Strange article for the normally Libertarian crowd here.
Why would a worker work at one of these farms? Because it's better, or they think it's better, than their best alternative. The same reason that many Chinese workers work at factories now instead of farms.
Before you think I'm an asshole, I am very much looking forward to the time when everyone has the standard of living that we enjoy in "the West", but you don't get there by charity or boycotts.
The main problem is that they probably get lied to, so think it's better than their best alternative, when it's not.
What can HN readers do about that? Off the top of my head, you could contact the reporter, and make a website (in Spanish) with the good farms, and the bad ones, so at least a few farmers could avoid the bad ones. Or let the farmers post reviews and ratings. Yelp for Mexican farms. Support cheap internet in Mexico. Support the Mexican equivalent of the ACLU.
It is not crazy to want your money to go to companies that treat their employees humanely. This article literally describes instances of slave labor: farmers receiving just barely the necessities of survival and forcefully detained in work camps where food is witheld from anyone who chooses to work. To argue that the best solution is to create a more perfect market is bullshit. These practices are wrong, immoral, criminal and need to be forcefully stopped by the Mexican government. And when the government is ineffective, American consumers need to demand that companies actively ensure that they are not part of the problem.
These people go hungry day to day, and your solution is Yelp for Mexican farms? These people don't have internet connected devices, and if they did they wouldn't have internet. They don't have running water! The article discusses the uselessness of the courts for redressing these problems. A Mexican ACLU is a non-starter when Mexico's courts are disfunctional.
Strange article for a Libertarian crowd? Because Libertarians like to pretend everything in the world is rainbows and butterflies? Bullshit. This article is entirely descriptive. Nowhere does it prescribe any particular solution. That is left as an exercise for the reader. Unless being Libertarian means you don't give a rat's ass about human suffering, there is no reason Libertarians wouldn't be disheartened by this story.
To some extent, you can choose not to spend your money at companies that are known to exploit their workers. You can buy USA produce, which is produced under better conditions. Mexican leadership can put the country in order to win back the American customer.
>You can buy USA produce, which is produced under better conditions.
Just because it's produced in USA doesn't mean it has better conditions. As an example: Think of an illegal immigrant, they'll get paid lower than minimum wage since the patron is having the risk of a fine or something, plus they don't speak the language or simply don't know their rights.
To some this is still better than back at home, and some who do it to send money back home still get to send more than if they lived in their country, through exchange rates.
There was a documentary thing about this, someone who got paid cents for each bucket full of tomatoes they picked. I can't find it right now.
What can HN readers do about that? Off the top of my head, you could contact the reporter, and make a website (in Spanish) with the good farms, and the bad ones, so at least a few farmers could avoid the bad ones. Or let the farmers post reviews and ratings.
Excellent strategy. BTW there's a name for the practice of avoiding produce from farms with consistently bad ratings. It's called "boycotting."
Mexico can get there if it chooses to. If it enacted structural reforms, cleaned up its corruption, and set economic growth targets, it could get to 70-80% of US gdp by 2030.
The problem is with Mexican government which is rotten and self serving.
This injustice is not only happening in Mexico and not only on farms.
The same stories exist in every 'non-western' country which produces stuff for the western world.
Farms, clothing, mining, electronics...
Stuff that we throw away once we get bored of it. There's nothing particularly special about us in the western world, our only merit is having been born here.
And all this is because we've created and maintain a culture of hedonistic pleasure seeking on a massive scale. We've made 'luxury' the primary object of desire in our society, the path to happiness (it's not, but that's a different story).
A 'consumer' is a nice word for 'a person transforming natural resources into garbage'.
That's why those people are living through hardship - so we can take the resources and turn them into garbage, while obtaining some amount of pleasure (or comfort) in the process.
A person is 'successful' if he can have access to the most exclusive resources. To be successful, you have to be thinking positively, aka. learn to ignore the injustice and destruction that's happening in the world.
I know this is very unpopular, I usually get downvoted fast for talking about this, but it's the truth.
Our strive for 'success' creates major suffering around the world and we've pretty much fucked up the planet in the process.
So what should we do about it ? There's very little that can be done, really, it's the consequence of what we call 'human nature'. The only path is a radical change in our philosophy of life, in which we think as 'we' instead of 'I', some variation of the Open Source philosophy for every aspect of the economy, but I don't see that happening any time soon.
And time is a resource that this planet doesn't have too much of.
If all Westerners were exterminated these farmers lives would likely be worse. Leftist claptrap is great for self loathing. I am sorry your parents tried to make a better life for you and made you complicit in the oppression.
> If all Westerners were exterminated these farmers lives would likely be worse.
Good theory. The fact is that their lives are like they are right now and it's as bad as it can be.
With supreme arrogance we think that by 'offering' those people slave jobs, we're somehow saving them from certain death.
Has it occurred to you that these people could harvest all that food for themselves ? They have to work in those farms only because corporations own all the land and they have no other choice ?
> I am sorry your parents tried to make a better life for you and made you complicit in the oppression.
They tried, doesn't mean they succeeded. Yes, we have more possibilities to 'enjoy life' than ever, but we've destroyed the planet in the process. And this will have dire consequences on everyone. Especially on our children and grandchildren.
Global war and famine is not far away and people feel that.
And that's neither leftist or rightist, just survival instinct.
Bullshit. Human suffering has never been less than it is now. This is the best time to be alive and more so in the future. We will walk on Mars, cure diseases and you will be miserable for no good reason. Why do people wish for doom facts be damned?
> Human suffering has never been less than it is now. This is the best time to be alive and more so in the future.
Hold your horses, my friend. 80% of the world's population lives on less than $10/day. Of those, 3 billion live on less that $2.5 per day. Go tell them that.
