I want to read the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, maybe for the book club, but I doubt I can convince others to be stoked about it.
posted by geoff on 12/22/2005 11:30:00 AM
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puck's epic freakouts: "I kept shaking my head in amazement. They're 'just' farmers, I remember. Not self-proclaimed guerrila artist vanguards, public relations consultants, military strategists, nor acclaimed musicians. 'Just ordinary people.' It sure raises the bar for the rest of us on what it means to be 'ordinary people.'"
posted by geoff on 12/18/2005 03:50:19 PM
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Dreams of Distant Factories. Rachel Louise Snyder reports on the struggle to save the Cambodian economy. Right now, Cambodia is competing with other nations for the business of big clothing companies all over the world, buyers like the Gap, Nike, Adidas. But they've vowed to follow fair labor practices, which, while eliminating sweatshops for workers, also makes their costs higher. Other countries end up with the contracts – and the profits. So an official Cambodian committee sets out on a mission to convince the U.S. Congress to give them a special trade agreement, before time runs out. With additional reporting by Producer Lisa Pollack.
This is the saddest thing that I've heard in a long, long time. When I want to see globalization, trade agreements, governments, workers in developing nations, trade unions, and workers in America in stark terms of heros and villains. This story makes me realize the reality of the world that engulfs all of these people - that its complicated. Do more stringent human rights standards hurt workers in developing nations? Does organized labor? How do we navigate the murkiness between rhethoric and reality? Intentions and actions? One thing that made me think about the disparity between the developing world and my world is the part where the cambodian factory representative talks about how long workers' wages can sustain them. As work dissappears, a Cambodian worker can survive on saved wages for less than 7 days, while the perception of the Cambodians is that American workers can survive for a few weeks. The plight of working people is a hard one everywhere, but I think that this perception of the disparity is still very true and I don't know how to respond to it.
posted by geoff on 12/18/2005 01:33:12 PM
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