Re:Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor i...
by noduerme on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @03:39AM
(#25579832)
Wow. A troglodyte on HN manages to get top votes by vomiting an incredibly incoherent spew of libertarianism, marxism, reactionary nationalism and militant western chauvinism. All of this in reaction to an article about slave labor going into every fanboy's favorite screen. Who woulda thunk it.
A lot of things you say are right: If Western civ actually held to its neoliberal values then things would cost more. Slave labor is inefficient (although it's more efficient and apparently more acceptable than executing people like they did during the Cultural Revolution).
But on what planet do you live where the only solution is armed violence? First of all, that's just not possible. Even in America, the idea that because we have guns we are able to stand up against oppressive government is nothing more than a wet dream fantasy of the far right. In China? Uighurs are going to arm up and stand to the CCP? Are you out of your mind? If that looked like anything, it would look like Islamic terrorism.
You and I in America, and the people in Hong Kong, and the Uighurs, are not in a "slave society", we are in a corporation. And our issues are not going to be cured by taking up small arms against nuclear states that act as part of that corporations, even if millions of us are armed. The only thing going on here is a battle for scarce resources, disguised as a bunch of ideologies.
Look, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have trillions of dollars they could spend to build up a Palestinian state rebuild Syria or help the Uighurs, but what do they do? Make arms deals with Israel and America and China. And logically they're doing what they need to do. There is no world in which your fantasy of small arms and liberation of slaves is a remote possibility.
The only possibility is people owning their own local resources. And not sharing them as marxists, either.
There are very few, if any, levers that we can pull from the West at this point to promulgate that strategy. We can't bomb the railway lines into the Uighur camps, as we should have in WWII, because it would cause a nuclear war. We can cut off trade, and encourage people not to trade with bad actors, that's about it. Everything else is just a wanker fantasy.
A lot of things you say are right: If Western civ actually held to its neoliberal values then things would cost more. Slave labor is inefficient (although it's more efficient and apparently more acceptable than executing people like they did during the Cultural Revolution).
But on what planet do you live where the only solution is armed violence? First of all, that's just not possible. Even in America, the idea that because we have guns we are able to stand up against oppressive government is nothing more than a wet dream fantasy of the far right. In China? Uighurs are going to arm up and stand to the CCP? Are you out of your mind? If that looked like anything, it would look like Islamic terrorism.
You and I in America, and the people in Hong Kong, and the Uighurs, are not in a "slave society", we are in a corporation. And our issues are not going to be cured by taking up small arms against nuclear states that act as part of that corporations, even if millions of us are armed. The only thing going on here is a battle for scarce resources, disguised as a bunch of ideologies.
Look, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have trillions of dollars they could spend to build up a Palestinian state rebuild Syria or help the Uighurs, but what do they do? Make arms deals with Israel and America and China. And logically they're doing what they need to do. There is no world in which your fantasy of small arms and liberation of slaves is a remote possibility.
The only possibility is people owning their own local resources. And not sharing them as marxists, either.
There are very few, if any, levers that we can pull from the West at this point to promulgate that strategy. We can't bomb the railway lines into the Uighur camps, as we should have in WWII, because it would cause a nuclear war. We can cut off trade, and encourage people not to trade with bad actors, that's about it. Everything else is just a wanker fantasy.