Bubbled Up to the Surface
I was reading an article about how Nike is getting slaughtered in the markets at the moment due to the tariffs being applied to the countries where they have their production. It is interesting, because Nike, and pretty much all of the large manufacturing companies, are pricks - and only moved their factories there to take advantage of cheap labour, including child labour. The conditions that these companies keep for their employees, is pretty terrible.
Isn't it a good thing that they economically suffer?
And while some will argue that if they pull out of these countries the people currently working there will have no income at all, which is true, is that a good enough reason to continue what is akin to slavery and child abuse? I don't think so. Perhaps if they paid their staff more in those production countries, they would be able to buy some of the products they work twelve hours a day to produce.
One of the things that I believe is quite backwards in the economy, is that while the activities of private individuals are tracked to the nth degree, public corporations are able to produce in shady ways, as well as manipulate and hide their financials in shady ways also. None of them are paying close o their full tax obligation, yet how many individuals aren't? If an individual gets caught for tax evasion, they end up in jail - while a company pays a fine. There is heavy asymmetry in the economy that favours entities that aren't human.
I think it would be interesting if there had to be financial tracking of all publicly listed companies across their entire supply chain, and it should be able to be audited publicly too. We the consumer should be able to research what we buy and be able to know exactly who and where is involved in the production. We should be able to go all the way back to wherever the start of the chain is, and see what is involved.
And it should be the same for governments.
While I don't agree with the way it is happening in the US, it is clear to me at least that it is safe to assume that a lot of the government wastage isn't just ineptitude, it is corruption. It is like those charity organisations that collect large volumes from kind people, but ninety percent of it goes to "administration costs" - while a handful of employees live in mansions and drive luxury cars.
Musks's "how'd they get so rich?" question for public servants, is very much valid.
While it would likely be uncomfortable for many, just imagine what it might look like if all financial data was transparent, and we could see exactly where all the money flows were going across businesses, and where it is exiting into pockets. I suspect that a lot of the "upstanding citizens in office", wouldn't be so keen to show their flows. Yet the same people demand to have unbridled access to ours.
We demand more from celebrities than we do from public servants.
Perhaps the rule should be that once at a certain level as a public servant, all past financial records are publicly accessible. Maybe then only the people who have nothing to hide will get into public leadership positions. If politicians are chosen on their personality rather than their ability, we should know who they are, right? Let's see who is worse, the crypto industry, or the government officials who legislate them.
Again, their is an asymmetry here, where the power for rule-making is in the hands of a few, who are also likely the most corrupt. No lobby group is coming to me to bribe me with goods and services.
You?
Transparency is an effective tool against corruption, which is why the corporations and governments are so unwilling to introduce it for themselves, but are more than willing to have it for us, the masses under their control. They want to know everything we do, all our secrets, every bit of dirty laundry, so they can use it to their advantage. Yet, have set up a system where there is no reciprocity.
I don't cry for the corporations that are getting hammered by tariffs, because they have been a negative force in the world for far too long. It is not ideal for the employees, or the contractors though, because they are just trying to make ends meet, and because of that need, they are continually taken advantage of - continually crushed to increase profits for the corporations.
Again, the system is backwards.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
There are actually might be more of that in the future in a round about way. Vechain is a blockchain and token that has been around now. The key use case is for carbon emissions, but I think it has the potential to bring some transparency to all parts of the supply chain.
The tech is available, and it would tae multiple chains, but with cross-chain interoperability I think it would work pretty well. Each company would have their own immutable chain for reporting transparency.
It is very bad to hear about that because those people working there will suffer before another job, staying at home without income is very bad
They might not get another job - unless the world changes.
That is very bad
Thank you very much for your support
Refreshing take on the situation! In the US, lefties are disclosing to anyone in listening distance just how much they have recently lost in the stock market. They do this to punctuate what they hate about the current president. I can calculate approximately how much they still have with that info, and they still have considerable assets, but all they can see is the 200k less that they have now. Honestly, it's embarrassing.
and has been through a great many administrations, Republican and Democrat alike. This is yet another distraction, the most recent in a near constant stream of distractions. Trumpers still love Trump, lefties still hate Trump, nothing there has changed one bit. Harris would have instituted price controls, Trump has instituted tariffs. Neither has ever combatted the price of goods to consumers. The Fed will continue to counterfeit money, governmental agencies will continue to squander tax payer money on things this administration does support, and inflation will continue.
I could go on here. I won't. I'm sick of how easily Americans are tricked by these deceptive acts.
It is embarrassing when the wealthy are complaining about losing theoretical value, when many people are unable to afford to eat properly.
It is the same sleight of hand replayed in different forms. A poor magician's trick, playing to a gullible audience.
And then let's talk about FATCA & CRS.
I think that there is nothing positive that will come out of these tariffs! The whole idea is based on poor understanding of economy and while this new administration is making claims of meritocracy in reality it is a team of underperformers knee deep in cronyism and nepotism.
Perhaps the merit is how well they do on their knees? ;D
Lol that is very funny and dirty 🤣
As tax is cut before our salary is paid, we are piece of cake for them. However, a company has chance to evade tax before the tax year.
Part of the scam.
He’s scattershot with that though. He recently implied that a federal judge he doesn’t like must be corrupt because he owns an expensive house but didn’t mention that the judge had spent years making a damn fine income with a large law firm and took a huge pay cut to become a federal judge.
