One of the hallmark properties of a market economy is that you have choice. You don't like your compensation? You quit. The truth is that everyone at the factory is there because they want to be. Because it beats being back on the farm. But still, Foxconn created the problem.
When Western media freaked out over the suicides, Foxconn got scared. They started making their employees sign non-suicide agreements. What? That is the height of stupidity. If a worker wants to commit suicide, a contract isn't going to stop them. However, if a worker does not want to kill themselves ... it creates a new bargaining opportunity.
I have zero sympathy for Foxconn on this. They created the problem with a bad business decision, by explicitly broadcasting where they were vulnerable and making themselves even more vulnerable.
You don't need to be sympathetic with the workers either. They're just negotiating for higher pay in a unique way. Completely within their rights. Nobody is jumping. The ones who are going to jump won't advertise it or ask for anything beforehand.
> You don't need to be sympathetic with the workers either. They're just negotiating for higher pay in a unique way. Completely within their rights. Nobody is jumping. The ones who are going to jump won't advertise it or ask for anything beforehand.
They're not asking for higher pay. They're asking for basic rule of law and enforcement of contracts. Foxconn promised them money and then didn't pay it. In Shenzen there is no practical way for the worker to force the company to pay. The workers are screwed.
Getting your employer to pay up shouldn't require negotiation of any kind, much less 'negotiation' of this extreme nature.
I'm halfway through the TAL piece and this sort of thing is all that most workers are asking for; "Pay my overtime." "Use less toxic chemicals on the assembly line." "Let me do different activities so I don't destroy my hands from doing the same motion all the time." "Let me join a union without putting me in jail."
I have sympathy for anyone who works in conditions where simple basic things like this aren't taken for granted.
> You don't need to be sympathetic with the workers either. They're just negotiating for higher pay in a unique way. Completely within their rights. Nobody is jumping. The ones who are going to jump won't advertise it or ask for anything beforehand.
This is bizarre to me. Shouldn't we be sympathetic to the workers? Some of us are really lucky to have been born in a country where the industrial revolution already took place and labor union struggles already succeeded in establishing the ability to take group action against your employers for better working conditions. So what if paying a fair wage or giving better conditions hurts Foxconn's bottom line?
Also, it is not true that those that threaten suicide do not intend to follow through. This story is an unusual situation since it is group action against an employer, but people threaten and commit suicide for a variety of reasons the world over and your statement erases those peoples experiences.
No. It’s exploitation, pure and simple. It might be better than the alternatives but it’s still exploitation. I simply cannot comprehend how you cannot have empathy in such a situation.
Industrialization – over the course of more than one century – led to a more prosperous, just and healthier society in many western nations. That doesn’t negate the millions of workers who were exploited along the way.
One party can't exploit another without the threat or use of force. If no threat of force is present, then the relationship is voluntary and both parties should accept responsibility for participating in it.
> It might be better than the alternatives but it’s still exploitation.
If a man one thousand years from the future came to visit you, he may very well consider your standard of living absolutely deplorable. But that wouldn't mean you are being exploited. Since no force is being used. See above.
> I simply cannot comprehend how you cannot have empathy in such a situation.
Why would I have empathy for either party in a business transaction? What? This is business. It is as much business for Foxconn as it is for their employees. Let them hash it out.
Power imbalance can create exploitation even without any external coercion.
I think a hypothetical example can be helpful here: Imagine you are in the middle of the desert and dying. Some guy in a helicopter arrives and offers you a contract: He will get you to the closest hospital if you give him all your money and nearly all of all your future income.
There is no external coercion involved, nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to sign, but it’s still exploitation. (All the laws I know acknowledge that: Not helping someone who is dying is a crime.)
Sure, there is coercion. Note that I only said that there is no (for lack of a better word) external coercion. You might also call it open or explicit, I'm not sure, I'm not really happy about any of those words.
What's not there, however, is any “threat of force” and that is what I was responding to.
When is a disagreement not business? Why should we be unwilling to take sides in a negotiating even when it is "business?" When a person's negotiating position is so bad that they use suicide to opt out, I feel sympathy, and I suspect that humanity might me better off if their position were improved by non-capitalist intervention of some kind.
When's the last time you fel the need to threaten someone with suicide? My guess is never. In that case, can you begin to imagine how desperate someone must feel if this strikes him as a viable option?
I think it hasn't occurred to jmathes, and I think they are bluffing.
I have not heard that things are so bad in China that it's impossible to get a job and suicide is the only alternative. This is just a negotiating tactic.
It did occur to me. When I said their "negotiating position is so bad that they use suicide to opt out," the choice I was talking about was between working at Foxconn and trying to find another job. I said "opt out" to mean inserting their own third option; suicide. I chose this language explicitly with the goal of showing that I realize that they have at least three options, because I expected you to argue this point with me otherwise. I'm sorry for my lack of clarity. It's something I'm working on.
Whether their plan to suicide is a bluff is relevant to our apparant disagreement. I think it is at least partly not a bluff, because Foxconn employees have a history of killing themselves. Given that their employees commit suicide based on their working conditions and perceived lack of alternative, I don't think you can rationally think it's good for them to be in this situation. I am not telling you that you should feel sympathy for them, although I certainly do. What I mean is that it is possible for a person to be in a business negotiation position that is bad in the same sense of the word "bad" that being raped is bad. The fact that they have multiple options and that the options involve money is not enough to absolve their malefactors. If I were forced to choose between paid to amputate my own body parts and starving to death for lack of money, and the person asking me to amputate my limbs could pay me without amputating my limbs at no cost to themselves, I would call that unethical. I would say so even if they were not themselves amputating my limbs, killing me, or actively restricting my other options.
A lot of people at Foxconn have already committed suicide. Why would they be bluffing this time? It's the exact opposite of the boy crying wolf.
Also, by reading this article, aren't you now hearing that "things are so bad in China?" Given the size and importance of Foxconn, this is the equivalent of wildcat strikes at GM or Ford. For all we know there are many small firms that are also abusive, but they don't get the media attention.
> One party can't exploit another without the threat or use of force.
Exploitation can happen through more than just force. Of course, at what point you call something duress, coercion, or force is somewhat subjective, but none of these requires someone putting a gun to your head. If you are offered money to do something that you don't want to do, but the alternative is starvation because you're so poor, that is certainly duress, it is probably coercion, and it may even be force. But it is also certainly exploitation.
Income inequality, which creates power inequality, is the main driver of exploitation. If you make people poor enough, you can make them desperate enough to do just about anything. There are people in this world who will sell you their children, and all of them are poor. There are also people who will buy those children. This is not a free exchange that makes both parties better off. It's exploitation. No guns required.
At Foxconn and other large factories in China, you don't just get a paycheck, you get a place to live, food to eat etc. They even have you do morning calisthenics like in the military.
To lose your job there is to immediately become homeless.
Okay, let me see if I got this straight. Foxconn workers are picking between two shitty jobs. Job A is worse than Job B. Job A is so bad that they are threatening to commit suicide. What kind of choice is this?
It's one option more than they would have without Foxconn.
If these workers were subsistence farmers back in rural China, with earnings < what they get at Foxconn, they would be worse off. They just wouldn't have anyone to blame or to demand more money from.
Do you have it straight? From the article: "Instead of the raise they requested, these workers were given the following ultimatum: quit with compensation, or keep their jobs with no pay increase. Most quit and never got the money. That's when the mass suicide threat came in. The incident actually caused a factory wide shutdown, reports Record China. "
Genuinely suicidal people don't threaten to commit suicide, they just do it. These people tipped their hand by coming off the roof without Foxconn conceding to their demands. If idle threats to commit suicide are a surefire indication that someone's being mistreated, then millions of teenage ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends are mistreated, too.
Threatening to jump off a building shows even less conviction than a genuine hunger strike (which will kill you more effectively than picketing on a rooftop making idle threats). IRA terrorists have engaged in hunger strikes to get released from prison--does that mean it's abusive to imprison terrorists?
The Chinese attitude to suicide is completely different to the one in the west, which everyone commenting here is missing. Worker suicides would cause a tremendous loss of face for Foxconn while preserving the face of the workers' families. The point of an anti-suicide contract is not to prevent people from feeling suicidal but to prevent the individual who signs it from holding that over Foxconn as a threat. If someone committed suicide after signing such a contract, the contract has priority and the loss of face would be from the worker's family.
Not everyone who is suicidal does so because they are mentally ill. People kill themselves for political causes, too. It's kind of a thing for monks to set themselves on fire as a means of political protest.
Let me get this straight: you are using one of the most ruthless [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_trade] command economies in the world as an example of the ills of Capitalism?
China has been blatantly capitalist since the economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping, similar to the USSR after the 1965 economic reform.
Don't fool yourself - China is capitalist. It is capitalist regardless of what its leadership claims or the extent to which it uses state mechanisms or market mechanisms.
I'm not just talking about China. It really doesn't matter which country the factories are in. The poor will always get exploited. Be it child labour in India or Indonesia, or closing of GM Flint Michigan.
Exploitation of the poor is at the root of capitalism if you think about it from a basic level. It's all about making profit, and for that you need cheap labour provided by the poor, globalization provides an abundance of poor people to be exploited. Don't like the working hours here? Hey we got queues of peasants lined up outside to replace you. Get back to work.
I'll assume you're bringing up those 2 countries as a direct comparison to North Korea and China? Correct? China seems to be doing alright for now. As for NK? Well when the country was formed, it got the better half compared to South Korea, in that it had all valuable resources and manufacturing. Now you have to ask how did this country with its head start manage to fall behind to its southern counterpart? Had the playing field been level, ie no sanctions placed and NK was allowed to partake in international trade, the story today would be very different.
Pay is certainly a good thing. But perhaps the companies need a heavy touch of social responsibility as part of their manifesto. Unfortunately social responsibility does not fly in the name of profit. That is what I mean by exploitation.
> Unfortunately social responsibility does not fly in the name of profit. That is what I mean by exploitation.
Profit? How about the buyer?
You're free to tell Apple that you won't buy unless they pay enough so workers can have BMWs. If Apple believes you, it will do so and pass along those costs.
What? You're not willing to pay for workers to have BMWs?
Your argument is void because the buyer never finds out what conditions the products are made in unless the factory workers protest such as in this case. Social responsibility is not part of the sales pitch, all the buyer see's are the shiny packaging and the sparkly tv commercials with their favorite celebrity. Were the buyer able to make an informed decision regarding his/her purchase, perhaps they'll choose otherwise.
> Your argument is void because the buyer never finds out what conditions the products are made in unless the factory workers protest such as in this case.
Buyers find out what they're interested in.
> Were the buyer able to make an informed decision regarding his/her purchase, perhaps they'll choose otherwise.
You write that as if there's no relevant experience. "Fair trade coffee" is merely one of the examples.
How is the closing of an unprofitable manufacturing facility exploitation?
Cheap labor is not the only source of profit. Many companies employ only highly compensated individuals to create products & services that they sell profitably.
The root of capitalism is private property rights & the right to voluntarily exchange goods & services.
The same kind people have in the USA, sadly. I know the guys on our production floor and I'll be blunt: factory work sucks.
If they want it to be better, they need labor laws. The people working that kind of job have little leverage. For example, if people are working 20 hour shifts in ~120 degree heat, it just sucks to be them. But once someone turns that into an on-the-record safety issue? Things get fixed. Maybe China should copy that...
It seems pretty clear that the workers think that their working conditions are unjust. Further, they apparently would be OK with those conditions if they got more money.
That suggests they don't consider them inhumane, (not justified regardless of pay) rather they are economically unjust.
The truth of whether or not they are economically unjust (in a market driven economy, which China isn't really) is that if they quit there will be no one else to fill those roles (economic scarcity created by a price imbalance). However if there are people who will fill those roles at the prices offered, then they will simply be out of a job.
It is always true in market controlled transactions that the buyer thinks they are paying too much for a good and the seller thinks they are paying too little. It's the fulcrum that creates the equilibrium point for the price of a good or service.
So in a dispassionate economic way one can say the employees are working to maximize their own economic value. If by periodically pulling stunts like this gets them more pay then they are doing their part to improve their economic station at the expense of the company. The company of course may try to use that to increase the price they charge to assemble such devices, and perhaps give some of that increase to their working staff.
Saying that their other option is to 'starve' seems improbable in a country that is based on the communist teachings of Mao and Marx. One might presume (but I don't know since I don't live there) that there are state jobs available. I could certainly understand it if those state jobs were less desirable. But what I do know is that nothing, and I really do mean nothing, is the same regarding working in China as it is in any western (non-communist / non-totalitarian) country. The best one can hope for looking in from the outside are shadows of those things that are creating them.
I don't agree. First, education levels among Foxconn employees are probably considerably lower than you can imagine. These people just don't fully understand how inhumane their jobs are or the lasting effects of the chemicals they work with and are probably directly lied to about it. Second they may already be owed money by Foxconn for overtime, healthcare, regular wages etc. and can't just outright quit out of fear of never seeing any of that money. Third there's a never ending supply of new workers, ignorant to the conditions in the factory, which pretty much nullifies their ability to bargain for rights. Fourth, according to the recent This American Life episode, THEY CAN BE LEGALLY PUNISHED FOR TRYING TO FORM UNIONS. I don't know how to stress the importance of that other than by raising my voice on the internet. HN doesn't have bolding.
TLDR:
They can't bargain. Plain and simple.
We have worker protections. If all that mattered was the free market then we wouldn't need them.
I completely relate to the emotion, in California we've had folks like Caesar Chavez organize to overthrow the exploitation of immigrant farm workers.
I'm saying that the article says they want more money. I'm sure there are lots of other things they want too but as I mentioned its very dangerous to assume anything when dealing with a culture and political climate that is so very different from one you are in or grew up in.
You point out that "Third there's a never ending supply of new workers, ..." That is, unfortunately, the economic force that is allowing these conditions to persist.
It suggests that one way to put pressure on Foxconn would be to cut off that supply through education and outreach to the people immigrating from the rural areas but I have no idea how that might be accomplished.
I agree that a long term strategy for improving working conditions involves access to quality education but I don't think that pertains to the issue being discussed nor is it very helpful to the people described in the article. The sad fact is these people are living their lives now and have virtually no bargaining power now. So they've taken to following the example set by the desperate measures of their former co-workers as a last ditch effort to eek out a fight. Perhaps the mass suicide was dis-genuine and they just wanted media attention. This to me is an indicator of what they feel they have to do to get a semblance of justice. Or that they genuinely have no idea how to stand up to their employer. An employer, mind you, that requires them to sign a contract stating that they will not commit suicide on the job. Think about that. Where would you be if you got paid $2 an hour to stand on your feet for 12 hours a day working with toxic chemicals without proper safety measures, having had signed a contract stating you wouldn't commit suicide, with no legal right to organize coworkers to even discuss how to improve working conditions, and don't have enough education to understand any of it other than your legs hurt, your hands won't stop shaking, and you haven't yet received any money for that overtime you put in to make electronics you'll never see people in your own country using.
>That is, unfortunately, the economic force that is allowing these conditions to persist.
No, it's a government problem. An individual is not on equal footing with a group of individuals (e.g. a company). Therefor either the government must allow workers to unionize or it must enforce some level of sane working conditions.
If your "free market" allows companies to exploit people to the point that working slowly kills them and not working kills them quicker then I want nothing what-so-ever to do with it.
First, China never was truly communist. It was 'communist' in the twisted definition that the state owned the resources and means of production, but that's not Marxism by any stretch - that's state capitalism, which is not the same thing as a planned economy (and neither of which is the the same thing as Marxism).
Second, China has not been 'communist' (note the scare quotes) for many years now.
Third, there certainly are many people starving in China, just as there are people starving in some part of pretty much any society. I find it entirely believable that there are people who one day's worth of unemployment away from starving in China. For that matter, I would have no trouble believing the same about a capitalist country like the US, or the socialist countries in Europe/South America.
The other option would not be to 'starve', most likely, since there is an abundance of low-skill, low-pay work to be found. But don't be fooled into thinking the government (especially the local government) or the companies care about the workers.
I think it's really interesting to observe the progression of China's economy over the last 70 years, from the "Great Leap Forward" (and the subsequent Cultural Revolution) up until now, they've had quite some twists and turns, but their underlying ideological basis I find intriguing: they derive their policy from the 'Scientific development concept' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Development_Concept).
I might be mistaken, but I don't think health-services (other than basic ones) are free of charge in China. The same goes for education. What's definitely very "Chinese" is the segregation between the rural poor and the urban population. They're no Sweden, that's for sure.
That suggests they don't consider them inhumane, (not justified regardless of pay) rather they are economically unjust.
There are dollar values in which many people will work in inhumane conditions, especially if it means supporting their family. Many people would willingly give up half their lifespan if it meant a good life for their children.
If you're willing to commit suicide as an act of protest, then you are truly desperate.
> It seems pretty clear that the workers think that their working conditions are unjust. Further, they apparently would be OK with those conditions if they got more money.
I don't think that's what happened. Both the Atlantic and the "Want China Times" article say that the mass suicide threat happened after FoxConn didn't pay compensation to the employees who quit. So that seems more about human dignity, not just angling for a raise.
But the story says that employees staged the suicide threat, which confuses me. It's not clear to me if this was a move in sympathy to their former co-workers, or if those ex-employees somehow regained access to the building, or if the ones who tried to quit didn't succeed because FoxConn refused to let them out of their contracts or something.
Saying that their other option is to 'starve' seems improbable in a country that is based on the communist teachings of Mao and Marx.
Chinese policy is based upon the teachings of the capitalist roader Deng Xiaoping. Go into a Chinese bookstore and you will find his writings not things by Mao or Marx.
There isn't any sense in which China is communist. How could the working class be in control of the society, when they are suffering in foxconn? Such a thing could never happen under communism.
They don't consider it inhumane, because it lies around the general treatment these people will get for the majority of low wage low skill jobs in China. This unrest is good though, as it compliments the already staggering turnover rate Foxconn endures with its employees, and will lead to marginal improvement over time assuming low skill job demand is competitive enough in China.
FTA: (apple) so obsessed it even programmed Siri to avert uncomfortable questions about its origins
... freakin' really??? And I suppose that when I ask Siri in jest to open the pod bay doors, I should be worried that my phone is plotting my demise based on the response?
I think this may be a reference to the recent episode of This American Life on the topic [0]. On that program they use this issue as a light introduction to the main theme, just a curious feature of Siri that when you dive deeper leads to an interesting story.
What I was expressing such shock at was the way they phrased it. If you look at the image to the right of the offending sentence, it's a Siri screenshot with
Siri, where were you made?
Siri: That's classified.
I don't think this is Apple "programming siri to avert uncomfortable questions" as much as another joking response to a nonsense question along the lines of "Open the pod bay doors" or "What is the meaning of life".
Siri was able to answer the "where were you designed?" question with "Designed by Apple in California", so it may or may not be just joking response to a nonsense question.
"Instead of the raise they requested, these workers were given the following ultimatum: quit with compensation, or keep their jobs with no pay increase. Most quit and never got the money."
That's a pretty shitty thing to do. Had the manufacturing process not been outsourced to Foxconn, would this kind of behavior fly under the Apple or Microsoft brand image? Probably not.
Open up any desktop computer and look around. I guarantee you'll find at least half a dozen parts made by Foxconn. This isn't just about smartphones, and it never has been. Foxconn has been all over the technology market for a long time.
I'm conflicted. Conditions for the lower class in China are abominable with industry or without. The alternative for those workers is to go back to their home village and do subsistence farming. It's not like they have a ton of options.
Or you could buy a Galaxy Nexus, made in Korea. I agree, those workers are probably better off working at Foxconn than if they stayed in rural areas and survived by subsistence farming, but it's still a moral grey area. It's akin to saying that slaves lived longer and in better conditions picking cotton in Alabama than growing beans in Africa. It might be true, but it doesn't make it good.
Do we know that the Galaxy Nexus is completely Foxconn free? Foxconn may not assemble the phone, but they make a lot of electrical components and Samsung is a Foxconn customer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn#Major_customers
Now that you mention it, none that I'd rely on. My initial claim was made based on a cursory glance at the results page for "where is the galaxy nexus made?"
Digging a little deeper, it seems some people have Nexii with "Made in China" on the back, whereas some say "Made in Korea". I suspect even the Korean phones are only assembled there.
Your analogy isn't applicable. What made them slaves is they were not allowed to return to Africa to do whatever. The Foxconn workers are not slaves. They can go back to farming or choose another job.
An employee who serves you is not a slave because he makes less than you.
Most factory workers are characterized by Western media as being poor, uneducated peasants from rural China who migrate to cities as they have little or no opportunities in their home villages.
Now whether this is actually true or not? I don't know.
That's not the analogy I was making. I was saying that there is a certain class of worker who, despite their bad conditions, is probably better off than they would be without the job. Forced or free doesn't factor into it; the question is to what extent supporting their employer is a moral act. Obviously forced labor is worse than free, but there's a continuum of ethical labor practices that both slavery and Foxconn (and any other employer) reside on. I was speaking to the ethical quandary of supporting companies on the low end of that scale, if the options for their employees are something even lower.
A few decades ago, buying anything made in Korea or Japan was fraught with the same moral dilemma. Until we bought so much stuff from Korea and Japan that Korea and Japan turned into rich countries. You could buy stuff that was made in America, but crack open a history book sometime--this was how America became a rich country, too.
I'm the first to admit I'm quite ignorant of my own history, let alone the economic history of Korea and Japan, but surely you aren't suggesting that if we keep buying stuff from China they will turn into a rich country and magically increase the working conditions?
It's not really magical, but yeah, that's how it's always worked.
Yes, someone has to actually fix the working conditions, but it's not going to be you or me, it's going to be the Chinese workers themselves. American and British workers formed unions and engaged in often violent struggles to improve pay and working conditions; some enlightened industrialists like Henry Ford voluntarily and profitably improved pay and working conditions on their own as well. The same thing will eventually happen in China as soon as the country has enough wealth to bargain for. It'll probably happen easier because the Chinese can learn from our history.
Outsiders can't fix them directly, but they certainly can bring pressure by publicizing things like this and pushing for change at the WTO and other fora.
Basically that's how it's worked for everyone else.
And that's working for China. As has been pointed out -- 12 hours in a factory beats 16 hours in a rice paddy. These people aren't slaves -- they are working hard to secure a better life (mainly for their children).
It's actually already happened. Most of the really nasty stuff (electronics recycling, sweatshops, etc) is now happening in places like Bengal and Sub-saharan Africa.
Foreign demand only speeds up the process; it's not a necessary component. The Western world went from no industrialization at all to sweatshops and tenements to riches within 150-200 years or so with no rich foreign countries buying their exports. (I'm thinking 1750/1800 to 1950.) That's only three times as long as it took Korea and Japan. China could make the same transformation based entirely on domestic demand the way the Western countries did, but instead, China gets the demand from the Western countries, plus Korea and Japan to speed up the process, plus all the cool technology we've developed to make it go faster. And the relevant population figures aren't China vs. the importing countries, because a lot of Chinese are already rich.
You're missing that it wasn't just factory workers that created all that wealth - current developed nations benefitted massively from the immense amounts of wealth they pulled from the 'new world', an option that is no longer available these days.
During the age of conquest Spain was able to extract natural resources (such as minerals), but for the most part, Britain, Portugal, France benefitted from the trade with their colonists --not trade with new world peoples.
I think it could be argued that this reliance on natural resources by Spain, contrasted with commerce favored by Britain, for example, resulted in the slow decline of imperial power by Spain. I think by the 1800s, Spain had pretty much ceased to be economically relevant vis-a-vis the more commerce oriented Empires of the time.
A crude analogy would be China selling to their diaspora outside China proper.
There isn't much of a distinction between exploiting natural resources and settling colonists so the colonists could exploit natural resources for you. The colonial American south exported tobacco and cotton, for instance.
The UK extracted immense amounts of wealth from India alone - where is China's India? Africa was plundered in all senses of the word by western Europe. It's not just Spanish gold that I'm referring to.
My point is that the strength of the UK economy of the time wasn't just 'factory workers', conquering a quarter of the world's landmass and nicking their stuff also helped significantly. China can't replicate this.
The question is whether it's more productive to conquer other continents and plunder them with 18th century technology or just produce stuff with 21st century technology. And it's not as easy as you'd think. Most of the imperial powers spent a lot of money on things like shipping people across oceans, maintaining vast military forces to guard their empires, building massive amounts of infrastructure in their empires, trying to convert the natives to Christianity or at least stop them from immolating themselves on their husbands' funeral pyres, teaching the natives to govern themselves, getting into wars with your colonists when they want to be an independent country, and getting into wars with the natives when they want to be an independent country. Adding insult to injury, having huge empires means a war with the neighboring European country turns into a huge world war between your colonies and the enemy's colonies. It gets so expensive that eventually you have to abandon your colonies--and it's not like India or Africa just ran out of natural resources. Quite the opposite, really.
So instead of messing around with all of that, China's expenses are limited to building infrastructure in China, maintaining vast military forces to guard China and occasionally menace Taiwan, and converting the Chinese to some vaguely secular state-approved worldview. And they have the benefit of modern technology and the entire developed world to crib notes from. They don't have to figure this shit out the first time. A factory anywhere in the West in the 19th century was a best guess--a Chinese factory today benefits from 200 years of experience and empirical research into how to run a factory, robots, computers, a huge foreign population of people buying stuff, and thousands of Western-educated professionals. I think China has the advantage.
China has plenty of shit to figure out for the first time - things like the one-child policy are evidence of this. But my real issue is that the idea that western europe industrialised and became an economic powerhouse just on the basis of it's own factory sweat is a poor reading of history.
Also, not sure what you mean by world war between colonies. Spain, England and France had numerous colonies, but didn't abandon them when warring between each other. Germany, Austro-Hungary and Italy weren't big on colonies, and neither World War involved much in the way of colony-on-colony fighting - pretty much all things you would call a colony in some way were fighting on the side of the Allies in both wars.
There were probably a half dozen wars before World War I that involved colonial theatres. The Dutch-Portuguese war, the Seven Years' War, the War of Austrian Succession, and the War of Spanish Succession are some examples. Many of these are considered world wars for that very reason.
Oh yeah--France actually did abandon their American colonies during the Napoleonic Wars. Haiti had a revolution and Napoleon needed money to try and conquer Europe, so he sold Louisiana to the United States.
It's a really tough call. Is it ok to keep using the phone i have? well, yeah. the damage is done. i'd think of that as something like a vintage fur. the animal won't get any more dead.
the bigger question is, is working at foxconn better than starving on the farm? I don't know much about rural China. I have a hard time believing that people would be driven to suicide without the factory job.
also, a lot of stuff i could likely make myself - i'm just to freaking lazy to buy the parts, solder them up, 3d print a case, and code up the OS.
I'm not saying every company needs to be lilly white, but i'd pay an extra $50 for a device that had a significantly lower probability of driving the maker to suicide.
-- edit --
to be clear, i could get a lot of what i want out of something like this: http://www.adafruit.com/products/330 + wifi + gps. i'm pretty sure i can get a cellular connection via a sparkfun board.
of course, i'd never get through security with a battery hungry monstrosity like that, but it's pretty doable.
Also, someone will probably point out the parts come from places far worse than foxconn, so perhaps i'm screwed.
> Is it ok to keep using the phone i have? well, yeah. the damage is done.
Our society generally disagrees with the idea that the damage is already done. For example, we can look to child pornography. Technically speaking, the damage is already done, so we shouldn't be concerned about the photos themselves. However, the sale of the photographs still demonstrates a market for which others will continue to try to fill, and therein lies the problem.
By buying a phone, the manufacturer of said phone will set those workers to work on the next generation phone in hopes that you will buy another. It's going to take a few generations for them to finally realize that you are no longer interested in buying their products.
I'm not sure what marknutter's intent was, but Foxconn really manufactures a lot of stuff beyond smartphones. PCs typically have Foxconn parts in them, as do routers. Any tablet you own has a good probability of being touched by Foxconn. Even if you get away from Foxconn completely, a lot of Chinese manufacturers have the same problems with less press.
So the more pertinent question in my mind is, "Is there any company that sells ethically built technical gear?"
Aren't there some rare elements that are necessary for semiconductors to work that are only mined in impoverished African countries with poor political stability, working, and environmental conditions? Try going your life without ever using a semiconductor. You can't. Everything in the world is indirectly produced by a semiconductor. You'd have to practically move to Africa and become an open pit miner yourself.
On the other hand, people are fond of pointing out that people who work at Foxconn are choosing what is far and away the best of all available options. So it's really a matter of cultural relativism whether a given set of conditions is good or bad. 100 years from now, are people going to feel guilty about using software that was developed by programmers working in cubicles? It's more likely than you think.
"It's a really tough call. Is it ok to keep using the phone i have? well, yeah. the damage is done. i'd think of that as something like a vintage fur. the animal won't get any more dead."
I'm not taking a side, in this comment, on the Foxconn question.
I believe the response from the anti-fur side to your observation is that, by continuing to wear and display the vintage fur, you help to prop up the perceived value of fur in general and encourage more furs to be ripped from the rodents.
> It's a really tough call. Is it ok to keep using the phone i have? well, yeah. the damage is done. i'd think of that as something like a vintage fur. the animal won't get any more dead.
It could be argued that by getting rid of your phone, the person buying from you (or being given it) would not buy the new smartphone that they would otherwise have.
Actually the rural suicide rate in China is supposedly pretty high. It's hard to come by exact numbers for something the government doesn't want to publicize.
So you're going to basically have to resign from your job and probably stop using every piece of tech you currently do.
I know this sounds overly snarky, but it's true. Those are the options. Either get out of tech on "principal", or realize that would be cutting off your nose to spite your face, and use these devices to help change the way of things.
You're really blithely willing to label avoiding manufactured products that where constructed on the back of what equates to slave labor as "cutting off your nose to spite your face"?
Simply put, until market pressures are brought to bear on companies like Apple to clean up their act on the manufacturing and sourcing side of the house nothing is going to change, regardless of what you do with your ipad.
