It's funny to me that this is framed through such a negative lens, when they're basically just saying that ever more people are being lifted out of poverty, to the point where our trash is no longer of value to them. I struggle to believe that old clothes will ever be a top ten most important environmental issue.
There are other issues, for instance: child labor makes most clothes in Asian countries. The labor is hidden behind opaque international sub-contracting agreements, making it impossible to audit the supply chain.
Ethical clothes are expensive to make. Go to US Target store and you can buy a three-pack of "Fruit of the Loom" T-Shirts for about $10, go do Everlane, who explicitly states their profit, cost, and logistics chain, and T-shirts are $20/each.
> child labor makes most clothes in Asian countries.
Reminds me of a Jack quote from 30 Rock:
> It's not "handmade in USA," it's pronounced "hahnd-made in Oosa." The Hand people are a Vietnamese slave tribe, and USA is their island prison. THEY made your jeans. Do you know how they get the stitching so small? [whispers] Orphans.
Child labor is probably not caused by the demand for clothes, though. On the contrary, without those jobs, the situation of those families would be even more perilous.
> Child labor is probably not caused by the demand for clothes, though. On the contrary, without those jobs, the situation of those families would be even more perilous.
Well maybe if the parents would be paid a bit more these kids would be given a chance to fair better in life by going to school. What is that comment? demand for lower priced clothes, "infinite growth" and investors always demanding higher returns absolutely causes all that child exploitation.
Your comment is either ignorant or downright dismissive of a problem directly caused by us, western consumers.
It's akin to saying "at least the slave is fed", exact same puritan mindset.
People in rich countries are (mostly) very nativist, so I doubt this kind of think would be popular. For whatever reason, people tend to value the lives of those in their country many times more than those in other countries.
So unfortunately, buying their labor at cheap rates seems to be the best way to transfer wealth right now, at least a big scale [0].
[0] - On a smaller scale individuals can donate to charities like Against Malaria Foundation or GiveDirectly, which I highly recommend everyone does if they have excess wealth.
You are already doing that to some extent and in my opinion it has the reverse effect. That money will go to the government which is quite corrupt in these countries and will stronghold more authoritarian regimes. Child-labor is bad but it helps some families make money, and many of them break the poverty chain this way. It's not the best/most ethical way to do it, but let's not pretend that a few random folks on HN have the solutions for these third-world countries.
> in my opinion it has the reverse effect. That money will go to the government which is quite corrupt in these countries and will stronghold more authoritarian regimes.
This is not the only option, and this defeatist attitude is dangerous. There are many charities operating in third-world countries that are incredibly efficient and are delivering real impact right now. Here’s a few: https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities
Now, obviously scaling it up will be difficult, but all these charities are currently cash constrained, so there’s still some room to grow, and after that point, I’m sure it’s not an intractable problem to figure out a working model.
The “corrupt government” excuse is common one to justify inaction, but given the existence of so many organizations doing good work, I don’t it’s applicable anymore.
> That would be idiotic. We are well off because we can make cheap things (including food). To make things arbitrarily more expensive would make everybody worse off.
It would make the ultra rich a tiny less richer, but hey you can't have that. There is wealth in this world so that every single kid on that planet can go to school instead of working at the factory, it's just insanely badly distributed.
Their point is, we (western countries as a whole) have the following options:
- Buy clothes made using child labour, the children and their families get a bit of additional income.
- Don't buy clothes made using child labour, the children and their families don't get a bit of additional income.
Most likely, these children are working because without this income, it's difficult for them to meet their needs for survival. Given that, the choosing option 2 will clearly leave this children and their families worse off. I'm not sure how that's a controversial statement, it's simply describing the situation as it is. Denying harsh realities doesn't make things better for those children.
Now, the ideal situation is just a direct wealth transfer from rich countries to poor countries, and I would be in favor of that. But people in rich countries value the lives of people in their countries many times more than those in poor countries, so I doubt this will happen anytime soon.
That's a false dichotomy used to justify child and slave labor as well as absolve yourself of responsibility.
Here's a few options:
1. buy second hand
Cheapest and best for the environment
2. buy local
stimulates local economy, doesn't give money to another big corporation ready to exploit another country
3. buy fair trade
4. stop buying so many things
It really isn't that difficult.
