Blog 8 – Amst 475: How acceptable is cheap? Or do we just turn our heads?

Hello readers

          Today our topic really hits home, this is about just where and how are our mass purchased and out sourced material good are made. Those working conditions, and why don’t we care, I mean we care, but lets be honest, we don’t really care, as long as we can get our Nikes’, Under Armor, and pumas for cheap. Now, lets start with the first bullet point, which is “What are your personal assumptions about “Made in China”?” My own personal assumptions are now more accurate about “made in china” than before I started this class. I knew, through regular talk and dialog with people I know that the work conditions over in China were bad, but after seeing just how bad I honestly understand just how bad their working conditions were. For instance, in the film we watched “Mardi Gras Made in China” the machine that ran an electrical current through the small piece of wire that was used to connect the ends of the necklace together was so hazardous!!! If you noticed their fingers, they were all scarred red and blistered, and that is AFTER many many rotations and hours at that station. I can’t even imagine how many times their fingers have been burned, seared, melted, and penetrated by a super headed piece of wire. Those conditions, as far as I know (assuming) would never happen in the US! The reason I say this is because, as Americans, we complain, if it’s not this, or that, we complain until we get our way, and we have people and representatives that listen, for the most part anyway. There will always be exception, like the other film we watched about the HP factory. That factory I would definitely not call safe, but it was much safer than the Chinese factories we saw.

Next “Who produces goods for the U.S. market and where?”  Well as we all know, a large amount of our purchased material goods come from China. These are made by Chinese workers in extremely poor conditions, but while searching for information on this, I came across a terrible article.Read here “ http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/03/28/295715854/made-in-china-but-was-it-made-in-a-prison ” A basic synopsis of this article is that not only is a large amount of our goods coming from terrible factories in China, but some of those items may even come from FORCED LABOR CAMPS in China. “Supposedly” we are working on making our consumption of these products illegal, but that battle has been fought since 1930, and apparently its still an issue with no resolution in sight. Our consumption of these forced labor goods won’t be completely abolished because of a loophole that says, according to The Us Tariff act of 1930″ prohibits the inflow of goods made with any types of forced labor, but it has a “consumptive demand” exception, which allows goods, even made by prisoners, to be imported if they are short in supply in the U.S. Efforts to plug this loophole have failed.”

Lets move on to the next point :Why do more and more U.S. companies manufacture and source products overseas, and why do U.S. consumers purchase these products?” This is quite simple actually. Profits. Every company, corporation and producer of material goods wants to make profits. Why would a company want to pay a worker 7/8/9/10  dollars an hour to make shoes for 8 hours a day, and keep them under overtime, which is time and a half, only to sell that shoe for 60 dollars. When they can have some foreign company pay their employee 2 dollars a day or less for 12/14/16 or more hours of work per day? A shoe costs that company FRACTIONS of what it would cost to produce in the US. Cheap labor is just that, cheap labor. Those factories are so hazardous and regulations are so easily skirted around they can get away with terrible pay because they know that the materialistic American society will continue to purchase their goods at exceptionally low prices. As with the “Mardi Gras Made in China” film, his company had profits that were less than 10 million per year, but that is still profit and he is only making Mardi Gras beads for gods sake…He can make profits because he can pay a factory full of people the same amount as what a handful of workers in the US would be paid. So of course he will make profits in his slavery business.

Second to last point, which is “What are the working conditions at foreign factories producing goods for the U.S. market?” Here, this page explains just how terrible their conditions are “http://www.greenfudge.org/2010/08/14/johann-hari-on-the-rise-of-china%E2%80%99s-laborers-%E2%80%93-and-how-we-keep-them-down/” and here are some accompanied quotes and images.

“Workers in China don’t just have to fight ruthless parent corporations, oppressive subcontractors and draconian labor laws. They also have our insatiable desire for newer, cheaper and more cutting edge goods to contend with.” This quote perfectly outlines the American desire for new, fancy, and cheaply made items, sad but true.

Here is a Nike Sweatshop

http://fashion.lilithezine.com/Nike-Sweatshops-in-China.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-apple-can-learn-from-how-nike-dealt-with-its-chinese-labor-scandal-2012-3

For those Apple enthusiasts

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2103798/Revealed-Inside-Apples-Chinese-sweatshop-factory-workers-paid-just-1-12-hour.html

I think those images really speak for them selves, you can clearly see just how cramped their working conditions are, you can see that there are many many MANY individuals within arms length of each other, with hardly any breathing room. And most importantly, you can not a single one is off task, they are glued to their slave work, they know they will be punished, which is usually a financial punishment in which up to a months wages or more can be taken from them at the slightest hint of disobedience.