The point is that nearly all the modern computing technology you're using is using what you call "slave labor" at some point in the supply chain. You name-drop Apple, and the article name-drops Microsoft, but its also Intel, IBM, Samsung, Sony, Acer, Asus, MSI, EVGA, and a myriad of other high-profile tech companies using Foxconn. It'd be more instructive to make a list of companies that are not using them. And even then, whats to say that they're not using equally poor labor that just hasn't been publicized like Foxconn has?
In other words, in order to ditch every piece of technology that's got a foundation in human exploitation and suffering, you practically have to ditch technology altogether. That computer you were using to post was probably built in part on human exploitation.
After the incident, Microsoft gave Kotaku's Brian Ashcraft the following statement.
Foxconn has been an important partner of ours and remains an important partner. I trust them as a responsible company to continue to evolve their process and work relationships. That is something we remain committed to—the safe and ethical treatment of people who build our products. That's a core value of our company.
Is there anything human about this statement? Clearly they have never been committed to this. You know what sounds human to me? Someone admitting a mistake has been made and fixing it with clear actionable items. I hope I speak for the masses when I say I'm completely desensitized by comments like this in today's world, because I simply don't believe it.
Anyone who can't see the exploitation in this has their head in the sand.
If you are paying/treating people less (in value) than what they contribute (in value) back to you, you are exploiting them. Simple as that.
Apple have taken to boasting how great their profit margins are, another way to look at that, is to say they are boasting at how well they can exploit others (suppliers and consumers).
Seriously, stop rationalising that your iDevice/Android is a moral device, it isn't in a utilitarian, or deontological sense, by any stretch.
Only some weak relativistic point of view can justify it. But that's what helps people sleep at night, so we all just hover around there.
Cost to produce is along the lines of what I expected you to answer, but I don't understand. Am I not to collect a wage as the runner of the business even if I'm not doing production work? Or is that in fact included in the 'cost to produce' and then you have to figure out a wage with no logical reference frame?
And how is a business going to get the capital to start if it can't take in money to pay interest? If that would be allowed you're dangerously close to capitalism.
Also I disagree that your idea is in fact anti-capitalist. Paying people based on the value they provide in exchange would favor giving successful wall-street fund managers hundreds of millions of dollars which seems supremely capitalist. (the business itself being exploitative to externals doesn't really matter here)
runner of a business? what is that? Does that mean you are living off the surplus value of your workers? or are you a worker yourself? Your "wage" is decided by your work isn't it? i.e if banana is worth x and you pick 5 of them, then you earned 5x no?
I don't understand your capital/interest point.
except in a world of no-profit companies... wall street fund managers wouldn't exist.
I'm talking about the guy in the back that tracks all the bananas and schedules the deliveries and orders the equipment and all the other logistics on this banana team. Does he not get paid? Or does this job not exist somehow?
Creating a banana farm takes money. Who is going to do it? If there are no profits then nobody that focuses on money will bother, and nobody that focuses on rewarding labor can get a loan either.
And fine, if you won't ignore the nonexistence of fund managers long enough to answer a question about principles I'll try a different tack. If I invent a banana picker that saves ten million dollars am I entitled to ten million dollars? Value in, value out.
sorry to rankle you. I'm not meaning to. More playing out a thought experiment.
So this hypothetical (socialist) banana farm, in order not to disadvantage anyone, would have to be owned by the local community (and ultimately the nation), given private ownership wouldn't exist. People aren't focused on money, or profit, they are focused on bananas, because they enjoy contributing to society.
> If I invent a banana picker that saves ten million dollars am I entitled to ten million dollars.
You are phrasing the question from a capitalist centric point of view. If you invent a banana picker, that is super efficient (and in a capitalist workforce would allow you to cut costs but firing your ten million dollar workforce) then you could just let your workers work less, given there is no profit, and you are already servicing the needs of your community with bananas. So perhaps the workers can think of improvements to other parts of the process, like shipping, or perhaps you just want to give them more time to their family.
It's actually very difficult to think about, given we have an innate capitalist view of things.
Hypotheticals aside, Is it really a controversial point to say that "profit" and "free markets" (while providing an efficient way to price things) motivates a whole lot of behaviours not in the "public good". Should we not explore other alternatives?
So you're saying there isn't private ownership of any objects but there is private ownership of money? That's not something I had realized about your scenario and if I've got it right I find it strange.
Or do people not get paid in private money and I don't understand your original point about pay whatsoever.
And yes that scenario I was making is deliberately about an exploitative capitalist.
"Intrinsic value?" What if I invent a new banana plant that can grow in cold weather. It's so successful that there is a banana glut. All the banana republics face bankruptcy because it costs more to ship the darn things than for me to go out back and pick a fresh bunch off my own personal banana tree?
This may seem like a silly example, but think of how the invention of the tractor affected the draft horse industry.
There is no such thing as intrinsic value. There is only the value the marketplace assigns to it. The Soviets spent decades trying to quantify it -- that is, to figure out how much to pay the janitor compared to the factory manager -- but ultimately gave up.
so because the soviets tried and failed (with stalinism that is). We should just assume that "free markets" are the best solution despite the obvious exploitation that occur due to the 'profit motive'?
