAVE labor toy factories

The truth will set us free.

Hush! What are you trying to do, close me down?!

Hey, if they don't fight back, it's their fault they are getting exploited. Now, where are my dividends?

[metalman]

Re: Inside China's SLAVE labor toy factories

Hush! What are you trying to do, close me down?!

Hey, if they don't fight back, it's their fault they are getting exploited. Now, where are my dividends?

hey, that child slave labor will raise them up! you can't have a developing market without slave labor! it's a phase. they have to go through it! blah, blah, blah...

The cause of private property has been championed by men who had no interest in it; their main concern has always been with the institution of privilege which has grown up alongside private property. They start by defining private property as anything that can be got by law; hence, they put their cunning to the control of the lawmaking machinery, so that the emerging laws enable them to profit at the expense of producers. They talk about the benefits of competition and work toward monopolistic practices. They extol individual initiative and support legal limitations on individuals who might challenge their ascendancy. In short, they are for the State, the enemy of private property, because they profit by its schemes. Their only objection to the State is its inclination to invade their privileged position or to extend privileges to other groups.
—Frank Chodorov, One Is a Crowd (New York: Devin-Adair, 1952), pp. 93–94.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Inside China's SLAVE labor toy factories

hey, that child slave labor will raise them up! you can't have a developing market without slave labor! it's a phase. they have to go through it! blah, blah, blah...

The cause of private property has been championed by men who had no interest in it; their main concern has always been with the institution of privilege which has grown up alongside private property. They start by defining private property as anything that can be got by law; hence, they put their cunning to the control of the lawmaking machinery, so that the emerging laws enable them to profit at the expense of producers. They talk about the benefits of competition and work toward monopolistic practices. They extol individual initiative and support legal limitations on individuals who might challenge their ascendancy. In short, they are for the State, the enemy of private property, because they profit by its schemes. Their only objection to the State is its inclination to invade their privileged position or to extend privileges to other groups.

—Frank Chodorov, One Is a Crowd (New York: Devin-Adair, 1952), pp. 93–94.

If the workers had access to a capital market I am sure they would create their own companies to compete, not by price, but by working conditions. No one can say they would not be competitive at those rates of pay. The underlying problem is that all business in China is run by or for the CCP, so you do not have the underlying concept of free enterprise by free citizens. This is classic feudalism, not free enterprise, certainly not capitalism.

But, think? What would happen if China decided to go to war against the West and shut the door to their factories? We would be in the most disadvantaged position possible. Caught with our proverbial trousers down with no productive capacity whatsoever. Then what?

[metalman]

Re: Inside China's SLAVE labor toy factories

If the workers had access to a capital market I am sure they would create their own companies to compete, not by price, but by working conditions. No one can say they would not be competitive at those rates of pay. The underlying problem is that all business in China is run by or for the CCP, so you do not have the underlying concept of free enterprise by free citizens. This is classic feudalism, not free enterprise, certainly not capitalism.

But, think? What would happen if China decided to go to war against the West and shut the door to their factories? We would be in the most disadvantaged position possible. Caught with our proverbial trousers down with no productive capacity whatsoever. Then what?

ever see a chart of usa factories switching from making cars to making tanks and ships and aircraft from 1939 to 1942?

[Chris Coles]

Re: Inside China's SLAVE labor toy factories

ever see a chart of usa factories switching from making cars to making tanks and ships and aircraft from 1939 to 1942?

What everybody has forgotten is that, then, there was a great raft of small businesses all full of skilled individuals that could be turned to the new work. A ship every few hours was an example. But today, the small business sector has been decimated and for example, recently, when there was a major explosion in an oil refinery, it turned up that there were insufficient coded welders in the US to cover the long term repair needs of the oil industry....

You have lost that raft of small businesses. Today, the kids fresh out of education now all sit behind a PC and have not the slightest idea of how to make something like an aircraft or a tank... let alone weld the steel for a ship. As an example, when in WW2 the UK had to turn over the efforts of thousands of furniture factories to make parts for aircraft, the change was simply a matter of a change in the material and the employees could easily adapt. Not today. That raft of confident successful artisans has completely disappeared. We would be stuffed. Period.

[touchring]

Re: Inside China's SLAVE labor toy factories

Hey, if they don't fight back, it's their fault they are getting exploited. Now, where are my dividends?

Well, they are fighting back.

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakin...icle_id=104620
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/5353910.html

[Guest]

Re: Inside China's SLAVE labor toy factories

Touchring -

Just in case you misunderstood - Sapiens was being broadly ironic in that observation. I don't agree with Sapiens on a lot of stuff, but he cannot be called callous by any description.

[touchring]

Re: Inside China's SLAVE labor toy factories

Touchring -

Just in case you misunderstood - Sapiens was being broadly ironic in that observation. I don't agree with Sapiens on a lot of stuff, but he cannot be called callous by any description.

