I'm not claiming that what you say isn't
true. I'm saying it shouldn't be true.
You're never gunna change those economic fundamentals.
Its essentially a result of the industrial revolution which made
it possible to use very cheap labor in a production line to churn
out very cheap product at a lower cost than it costs to have
a relatively highly skilled tech diagnose and repair a problem.
And there will always be a very big difference in the wages
paid to an assembly line monkey and a first world tech too.
I'm one that doesn't feel I have to accept the status quo
just because somebody tells me "that's the way it is".
You're always welcome to tilt at windmills, Don Quixote.
You'll be just as successful as he was too.
The modern global economy has
tipped scales in many weird ways.
Thats been going on for centurys now.
You basically get to like it or lump it.
Yes, the low cost of living, comparatively low quality
of life, and exploitative labor practice is China, South
East Asia, and elsewhere in the developing world have
allowed our seemingly disastrous throw-it-away society
Nothing disastrous about it, its why our
living standards leave theirs for dead.
Its also the fundamental approach that has allowed us to
ensure that very few kids die in childhood anymore from
starvation, lack of clean drinking water, and infectious disease.
It aint even disasterous for the third world either.
They get access to those cheap goods too and
get a decent cashflow to pay for them too.
to be a flourishing economic success.
It aint just an economic success either, its a flourishing
success in a host of other areas as well, most obviously
health care, education, communication, entertainment etc.
Mao made the rather incisive point that the rural chinese didnt
have much to fill their time with in the evenings except ****ing.
Certainly goes a long way towards explaining their birth rate.
We can waste more in the developed world
by just exploiting more in the developing world.
The economic models would look a little
different if we properly factored in the
cost of throwing things away in the USA.
Nope.
There is a cost to adding that HD to the landfill, both
a direct economic cost and indirectly in terms of an
environmental cost. It's quantifiable and it's not insignificant.
Its a fart in the bath as part of any modern first world economy.
The most realistic approach I see
for combating the offshoring of jobs
Thats been going on for centurys now.
You wont be stopping that either.
is to tie some strings to our exploitation of cheap foreign labor.
No thanks, thats a very fundamental part of the total
economic system with real benefits for everyone involved.
If US companies are going to reap an economic
advantage by moving manufacturing and call
centers to the developing world, then they should
be required to also benefit the host populations.
That always does. Instead of only primitive agriculture
being available, they get a lot more choices available too.
We cannot export our exact OSHA labor standards,
and our Union labor structure, that would completely
nullify the economic advantage, but we should be
improving work environments, increasing wages, and
sharing a greater portion of the benefit with our laborers.
They live quite well already, particularly in china and korea etc.
Obviously business cannot be expected to cut into it's profits
or raise prices for such social benefits of the have-nots, which
is why it's up to global oversight like the WTO or perhaps the
UN to make sure the process is symbiotic rather than parasitic.
No thanks, those useless wankers
couldnt organise a pissup in a brewery.
Labor and economic rules must be enforced to ensure the
host country benefits substantially from globalized business
They always do, without getting wankers involved.
or we are just engaging in the same ruinous extraction of
wealth that characterized European colonization of Africa.
Hasnt happened in modern times with industrialisation.
Even with the current unregulated exploitation of foreign
labor, there are plenty of example of reuse models in the
united states that have been tremendously successful.
Nope. They're all a complete wank with high technology areas.
I've spent time volunteering at a couple awesome computer re-use operations:
http://www.raft.net/resources/index.php?pg=ctcmaster - refurbs donated
computers and sells them for minimal fee for use in educational environment.
The education system should be using the latest technology and they
do in any first world country with a properly organised education system.
http://www.otxwest.org/ - channels enormous
amounts of equipment into Oakland unified.
They should be using the latest technology instead. My
local equivalent is, running XP on the latest hardware. My
main quibble is that they mostly use Works instead of Office.
They also educate and provide equipment to students
and families that otherwise couldn't afford it.
No such animal in first world countrys.
Nope, its a complete wank.
How about Cell Phones, those phones people in the
US decide are trash once every 6 to 12 months
Thats a complete wank too, doesnt happen.
can be reused instead of thrown away.
With the handsets so cheap, thats completely pointless.
A company called ReCellular
http://www.recellular.net/,
which I partnered with when I was at UCD starting a
Cell Phone collection, remanufactures those older phones
And the real cost of doing that is MUCH higher than the
real cost of stamping out a new one in a SE asian factory.
and resells them into emerging wireless markets
at a fraction of the price of new equipment.
Only possible because its voodoo economics.
Once students new they weren't trash, we collected
over 300 used cell phones in a single quarter.
They're clearly still discarding them at a high rate.
There are all sorts of money making opportunities for reuse and recycling.
Nope, that utterly bogus economics.
Utilizing highly automated manufacturing facilities, HP has
an outstanding operation in Roseville processing e-waste,
Just another complete wank.
while on the opposite side of the spectrum Dell and others use
jail labor and dump their waste overseas to be picked apart by
children.
http://www.svtc.org/cleancc/pubs/prison_final.pdf
Yep, another complete wank.
It takes a little more thought and vision
to do the right thing and I intend to do it.
Its actually the wrong thing and you're completely
irrelevant in the entire global economic scene.
And you wont be repairing hard drives either.
The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition is another group doing
great work on these issues
http://www.svtc.org/cleancc/.
Nope, great wank, actually.