The last point to elaborate on “Why do factory workers in foreign factories work under the current conditions?” This is also a simple question that is elaborated in any one of the links above. They can get away with these conditions because the Chinese people are abhorrently poor. They cannot afford to not work, they must slave away to exist in any form of the word. To tie in with the movie,one of the female, young factory workers had a quote that struck a chord with me to my soul. She said, in a nearly whimsical manner “Unfairness is irrelevant. I am willing to sacrifice everything for my brother” This is exactly what she is doing, she is slaving away in a factory so she can see her brother off to school, just so she can live vicariously through his success and happy life. She is willing to be, and is, unhappy with her work, but at the same time she is happy that she can give her brother the opportunity to survive and outlast their hellish life. I can’t honestly say that I have ever heard an American say anything so deep yet tragic, I can’t even think when I have said anything with respect to my own brother, I love him, but I can’t imagine a situation where I would sacrifice everything for him. I would die for him, except I would do everything within my power to survive.

I hope this wasn’t too boring a read, but I hope it was informative and maybe you learned something you didn’t know before.

Quin

 

Blog 7- DTC 375: Stock

Write a blog entry. The stock option: write an anthropogical examination of the communicative conventions of a blogging or other online social media subculture (for example, mommyblogs, right-wing politics blogs, Harry Potter fanfic blogs, model railroader discussion boards, et cetera: seek out a group that your classmates might not be familiar with), investigating who the members of the group are, what types of language they use, what types of arguments they make, how they use media, and what types of messages are acceptable or unacceptable in the group.

 

Hello There

I am going to delve into a blog I am sure most of you aren’t familiar with. This is a blog about guns, accuracy, purchases, and what not, pretty much anything one can think about with respect to guns and ammo. Lets start with the type of people that write articles in the blog. The range of authors on this blog are quite substantial. There are young authors, in their 20’s as well as authors that are in their 50’2 and older. It just depends on who you are reading that day. For instance, I chose the article “Lee Loader Review— The Cheapest Way to Start Reloading Your Own Ammo” By Max Archer. He uses very neutral language through out his article, which can be read here http://www.gunsamerica.com/blog/lee-loader-review-how-to-do-basic-reloading/. He is within the age range of 30-40, so he isn’t some rambling senior citizen droning on and on about how Obama is taking our gun rights away. But he is going into depth about the very very basics of reloading your own ammo, which I do. He uses images, as well as he has embedded a video of him actually using the product he is reviewing and exploring. On another blog, whos author is simply named “Administrator” has a running multi-part blog entry about the M1-Garand. http://www.gunsamerica.com/blog/garands-from-the-government-ii-the-guns-arrive/

He uses very different language, and in one instance, he even says “Therefore, unless one of the geezers wants to come and comment here, and explain exactly from where that comment is derived, I am going to consider it a dead or non-issue.” This was with respect to his purchase and reviews on the CMP(civilian marksmanship program) in the M1-Garand department. As you can see, his language can be harsh at times, yet he has many readers, in fact; his first article about obtaining an M1’Garand had more than 45 thousand readers on the FIRST day it was published. He may be brash, but he is highly read.

As for the readers and commentators. The average comment consists of this “Wish we could have gotten all those returns from South Korea. Almost a million guns and most have been warehoused for decades.” T. Jefferson

But of course it is on the internet, the comments, with respect to the gun community always ALWAYS travel down the political realm as well as down the realm of conspiracy. For example, as “Mike from Virginia” explaing

         “You really don’t want to know what happened to them. It would break your heart…..
But some made it out of S. Korea to the shores of Greece and Crete so they all didn’t go to waste.
but 80% of them were dumped in to the ocean when Obama decided not to sign the import authorization for them to come in to port in the USA. My nephew worked on a ship that was bringing back over 1000 of them in originally sealed post Korean war crates. They were ordered to toss the remainder of the crates over the side of the ship two days before making port in the USA. Made me sick to see the photos of them being tossed in to the sea.. Dam Obama wants to destroy everything decent in this country.
My gut tells me that this whole deal at the Sandy hook school was cooked up by the democrats to disarm American citizens. Why is it that the same week these children were shot the Social Security dept removed the right for anyone to view the national death index records database? They knew that people would want to see if any of these people were actually in fact dead. That would be the proof. Once you are declared dead a coroner have 48 hours to post the information to the Social security Administration for them to update the master death index. since this incident happened it has been closed to the public except to those paying to do extensive research on Ancestry .com. you cannot see anything newer than 1999. They say it’s to prevent identity theft. It’s all Bullsh*t.
Strange isn’t it?……”