For sure - he is not the one who should be doing it at all - but someone should, right? I have heard that it is wise to follow senators stock movements - but nore sure if it is true.
Ah, your information about Nike isn't quite right.
Nike has never had factories... or they technically do but just in the US for the air bubbles in the shoes. Nike was originally just an importer of shoes from Japan, and then eventually they moved to have their own designs made in factories owned by other companies in China and Vietnam. When the news broke in the 70s, and then again in the 90s of sweatshop conditions in those factories (that they never owned) they themselves started inspecting these factories and refused to do business with any factory that wasn't up to their standards (which included fair wages, proper aged employees, reasonable hours, etc). My understanding is that they solved this problem decades ago, but conservative media still talks about it because they make shoes for a diverse set of customers.
One thing I'm not sure about with the tariffs, is if it applies to finished products or not. If Nike ships shoes from Vietnam but assembles the labels and laces in the US, does the tariff still apply?
I think the answer to a lot of your questions is to increase funding to the IRS, FTC, SEC, etc. So many rich individuals get away with not paying tax in the US because they are too expensive for the IRS to take to court. For every $1 invested into the IRS, it makes back $5-$9 by enforcing the rich to actually pay their fair share. Obviously lots more investment is needed to enforce companies, but the ROI would be very dramatic. The US could fund so much infrastructure and services if they could force individuals and companies to pay what they are supposed to.
Charity organization spending should be scrutinized... and usually a state's attorney general would investigate any wrong doing, but Trump fired a bunch of attorney generals, so I guess crime is legal now.
Musk's DOGE cut funding against so many agencies that were investigating his companies, which also won't be able to investigate any other wrong doing... so sure he can ask about how public servants get rich, but he's literally the person making corruption so much easier. $TSLA stock is way higher than it should be, because his own Musk Foundation is buying call options to pump up the stock, one of the many, many things he was being investigated for, which now, of course, won't be investigated. He told Tucker Carlson that he was going to jail if Trump didn't get in, and this is what he was talking about.
I don't cry about corporations coping tariffs either, but all those additional costs at every step of the supply chain get passed onto the consumer, so the people living paycheck to paycheck are the ones that will suffer the most.
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I will answer in more depth later, but I'd you look into how Nike and others contract their production, while they don't have factories, they are definitely benefiting from slave and child labour.
Nike, specifically, has a huge number of safeguards in place to prevent their products and materials being associated with slave and child labour because of the stain on their past. As far as I can tell, they go above and beyond (ie, engage with 3rd party inspectors) to ensure they don't benefit because they face so much scrutiny from watchdogs and human rights groups. They literally cannot afford another controversy like they've had in the past now that they have so much more competition.
Yes, but they keep having issues. Essentially, they end up hiring firms that hire secondary firms, that hire third firms - it is a shell game. Many of the companies do it.
Ah, now we're getting to the nuance of it all.
How much money and effort should a company be required to spend in order to prove that they are ethically producing a product?
They have third parties that investigate the factory companies that make their products who are all above board and give them the green tick. That factory company hires another factory to make them cotton section of the product, the 3rd party investigates that too, and they're above board. The cotton section factory buys the cotton in bulk from another company, that cotton factory purchases the cotton from a wholesaler, that wholesaler buys cotton from individual farms and some of those farms have unfair labour practices. Is Nike responsible for every employment contract of every single part of their supply chain across various countries and continents?
If Nike's are sold at Footlocker, is Footlocker responsible instead? At what point are the countries the factories in responsible for employment practices in their countries?
In an ideal world Footlocker could trust that every single person in their supply chain is looked after properly, but what is Footlocker's financial responsibility in all this? What is Nike's responsibility?
We live in an interconnected world where products are made from pieces and materials from lots of different countries... how much investigation is good enough? It's easy to say that every part of it should be guaranteed, but I don't know how anyone can actually prove that without spending hundreds of millions of dollars on it.
I'm not defending Nike specifically, I'm just saying it's all very complicated and very difficult and nuanced... and that capitalism's need to put profit over people is responsible for this mess. The need for corporations to show growth and increasing profit quarter over quarter caused all of this.
It's very possible that every single product in my house has an element of unfair labour practices, and I hate that, I know its a huge problem in the sugar industry as well as coffee and chocolate, and I would be shocked if every single part of my laptop that I'm typing this on was ethically provided. Where is the line between it being specifically a Nike problem versus an actual global problem?
Companies like Nike move factories for cheap labor, then cry when tariffs hit. They should start with treating workers right. Sadly the business owners seek profit over well being of their employees and are probably looking forward to the day they get robots for even cheaper labor
Unfortunately, this is not what economic incentives support. It isn't about making better people, it is about making better profit.
that's true, very true
Thank goodness for decentralized blockchain being a neutral arbitor of transparent transactions for finance and other smart contracts! But even then, when we see things like corrupt memecoins, celebrity rug pulls, and tracable insider accounts before crypto PR statement, bad actors are still everywhere in the system. Not to mention scam, phishes, and wallet draining links lurkingin plain sight. Still so much more to do!
I hold Nike in high esteem but why would a reputable company like that be involved in such kind of ma our. And I want to believe that this is an open secret, is there no agency or laws to put these type of things in check….comapnies like that should be prosecuted