Category: Commerce

The Legality of Indian Child Labor

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India has the highest amount of children who work of any country in the world. Thousands of children are trafficked into domestic slavery each year in India but due to India’s vast population of 1,300,000,000 (1.3 billion) people, these children go largely unnoticed. In India, every hour, 8 children are trafficked however 5 of these children are never found after having gone missing. Traffickers are paid 5000 – 6000 Indian Rupees ($95.00 – $110.00) per child. Indian society seems to permiss children working and it is deeply ingrained within society as it is viewed as poor children working because their families cannot afford to send them to attend an educational institution. It is viewed as better to work than to do nothing at all. It’s ironic because a buffalo will sell for 200,000 Indian Rupees ($3700.00) but a young girl for 10,000 Indian Rupees ($185.00). The value of a human life does not seem to count for much as prices are set in terms of how much work a person or animal can perform before collapsing. Kailash Satyarthi, a man who has spent his life freeing children from slavery, his organization freeing close to 100,000 children in the last 3 decades as of 2018. Satyarthi who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for his efforts to eradicate slavery states. Satyarthi often educates that there is a triangular relationship between poverty, child labor, and illiteracy with each forming a chicken and egg relationship with the other as each factor is a consequence of the other factors. When child labor is permitted, it allows child illiteracy and poverty to continue. Child labor is the largest factor preventing education and literacy for children around the world. This places children at an enormous disadvantage because they cannot become equal partners in the globalized economy. It’s not only the traffickers of organized crime who need to be suppressed. It is also the middle class families in large cities like Delhi who do not consider the consequences before hiring a young person to watch their children, clean their home, and cook their meals. Suppressing both of these ties to slavery will drastically help reduce the number of children who are trafficked each year. Law enforcement has been known to resort to medical examinations to provide an accurate age when documentation is unavailable or thought to be fraudulent. Indian law however clearly states that if a school certificate is used as proof of age, then no medical examination shall commence. This is used by traffickers as leverage to ensure that they’re never culpable for having a person below the age of 18 under their supervision

The Dreadful Conditions Imposed Upon North Korean’s Who Work Abroad

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Many North Koreans decide to work abroad but foreign work programs do not work the same way in North Korea as they do in the western world. Workers go abroad to places which will take them, with Russia and China being the primary location to migrate, and then work in industries which require cheap labor, typically in construction or factory work. Workers are forced to pay a mandatory fee to the North Korean state as crippling sanctions by the United Nations has hobbled North Korea’s ability to advance its nuclear program(s). This fee is referred to as “party duty” and is typically $300.00 – $900.00 per month which is why many workers end up giving up and returning home, often in debt. Workers are paid in a form of food stamps as all financial pay goes to the team leaders of the band of workers. These leaders arrange for part of the money to be paid to the worker, part of the money to be kept for themselves, and part of the money to be paid to the North Korean government. Workers have reported earning as little as 7% of their gross income after the immense fees which were imposed upon them. Many workers work during the day at their primary job, and then again during the night with private construction jobs which they acquire most often by bribing their team leader. The night construction jobs pay much better than the state sanctioned jobs because doing so is completely “off the books” meaning that no taxes or fees are imposed allowing workers to keep the entire payment for themselves and their families. These migrant workers are often referred to as “dollar heroes” within North Korean culture and there are approximately 40,000 of these types of workers in Russia alone. At its core, this system is essentially forced labor which is equitable to slavery. The North Korean state is dependent upon this system as many of its legitimate exports are now blocked from world trade making income generation substantially more difficult. The demand for North Korean labor is intense because Chinese laborers now earn enough that their wages are no longer competitive with North Korea. The Chinese government often sets up conventions which function as career fairs, placing perspective employers in touch with those looking for work. These work fairs are established so that North Korean workers can be brought to China to help meet the demand of laborers needed to build new projects, primarily in construction. North Korea has put laws in place so that employers and employees can never directly exchange payment for services rendered. Any employee demanding payment is dismissed and sent back to North Korea. Workers are closely guarded and watched by North Korean managers who report back anything suspicious to the North Korean government. China is North Korea’s most important trading partner and it is estimated that in China alone, North Korean workers earn hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Before workers are allowed to go abroad, they must pass an ideological examination which is essentially a background check of ones family. Workers are required to have 1 spouse and 1 child in North Korea before migrating for work so that those who go abroad cannot engage in rogue activities. The North Korean government leverages these families left behind to manipulate workers into complying with the harsh system setup abroad, as many are unaware just how bad conditions are until they arrive to their worksite for the first time. The United Nations estimates that North Korean workers earn over $1,000,000,000 ($1 billion) annually for the North Korean state. Reports indicate that there are approximately 150,000 North Korean workers working abroad in total with 100,000 in China, 40,000 in Russia, and the remaining 10,000 working in Africa, Cambodia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Myanmar, and Poland. The United Nations has predicted that because western sanctions have put such immense pressure upon North Korea and its future financial growth, Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s leader whose technical title is the “Chairman of the Workers Party”, will be looking to increase the number of workers North Korea sends abroad as well as ratchet up the pressure placed upon these workers to generate even more foreign exchange income. Because of the insatiable drive to fulfill ever lower wages, it seems the rest of the industrialized world is complicit in helping North Korea’s Supreme Leader fulfill his ambition

