Sailboats are faster but not cheaper. Why?

Asians have a different way of thinking and it is for both good and bad.
Westerners go to a paradise beach and look for garbage when they find some, then they can’t enjoy what’s otherwise perfect. Asians don’t think about the negative stuff and will simply enjoy the positive

Mychael, you are thinking like a Westerner You are thinking about the negative thing that you could have an accident in the future if you don’t wear shoes, that’s negative not positive

Mikey

 

Mychael ,they would like to go down to the local walmart and buy a pair of boots to work in ,,,but they would probably rather eat that day ,,this is what I mean when I say unfair to all involved ,,unfair to developed nations ,,,and most sadly unfair to the working poor. with all thanks to selfish corporate giants ,,,longliner

 

And partly because they walk 1-2 km across mud/water flats to get to the hulks being scrapped; shoes, even boots would be heavy, with water & mud inside. And partly because the towns where they live and work don't have shoe stores, so buying shoes would mean trying to get time off from work, taking a bus for hours, and maybe not having enough money to pay for them. And partly because wearing protective gear and encouraging others to wear it is a sure way to loose the job that, dangerous and unhealthy and low paying as it is, is one of the highest paying jobs in town for someone with no education. That's a pretty nasty situation, but why the workers stay and don't try to change is both complicated and brutually simple.

"More than 30,000 laborers cut ships apart with torches and live in squalid shacks. The striking pictures of rag-headed and barefoot workers toting tons of steel told a powerful story. Accidents and death abound. "It is better to work and die than to starve and die" is what the workers told Mr. Cohn."
(Exerpt from Baltimore Sun story)

 

thankyou charmc,,,,now I know I am not alone,longliner

 

Let me correct myself, yes, it can be done but it is hassle all the way and not a good way to benefit from a developing country. It is a good way to get a bleeding ulcer though

Longliner, very true. It is very sad that many people suffer and fortunate that they can still stay positive and often, believe it or not, enjoy life as it comes more than westerners do. But it is at the cost of slower development

Mikey

 

More than 30,000 laborers... They support a quarter of a million people

Many kids are a necessity, they are the ones supporting you when you are too old to work any longer

 

Guys, I understand all the points you are all making and I understand that there exists the exploitation of workers and their financial burdon etc etc. I do not dispute any of that.
I still find that whilst Mikey's last statement is surely correct is still to me defies reasoning and logic. How can these workers not make the simple conclusion when they see so many of their workmates injured??
Ok, so circumstances prevent them from getting boots (boots now just being the reference point for the discussion) but to not consider the possibilty of injury when you see it happen around you a lot of time and then ignoring it, is not positive thinking, it's nieve and stupid. even uneducated people have the power of observation and reasoning.

Mychael

 

Or let me try to put it another way. Suppose I had to cross a paddock everyday and in this paddock I knew there were nests of deadly snakes but I still cross it 'cos I have to for work or whatever.
Would I just stroll along thinking "hummdeehumm, it's a beautifull day and I won't bother watching out for these poison snakes that might bite me because that would be negative thinking" ?? Hell no, I'd be thinking "Well I need to cross this paddock to feed my family but it's full of poison snakes so I'll be alert and watch my footing to avoid being bitten". I'll place money on which attitude has got the better odds of crossing the paddock every day without getting bitten. "So the twain shall never meet" but given the option of attitudes I'll bet on my way everytime... ;-)

 

Mychael,

I agree with you. It does seem impossible to us that workers would continue in such dangerous situations. But "us" as Mikey said, means citizens of what are called Western democracies (culturally, you Aussies are Westerners, like
we Yanks and the Poms/Limeys, whether you like it or not! ). That means that the worst exploitation of workers ended a long time ago, that there are choices available for a worker who does not like his job or his workplace. Many do not take advantage of those alternatives, but they are there. In Alang, the ship scrapping region of India, the owners, as Longliner pointed out, adamantly refuse to improve conditions; they're making millions and want nothing to cut into profits. More importantly, the government denies that there is any problem. For a worker living at the subsistence level, without government enforcement of even minimal safety rules, the choice is, as those workers told the reporter, "Work and die, or starve and die". It is a whole different world for them.

