Feel free.



This entirely depends on how you define standard of living. By almost any definition you use, your lie is correct.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfs

If I have to provide anything else, I'm writing you off as delusional.



Life expectancy? Seriously? LOL. It must be nice to live in a fantasy world.

For fuck's sake, Korea is not a third-world country. They can get a different job if they want to.

There are people in all nations who can't move up and down the latter as some of us can. South Korea definitely isn't a third world country, and the amount of exploitation probably isn't as bad as in other nations. Perhaps it does begin and end in close proximity to shitty hours and some stodgy working conditions, although probably not.

I guess if you are from middle America or more affluent areas you wouldn't understand.

This happens with most shit we buy, it's horrible but nfortunately we have to..

People suffer for our lifestyles in the developed world.

I am guessing that is a joke to point out the equally absurd assumption that all South Koreans have high economic mobility?

More or less, yes.

I agree with you that life is hard, thus humans will always exploit each other in order to fulfill the hard work that needs to be done. I just don't see this exploitation as a fatality, since human instincts can be easily controlled by supra-individual entities. Globalization is not a fatality and a natural process, it results from a political choice made by governments.




Please do not confuse technological progress and life comfort. Technological progress in post-modern way of life has also induced negative factors (stress, anxiety, shame, loneliness...) that were minor in previous times. Besides, comfort is always relative to a way of life. If I'm used to sleeping in a very comfortable bed everyday, the habit tends to kill comfort.




I don't think that serfs were more exploited by their lords in the Middle Ages than employees by their bosses today. Do you? If yes, please try to explain why.
From my point of view, serfs had to give most of their crop to their lord, and keep enough for their own living. Today the situation is quite the same, but the big difference is that a company can get rid of its employees at any time, whereas the serfs belonged to the same lord in their whole lifetime.




I know life expectancy has been rising until the 2000's, but I think that it's now in decline because of a certain number of factors: new epidemics like AIDS, decreasing quality of food produced by the agro-industry, climate change, frequent natural disasters... And I think humanity will have to face major problems in the years to come. Expect some wars, or serious events that will drastically reduce the globe's population.

I hate talking to leftists. It's like that lady in the Simpsons screaming "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!"

What does this have to do with anything? It doesn't even address my 'capitalist propaganda' much less refute it. You assert that humans will always exploit each other, and in the next sentence, say it isn't a fatality (assuming that you mean an inevitability). That is a direct contradiction. You then assert that globalization is not inevitable nor a natural process -- except it is. As people reproduce and populations grow, these populations will spread out. Eventually, what were once distinct populations, cultures, and economies will meet, intermarry, and blend.



I agree with your assertions. Technological progress does not necessarily improve standard of living (though in the majority of cases, this is true). Comfort, happiness, pain, and suffering are all relative concepts to what we are accustomed to. That is why it is important to compare absolute or numeric measures of standard of living, and that is what I meant by a definition of standard of living. Infant mortality? Life expectancy? GDP per capita? Starvation rate? Poverty rate? Development improves standard of living in each of these.

It is true that a developed nation has the 'Angsty Teenager' problem -- Living in the lap of luxury, with free access to food, water, air conditioning, education, and entertainment, a suburban teenager will get pissy and depressed, despite having a pretty good life. This is explained pretty well by Maslow's hierarchy of needs:



The base of his pyramid is taken care of, leaving him to deal with the problems on top. These problems are difficult -- they require thought, reflection, insight, and wisdom. Things a teenager typically doesn't possess much of. A person living in a less developed world will spend 100% of their time working on the base of the pyramid, and will not have time or energy to spare for the higher parts.



From my point of view, serfs were owned by their boss as property and employees are not. Right now, my manager is telling me what to do. If I don't like it, I can quit and get another job somewhere else. If I'm not getting paid what I should be getting paid, I'll leave and get another job somewhere else. If I'm not being treated well, I'm leaving and getting a different job. A serf can't do any of that. If his lord fucks him over, he is without option. Now, it is true that in both scenarios you have a Boss and a Worker. But the serfs had no political or legal rights. They were property, much the same way that slaves were.

I can leave. I can move away to a different part of the world. I can do whatever I want and my boss can't force me not to. A serf didn't have that right.



I don't have any idea what the average life expectancy for the entire globe is, but it is irrelevant. Life expectancy and development have almost a 100% correlation. The most technologically advanced nations have the highest life expectancy, and the least technologically advanced have the lowest life expectancy. AIDS is a problem, but recent medical developments have all but cured it, and a cure is on the horizon. Genetic modification of food will (once ignorance recedes) vastly improve the nutritional quality of food (see:golden rice). Natural disasters have always happened and they will always happen; if they have killed more people recently, its only because they have more people to kill. Technology continuously helps protect us from these things.

