truth_seeker wrote:Slavery is "productive effort" ... so obviously productive effort (in itself) is not a very enlightened standard.
You are deliberately trying to evade the essential rule of human existence by playing silly bugger false "equivalency" games. You know as well as all the readers here that I am right: human existence requires productive human effort. All that is left to decide is whose effort supports whose existence. We both agree that slavery is immoral, because the effort of the slave goes towards supporting his master's existence, not his own.
It depends on the sweat shop (the term is not as monolithic as you seem to be implying).
To no one's surprise, you refuse to define your terms. You hem and haw and waffle but refuse to respond to a standard request - "define your terms". Until you do, there is no point continuing this farce. Your understanding of the term "sweatshops" remains nebulous and ever-changing.
You dumb down this distinction so it fits within your very disturbing world view.
I am not dumbing anything down, nor is my world view disturbing to anyone other than a Chomskybot. The basic choice facing humans is: exert productive effort or die. You keep pretending this is irrelevant to the discussion, when in fact it is at the very core of the discussion. There is nothing "disturbing" about acknowledging facts on the ground.
Employees were trapped in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory (which is why so many of them were killed in its fire).
No they weren't "trapped". Any one of them could have quit working there at any time. They were not
"locked in a factory, under guard" so they couldn't
"escape or try to quit suicide". They went home at the end of every shift, and voluntarily returned at the beginning of the next shift. Or - in many cases - decided not to, and went to work somewhere else.
So yes absolutely, I include the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in my definition of sweat shop...
So you admit that the people we are talking about - "sweatshop" workers by your definition - were at all times capable of leaving the "sweatshop" and doing something else with their lives. Or even to have just walked on by the "sweatshop" in the first place, ignoring the offer of employment by the owners of the "sweatshop".
...but also operations like Foxconn China, and other modern day sweat shops in Asia, where workers are under guard, not allowed to leave, forced to live in company dorms (where they're also under guard), etc.
I don't know if your characterization of that particular firm (Foxconn China) operating in a non-Capitalist country is accurate. But if the workers are not allowed to quit, then the enterprise is more than a "sweatshop", it is a slave pen. You conflate the two terms deliberately in order to avoid facing facts: your argument holds no water.
In other words, I consider neo-feudalism, or quasi-slavery, as falling within the definition of sweat shop.
Stop with the jargon and answer the question asked:
Phred wrote:"What are all the essential characteristics an enterprise must possess in order to qualify as a "sweatshop" in your eyes? Don't leave any out."
So far the best you've done is to provide this:
truth_seeker, quoting wikipedia wrote:Sweatshop (or sweat factory) is a negatively connoted term for any working environment considered to be unacceptably difficult or dangerous. Sweatshop workers often work long hours for very low pay, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage. Child labour laws may be violated. Sweatshops may have hazardous materials and situations. Employees may be subject to employer abuse without an easy way, if any way, to protect themselves.
Is that the definition you are going to go with? Because it says nothing about people being rounded up against their will and imprisoned in company dorms, nor does it say that employees may not quit.
If all my descriptions of the horrors being visited upon third world workers haven't been enough...
Such descriptions aren't a
definition. How hard is that to understand? Are you going to go with the wikipedia definition (above) you cut and pasted or not?
Choice only exists where there's adequate information regarding those choices.
Re-read my offer of employment to the dreadlocked guy applying to be an operator of one of my laminating presses. What do you find inadequate about it?
Manipulating or limiting information to solicit consent is called fraud, and assent gained through fraud or deceit cannot be reasonably defined as a free choice.
What did I manipulate or limit to the prospective employee? How was my offer in any way fraudulent?
Phred: Describe that information you possess which - if the "sweatshop" employee possessed the same information - would lead to him rejecting employment at the "sweatshop".
truth_seeker: We can safely presume, where suicide rates among sweat shop employees becomes such a profound problem, the sweat shop owner needs to post guards to prevent employee suicide .... that the sweat shop employees lacked adequate information regarding what they were signing up for, and indeed now lack the capacity to escape those circumstances.
So you can't answer my question. No one reading this thread is surprised.
Phred: That was my question to you, and you haven't answered it. Why do you believe you can choose better for someone else (from an admittedly less than ideal menu of options) than they can choose for themselves?
truth_seeker: Trying to juxtapose yourself as the defender of free choice is laughable. It's the ultimate twist of irony, but sadly, all too typical.
So you can't answer my question. No one reading this thread is surprised.
Not true, it does indeed narrow the menu of available choices.
How? Yesterday there were five choices on how to make a living: pushcart vendor, barmaid, prostitute, coconut husker, street beggar. Today there are six: pushcart vendor, barmaid, prostitute, coconut husker, street beggar, "sweatshop" employee.
It is such an unsophisticated analysis, which ignores the underlying social and psychological dynamics to such a profound extent, there's no reason why any reasonably intelligent person should take your position seriously, or ascribe any degree of merit to it.
LOL! Yeah, right, Sparky. Six isn't
really more than five, because one of those six makes Chomskybots upset.
This is text book sociopathy.
You are exhibiting textbook denial of reality.
Inventing an imaginary reality...
There is nothing imaginary about the fact that Mother Nature presents us all with a choice: work or starve.
...to justify horrific treatment of human beings...
Oh, stop being such a hysterical little girl. There is nothing "horrific" about most of the "sweatshops" operating in the Third World. I live in a country (Dominican Republic) where what you call "sweatshops" the people working in them (and more tellingly, the people who desperately
want to work in them) call a sweet deal.
Good and decent people have always had to fight against these pseudo-justifications for exploitation...
Define "exploitation". I assure you, the people working in the "sweatshops" here don't feel exploited. That's probably because they
aren't being exploited.
... and I believe that exposing human beings to sweat shop conditions, is harm; and I do not believe consent based on misinformation and manipulation can be defined as consent, much less non-coercive.
The readers of this thread have noted that you believe all kinds of things that aren't so.
The claim of objectivists (and others who hold to a similar ideology) is that morality should be narrowly defined, to avoid subjectivity (and arbitrary definitions of what comprises good moral behavior). Of course this winds up reducing to the thing they claim to be against, moral relativism. Indeed, their narrow (and virtually meaningless) definition of morality so conveniently fits within their laissez faire ideology, only the most obtuse could view this as a coincidence.
This is just gibberish, and whiney gibberish at that.
Phred