A ground breaking business idea

[trenton]

I was doing some exercises from the life purpose course when I suddenly got an inspiring idea.  

I did some research on slavery and discovered that there are over 91 billion dollars of electronic products at risk of being produced by slavery being imported into the United States every year.  There are sweat shops and factories in which workers are not guaranteed a minimum wage and the lack of business transparency results in child labor.  This makes it hard for people to have access to ethical products because even your cell phone could be produced through slavery.

I began to wonder about slave free products and how revolutionary it would be for the developing world if they had access to the worker rights we take for granted.  This leads to the idea of producing electronics while winning over employees with ground breaking benefits.

First, imagine that you were not guaranteed a minimum wage for working 60 hours a week, and even if you did receive one, it would be less than 1 dollar a month and be hard to live off of.  Now imagine you are offered a job opportunity in which you are offered even just 1 dollar a day.  On top of that there would be health care benefits, no child labor, a 40 hour work week, a month paid vacation like in Europe, a ten cent raise every 6 months, a retirement plan, and the right to unionize and peacefully address your grievances.  Finally, instead of throwing away perfectly good food or electronic products like many companies do, they would be given away for free in developing and impoverished nations.  A business would inspire people to work for them if they were not so worried about profits.  Most electronics could be sold in places like America where it would probably be a net profit anyway.

If it were possible to build a business like this in developing nations, it would be ground breaking for workers rights in impoverished nations.  It would help enforce business transparency in the global supply chain to stop slavery.  It would help other countries develop faster with access to modern technology.  It would help women equalize with men by allowing them to work at home on computers while caring for children.  And it would be profitable, but it does not need to be that profitable.  Only enough to make it work. 

1 dollar a day is still not commensurate with the work done and probably they could be paid more.  I don't know how much would be workable.  I still find it inspiring how much could accomplished with a business strategy that emphasizes worker benefits.  It would make everybody want to work for you and achieve this vision.

Is this realistic?  It sounds like it should be doable.  I need to figure out how much it would cost to build factories by each nation.  How much would the materials to build electronics cost?  How would I transfer them to the United States? Other questions like these need to be answered if this is really a viable option for entrepreneurship.

What do you think about business ideas like this and winning workers over with benefits?  This comes at a time with union suppression, slavery, financial terrorism, and more.  One day businesses would have to learn that in order to survive, they must win workers over with benefits.

[Leo Gura]

3 hours ago, trenton said:

Is this realistic?

How are you going to compete with companies who pay their workers a fraction of what you pay? Your products will all cost so much no one will buy them.

Cheap labor is used precisely to drive down product costs to what consumers are willing to pay.

Your idea is basically utopia on stilts. To win over employees with benefits you need to have such high profit margins and funding for your company that you can afford to give a large chunk of it away to your employees. Paying employees well is a luxury only the most successful businesses can afford. And even then, they rarely do it. Markets mostly drive labor costs. You are not going to single-handedly change that.

If you dream is to pay your employees well, first create a rock solid profitable business that generates hoards of cash. And once you do that, you could just donate that money to charity or homeless people. Makes little difference.

[SaltyMeatballs]

These workers are paid minium wage because they don't possess any good skills. They will soon be replaced with AI and mostly everything will be automated.

[Cepzeu]

@SaltyMeatballs unlikely. Cheaper to pay min wage than to buy and service robots or pay license for AI. I did a summer job at a paper factory where I was basically employed for min wage because it was cheaper than buying a conveyor belt

[trenton]

5 hours ago, SaltyMeatballs said:

These workers are paid minium wage because they don't possess any good skills. They will soon be replaced with AI and mostly everything will be automated.

Replacing people with robots sounds more realistic.  In that case a better approach to business than the one I mentioned before would come from engineering.  I don't know how soon low skill jobs will be replaced with AI.

[trenton]

10 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

How are you going to compete with companies who pay their workers a fraction of what you pay? Your products will all cost so much no one will buy them.

Cheap labor is used precisely to drive down product costs to what consumers are willing to pay.

Your idea is basically utopia on stilts. To win over employees with benefits you need to have such high profit margins and funding for your company that you can afford to give a large chunk of it away to your employees. Paying employees well is a luxury only the most successful businesses can afford. And even then, they rarely do it. Markets mostly drive labor costs. You are not going to single-handedly change that.

If you dream is to pay your employees well, first create a rock solid profitable business that generates hoards of cash. And once you do that, you could just donate that money to charity or homeless people. Makes little difference.

Thanks for the input.  It sounded too good to be true, but I wanted to make sure.

The reason it sounded doable was because of the profit margin of electronics in the United States.  For example, for the Apple IPhone 12 pro, the production cost is 406$ and the retail price is 999$.  This leaves a profit margin of about 60% and most of the products have a profit margin between 60 and 70 percent.  It looks like if there were a company that made similar products, there would be room to pay employees more.  The result would be a lower profit margin but the business sounded possible.

