undefined | Better HN

0 pointsekianjo3y ago0 comments

> everyone here is choosing cheaper Chinese goods so we're all complicit too.

its not like we have much choice anymore as consumers. There's hardly anything made elsewhere.

0 comments

It was the consumer's choice on what to buy and where to buy it from. But demand for low prices, regardless of where and how things are manufactured (overseas and in sweatshops) and lack of demand for accountability in the 1980s and 1990s when manufacturers shipped jobs and work overseas that resulted in where we are. Consumers always have choice, we've just made self-serving short-term choices.

mhoad3y ago

I don’t know exactly where the line is when it comes to who’s responsibility it is about “products made in China” but I would make the argument that trying to push decisions focused around things like national security, geopolitics, macroeconomics etc down to the consumer level is basically a bullshit move.

Regular people don’t have the right level of knowledge to make those decisions and it’s not realistic to expect that of them. I would much rather talk about the party who not only had the right level of information but was also the one who actively made the decisions that lead to this situation to begin with.

At the end of the day Apple have a lot more to answer for than regular consumers.

ekianjoOP3y ago

> It was the consumer's choice on what to buy and where to buy it from

I'm sorry, can you remind me when companies offered the same product made outside of China and in China, as an alternative choice? The companies decided to go offshore, not the consumers.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse