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0 pointsvmarsy12y ago0 comments

> I don't think that's necessary nor ethically justified

Let's say there was a fictional country that was the exact opposite of your country : Some kind of dictatorship, with censorship everywhere, people enslaved , etc.

Of course you would not buy a laptop from them, you don't want to give more money/power to this awful country.

Now, if you consider 1 country to be the best, with a score of 100, and that worst country to have a score of 0.

Every other country would have a score between 0 and 100.

Depending on people views about where this country fits , some will be more supporting than other : They would be OK to pay 20% more for the same laptop to a country with a score of 95 instead of 80.

The analogy with the coffee shop of JonFish85 would be : you know your brother is kind with his employees and give them good salaries, whereas the other coffee shop's owner harass his employees and pay them badly. But in both coffee shops , the product is the same, with the same price.

>Ironically, the only way those poor countries will have labour/environment standards, human rights and civil liberties is throug economic growth. If you're poor, you can't afford workplace safety.

Not really, if some company has twice more money, they would just hire more low-cost employees. To have a better workplace safety, either the employees must act, or citizens of that country ( including the employees ) assuming the country is a good democracy. If none of them can, other country can help solve the problem by boycotting products or enforcing regulations.

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3 comments · 2 top-level

Hinrik12y ago· 1 in thread

My country of birth is small enough that practically none of the nontrivial products I want to buy or consume are made locally, so hearing about this sort of preference (e.g. for "made in $my_country" products) makes me think. Since I can't fall back on a no-brainer nationalist preference on a daily basis (except for a few locally grown vegetables) like the citizens of a country as large as the United States, what should I prefer, if anything?

>Of course you would not buy a laptop from them, you don't want to give more money/power to this awful country.

The approach you describe entails rating countries of manufacture based on labour/environmental/civil standards. So, without more detailed knowledge of the factories in question, an American who follows this approach should prefer a product made in (say) Germany or Sweden, rather than one made in the USA, since it could be argued that the former countries treat their workers better, and take better care of their environment.

I think a reasonable proviso to this policy might be to source high-volume/frequency items locally (e.g. produce) when possible to reduce pollution from transportation (or any other wasteful overhead), assuming almost everything else is equal. Which also means that if this hypothetical American resident is close to a land border, s/he might want to buy something from Canada or Mexico rather than a U.S. state at the other end of the country.

mpyne12y ago

> what should I prefer, if anything?

Whatever you want. That's the point.

People on HN are talking about boycotting U.S. cloud-based services due to the NSA, which is a logical extension of this principle of supporting people and business who you perceive to be "closer" to you.

zipppy12y ago

The wealthier a country becomes, the better standards will become. In short (understatement), because there are a finite number of people in the country (you cannot hire an infinite number of "low-cost employees").

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