[Bob Seeker]

I mean it is hard to compete with someone like apple, almost impossible, but if you had a really neat new idea and owned the patent rights. your competition could be limited, and it doesn’t sound too crazy to me. Don’t just take Leo’s dismissal for granted. He could be right, but maybe not…

On some level, just donating money is the same, but on some level it is not since there is the whole part where people develop work lives to earn this money. It is a different dynamic with different end results.

Edited August 7, 2021 by Bob Seeker

[trenton]

@Bob Seeker I see what you mean when you distinguish between charities and worker's benefits.  What I am aiming for in the process is human rights which is more than just giving money to charities.  The point is that if workers had a taste of freedom with all the benefits they could have, it could one day become the law.  Conflating this with charity misses the point.

Another reason it sounds like it could be done is some businesses use armed guards to protect dumpsters full of perfectly good food from homeless people.  This is a terrible image and it could inspire people to support a brand that gives away extra food to homeless people.  This is the alternative to worker's benefits where my point is that companies are so caught up on maximizing short term profits that it leads to insanity for even the smallest profit. 

I am imagining a company for food or electronics that is willing to give away tiny tiny profits to inspire people to support it.  This makes it sound like a company should still be profitable.  One problem is that I don't fully understand what competition would do to such a business and why it would be hard to survive.  Giving away free products that are being thrown away sounds more realistic then worker's benefits.

[universe]

@trenton

The profit margin is way off.

https://azrecom.net/iphone-12-pro-production-cost-is-estimated-at-406-dollars/

In the end the article hints at a few (of many more) other costs besides production to be able to sell a smartphone to people. Add to that the slavery is already included in the production price.

If you want to end slavery maybe start in a non-profit organization, raise awareness and go into politics.

Or you could join a manufacturer that already subscribes to ending slavery in their smartphone production.

https://www.fairphone.com

[Bob Seeker]

Yeah I don’t think giving people one or a few dollars a day would bankrupt you, assuming that you have an actual innovation that you could patent and it was better quality than the inevitable knock-offs that will come.

 You would need to think of a lot of things too. People could get harassed for making more money than others in their area, especially if they are women. It still would probably be worth it though, as something needs to change, and change is never easy.

Edited August 8, 2021 by Bob Seeker

[trenton]

@universe going into politics is the plan b in this case.

I remember that there was a messenger candidate who did not intend to win, but wanted to introduce us to universal basic income.  I think a very effective way to raise public awareness is to get a messenger candidate like him to run on modern slavery.

How effective would it be If a messenger candidate ran on issues like child marriage, slave products, and police brutality toward the mentally ill? 

I am only 22, so I probably can't do such a thing yet, but I would strongly consider it If nobody else would.  The United States imports over 91 billion dollars worth of electronic slave products every year and to this day we are still arguing over slavery 200 years ago being a "necessary evil.". Yet many nations are blind to the corruption of the global supply chain and how they still profit off of slavery today.  This would grind the white washing of history to halt when we focus on the present.  

I would contact anti-slavery organizations to ask them about messenger candidates for anti-slavery.  It is the next best thing aside from starting a business that might struggle to compete with Apple which is a trillionaire.

[Leo Gura]

On 8/7/2021 at 7:22 AM, trenton said:

Thanks for the input.  It sounded too good to be true, but I wanted to make sure.

The reason it sounded doable was because of the profit margin of electronics in the United States.  For example, for the Apple IPhone 12 pro, the production cost is 406$ and the retail price is 999$.  This leaves a profit margin of about 60% and most of the products have a profit margin between 60 and 70 percent.  It looks like if there were a company that made similar products, there would be room to pay employees more.  The result would be a lower profit margin but the business sounded possible.

Dude, making a business around eating into your competitor's profit margins is a terrible business strategy because you just create a race to the bottom. And ironically it is this which leads to slave labor.

[Preety_India]

Slave labour is important. Who will pay the slaves? 

If you want it gone, you're asking for their death. 

[Girzo]

@trenton Read "Reinventing Organizations" by Frederic Laloux or "Corporate Rebels" by Joost Minnar, Pim de Morree. "Let My People Go Surfing" by Yvon Chouinard is a great read, too.

Don't get into gaslighted into thinking better business is not possible. It is, and there are already concrete examples of corporations that have gone that way. Someone just have to scale those solutions, reinvent them in new sectors, it could be you.

[tsuki]

On 7.08.2021 at 5:39 AM, Leo Gura said:

How are you going to compete with companies who pay their workers a fraction of what you pay? Your products will all cost so much no one will buy them.

One could build a brand around combating slavery in third world countries and market his product to people that care.

[Leo Gura]

20 hours ago, tsuki said:

One could build a brand around combating slavery in third world countries and market his product to people that care.

It will be hard to make that bird fly.

Business does not work based on empathy. Business requires that you deliver tangible results to people, not hippie fumes.

Of course better business is possible but your biz has to be grounded in tangible deliverables, not positive vibes. Building a better way to do business is really hard. Which is why highly conscious businesses are so rare. You have to be really clever and ruthlessly practical to pull it off.

[tsuki]

@Leo Gura Thank you.