U.S. Patent Office Requirements During the 19th Century

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Between 1790 and 1880, all United States patents required a working model of the idea proposed prior to being patented. This requirement was phased out by the U.S. Congress in 1870, but the U.S. Patent Office continued to stipulate it as a requirement until 1880. The reason for the abolishment of this stipulation was that creating working prototypes was an expensive process and it was often difficult to find a tradesperson who could create the parts needed. This inconvenience slowed down the ability of inventors to acquire patents so that their product could be sold upon the open market. It was eventually agreed by the U.S. Congress as well as the U.S. Patent Office that this laborious process held up the release of inventions which could potentially make life easier for everybody and was therefore repealed

Facebook’s Corporate Practices Regarding Questionable or Offensive Content

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Due to the fact that Facebook is an advertising organization, first and foremost, Facebook’s directors have strived to setup and implement infrastructure which has been specifically designed to keep people logged into Facebook for as long as possible. Facebook has discovered that a single person with fringe or extreme ideologies, can often provoke dozens of others, which in turn leads to even more engagement with more people, therefore generating greater advertising revenue. Offensive and disturbing content is an example of material which Facebook publicly denounces but internally welcomes as it keeps people signed in and conversing. Every second spent on Facebook is another chance to see a new or repeat advertisement. Unless streamed live, videos of child abuse in the U.S. typically go unreported to law enforcement and are rarely removed from Facebook unless requested to do so by an intervening law enforcement agency. Facebook has implemented a corporate policy in which users and moderators can flag content as disturbing so that users under 18 cannot view said content which is designed to be a reasonable intervention to maintaining a degree of control over the way content is shared, but Facebook purposefully allows questionable content because it provokes discussion and sharing between Facebook users. Censorship is purported as the main reason by Facebook as to why content of this nature is justified, but the true reason is most likely directly correlated to advertising revenue as the more the company earns, the higher its internal value becomes and the higher its internal value becomes, the more investors want to invest in it, which feeds back into a feedback loop causing an even higher valuation of the company. Facebook employs full time experts (e.g. psychologists etc.) to continuously moderate and review policies of acceptable terms of use. Facebook uses the accronym “MAD” which stands for “marked as disturbing” to classify content which many rational adults would argue should be removed. Fortunately, one of Facebook’s policies state that “if a parent or guardian views a video of their child in circumstances which they object to, they have the ability to request and/or demand Facebook moderators to remove the content”. Facebook moderators are forced to follow this corporate policy, however this request must come only from a parent or guardian of the child who is actively participating within the video or image in question. Fortunately, high priority issues (e.g. self-harm and suicide etc.) are sent to a specialized queue in which intervention has a turn around time of 24 hours, but all other flagged content which falls outside of this classification has a turn around time of approximately 5 days which is 5x longer than the standard response time for most technology companies 5x longer than the target Facebook has aimed to achieve. Priority queue material is not always removed however, with many cases involving helpful resources (e.g. digital ebooks, audiobooks, and telephone helpline phone numbers etc.) being sent to the content creator and/or person(s) found within the material, with the actual content itself remaining available for users to view. Facebook argues that removing content flagged as an immediate priority would mean that friends, family, and loved ones would not be aware of the issue (e.g. suicide) affecting the person(s) depicted and therefore would not allow for helpful intervention, rationalizing the distribution of content like this as a means of not only starting an open dialog between affected people, but also allowing them to be put in touch with the resource(s) they need. Facebook’s User Agreement states that no user under 13 years of age is permitted to use Facebook’s services however age violations are only investigated if other Facebook users report another user as being underage. Content which is racist or biased against a particular ethnicity is left available for consumption so long as these critics castigate immigration policy, and not any specific person or group. Highly popular Facebook pages are shielded from these removal policies to a degree and are also protected from ordinary content moderators removing content, only having material able to be removed if senior moderators flag it to be placed into a queue so that it can once again be reviewed by even higher ranking Facebook moderators. Surprisingly, some Facebook pages, particularly the high traffic ones tens of thousands or millions of followers, are afforded the same protection status as that of government and news organization Facebook pages

Steve Jobs’ Back Dated Stock Options Scandal

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Steve Jobs was accused of back dated options trading, in which stocks could be purchased from Apple at previous price points which had since passed (e.g. purchasing 100 shares of stock for $100 at the January 2010 price point, when those same stocks were worth $200 because the actual date was July 2010). Jobs did this to give his key people stock options which were so enormous in value that these employees would never even consider taking their talents and skillsets elsewhere. Back dating is legal, if properly reported within official corporate records. After the backdated stock options scandal was exposed by various media outlets, 200 U.S. companies came under investigation for doing the exact same thing. Jobs escaped any wrongdoing by effectively throwing Apple’s CFO Fred Anderson under the bus, a person who was instrumental in the hard fought come back of Apple. Anderson was forced to resign and pay back restitution to the sum of $3,600,000 ($3.6 million) in penalties. In reality, Anderson explained this process to Jobs, and Jobs fully understood the implications, yet chose to place blame squarely upon the Anderson with the rationale that a CFO must oversee all practices related to accounting within a corporation. It was estimated at the time that had Jobs gone to prison for back dating, Apple would have dropped in value by $22,000,000,000 ($22 billion)

