This is why I am never ever going on a cruise ship (or any resort in Mexico, Dominican etc). Knowing that the guy serving you is basically a slave working for pennies while you are supposed to enjoy your vacation and relax- I couldn't, no thank you.
What surprises me to this day is how little it costs to buy American congress. 1,000,000$ lobbying costs? That's less than a lot of houses in SF or NYC.
Shouldn't it cost more to buy American congress decisions? Like 50 - 100 million USD price range? 1 billion perhaps? Why American politicians are so cheap? Raising lobbying prices would seem a logical conclusion Here :)
You realize that people work on cruise ships and in sweat shops because that is literally the best opportunity they have? Boycotting their meager employment will hardly make things better for them.
Until we have enough skilled workers in the world where we are regularly pumping out robots that can perform menial labour there will always be a need for this type of worker. We live in a time where hyper robot production is not happening, we also live in a time where actually there is a absolutely horrendously massive number of these types of workers.
What do you want to do about it? You want to put them all out of jobs so that companies are forced to spend more money developing robots? What? What is that going to solve? You act like people would rather not work. That's probably true but I hope you have a backup plan for them.
The "horrendously massive number of these types of workers" is the result of a violent imposition of a Capitalist ideology that masquerades as some inevitable, invisible, and inviolable logic. Robots and AI deployed by an oligarch class are just the newest incarnation of a truncheon waved in the face of the engineers who enable them. Better the poor be beaten with it than you.
I say we change the trajectory of the future instead of embracing a nightmare of our own invention as an inevitability.
Oh so this fatuous teleology extends back throughout all human time and history, now? All of history culminates in Filipinos being exploited by cruise lines because cave men? That's quite an interesting take on Hegel.
Alternatively, you could simply vote with your wallet and not increase demand for exploitative industries.
The world is rife with stories of menial workers who were lured to international job roles that turned out to be lies. One common one is subcontinental workers lured to the gulf states to work on construction, and when they arrive they have their passports confiscated and a treated like slaves. Another common one is southeast Asian women lured to first-world countries and similarly tricked, but into sex slavery. These are the worst-case scenarios, but there's plenty of versions without the idea of 'slavery' - the international 'maid' industry, for example. A lot of south east Asians go to other countries and become maids, where they are frequently abused - and it's hard to get home when you haven't been paid since you arrived, may not have your passport, may be physically isolated, and don't speak the local language.
Ah, but no, "it's a job and someone's doing it, so clearly they were fully informed before they went in and no-one is exerting undue leverage over them"...
Those stories involve immigration. Cruise ship workers don't do that. They will the world and return home to tell all their friends about the experience.
I like going to touristy resorts in Mexico. I just tip generously and make sure it goes right in their hand. You can tell from the reaction that it's making a meaningful impact, perhaps more so than boycotting the trip.
I love cruises, I think you're missing out on some wonderful vacation memories!
I bet you very much could relax, considering there's almost no way you have problem typing on your computer made by "slave" labor, while wearing your "slave" labor generated clothing, eating your "slave" labor trafficked food, etc.
Some very poor people live their lives because you bought the stuff in the room you're in now, there are no two ways around that.
>This is why I am never ever going on a cruise ship [...] Knowing that the guy serving you is basically a slave
I'm not doubting your sincerity and principles but I'd like to go beyond this particular injustice of cruise workers and understand how consumers reconcile all the "slave" inputs for the other products they buy.
In the USA, many fruits and veggies are collected by cheap labor from Mexico.[1] In UK, the analogous group is Africans. Those strawberries in the supermarket are not collected by white middle-class teenagers working the field as a fun summer job. It's back-breaking work with terrible pay. Similar situation for many foods like coffee beans, beef/poultry/pork processing.
Or the shoes for your kid to run or play soccer in. Made by sweatshops (many staffed with children) in Asia.
Or how about smartphones?[2] This includes kids mining for minerals so we can have iPhones.[3]
Yes, some of these happen because many consumers are oblivious to how products are made. (You mean the strawberries don't come from a magical strawberry fairy?!?)
