Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Badtrainwreck t1_iyb2w8f wrote

Reply to comment by BassmanBiff in Forced Uyghur labor is being used in China's solar panel supply chain, researchers say by chrisdh79

What are we going to all move to China and vote? If we can’t fix it here then how do we get China to stop?

12

420ohms t1_iybrjx0 wrote

Voting here doesn't even work.

7

BassmanBiff t1_iye2vph wrote

Yes it does, it just doesn't fix everything immediately. There really isn't a more impactful thing you can do with the hour or whatever it takes to do it. It's more than worth doing while pursuing other activism.

Put differently, voting is not sufficient, but it is necessary.

2

Whitewing424 t1_iyeqprn wrote

Voting is a useful form of harm reduction, but it doesn't solve systemic problems. Voting is something everyone should do because the effort is minimal, but nobody should expect it to be sufficient, as you say.

1

BassmanBiff t1_iye2fh5 wrote

We should absolutely try to fix it here, but calling it out everywhere is important and doesn't stop us from working on it at home. Import restrictions and slightly better consumer info are about all we can do about China, and while that's obviously not going to fix the problem, it still helps to do it.

0

Whitewing424 t1_iyeqxxl wrote

Given how many US corps are involved in both what China is doing and the US prison situation, don't hold your breath on those import restrictions.

US needs major reforms first.

2

BassmanBiff t1_iyewssd wrote

I was talking about ones we already have.

I'm under no illusion that those will fix anything, or that they're perfectly designed to target large and small companies equally, or that they're somehow more important than addressing our own problems. I'm saying that we can and should do both at once, and whichever front people choose to yell about, they should be encouraged so that we can redirect that energy instead of simply stamping it out whenever people choose the "wrong" issue.

1