You wouldn't accept a political system that gave more votes to a select minority, so why so keen on an economic system that does that? (substitute votes, for money)
Free markets are the least bad option so far. You tried to make the same point about intrinsic value the Marx, Engels and their followers have been making for the last 150 years.
Rhetoric only gets you so far. It's easy to seize the moral high ground when you don't have to actually implement. It's like me saying "there needs to be a better search engine than Google" and getting mad if someone suggests I build one.
And as another commenter posted earlier, the US Senate prioritizes votes from low-population states.
And "money" is just a store of value. Ultimately it has to be backed by a marketplace that accepts its value.
I think this should be seen as a case for why robotic automation should be encouraged wherever and whenever possible. There tends to be an undertone of fear when we talk about automation - fear that robots and technology are going to eliminate everyone's job. Lets also consider that certain jobs out there are not suitable or healthy for breathing, thinking, creative, unique humans (which we all are) to be doing.
When I hear about these things I can't help but think, this is how it is over there. This may be their culture and way of life. So how should we think about that? I do know that some have expressed unhappiness over the hours but, in the NPR story, I didn't sense it was grief. So I'm just unclear what to think.
Foxconn builds a lot more than iPhones. Take a look at all their customers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn#Major_customers If you own computer equipment or a smart phone, there's a pretty good chance that something that you own was made at Foxconn.
And that's partly why it wouldn't matter. People generally connect Foxconn with Apple stuff, and will then boycott by buying other computing products that are also manufactured by Foxconn.
Considering how much was already known about the working conditions as well as suicides at Foxconn, it hasn't slowed down sales. I'm sure a mass suicide would get more media attention, but who knows how it would actually affect their bottom line.
you just gave me a great idea for a movie plot. "Blood Smartphone". A movie about Chinese family working in FoxConn and struggling through live; lots of blood, tears, sweat, abuse, poverty and death. And at the end, a dumb american teenager with bracelets buying an iPhone and downloading Angry Birds and Plants versus Zombie all happy and excited.
I can see the transition shot already: a SnorriCam (one of those cool mounted cameras) following the smartphone down the assembly line, past the family, in dingy blue factory lighting. It loads into a box, onto a truck, into a shipping container, over the ocean, unloaded, and finally in a cheery white and shiny Apple store. The teenager convincing his parents to purchase the phone says "but everyone else my age has one!" The camera then cuts back to the Foxconn factory, where a younger member of the assembly-line family stares bleakly into the camera.
All the photos I've seen of the factories in question are as well-lit as American factories. The working conditions are poor, but they're far better than what early American and British workers endured during the industrial revolution.
Also, such a film would only be complete if it documented the nerve and joint damage caused to American vinyl and PVC manufacturers not given proper ventilation. Would you listen to a blood record, or defecate in a blood sewer pipe?
That's pretty funny, because last time I checked, films were considered art and used to tell whatever story the writers and directors want to tell. Good luck finding a "complete" film to your standards.
love it!! I would change the teen line though: "thank you, daddy! you really, really love me!!"
and would make the ending more tragic. this young member could simply have a bad day etc so him staring bleakly into the camera wouldnt affect me much. how about the plot is about parents who (at the beginning) lost their child that commit suicide cause working 19 hours a day was bit too much, and at the end from overprivilaged, undereducated spoiled teenager camera cuts back to mom and dad hand by hand jumping from a factory roof.
i think that would do it.
Most people would. It's one thing to switch registrars and get exactly the same thing as you had before. It's quite another thing not to have your smartphone at all. How would you check in?
How many suicides would it take before Foxconn is out of business? 1, 10, 1000, .... ? . People already know of dozens or so suicides that have taken place in Foxconn. If people kept on buying stuff regardless, what difference would more suicides make?
Call me cynical, but everyone loves cheap products much more than far removed suicides of random people half way across the globe.
Call me cynical as well, but I can't help but think of how many people competing for those jobs see the suicides as job openings.
Simply, the working conditions might be extra bad at FoxConn, but they're bad everywhere else in the general area. The wealth of cheap workers who are willing to work in horrible conditions for pay is still great, and it would take a LOT more suicides than Foxconn has employees for that situation to change for the better. I think.
So all the people working there who are willing to take extreme measures to improve the working conditions are planning to eliminate themselves from the equation? Seems like they're doing Foxconn a favor. What ever happened to going on strike?
Going on strike wouldn't be effective, there are tons of people waiting in line to replace them. Apparently people are even paying "recruiters" for these jobs, or agreeing to go without salary the first month.
When Western media freaked out over the suicides, Foxconn got scared. They started making their employees sign non-suicide agreements. What? That is the height of stupidity. If a worker wants to commit suicide, a contract isn't going to stop them. However, if a worker does not want to kill themselves ... it creates a new bargaining opportunity.
I have zero sympathy for Foxconn on this. They created the problem with a bad business decision, by explicitly broadcasting where they were vulnerable and making themselves even more vulnerable.
You don't need to be sympathetic with the workers either. They're just negotiating for higher pay in a unique way. Completely within their rights. Nobody is jumping. The ones who are going to jump won't advertise it or ask for anything beforehand.