I myself don’t know—and don’t think it’s worth my time to investigate—to what extent those were lies, but I do know that they were to some extent exaggerations, and to the extent that they may have been true, I’m fairly confident that they are now less true and in the future will be even less true still.
I also take issue with the “cheap plastic junk” framing, as if China only or mostly produces junk. The only reason they’re still producing and exporting cheap junk is because we’re still buying it.
On top of all, that, I’m sure that no matter how bad the supposed sweatshops are or were in China, the sweatshops here are worse, with maltreated undocumented workers and child workers, not to mention prison labor.
I never mentioned that China produced cheap plastic junk. I said that Alibaba sells cheap plastic junk. Which it absolutely does.
Also I never said that the sweatshops were in China. Most sweatshops are in exploited countries such as Bangladesh, Nepal, Vietnam, the Philippines and so on; from where cheap good are procured for pennies.
You misunderstood what my message was saying. I said that capitalists procuring cheap junk goods from exploited workers is not made better by the capitalists being Chinese.
Oh, I didn’t know they did or still do outsource to even cheaper labor markets. Yes, you meant Alibaba specifically, which I conflated with China as a whole. I also doubt Alibaba only produces garbage, but now I’ve ventured into talking out-my-ass territory.
They do, China is a large consumer market, and it’s still extremely economical to ship off your sweatshop manufacturing to a poorer nation in order to fuel your consumer economy for a significantly cheaper price tag.
Also alibaba is one of the Wish, Aliexpress, Temu, and Shien type of websites. The entire point of those websites is to sell you massive amounts of utterly dirt cheap junk, and get the buyer addicted to the feeling of “being rich by buying so many things cheaply”, which is literally the tagline of Temu, “Shop like a billionaire”. Maybe once in a blue moon you’ll find a good product, but 99% of them are mass produced plastic garbage designed to be thrown away after 1-5 uses.
How do you push the product price so low? Make the quality match the price, and commit gut wrenching levels of exploitation on workers to drive the price lower.
Amazing. And a bit of a blind spot for me, because I’ve never given those those stores the time of day, and I don’t know anyone who admits to shopping at them. When I think of Alibaba, their cloud platform comes to mind more than anything else.
I was referring to countries such as Bangladesh, the Philippines, Vietnam, and so on. The vast majority of sweatshops in China died out in the early 2000s. They have been outsourced to poorer counties.
There are a decent number, but they usually employ easily exploitable immigrants and operate illegally. It’d be impossible to eradicate them entirely, but China as made amazing strides in the past 20 years. Sweatshops on the scale of the 70s and 80s are a thing of the past.
Is there any proof of the sweatshop allegations?
I myself don’t know—and don’t think it’s worth my time to investigate—to what extent those were lies, but I do know that they were to some extent exaggerations, and to the extent that they may have been true, I’m fairly confident that they are now less true and in the future will be even less true still.
I also take issue with the “cheap plastic junk” framing, as if China only or mostly produces junk. The only reason they’re still producing and exporting cheap junk is because we’re still buying it.
On top of all, that, I’m sure that no matter how bad the supposed sweatshops are or were in China, the sweatshops here are worse, with maltreated undocumented workers and child workers, not to mention prison labor.
I never mentioned that China produced cheap plastic junk. I said that Alibaba sells cheap plastic junk. Which it absolutely does.
Also I never said that the sweatshops were in China. Most sweatshops are in exploited countries such as Bangladesh, Nepal, Vietnam, the Philippines and so on; from where cheap good are procured for pennies.
You misunderstood what my message was saying. I said that capitalists procuring cheap junk goods from exploited workers is not made better by the capitalists being Chinese.
Oh, I didn’t know they did or still do outsource to even cheaper labor markets. Yes, you meant Alibaba specifically, which I conflated with China as a whole. I also doubt Alibaba only produces garbage, but now I’ve ventured into talking out-my-ass territory.
They do, China is a large consumer market, and it’s still extremely economical to ship off your sweatshop manufacturing to a poorer nation in order to fuel your consumer economy for a significantly cheaper price tag.
Also alibaba is one of the Wish, Aliexpress, Temu, and Shien type of websites. The entire point of those websites is to sell you massive amounts of utterly dirt cheap junk, and get the buyer addicted to the feeling of “being rich by buying so many things cheaply”, which is literally the tagline of Temu, “Shop like a billionaire”. Maybe once in a blue moon you’ll find a good product, but 99% of them are mass produced plastic garbage designed to be thrown away after 1-5 uses.
How do you push the product price so low? Make the quality match the price, and commit gut wrenching levels of exploitation on workers to drive the price lower.
Amazing. And a bit of a blind spot for me, because I’ve never given those those stores the time of day, and I don’t know anyone who admits to shopping at them. When I think of Alibaba, their cloud platform comes to mind more than anything else.
I was referring to countries such as Bangladesh, the Philippines, Vietnam, and so on. The vast majority of sweatshops in China died out in the early 2000s. They have been outsourced to poorer counties.
I was aware that sweatshops in China are basically gone, but I was concerned that there was some left over when you said that.
There are a decent number, but they usually employ easily exploitable immigrants and operate illegally. It’d be impossible to eradicate them entirely, but China as made amazing strides in the past 20 years. Sweatshops on the scale of the 70s and 80s are a thing of the past.
I’m aware and still in awe of China’s great strides over the past few decades.
You have a source for this? This will certainly help me if someday a chud/liberal makes a claim about sweathshops in China