People, well, those who own guns are usually very flagrant about their rights and their use of their guns and are brash about who can tell them what they can and cannot do with their guns. I, am of course a gun owner, I have 5 rifles my self and I am in the process of building my own Ar-15! OH GOD HE HAS AN ASSAULT RIFLE?!?!? Yes, Yes I will have an assault rifle soon, and No I wont be running around shooting up the school. Responsible gun owners aren’t these demons that popular media portrays us to be. We have legally purchased our arms and use them in a lawful manner. Just because you own a gun doesn’t mean you will commit evil acts.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the gunsamerica blog, I hope you learned something about our culture and our love of guns.

Quin

Comments from last time.

Blogs I Commented on.

Ali M: http://amm356375.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/375-blog-post-6-stock/comment-page-1/#comment-34

Jesse P: http://jessepearsondtc375.wordpress.com/2014/03/12/blog-post-6/comment-page-1/#comment-8

Blog 6-DTC 375: Stock

Hello there

                   How are you? Thats great, I am glad youre here because I would like to talk to you about college.I know that it doesn’t seem like you should worry about it now, especially since you’re only 16, but you should think about it nonetheless. Why? That is a great question son, college is there for you to learn, to run into obstacles and overcome those obstacles. College is where you discover who you are without your parents there to tell you what you should do, about your attendance, and telling you to do your homework. You have to get motivated your self, you have to make time to study, time to game, and if you’re like me, you have to make time for your job as well. Back in my day, we had a choice of colleges we could go to, even had inexpensive colleges called community colleges. Unfortunately in 2055, those were abolished when the government went into a tyrannical rule under Jorge Dubya Gwash. He said that since people could afford to go to community college with out of pocket funds, it was taking away from government funded financial aid, in which you will have to use to pay for your tuition, which is $264,000 per semester. When I went to community college I was paying a little over a thousand per semester, and when I went to University I was paying about 16 thousand per semester. Hard to imagine school for that inexpensive isn’t it? Good thing I am 93 years old and I am still working to pay for your school, your parents have 3 jobs each, and you get to work at the age of 16 so you can start to pay for your college as well. But trust me, if you don’t go to college and find a job that pays well, you’ll have to work 23 hours a day for 6 days a week in order to pay for college for your children. With a college degree you will be able to pay your financial aid in 75 years instead of over 100, where you’ll have to transfer your dues to your kids. If you think “Oh, I’ll just rather not go to college” Well Gwash has that covered, it’s a law called “No person without financial aid” Which roughly translates to, if you aren’t paying student loans you get a fine of $2000 every 4 months.  Much like the Affordable Healthcare Act of 2013. Anyway son, I really hope you understand the absolute importance of college, getting a degree, and being able to pay for your portion of Student Loans so you don’t transfer your debt to your kids. Just as a little example, I was talking to a customer when I was in a restaurant, he went to WSU in 1954, he told me he was paying about 900 dollars per semester. That is 5% or 1/17 of what I was paying per semester, now in 2064, consequently 60 years after I went to school, you’re paying about 17 times what I paid…which is $272,000, luckily you’re only paying $264,000 per semester. If that isn’t enough, here link into my brain and see this image that I BillGatesed(googled).

I hope you enjoyed this read.

Quin

 Blogs(5) I commented on:

Shannon H- http://shannonheric.wordpress.com/

Jon A- http://jonarthur1992.wordpress.com/2014/02/28/blog-post-dtc-375-e-books/comment-page-1/#comment-11

