Aanvil wrote:Sell to all or sell to none?
Nonsense.
Terry, you are under no obligation to "help" Pakistan.
They can find access to a Pratten's and copy it if they cared to.
This "do gooder" attitude around here just chaps my hide.
Western first world guilt if I ever saw it.
There is no karma attached to this.
These people would have not one single problem about taking the food from you and your families mouths given the chance.
This is a business. You may wish to work with them though but you consultation should come at a price worthy of your experience.
I'll also mention there is no way to truly legally bind these people into anything.
As already pointed you might sell those plans to me or any other interested in a homespun business and I could make no more than handful in a year. Thats with maximum effort.
These guys will go out and make a thousand of them... with sweatshop labor.
If you want to be responsible for putting more people to work do it in Oz.
Charity starts at home.
Straw man. Nobody is saying Terry has an obligation
to sell his plans to Pakistan. He doesn't have one.
He wants to know what the best thing is to do.
So he's considering costs and benefits to all concerned,
and I'm suggesting the potential benefits outweigh
the risks.
You know I've never considered myself a do gooder.
I'm a conservative Republican, opposed to most things
'do gooders' are supposed to want. I don't think I feel
anything much in the way of guilt. My feelings are
based on living in these countries (which most western
do gooders haven't done), and knowing the people.
But call me what you want, you can't very well refute what I
say by calling me a 'do gooder.' Suppose I'm a guilt-ridden
westerner, etc. What I've said could still be true.
My argument is this:
Look at what Japan did with guitars; look at what China is
doing with mandolins. And look at other things that third
worlders have appropriated from us, first making abysmal
imitations and then improving them until they were making
something pretty good.
Pakistan is probably trying to do that with flutes. This is part of a process
by which Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, China have considerably
lifted themselves out of poverty. It includes lots of thing
other than musical instruments, of course, but they
are part of it. Yamaha guitars, for instance.
Poverty is bad--if you don't agree, no need to read further--
and so doing something that helps along the process of relieving it
is to that extent anyway, good.
I figure Terry thinks poverty is bad--not that we have an obligation
or a responsibility to allieviate it, but that alleviating poverty,
giving very poor people jobs, is a benefit to be counted in
doing the cost/benefit analysis of selling his plans.
Right, they may well use sweatshop labor on their way up,
and that's obnoxious. But this needs to be considered too.
Poor countries have generally risen out of poverty on
the basis of sweatshop labor. It happened in the USA,
it's happened in Japan and Korea and Hong Kong and
wherever there's been rapid economic growth.
The profits go into improving the product and expanding
the ability to produce. The workers in the sweatshops
are, in fact, getting paid more and often working less hard
than they would otherwise--unless, of course, they
would simply be unemployed and starving.
It's too bad, but it has the benefit of giving people
desperately needed jobs and also helping a large
number of people, sometimes an entire society,
out of poverty.
So the point is Why not sell them the plans?
These flutes are bad, not because they are made by
sleazy slimey fat cats but because they are made
by poor people who are trying to break into
the flute market. Helping them make better flutes,
just as other third world producers of musical
instruments have improved their product,
hastens the day when people won't get
burned by buying these instruments.
If better flutes sell better there will be an impetus
to continue to improve the instruments...
as has happened elsewhere.
It isn't going to compete with Terry's business,
cause these folks aren't going to be producing
instruments of that quality for some time,
if ever.
And it may employ a good number of very poor people.
It may help an emerging economy.
There are potential benefits and potential costs.
Terry wants to know, I think, which are greater.
When you put this business in its economic
context, namely, an emerging third world
flute industry, there seem to be some
pretty obvious benefits to helping
them along.
Certainly I don't see the potential costs and risks as being so great
as to give one a strong reason to refuse to sell
the plans to these folks, to make an exception of them,
while one sells them to everyone else.
Once again I agree that Terry has no obligations here,
but that isn't the point. The question is what are the
actual effects likely to be? On all affected. If you don't
know what to do, you might
as well do what will probably do the most good.
You write: 'These people would have not one single problem about taking the food from you and your families mouths given the chance.'
I think you're being hard on people I suppose you never met. I don't know
why you say this. You know there are probably a good number
of poor folks employed in this business, more coming if it prospers.
I've met a lot of such people in Asia--they are a good deal more likely to give you the shirt off their back than you might guess, certainly
more so than anybody I've met in the first world.