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Comment by Skunkleton | Hacker News Reader

That is much easier to do when there is real competition and transparency. Unfortunately my only high speed ISP is Comcast and I had no idea that parts of my phone were made by slaves until just recently. Until business has less power, we cannot instill morals in a meaningful way.

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I'm sitting here on my couch looking around my living room, and it occurs to me that a significant % of my belongings could have been made under labor conditions illegal within the US. It's a bit chilling to consider that.

this is tricky. Most of those workers don't have better options. Work in conditions that are illegal, or for much less pay elsewhere, and probably still illegal. Safety standards are not as high, but they get better as the companies learn from us. (Even at the least flattering look, cleaning up body parts and training a replacement takes time. Most people are better than that )

But I still avoid slave labor. The workers need to be free to leave for a better option if there is one.

I guess my point about looking around my living room was that I wouldn't know where to begin if I wanted to avoid slave labor.

I mean, I think it's safe to assume that Apple isn't the Big Bad here in terms of overseas labor practices: It seems highly likely that a very large % of technological devices around me involved either 1) child labor 2) some form of forced labor 3) unsafe labor conditions 4) starvation wages 5) 14 hour workdays 7 days a week

It goes far beyond electronics too: I just grabbed one of my kid's favorite little plush puppy: made in China. It seems reasonable to doubt the quality of the work conditions in the factory it came from, but I just don't know.

I think about something like "Organic Food" and there are at least labelling requirements for things like that. People do, with some effort, manage to eat completely organic, even if there are some problems with labelling consistency.

There's nothing equivalent for "no kid/slave labor/fair wages" etc. You could buy only things made in the US, or other countries with fair labor practices, but the supply chains for components & materials to build those things are will be opaque & frequently have roots into the labor practices you want to avoid.

I'm not saying you shouldn't try to avoid products like that: If possible for a given product? Sure, go for it. But otherwise I'm saying that is seems like a virtually impossible task to accomplish

I used to think this way, but I have since realized that it is a trap. Modern American business benefits from cheap foreign labor. This is almost exclusively labor done in conditions that no American worker would accept, for pay that would be illegally low. The transitional argument in favor of this arrangement is dishonest. It ignores the fact that many of our suppliers countries controlling entities are benefiting hugely from this exploitative arrangement, and are therefore unwilling to move towards a more just society.

I don't know the specifics but I feel like that is not the result of a free market. I believe the government gave Comcast money to build out networks they own? In a free market you'd accomplish that by starting public collectives that do that build out, and then have the property owned in public trust. User/owners are unlikely to overcharge themselves for services.

There is no free market and there can't be - it's a theoretical ideal whose actual implementation is impossible, and we can only get so close to it without starting to incur extreme humanitarian costs. But since we can speculate about the outcome of a truly free market, here's my view:

In a free market, the first entrepreneur to get a loan from the bank to build up some of the infrastructure would beat all the public collectives - they could just build up, sell at a loss until the local collective gives up, and jack up prices as most users switch to their offering. Rinse and repeat, and with every iteration it only gets easier - because wealth and power compound, much like interest in the bank.

A free market structurally favors larger companies. Unlike what some people say, government intervention is neither necessary nor sufficient to enable monopolies - all that's required is the positive feedback loop on capital. The more you have, the easier it is to get more.

Monopolies form because there is no upper bound to how big a company can grow. Eventually it will be as big enough to serve the entire market.

In a free market you can still have the government as a market participant of last resort. You don't have to mess with the market itself. If only one company is needed to serve the entire market there is no reason for the government to not own a large share in it and steer it. The threat of government control should be a good incentive for companies to not grow too large relative to their competitors.

What you suggested is definitively a good idea and closer to the spirit of the free market.

But lets take a closer look at the Comcast subsidy. Why is that not a solution based on the free market? It's because there is no reason for Comcast to actually provide the value it promised. It's a monopoly and if there must be a monopoly then it should be in control of the government. Did the government become an investor in Comcast and receive voting shares to steer the company on the right path? No? You just donated money to the owners of that business. Don't expect anything in return.

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