Societal Changes Within the United Kingdom Which Occurred​ After World War I

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Post World War I in the United Kingdom, many battle hardened veterans no longer viewed themselves as servants to the wealthier classes of society and demanded social equality, suddenly realizing that work in factories and within dense city populations could provide a better standard of living than within small economically cut off villages. Suddenly, without warning, aristocratic estate owners went from paying 6% on their income tax, to a much higher rate in line with what a common person would pay. Due to this massive increase in the amount of income now required to continue the running of an estate, many were demolished during the 1950’s and 1960’s and much of the artwork within these homes which initially would have been passed down throughout subsequent generations as family heirlooms, were sold to the U.S. as the U.S. was the wealthiest nation in the world during the era and had the ability to help once wealthy families avoid complete financial ruin. Most aristocratic dynasties simply gave up with the introduction of these new income tax policies as the cost of maintenance was simply too great for what an estate could reasonably generate

The Statistics and Layouts Casinos Use To Get Gambling Customers To Spend More

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During 2014, 40,000,000 (40 million) people visited Las Vegas, United States of America and lost a combined total of $10,000,000,000 ($10 billion). The average odds of winning when using a slot machine are approximately 6.6% meaning that for every $100.00 put in, the casino takes $6.60, baiting players with a win but bleeding them dry in the long term, banking nearly $0.07 (7 cents) for every $1.00 dropped into them. Casinos with the worst odds are clustered within the Las Vegas Strip, and casino games with the worst odds are clustered within the middle of each casino itself. This snowman pattern of 3 grids, each one sitting on top of a larger one beneath, surrounded by a larger perimeter of less high function activities going on also occurs in other industries including the design of digital circuits, agricultural design for industrial farms, indigenous villages layout and design in Africa, and occurs naturally within the biology of the human body. These systems are designed for maximum efficiency

The Nest of the Edible-Nest Swiflet and its High Economic Value

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Birds nests made by edible-nest swiftlets using solidified saliva is highly prized all throughout Asia with a single kilogram selling for over $2000.00. Edible-nest swiftlet nests are believed by those who subscribe to the practice of eastern, more specifically Chinese medicine, to boost the immune system, improve skin complexion, and to fight signs of aging, however none of these claims have been backed up with scientific evidence. Edible-nest swiftlets prefer to create their nests in dark caves, so aside from farming them in specialized dark rooms, acquiring them in nature is incredibly dangerous as steep and sheer cliffs must be scaled to reach the nests which are precariously high above ground level. It takes edible-nest swiftlets 40 days to make a single nest and nests can only be produced during the breeding season which is when the edible-nest swiftlets salivary glands engorge

The Tragic and Untimely Sinking of the Titanic

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After hitting an iceberg during its maiden voyage, the Titanic stayed afloat for less than 3 hours. Rivets used in the manufacturing process which were also used for many of the United States’ modern megastructures, were fit using a technique in which the rivet is heated and then hammered through a hole subsequently cooling and contracting, which pulled together the pieces of anything it was attached to. As the rivets of the Titanic popped out after impact, it allowed for a zipper like opening of the ship which conceded water to flush inward. Modern ships do not use rivets for this very reason and instead opt for welded hulls. It is impossible to build a ship which can withstand either an iceberg or a rock edifice with both being found below the surface of the ocean quite frequently. The only resolution is to use Radio Detection and Ranging or Radio Direction And Ranging (RADAR) and a global positioning system to steer clear of these hazards. Modern oil tankers have double hulls which reach right upside the entire ship but modern commercial ships normally do not bring their doubled hulls this high as it is an expensive safety feature which is bypassed as commercial ships do not carry oil which is financially and environmentally costly when spilled, alongside the fact that double hulled ships take up valuable space which could otherwise be used for cargo transportation. Instead commercial and industrial ships invest resources into safety systems better equipped for the needs of the people and/or goods which they transport

Elon Musk’s Innovative Tesla Battery

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Tesla vehicles use approximately 8000 small cell batteries close to the size of a double A (AA) battery, only slightly larger with a length of 65 millimeters and a width of 18 millimeters. Tesla originally used this battery size because of its wide abundance but will be switching to a slightly larger size with a length of 70 millimeters and a width of 21 millimeters when their gigafactory is complete. Tesla claims that these new batteries will be the best and cheapest option in the world. Competitor manufacturers use different kinds of batteries than Tesla because of their belief in how the technology works and how efficient it can be