[lug] One laptop per child

[dio2002 at indra.com]

>> There's a very real chance that in order to build these cheap laptops,
>> they're enslaving a whole new group of people to build them, while
>> attempting to help others out of poverty.  Just moving the pain around.
>
> For this statement to make sense, you would be implicitly assuming
> that people working for 3rd-world wages had a better alternative.
> Half the world lives on less than $2/day.  On the contrary, increasing
> the demand for products that are made in 3rd world manufacturing
> plants is a side benefit of this program, regardless of how successful
> it is in its stated aim.

that's a very pro business / pro developed world position.  you are
assuming that those people are better off.  he's assuming they are not. 
both sides may be equally valid.

a scenario (lot of what ifs):

is that worker actually better off because he's making a wage?  he used to
live on a farm with access to clean water and lived off of subsistence. 
people lived like that for thousands of years and some still do.  now he
works in a factory, probably many more hours than he did in a field.  he's
got no access to sunlight or fresh air.  terrible working conditions. 
he's polluting his rivers, his air, his environment.  his health suffers.
he needs to go to a doctor more which costs more. he now has bills.  he
now starts buying crap. is his *quality* of life really any better?

(OK i'm sure there are some success stories out there as well - i'm not
putting those down and i'm not saying everything is as decribed above -
but i'm sure there are cases like that too).

there are kids in india that wade in toxic chemical pools every day so
that one can have a colorful tshirt.  is that progress?  does one even
know where one's tshirt comes from or what somebody is giving up so that
one can have that tshirt?

Follow the chain of wages back to your pocket and it isn't always as rosey
as it's made to be.

I think the simplest way to look at it to give you a different
*perspective*  is to look at it in absolute versus relative terms.

It's easier to justify something as being beneficial in relative terms. 
"oh that guy over there is better off than he was".  however, that's even
a stretch because you have no idea what "was" was like. and you're not
going to have to live that life.

However, if you look at it in absolute terms, applying the highest
standard to all, one's perspective often changes.

If you compared "how is that guy over there doing relative to ME", you say
that he's doing pretty darned awful (and maybe through a longer chain of
events as a result of me).

Is that OK?  that a guy is slaving away in deplorable conditions?  he's
doing relatively better (???) than he was but he's still 100x worse off
than you.  Why is that OK?

Another way of looking at this is:

Would you actually be willing to swap jobs with the other person?

If you can't answer yes, then that other guy really isn't better off is he
?  Because you wouldn't trade places with him for a thousand years...

Phrasing it like that, raises the consciousness level.  And it raises your
personal investment in your opinion on the matter and maybe forces you to
think about how i might be part of the problem.

I know i'm painting a high in the pie sky of looking at this.  Very
idealistic which sometimes contradicts the reality of what actually is.
It's not an easy problem and there isn't an easy solution.  I'm not really
offering one.  Cause i don't have one.  And as i've said earlier, there
are probably both good and bad cases of these third world worker
arrangements.

Ultimately, in a perfect world the only fair way to judge everybody would
be on a single set of criteria about what "better off" means.  When you do
that however, the world looks like a pretty dire place because it's pretty
unequal.