As promised, some thoughts on human trafficking.
From The Kansas City Star:
Ice cream vendors face forced-labor charges
A KC company allegedly exploited eight Russian youths and housed them in spartan apartments.
It was supposed to be a "cultural, educational and financially rewarding summer" in the United States for eight Russian students. Instead, federal prosecutors say, the students were forced to drive ice cream trucks in Kansas City 13 or 14 hours a day, seven days a week for as little as 87 cents an hour...the students allegedly were crammed into one-bedroom apartments furnished only with mattresses on the floor.
For shame, Frosty Treats, Inc. The ice cream man has long been a somewhat-revered figure of society--like a third-string NFL quarterback, or a chiropractor. And every summer afternoon, when the stoners and pedophiles of this noble industry hop behind the wheels of their rolling freezers to deliver bomb pops, snow cones, and Neapolitan ice cream sandwiches (does anyone eat the strawberry?) to the dairy-starved masses, America becomes just a little bit more American.
But in light of these recent events, I don't know how comfortable I'm going to feel letting my beautiful, brilliant, non-existent children roam the neighborhood with money in hand, looking for a cargo van filled with candy.
While the whole thing makes me kind of sick, I am awfully impressed by Frosty Treats' commitment to ice cream delivery. "The students were forced to drive ice cream trucks in Kansas City 13 or 14 hours a day," the article says. Say what you will about human trafficking and forced labor (and I will go on the record as being anti-both of those things), but that is customer service. I mean, how much ice cream are you really going to sell at 8:30 on Tuesday morning?
Not to mention that these entrepreneurs made a serious investment when they imported eight Russians, bought them mattresses, AND housed them in a spartan apartment (which, if my vocabulary is still up to snuff, means "lavishly appointed"). Sounds like good ol', red-blooded capitalism to me.
And frankly, I don't want to live in a country where spartan accommodations and capitalism are illegal. Come to think of it, that sounds an awful lot like a place called Russia. So really, was there any crime here? Are the Russians any worse off now than they were before?
Unfortunately, we'll probably never know the answers to these questions. In fact, it would probably be best to just leave things be. After all, these eight Russian youths were originally promised "a cultural, educational and financially rewarding summer." And in the end, they got two out of three. That's roughly %66.66666666666666--which is one heck of a batting average.
No comments:
Post a Comment