Climate change....yeah that is a problem. I hope that humanity can move beyond our petty political differences and look over the earth with a permanent and sustainable model rather than the current disposable one we have now. I expect that advances in nuclear, fusion, solar, geothermal, and biofuels will do much to solve our current climate and energy problems, and we again see that when faced with a problem, what is required is more science and more development.

Necrofile, I'm not a leftist but a national-socialist, thus I embrace more or less the same ideas of the ones who sent "leftists" to concentration camps. Anyway...

MattP, I'll try to answer as shortly as possible.



Humans will always exploit each other unless they are controlled by a supra-individual entity, like a State, a party, a leader...




That's your opinion.




There has always been commercial interaction between human civilisations. What we call "globalization" is not a great mix of all current civilisations - it's a mix of human races under the domination of Western capitalist post-industrial way of life. It's a kind of cultural colonisation, with the English language as newspeak.




All right, but capitalist Westernized "development" essentially concerns urban populations. It tends to aggravate the gap between different regions in a same country, especially since wealth redistribution is often considered as "undynamic". In short, it just makes the bourgeois minorities of a third-world country richer.




You forget one thing: this pyramid concerns post-industrial societies. Human needs and social conditions are not the same in a tribal society, for instance, so the pyramid is not universally valid.




Have you studied custom in the European Middle Age feudal society? I guess not, so your assertion is as prejudiced as an article from The Economist about North Korea, or as Roman historians about the provinces conquered by the Roman Empire.




Today in Saudi Arabia or Dubai, there are immigrant workers from the Indian subcontinent whose statute is very close to slavery. Ask about this to people who worked in this area.




A serf didn't have that possibility, because at that time transport was limited to foot, horse and boat.




No, technology alienates us from a natural way of life, and creates new threats to humanity and the planet.




You seem to consider science as a kind of new religion, but it's just a means to an end. The real ideology between the current use of science is capitalist post-Christian human exploitation of the planet's ressources, because modern men consider themselves as masters to rule the Earth, and not just a single animal species among others.

So do you embrace the mass murder of "leftists" or not?

I don't care, my main goal is to protect the White race, the animals and the environment.

I guess we can put you in the "don't boycott" camp then, as the Cort guitars in question are made by South Koreans.

Hey come on, South Koreans are still animals. Don't be so presumptuous!

........ ugh.

Please read my posts attentively and try to understand them properly. I talk about protecting the White race, not about exploiting the other races for the profit of White capitalists.

Thanks for clarifying, I guess I wasn't fully grasping what was going on in the situation. If you don't mind yet another set of questions, how should the white race go about obtaining guitars? Would they be produced locally in small tribal communities or would forgoing such technology better help the environment? I am trying to see how all of these theories apply in the context of the topic.

The best thing to do is to buy a guitar that is made in your own country. I quoted the example of made in France Lag Arkanes in the first page (edit: in fact, the low and middle end models are respectively made in China and South Korea).

By the way, I'm planning on buying an ESP Horizon FR, anybody knows exactly where they are made?

Edit2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESP_Guitars
The Custom Shop and Original Series ESPs are handcrafted in Japan while the Standard Series ESPs are made in the ESP factory in Japan.

Lol~

This.

All right, this was an interesting debate, in which mattp tried his best to defend his point of view. Now we can get back to the original topic.

Good afternoon gentlemen.

I have some friends working in South Koreans factories because in their original countries they don't have work. They are from third world countries and many of the factories where they worked have been abused in some way and my friends told me that the South Koreans are racist and just lower their heads to their U.S. masters, if you don't have white skin or you do not work in an office you will be mistreated, that is the reality that these friends told me.
I do not know what it feels to be humiliated and abused at work, but these friends have told me things that have lived and I support them and I support the workers rights, because those abused workers could be us or someone we know!.

Have a nice day.

KFD, I did study custom in the European Middle Age feudal society. You have no idea what you are talking about much like everything else you have dribbed out. mattp is on point.

the end.

Useless post. We don't care about what you've studied or not, if you don't provide reliable sources to confirm or counter a point.

Does anybody have a complete list of companies they contract their shops to? I'm not planning on buying any axes any time soon, but I'm kinda curious about low end BC Rich and Hamer guitars.

You haven't done so either. Why should I waste my time when I and everyone else already knows you are incorrect? You seem to be too dense to do your own simple research You are on the internet you know... A little effort to back up what you have to say would go a long way and you would realize how way off you are.

Jackson, Ibanez, ESP, Schecter, Parkwood... Listing all companies which don't delegate their low end production to Cort should be way shorter.

The best thing to do is to check the country in which each model is made. If the guitar costs less than 1000€, it has great chances to come from South Korea or Indonesia.