In the last 50 years or so virtually all the planet's ecosystems have been disrupted, polluted or destroyed entirely. Most depletion graphs look like hockey sticks, that is geometric progression with very short doubling times and still accelerating.
Storms, hurricanes, flooding and droughts have become daily news, not 'freak' events like they used to be.
I won't even touch on the global financial system and what a hack that is.
Being in denial is convenient, but it doesn't stop the processes set in motion.
And if we're talking about 'never ever', then it's worth mentioning that humanity has never ever had as many weapons, including nuclear, as it has now. Not even 1% of the destructive power that awaits to be unleashed. And humanity has never ever stopped waging war.
I'm happy that 'we' will walk on Mars, but that doesn't solve any of our current issues. Maybe the offsprings of the very few who will travel to the distant, cold desert which is Mars will be able to turn it into a paradise, similar to... Earth, who knows.
However, the way things are going, it seems we will turn Earth into Mars much sooner than vice-versa.
As a parent, I really hope I'm wrong and you're right, because I want my children to live a happy life and not have to deal with the consequences of our ignorant and wasteful lifestyle.
You really have to be willfully ignorant to not notice that it mathematically impossible to deliver food at the prices we pay while paying a decent wage.
The fruit I and friends picked and packed during a gap year in New Zealand for minimum wage (at that time around 6€) are sold here in Europe for 2€/kg. (And the place basically gave us a free place to live and free access to the fields for food.) It might not have been the most amazing job ever, but it was ok enough.
For a small and non-poor economy like New Zealand and Australia I find it a good compromise to take the adventure-minded youths of rich countries and have them work a few months of their lives, since there is no shortage of those and less people do the job all their lives or try to raise a family on it.
It's also interesting to see there was labour travel of poorer countries such as Chile and China. A few people came over, basically to have an opportunity to see the world (most surplus of earning was eaten by higher costs and travel), and they didn't even know English. I still admire them.
TL;DR: If you buy New Zealand fruit - most has been picked by some priviledged kid from a rich country (for fun and acceptable pay).
To support your point, the Netherlands is the world's second largest exporter of agricultural produce [1], and, to draw a direct parallel with the article under discussion, the worlds largest exporter of tomatoes [2].
There is no way that agricultural workers in the Netherlands are treated as badly as those described in the OP.
We (Americans and Canadians) used to pay a much higher part of our income towards food than we are now. We would still eat if prices were higher and workers were paid fairly.
The problem is "fair" is hard to measure, but "cheapest" is very easy. Trying to determine what is "fairest" for all of the thousands of products we buy every year is impossible
We can demand that suppliers respect the labour laws along the whole production chain. That would go a long way. And when that's not enough, we can write stronger labour laws, and enforce them too.
Most of the population in Mexico earn about 750 pesos weekly at Maquilas, making car parts and clothes (about 50 dollars) If you're lucky you can earn about 950.
Earning your entire monthly cost of living in a single week, and earning 1/4th of your apartment's monthly rent in a week, isn't uncommon in the US. They get a roommate.
My point is that there are terrible conditions in Mexico, and we should be careful to focus on the ones that are true, lest people start to believe that there isn't really a problem.
Cost of living is quite uniform in the world. Instead of getting a roommate, they get a crappy small room, maybe running water, maybe not that many rats but probably not.
Well, considering that drug cartels capture immigrants for use as mules and drug cultivation without pay and they execute them at the end. They live like angels.
3. They have a local store for buying goods with credit
4. They pay the total at the end of the project.
Why?
Well, first of all, imagine they dont offer them housing, and housing is on their shoulders. They are going to live like pigs. Second, If they close the local store, they are going to travel great distances in order to buy soap or anything (most people cant do that, they dont have cars), is similar to the case in the US where the only store (a walmart) in town is 30 miles from a guys house. They end up buying crap food because they can only afford a trip per month. Why is it good they dont pay them? Most Indios cant stay sober. Is a hard truth, but once they take some money, they are going for whores and alcohol. I've seen that a lot of times, and well, why at the end of the season they dont have any money left (after they clear the account at the store), because sadly they keep buying fries, candies and crap. It's not a coincidence Mexico is the fatest country in the world. I've employees earning 950 pesos weekly who spend every day 15 pesos in a coke, 9 pesos in chips and a couple more pesos in a candy bar. You make the sum, and they spend more than 10% of their salary on candies, chips and coke.
This is where the US should be sending drones out to liberate the populace. Really gives the lie to "Western values" and America as "leader of the free world".
This is American Empire.
Given the track record the USA has with liberating people (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libia) I'd say thanks but no thanks.
From my point of view it doesn't really look that the USA is trying to liberate anybody. Just an empire looking out for its interests and masquerading it as something benevolent to fool its own population while at the same time totally screwing the people it is trying to liberate and leaving them worse off.
Why would a worker work at one of these farms? Because it's better, or they think it's better, than their best alternative. The same reason that many Chinese workers work at factories now instead of farms.
As Krugman would say "Bad jobs at bad wages are better than no jobs at all". http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/19...
Before you think I'm an asshole, I am very much looking forward to the time when everyone has the standard of living that we enjoy in "the West", but you don't get there by charity or boycotts.
The main problem is that they probably get lied to, so think it's better than their best alternative, when it's not.
What can HN readers do about that? Off the top of my head, you could contact the reporter, and make a website (in Spanish) with the good farms, and the bad ones, so at least a few farmers could avoid the bad ones. Or let the farmers post reviews and ratings. Yelp for Mexican farms. Support cheap internet in Mexico. Support the Mexican equivalent of the ACLU.
Better information is the answer.