• metaStatic@kbin.earth
    351·
    6 days ago

    Plz, those kids where replaced by robots decades ago. You’ll find them in the cobalt mines now.

    • quixotic120@lemmy.worldEnglish
      19·
      6 days ago

      you’re fooling yourself if you think cheap plastic shit is made by robots. robots cost a shitload of money. slave labor is like $4 a week

      • orrk@lemmy.world
        42·
        4 days ago

        oh you wish, toys like that are so simple to assemble that the cheap-ass Alibaba brand knock off machines are more than sufficient, and the robot is suddenly cheaper than having to hose down the children every two says because they can’t get up to use the restroom, basically they have like 10% of the workforce still in the factories because the screws don’t screw themselves (well these robots exist as well, but actually require precision, so they cost money)

        • quixotic120@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          4 days ago

          Do you have any kind of basis for that aside from your intuition?

          https://chinalaborwatch.org/the-dark-side-of-the-glittering-world-a-report-on-exploitation-in-toy-factories-in-china/ this article is in chinese so you’ll have to machine translate it but at a minimum you can scroll down to see images of workers stuffed into crowded lines, falling asleep on the job, with somewhat miserable conditions, to make dumb plastic shit you’d see in a us checkout lane (frozen miniature toy, lol toys, dude perfect toys).

          Thankfully there don’t appear to be any children or truly abhorrent conditions but it doesn’t appear to be anywhere near a good place to work either

          • orrk@lemmy.world
            41·
            4 days ago

            the fun part about being an engineer for a German company that has some (very stupid) investments in China (the state actively uses local companies to undermine and exploit anyone who decides to have a factory there a few years after they open up) is that you end up seeing some of these places. and yes these places still very much exist, they only need people for the bare minimum (such as the people in those screwdriver stations(it’s the cables that give it away))