Or maybe why we tolerate many of these scenarios is "The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics"[4] which has been discussed by HN before. If I don't physically have to touch or lay my eyes on that child labor in Africa, my iPhone is fine.
What would a lifestyle that avoided all use of "tainted" products used look like? (No iPhone, no cheap produce from the supermarket, no affordable shoes or clothing. etc.)
I've not seen a really good essay discussing all the inconsistencies of ethics applied above and advising us how to live guilt free without retreating to a remote monastery and minimizing oneself to an ascetic life like a monk. Refusing cruise ships is easy -- a lot of HN readers don't like them in the first place. Giving up smartphones is hard. Relevant to this moment, the ability to type up comments on HN means I'm taking advantage of the global supply of "slave labor" around the world. There's no way I could have the luxury to do that if I had to harvest my own strawberries or pay a white person $20/hour to do it for me.
It's always possible to make arguments like these, and their appeal is that they're impossible to refute. It's not evident that the conditions of the Filipino cruise ship worker are worse than the Foxconn worker, the strawberry picker or the factory worker in Vietnam.
However one should never turn moral consistency into a prerequisite for action - otherwise we get paralysis and inaction and nothing gets done at all. CP is perfectly able to reconcile voting with his or her feet on this and accepting that in other areas he or she is tacitly accepting slavery.
>It's not evident that the conditions of the Filipino cruise ship worker are worse than the Foxconn worker,
That may be true but it's not relevant to my comment. I was focusing on the rationale given ("knowing the guy is a slave") and not the severity.
>However one should never turn moral consistency into a prerequisite for action
I'm also not advocating or justifying continuation of any economic evils just because one cannot have perfection of morals. Your last sentence finally gets what I wanted to discuss: "CP is perfectly able to reconcile [...] tacitly accepting slavery."
Yes, obviously millions of people _do_ reconcile the inconsistencies that but it would still be interesting to dissect how people really think.
If one is to loudly and publicly say that "I won't buy X because of slavery" but there are lots of other instances where "slavery didn't stop me from enjoying Y", doesn't that mean the more complete moral rationale would actually be:
- "I won't by X because of economic slavery -- unless my desire for X is more important than the slavery."
Doesn't the extra conditional clause at the end makes the public morality stance somewhat empty?
Being a hypocrite on these issues is basicly unavoidable in the modern world, but the critical point here is that does not make you wrong, nor is it a refutation that such things are bad and should be changed.
Its just an easy trite dismissal to avoid examining the situation.
I wasn't dismissing the Filipino worker. I was trying to expand the discussion to other areas similar to the cruise worker. People may be unaware how many other workers in other industries the "slavery" criteria applies to. Or they are aware and don't care. I haven't taken a survey and don't know.
These people usually choose these jobs because they're the best option available. I'd rather lower my lifestyle, send as much as I can towards development NGOs, and vote for candidates trying to build mutually beneficial trade agreements, rather than using our strong economic position to force unfavorable rules unto developing countries.
I know that this is not limited to the cruise ship industry and I do "vote with my dollar". Just as with avoiding cruise ships and resorts of this type I avoid cheap manufactured products coming from countries with questionable labor laws. It is hard to completely avoid this in our everyday life but I do as much as I can. I'm being mindful about it unlike some people who completely ignore these issues.
Food, clothes, energy ... The human slavery did not stop with the abolition almost 200 years ago.
Everything is connected, and you cannot hold yourself responsible for every perceived injustice in the world. You'd need to go full Amish to do that even semi-seriously.
Filipinos who work these jobs are better off with them, not without. That's what counts imo.
What surprises me to this day is how little it costs to buy American congress. 1,000,000$ lobbying costs? That's less than a lot of houses in SF or NYC.
Shouldn't it cost more to buy American congress decisions? Like 50 - 100 million USD price range? 1 billion perhaps? Why American politicians are so cheap? Raising lobbying prices would seem a logical conclusion Here :)