Charlie

 

Yep, totally agree with you Charlie.. I was more trying to investigate this "positive thinking/ negative thinking" the Mikey was alluding to before.
I just wonder whether the workers do nothing because they cannot and their employers are ruthless ******** or because this negative/positive thinking comes into it as well.

Mychael

 

No one said these guys don't try to do the work safely. They don't work carelessly, they try to be safe. But if a large chunk of metal cut away by the work party on a higher level catches on a part of a nearby bulkhead and bounces sideways, crushing your foot because there are no barriers between your work area and the area where they're dropping pieces as they are cut away, your alertness might not have been enough. Or if you are ordered to start work in a closed area that has been declared safe, but the guy checking wasn't given the right equipment, or the equipment was not calibrated correctly, or the shift foreman didn't even take the time to check if it was really safe, and someone dies from toxic fumes or lack of oxygen, being alert might not be enough.

 

Mychael, you're right, Eastern acceptance that there is nothing the individual can do to make a difference, and that it's better to focus on the positives plays a role. I'd say, though, that the owners and corrupt gov't officials are exploiting that attitude. The workers aren't stupid, just ignorant. Education and safety rules would reduce the profit margin, but with the low wages paid in that part of the world, they could still outbid other scrappers for the work and continue making millions, just a few less per year.

Charlie

 

Take a look...

Here's a view of how big and nasty this is.


http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=...9712,72.169093&spn=0.003726,0.006738&t=k&om=1

The little purple box in the lower right corner can be moved along the coast and offshore. This is a huge business

 

Wow!!!. That's incredible.. I've often wondered where old boats go to die. I see there was even a aicraft carrier there. Hate to think what the beaches and water must be like around there.

Mychael

 

Reasoning and logic (between Westerners and Asians) is not the same. It took me many years to move from "not understand anything" when it comes to how Thais think to "OK, now I can at least predict what's going to happen", ha ha, and back again when I realised that simply wasn't true, I didn't understand how they were thinking and therefore I couldn't even predict accurately. But then over the years it got better, I became more and more fluent with the language and with that, I also got the understanding of how they think. I'd say minimum 10 years to get a good understanding and if you ever hear a westerner saying that he understand how Asians think without speaking the local language very well, don't believe him.

Let's take a sample of different reasoning and logic;
When a puppy gets run over by a car, we don't call that mean because we involve things like "if it was an accident or not" in our reasoning. Thais don't, why involve things like "why"? The puppy is dead, regardless of if it was an accident or not, right? So the Thais use the same word to describe that kind of event regardless of the reason for it to happen. Which is why dictionaries are useless...

Illogical can be logical, and un-reasonable can be reasonable. Values are very different in different cultures and our core values steer our lives (more than what many educated people want to admit).

"How can these workers not make the simple conclusion when they see so many of their workmates injured??"
Of course they can, and they do, but what good is it? Why think too much about what you can't do anything about anyway? Life is difficult enough as it is (and am I not actually lucky, I have a well paid job and can support my family well)

"even uneducated people have the power of observation and reasoning"
Absolutely! but these people think differently and have different values so when they observe and reason, westerners don't understand it.

"I just wonder whether the workers do nothing because they cannot and their employers are ruthless ******** or because this negative/positive thinking comes into it as well."
Charlie is right, both. But I wouldn't say that the workers are ignorant though

"...they can still stay positive and often, believe it or not, enjoy life as it comes more than westerners do"
That's an important thing. It used to amaze me how the poor could enjoy life so much and have so much fun in life. I sometimes compare with my old Swedish friends, all working hard and successfully. They go out and have fun once per month, they work to pay off their nice house and plan to have everything paid off so that they can retire when they are 55 - 60. What they don't realize is that they will wake up when they have reached their goals and realize that their lives passed by on the way. And I think that's sad.

Asians know how to enjoy life as it passes by, that is something that Westerners need to learn to do better.

Back to the topic of this thread; Sailboats are faster but not cheaper. Why?
Because Westerners think that they need so many things now a days that they didn't know that they needed 25 years ago... But don't tell the Chinese that

Mikey