He might be ironic, but this is how many businesses work today.

Companies outsource manufacturing to OEM factories to manufacture cheap products to sell at home and abroad. The bulk of the difference between the what they sell and what it costs to manufacture goes towards paying for logistics, management, finance, legal, marketing and advertising expense back home, the remainder becomes dividends.

[metalman]

Re: Inside China's SLAVE labor toy factories

He might be ironic, but this is how many businesses work today.

Companies outsource manufacturing to OEM factories to manufacture cheap products to sell at home and abroad. The bulk of the difference between the what they sell and what it costs to manufacture goes towards paying for logistics, management, finance, legal, marketing and advertising expense back home, the remainder becomes dividends.

been thinking about this vid some more. my take is: if the kid's job was going to be even worse than the one making toys... like working in a field dawn to dusk 7 days a week and dying of old age by 45... he's still better off. right?

[Chris Coles]

Re: Inside China's SLAVE labor toy factories

been thinking about this vid some more. my take is: if the kid's job was going to be even worse than the one making toys... like working in a field dawn to dusk 7 days a week and dying of old age by 45... he's still better off. right?

Nice to see someone else is aware that there are consequences for all the outsourcing to China and the like. Capitalism is the investment of equity capital into the productive capacity of a nation. The productive capacity is the youngsters that every year leave school to make something of their lives. As I often like to quote; Adam Smith , in his treatise "The Wealth of Nations" states at the front of the book, "it will hereinafter appear, all jobs are created in proportion to the amount of capital invested". Now, consider this? If all those productive jobs have been outsourced and now, the capital is all in the hands of Sovereign Funds owned by our competitors, not companies, but nations and those funds end up owning the capital we need to invest into our own productive capacity, but instead, invest into their own.... We go back, as Metalman shows us, back to being an agrarian society, right back to where we were before the industrial revolution.... And, right now, the banking system, that replaced equity capital investment with loans of what we now see was a load of worthless paper, is, as a consequence, on the point of collapse too...... Not to put too fine a point on it, we are stuffed. The only way out of this is a rapid return to investing equity capital into our productive capacity.

But we do not have a mechanism for that any more. We stopped investing equity capital into new creativity decades ago when the rules for our stock markets were changed to suite, the people that run the investment vehicles that today have brought our own financial system to its knees.

Please, think about that.

[NFN_NLN]

Re: Inside China's SLAVE labor toy factories

This can't be sustainable.

I mean the factory was entirely staffed by young women. The manager said "they're easier to manage". They were housed 12 to a room. There was no place for a family and I didn't see any children. Where's the next generation of slave labour coming from?

[touchring]

Re: Inside China's SLAVE labor toy factories

This can't be sustainable.

I mean the factory was entirely staffed by young women. The manager said "they're easier to manage". They were housed 12 to a room. There was no place for a family and I didn't see any children. Where's the next generation of slave labour coming from?

The young women will work for a few years, after which they will return to the countryside, get married and stay in the village.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Inside China's SLAVE labor toy factories

Nice to see someone else is aware that there are consequences for all the outsourcing to China and the like. Capitalism is the investment of equity capital into the productive capacity of a nation. The productive capacity is the youngsters that every year leave school to make something of their lives. As I often like to quote; Adam Smith , in his treatise "The Wealth of Nations" states at the front of the book, "it will hereinafter appear, all jobs are created in proportion to the amount of capital invested". Now, consider this? If all those productive jobs have been outsourced and now, the capital is all in the hands of Sovereign Funds owned by our competitors, not companies, but nations and those funds end up owning the capital we need to invest into our own productive capacity, but instead, invest into their own.... We go back, as Metalman shows us, back to being an agrarian society, right back to where we were before the industrial revolution.... And, right now, the banking system, that replaced equity capital investment with loans of what we now see was a load of worthless paper, is, as a consequence, on the point of collapse too...... Not to put too fine a point on it, we are stuffed. The only way out of this is a rapid return to investing equity capital into our productive capacity.

But we do not have a mechanism for that any more. We stopped investing equity capital into new creativity decades ago when the rules for our stock markets were changed to suite, the people that run the investment vehicles that today have brought our own financial system to its knees.

Please, think about that.

I know I am being a bit naughty quoting my previous post but this has just surfaced in the Washington Post.

Cupboards Are Bare at Food Banks

Drops in Donations and Farm Surplus Cause Area Charities to Run Short


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...src=newsletter

It is easy to fall into the trap of believing that the US is a very successful nation at all levels, when, the truth is, it is not at all good at successfully driving forward with the distribution of its equity capital re-invested back into new productive capacity. Ergo, you have a very large raft of poor people who starve for want of a regular, reasonable paid job to support themselves and their families.

You can turn away and say, it is nothing to do with ....who? But not in any sort of a civilised society where the whole nation is led by individuals that recognise their responsibilities to those less fortunate than they are.