<story><title>China and &quot;our standard of living&quot;</title><url>http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2009/07/im-really-thinking-maybe-i-shouldnt.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mistermann</author><text>Wow, spot on!  Likely not news to anyone here, but I really wonder how many people out there are smart enough to realize how amazingly cheap the stuff we buy is, and really think of where it comes from.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>domodomo</author><text>I used to work in IT for a Taiwanese manufacturing company that sold to Walmart &amp;#38; Sams Club, with factories primarily in southern China (near Guangzhou).&lt;p&gt;Spent a fair amount of time in these factories.  First thing is, no factory makes everything themselves, it&apos;s a huge network of factories and a buddy network of factory managers who supply varying levels of material to one another.  That&apos;s part of the reason it&apos;s difficult to ascertain the true quality of life of workers associated with making a product, because down the line many factories go into making one finished product.&lt;p&gt;I can say from my own anecdotal experience labor conditions are mixed bag.  The light industry factories seemed to have safer conditions, and my companies factories were pretty decent.  One iron processing factory I saw down right scary, imagine vats of molten iron at ground level, and operators in bare feet.&lt;p&gt;One counter-intuitive thing I saw is that workers will often protest not when worked too hard, but when worked too lightly.  Many factory workers WANT long hours so they can send more money back to relatives, or increase their personal savings.  At least when I was there five years ago, it could be dangerous for a factory to be light on hours, as employees will quit and move to a factory where there are more hours to be paid.  With the economic slowdown, this might have changed.&lt;p&gt;What I&apos;m getting at is it&apos;s hard to generalize about labor conditions in China, so saying things like they are all &quot;slave labor&quot; isn&apos;t really useful.  You have to look at the specific circumstances of that companies manufacturing chain, if you are able.</text></comment>
<story><title>China and &quot;our standard of living&quot;</title><url>http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2009/07/im-really-thinking-maybe-i-shouldnt.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mistermann</author><text>Wow, spot on!  Likely not news to anyone here, but I really wonder how many people out there are smart enough to realize how amazingly cheap the stuff we buy is, and really think of where it comes from.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>biohacker42</author><text>Well not quite spot on. It did mention that these people were willing to do what ever to get away from the hellish alternative they were born into. But if you blinked you missed it, you missed the most important point:&lt;p&gt;People are doing this voluntarily. Rumors of forced labor are greatly exaggerated. Perhaps somewhere in Burma but in China and India and other places, people do this hard work because the alternative is harder. This is how you work your way up from a very low starting point.&lt;p&gt;England wasn&apos;t always a workers&apos; paradise either. Wages in China will rise.</text></comment>