Blog 7- AMST 475: Gentrification in Silicon Valley

Hello there readers

Lets start off with some relation to the movie we watched in class about Silicon Valley and the outside town. I don’t remember what it was called sadly, and this is because we all know about Silicon Valley but what do we really know about the places around it? About the people who actually work on the ground floor of those factories and assembly lines? I can tell you I didn’t know jack about it, it never even crossed my mind because I believed that people here in this country wouldn’t be treated like slaves working stupid hours in poor conditions. Of course you hear about it, Ive heard about it, but to actually see it, to actually realize it could happen in a place like SV…it is hard to believe. When looking at the video we saw the lines were filled with people of color only, and all the people in charge were white people. interestingly enough, according to the book “ …18 percent of the managers, 17 percent of the professional employees, and 25 percent of the technicians are female”( Nelson, Hines 39). The reason this is interesting is because the factory we saw was owned by HP, whose CEO at the time was Carly Fiorina, a woman. The reason this is interesting is because we saw a couple “important” people, one was the “Manager” the green clad foreign lady, a woman, and one of the “floor managers” who was also a woman. For that particular company, in that particular factory, it would seem their women in “power” has a little higher percentage. I wonder if this is because the CEO makes sure women are more included in the hiring process, or if it was just by chance all the important people in that video, with respect to that factory were woman.

According to Fiorina her self : “Women are the most underutilized resource in the world. That’s an economic fact. Why is that? Because a woman’s first and highest ambition is to improve life for her children and future generations”(Fiorina 2013). With that being said, I would most likely believe that she personally makes sure more women are hired in her company than men are.

As for the google busses, I think this is actually ridiculous. They work at a most likely great paying job, now they don’t have to pay for transportation to and from work. They are increasing traffic as well as taking up the public transportation bus hubs. Which is for PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION not private. Because they dont have to pay for their drive to and from work everyday, they have more spending money, or they have more money to spend on rent, raising the rent there and further displacing the residents. I can understand why those residents are boycotting and blocking those busses.

With the city as artistic as it is, it is of no surprise that some artists have taken the public feeling into account. Here I have artists views on what google is doing and just how little the people can do against the giant. Artists Matteo Bittanti and Colleen Flaherty display these models only online, but what I see here is a giant google bus, fancy and updated in a lower economic neighborhood, and a singular person trying to stand against the giant. As to show that “what is just one person with a fly swatter going to do against us, were Google, were giant”.

This image really reminds me of the “tank man” in Tiananman Square. The reason I make this comparison is because like Google, those tanks are taking over everything in their path and “running over all who stand against”. Of course Google inst as viscous…well not physically, but economically they’re devastating the local economy there, gentrifying the area to only those that can afford to live in their “Googliness”.

I hope this wasn’t too boring of a read. Thanks for stopping by.

Quin

Blog 5- DTC 375: Stock, books? Ebook?

Okay, lets start at the beginning.

I actually prefer ebooks to regular books because I can have them with me at any time and anyplace. In fact 6 of the 8 required books I have this semester are ebooks because I didn’t want to wait for the book in the mail, and I dont want to have to carry 3 books with me at all times when I can just carry 6 of them with me on my phone, via amazon reader online. This meme here shows the exact opposite of how I feel about ebooks.

As for classroom tech, I believe that there has to be a delicate balance of useful technology versus distracting tech. Yes, there are people who only use their phones and laptops in class for class related things, but there are also those people who use their devices to browse Facebook, twitter, or even read anime. This only helps you get distracted and adds detriment to your learning experience. As for teacher tech. I prefer it when teachers use computers versus overheads or document cams. Overheads are a pain to use, they are bright, smear so easy, and are just a hassle for the teacher and the student. Document cams require just the right amount of light, ambient or produced to be effective. Otherwise the document gets whitewashed, its flipped upside down, or is just plain too small to read. This is why I prefer the professor to use the projector and computer set up. Each page can be zoomed in, copy, paste, edit, and a plethora of other excellent features that the other teaching methods can’t compete with.

And lastly, for a big lecture class. Ill tell you that when I first got here, after transferring from a community college I was blown away by the massive class size. It was hard to believe just how many people were sitting in one room “learning”. Of course there wasn’t mandatory attendance, and as such, I decided to forgo going to quite a few of these classes. This didn’t work out for me so well because I actually missed a test, it happened and I felt pretty crappy about it. From that point on, I have had astounding attendance. I just needed that kick in the butt to tell me that I needed to be there, to learn, to understand, and to know when the tests are.

I hope you enjoyed this rather bland post, thanks for reading.

Quin

Blogs(4) I commented on:

Susan C: http://susancinderella.wordpress.com/2014/02/16/game-theory-and-designs/comment-page-1/#comment-15

Katie Tu: http://ktuftsprofessional.wordpress.com/2014/02/18/theme-vs-mechanism/comment-page-1/#comment-3

Blog 6-AMST 475: Communication, danger, and our wants and needs.