------------
The harsh reality is that we all are to blame for the predicament of those countries and we try to brush it off, just like you just did. We choose to buy cheap without checking where things are from. We choose not to support local industries. We choose politicians that choose not to prosecute companies for crimes in other countries. We choose to give big companies money which they then use to corrupt foreign countries in order to exploit them. We choose to justify our consumerism with "at least I'm giving them a job".
You really think that those countries would be in such disarray without our involvement? Do you think if multi-nationals had less power, the support of their western politicians and populace, that they'd be able to mess around in foreign countries and take away opportunities for the foreign populace?
> That's a false dichotomy used to justify child and slave labor as well as absolve yourself of responsibility.
It's clearly not a false dichotomy, since 3 of those options will leave those in the working in the global poor worse off. Buying fair trade will help those in the global poor, so that's a good option.
Note that I did not use this to justify slave labour. That's obviously bad, and they will be better off not working under slave labour. We should refuse to buy goods produced from slave labour. I am specifically focusing on those who work "voluntarily"[0] in exchange for pay.
> we try to brush it off, just like you just did.
Did you read my comment? I said, "Now, the ideal situation is just a direct wealth transfer from rich countries to poor countries, and I would be in favor of that." How is that brushing it off? I advocated for giving them money/aid/etc. directly (and is something I do on a small scale personally, by donating to charities that help people in the global poor).
What it comes down to at the end is that these people are working these jobs because the alternative is starvation or the like. If you're saying we should stop buying from them (indirectly, through a large company), you need to pair that with a direct transfer of some form of aid to make up for the lost income. Otherwise, you are directly making them worse off. Before, they earned some money for their labour, now they don't.
> The harsh reality is that we all are to blame for the predicament of those countries
If we're to blame, we can't just tell them "Sorry, I know you need this income to sustain yourself, but I'm not comfortable with those working conditions, so I'm going to give my money to someone in a first world country instead."
[0] - Ie. They decided they are better off working this job, than not working this job.
> Is HN being invaded by trolls? I see more comments like the above than I used to.
No HN has always been extremely classist like that, it's the startup world where "we're just an app" and humans that aren't engineers or entrepreneurs are seen as yet another disposable resource to be exploited in order to fake it till you IPO...
This is not the worst dehumanizing comment I've seen on this website, unfortunately.
> It's probably true though? Refusing to use child labor is not going to help those kids.
the "at least the slaves aren't starving" argument. Maybe if westerners paid them a bit more, which they can afford, their parents would send these kids to school instead.
"low wage" is meaningless. Parents need to be able make a living wage so that they don't have to send their young kids to the factory instead of school.
Have you accounted to imoact on theur future earnings from missing on education, from work-related accidents and injuries, trapping them in an eternal cycle if poverty?
I live in a poor country like this -- it's odd to me that there is a huge stigma against giving even a few dollars directly to beggar children, but if it's a factory paying them the same amount for a day's work then it's ok for you as the consumer to indirectly pay that wage through your purchase.
I have had good luck buying jeans and t-shirts made domestically. Does anyone know of a brand that makes socks in the US? I can’t seem to find any that are less than 20 a pair.
I'm in the same boat. The only US-made I found were by Gustin, but they were expensive and the elastic was meh. Everlane has yet to offer socks (non-US but very accountable). Allbirds has cheap(er) eco-groovy socks, but I don't know where they're made. Lemme know if you ever crack that nut, I'm glad I'm not the only person obsessed with trying to ethically source every item of clothing.
What's more environmentally friendly: clear cutting land and irrigating it to growing cotton, spooling it and making it into textile, dying it, screen printing it cheaply with underpaid labor, and shipping it across the ocean, or buying that $5 shirt in your size that already exists in that goodwill in your neighborhood?
This is a reason to challenge the value of jobs, not a reason to materially damage our irreplaceable environment. Social constructions must yield to material reality.
If you ate gonna waste money to create jobs you could habe a public works programm for planting trees, or have mandatory conscription and bigger military, or have government paid for education, or infrastructure, or any number of other things
Reminds of brave new world. The world government has to encourage consumption so that everyone has a job. People without jobs get restless, even if their needs are met.
Are you really thinking this through? You are justifying child and slave labor and exploiting other countries right now because of "Arbeit macht frei".
> the textile industry accounts for more greenhouse-gas emissions than all international flights and maritime shipping combined; as recycling markets break down, its contribution could soar.
The article actually says that the price of new articles is approaching the price of recycled articles -- so it's not necessarily that more people are being lifted out of poverty -- but that we are producing more stuff for cheaper.
