Quote Originally Posted by Polymirize
You have some good points Fengzi, and I actually wouldn't want to argue with any of them at this venture.

But surely we can agree that there's a difference between outsourcing Labor, both as a means of keeping costs lower and providing work to other countries; and economically exploiting 3rd world nations.

I'm not suggesting that we don't utilize foreign markets, but rather that we pay them a fairer wage for their labor. I know what your thinking, it would cause our own costs to rise, maybe you'd pay an additional dollar or two per shirt. And of course, the place to start with this balancing act is at home, because the excess of some in the face of the overwhelming poverty of many is disgusting.

I just think it's going to become an inevitable step, sustainability is rapidly becoming a necessity in our future. And the sooner our nation realises that, the higher the level we'll be able to sustain. Time is money after all, and we seem to rapidly be running out of both.

Paying foreign workers a "fair wage", or the failure to do so, is another myth created by the left. What is "fair" can only be determined by the people living in a given area. What seems grossly unfair to us may seem pretty good in Indonesia.

When I first met my wife 11 years ago, she was a professor at a top university in China. As a highly educated professional, working for the Chinese equivalent of Harvard or Yale, she earned about $200 a month. That's about $10 a day and that was considered very good in Shanghai.

While it would seem like the noble thing to set up a factory and start paying the workers there $6/hr, the reality is that it would wreak havoc on the local economy. You would flood the economy with money and inflation would go up. Before long the factory workers would become the new rich, using their resources(money) to compete with the rest of the local population. The result would be that the rest of the population would no longer be able to afford to keep their old standard of living. So, while you've helped a few hundred factory workers, you've fucked the rest of the population.

Think about it, there's a reason Nike can set up a factory in some thid world place and pay workers $1/day. Although the left likes to use terms like "slave labor" the reality is that people are there by their own free will. Do you really think they'd stay working for $1/day if it wasn't better than the alternative? If the alternative is working in a snake, bug, and disease infested rice paddy for $0.75/day, is Nike really taking advantage of them.

Just something to think about.