[snackernews]

Workplace safety, environmental protection and human rights laws will never be enforced in the manufacturing industry because they cannot be enforced on the Chinese manufacturing industry.

Western governments would rather citizens lose some rights and years off their life than tolerate a world where their industries become dependent on Chinese manufacturing.

————

Western governments could make models trained on stolen IP toxic if they wanted.

It may not be worth it. The trade off of model capability vs the value of IP law might be worthwhile.

But western governments should show a little dignity and openly make that trade off. We don’t need to appeal to “but China”.

[spacebanana7]

Western governments were willing to give up their manufacturers sectors, or at least large parts of them, to maintain better environmental/labour laws than China.

It’s not clear that was a good decision, but tariffs and similar restrictions at least provide hope of a remedy. But we can’t use tariffs on open source software.

[krapp]

>Western governments were willing to give up their manufacturers sectors, or at least large parts of them, to maintain better environmental/labour laws than China.

Their motivation wasn't the maintenance of better environmental and labor laws, but higher profits from exploiting China's more business friendly (less regulation, fewer labor rights) environment. Had it been economically and politically viable for Western governments to domestically enact the same environmental and labor standards as China, they would have done so. And as soon as the quality of life in China improved enough that labor there was no longer economically viable, many companies moved their outsourcing elsewhere, such as to Vietnam or Africa.