Wait till you find out how the electronics and clothes in your house are made and how the materials they're made from are sourced or what the workforce that picks the fruit and vegetables you see in the supermarket, endures.
It is rarely (never?) discussed in the west how all the consumer goods are cheap simply because the supply chain relies on poor exploitable people and exploiting the environment.
All we hear about is the positive spin, how capitalism and globalization have blessed us with cheap goods and how those poor farmers halfway around the world now have paying jobs, woo-hoo!
I don't know, I see it talked about all the time, but nobody seems to be able to do anything about it.
Nobody seems to want to do something about it. It's easy, vote with your wallet. But since the choice is either A) help humanity by stop buying cheap consumer electronics or B) don't get any cheap consumer electronics to make your day 0.5% better, it seems we're stuck in exploiting humanity.
The parts of our society that profit off cheap offshore labor are quick to spin stories accusing people of being nationalist/protectionist/racist, but their profit margin is being defended in the process and the issues distracted from.
At the same time, if I lived in a largely agrarian society and factory work offered me the choice to get out of poor farm labor work, I’d jump at it the same way my ancestors did. I feel most of us can appreciate the value and prosperity that the global supply chain has brought, while simultaneously lamenting the destruction of domestic industry and the exploitation that has accompanied it.
We don’t have to be all-for or all-against, though I think when “free trade” agreements come up, they should be regarded very suspiciously, and when accusations fly about nationalism and protectionism, those should be seen as the cheap and distracting rhetorical devices they are.
There is no ethical consumption under captialism. Blah blah blah.
I also can’t relate to your “all we hear about” point at all. I feel like I really have to go out of my way to find any discussion about anything good in the world, the vast majority of what I hear is negative takes like yours about how everything is horrible and everyone is oppressed.
If you adjust your definition of poverty to local inflation, you also barely see any difference anymore.
I have also heard some compelling arguments that a similar transformation is likely on the way in sub-Saharan African over the next few decades.
Also these are real dollars, they are adjusted for inflation.
As for Chinese people, it is amazing that they came out of poverty. But clearly it's not thanks to free market capitalism.
The poverty line is also arbitrarily low, with many countless people over the poverty line who are dying of hunger. A more realistic poverty line would probably be several times bigger than the current value, which would fuether skew the numbers.
Not to mention, as others have pointed out, the vast majority of people taken out of poverty were taken out by dictatorial China's social programs, not capitalism.
they are scared. they are really scared.
it's like amazon entire business model is based on exploitation of labor.