The guy is an admitted Nazi, dude, there is no point reasoning with him

Oh I didn't even know that. I might as well be talking to dirt, but dirt is more informative about the facts.

QUISLING! bloody fuckin quisling......

i've been wanting call someone that for ages now, never had the chance nor did i think it'd be these forums of all places i'd get to use it, fuckin eh

OT: boycotting is pretty fuckin useless in this scenario, hell, it's pretty much useless on the whole....unless it's like whole nations boycotting one another. definitely not the case here, better off just buying other guitars and not even making it a concious choice

Why are you so disrespectful? I didn't show you disrespect on my behalf.
Besides, a friend of mine who graduated from history studies told me that one in three days was a day off in feudal Middle Ages.
If you were not both entangled in Capitalist dogmas and clichés, I would recommend you to do your own researches about this subject, but of course not on Wikipedia. Ask to an objective historian, or try to read sources from this period of time.

Even then a boycott is tricky. Compare the United States Embargo against Cuba to the apartheid related embargoes against South Africa if you are interested.

It'll just be easier to add him to the block list so you don't have to read his idiotic posts anymore. It seems he gets dumber with each passing post.

I play an Ibanez right now which was probably made in one of those sweatshops. I'd like to thank the workers for making me an instrument which I was able to afford at a young age, with no income, and become a competent musician. If they didn't I probably would never have been able to enjoy playing and recording music.

When I get a chance, I am buying a Rickenbacker... why? Because they sound great, are a classic bass, last forever, are made to a very very high standard and are made in the USA.

Anyway, I don't mind paying more for products made in the USA but if we Americans didn't buy products made in China or Uganda or wherever, those sweatshop workers would be crawling around in the streets trying to pick up rotting rice grains from the gutter. I have no issues with their work environment because I know they would be in a much worse situation without us buying the cheap crap they make us. They should be elated that they are making cheap crap for us to buy and you should be happy that you bought a guitar which helped to give them some small ounce of ability to buy food for their family.

EDIT: The favorable sentiment towards Capitalism in this thread is refreshing.

thread necromancy isn't really appreciated.

Not choosing sides between the French Nazi or the Capitalists, but you guys honestly don't know what you are talking about. You can read about exploitation and study foreign cultures all you want, you still would have no fucking clue what you are talking about. This discussion became senseless when everyone tried to prove they know more about the exploited and to what degree they are being exploited and even whether or not they are actually being exploited.

The OP had good intentions, I don't see why anyone has to come with their goddamn illusory world theories and piss all over that.

@mattp Even in a country like South Korea, which as has been stated might not be a third world country, you don't just quit your job and get a new one. You can't just move around or to some other country until you've found something better. The fact is that these people are the lower class, hand labourers, every job is as shit as the next, because you always operate at the same level. So if they do decide to leave Cort, the next "sweatshop" factory sure as hell won't be better. The fact that South Korea isn't a third world country means that exploitation should not exist there in the first place. I know they are supposed to be able to get a better education, I don't know exactly why they don't, but believe me, in some countries it just doesn't work like that. Most kids here don't get the chance to have a proper education, they barely get a basic education because they don't have class rooms, access to information, or even electricity or running water. I know we can't save the world but don't go running your mouth to prove that you are right when all the OP was doing was being passionate about raising awareness, I just think it's really uncalled for.

@KFD I was kind of thinking that you are talking sense until you started making stupid fucking racist comments. I actually have no idea why you even care. I'm a white guy living at the tip of Africa, I've been to other parts of the world, and I can tell you now you can stick your big nose country right up your ass, no one needs your sympathy for whatever selfish cause it might be. White supremacy is one of the dumbest concepts I've ever heard. "Protect the white race". From what exactly? Ourselves? Can't think of anything that can be worse for us than ourselves.

You are still missing the point though. Sure you are stimulating their economy, but the problem is they aren't being paid a fair amount in relation to what the company they work for are making. I'm sure they are grateful for the jobs, and you're right without those jobs they would starve, but that doesn't mean that we need to give them below average wages because "they should be thankful". They did a good job didn't they? Is your bass still working? Has it fallen apart yet? Does it sound good? Does it feel like a well crafted instrument? Do you think it's fair that labourers making a cheap bass in the USA make much more money than South Koreans making cheap basses? That's all. It just isn't really fair, unless you think Americans or white people are better, in which case there really is no point in even discussing this with you.

YES. I have been waiting for forever for somebody to say this, and all I had to do was, apparently, look to a national-socialist.

On topic, the amount of apathy to the less fortunate in this thread is disturbing/shocking. It's amazing how spiritually demotivating the statement "that's just how it is" can apparently be to people. Holy fuck.

Profound.