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

[Michael Trausch]

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