Welcome everyone in the audience today. I just want to tell you about communication. Not the communication you might be thinking of, but the communication over the internet. The communication that someone can have with another person across the world, across oceans, foreign lands, and in multiple time zones. This communication can be achieved by various means. I can take out my phone and communicate right here, at this very moment with a friend in Oregon, Alaska, and Florida at the same exact time. I can send a group text, the interesting part about these 3 friends is that they don’t know each other, 2 of them are close friends I have actually seen in person, and 1 is a friend I have never seen. Can you guess who that person is? Correct, that would be the friend in Florida. I met him on XBox live when I used to play Battlefield often. We became good friends because we would effectively be together for many hours per week killing enemies, capturing bases, and destroying tanks. As you can imagine we eventually exchanged facebook contact and even our personal cell phone numbers. So now I don’t have to wait to play to talk to my battle buddy, I can just text him and ask him whats up, hows the weather (hot) because he’s in florida of course.

 

Now to change the topic a little. The Terranova article talks about the digital economy. Terranova says something quite interesting “In particular, the Internet is about the extraction of value out of continuous, updatable work, and it is extremely labor intensive. It is not enough to produce a good website, you need to update it continuously to maintain interest in it and fight off obsolescence”(Page 17). This is actually quite true with much of the internet I feel. In fact I just had a friend post on facebook about how he decided to head back to his Myspace to see what was up. And when he logged in and looked at his profile he told us “Man, if you haven’t seen your Myspace profiles lately, you’ll notice that shit is completely outdated!” (Rios). This made me remember back to when I had one, I realized that when I started my page, it wasnt enough to just have a page, you have to make it yours it had to reflect who you were, what you liked, and what you were all about. Of course there was the “about me” section, but that wasnt enough, you had to change the background, have custom music, font color, font, page layout, friends, images, and everything else that Myspace offers.

 

Now, to quote the The Deadly Labor Behind Our Phones, Laptops and Consumer Gadgets article by Sophia Chang “Workers typically live in factory dorms with roommates who work different shifts and speak different dialects of Chinese. Differences in schedule and language prevent workers from forming close relationships—a boon for production, since isolation makes for more focused workers.”(Chang). This is the most disgusting thing I can actually think of with relation to work. I work 4 days a week between 5-8 hour shifts because I am a server, and as you can imagine (or not) it is tough work, waiting on a customers every need, wanting their food, drinks, and checks fast so they can get in and out if they want. If you think that serving is easy, I’ll be blunt, you’re an idiot and I have no respect for you. But I digress, I can’t imagine going to work, well, living at work, and not being able to communicate with anyone at any time, not even when I am in my down off my shift. That is insane. Then they intentionally make it so people can’t communicate with the same language….that is actually horrifying. But we are all guilty of materialism, I have a Galaxy S4 and I am sure the conditions aren’t much better, and many other items made in China. it’s nearly impossible to have something nowadays without it being made in China. If you don’t believe me, look in your phone, look at the box for your silverware, your keyboard, your laptop, clothes, glasses, hats, shoes, hell, even your toothbrush.

Lastly, to tie all of this information, the Terranova article relates to my topic because it applies to my phone, I always have the latest version of the Galaxy. I love the series and I have had every Galaxy since the first Galaxy S. I enjoy the fact that they’re fast and can be very customized. I can keep in contact with my friends, family, and whom ever I feel like contacting because I am tied to my device. As for the danger, I described it above. But its not the fact that it is just my phone, but it is our clothes and shoes, socks and much of our items we use in our everyday lives are made in China. We can help the fact that we are a materialistic culture, and our materialism breeds these sweatshops. We want things fast, no faster, no we want them now. Our demands s what leads to these facilities and these harsh conditions. We intentionally turn a blind eye because we always think “well someone else will get involved, why should I?” or we think “what is one person going to do against that machine?” To bring this to a close. I want you to think about what your items, your materialism, and your want for everything faster does to those around you. Don’t freak out if your item is delivered a little late, maybe your driver just got dumped, don’t freak out if your friend doesn’t instantly reply to your text, and for the love of god don’t turn a blind eye to the world and its events. There is turmoil, there is hatred, and there is death, but there is also beauty, love, and so many other things that words cannot describe. Think about your fellow human as just that, a human, not the person who ou can get pissed at because your food took a little longer than you wanted.

Just some thoughts for you, thanks for reading, I know it was long and kind of a rant.

Quin