Apple: Promoting slave labour in China

[Zixinus]

Wer zu Hause bleibt, wenn der Kampf beginnt, und läßt andere kämpfen für seine Sache, der muß sich vorsehen: Denn wer den Kampf nicht geteilt hat, der wird teilen die Niederlage. Nicht einmal Kampf vermeidet, wer den Kampf vermeiden will, denn er wird kämpfen für die Sache des Feindes, wer für seine eigene Sache nicht gekämpft hat.

Could you please stick to English?

[Darth Fanboy]

It's a German poem, rather noteworthy one in fact.

What if they gave a war and nobody came? Why then the war will come to you!
He who stays home when the fight begins and lets another fight for his cause should take care,
He who does not take part in the battle will share in the defeat.
Even avoiding battle will not avoid battle, since not to fight for your own cause
really means fighting in behalf of your enemy's cause.

[Ryan Thunder]

When you have all done this wonderful personal audit of your lives to make sure you're not unwittingly harming another sentient being, then you can play up the bogeyman angle on that which you dislike and not come off as a flaming hypocrite with only the most tenuous grasp of just how "evil" your every day life typically is.

1. Fuck you.
2. Fuck Apple, Foxconn, etc.

I'll condemn whomever I want for whatever I want, and if you want to call me a flaming hypocrite you're bloody well welcome to, because it has exactly fuck all to do with what they're doing and doesn't change a whit that they have to be stopped.

Oh, by the way, I typed this on my Acer laptop, which was most likely produced at a Foxconn facility. Feel free to make a fool of yourself and go on about this fact like its at all relevant.

[MKSheppard]

God bless Terry Gou and Foxconn, for bringing an escape hatch into sight for millions of impoverished Chinese workers to help them escape agricultural debt peonage.

I suppose next you're going to start railing on about how the US exploits Mexican and Central American workers in certain jobs?

[Ryan Thunder]

God bless Terry Gou and Foxconn, for bringing an escape hatch into sight for millions of impoverished Chinese workers to help them escape agricultural debt peonage.

3. Fuck you, too.

Working at Foxconn may as well be peonage. They work people like fucking machines until they're of no further use, and then fire them for not being able to do their jobs. If they complain to the authorities who are supposed to handle that sort of thing, they get blacklisted. If they organize, they're sent to jail for years.

You're gonna justify that as an improvement right now, before spouting any other weaseling bullshit.

[Plushie]

Your claims require to be substantiated.

Oh, sure, I'll just go get my copy of The Big Book of Alternate Historical Timelines, I'll get right to you.

....

Have you ever worked on a farm? Long, long hours, hard, hard work. High effort, low return. I mean, there's a good reason these people are able to put up with working for FoxConn at all: They're used to it.

China has not had a famine since the 1960s.

Coincidentally, the 70's is when China's economy began to open up.

Alternatively, if the price of their exports increases (and yes, that would result in a declining quality of life in the First World), they would be much better off. So they need to bargain against the First World.

Labor organization doesn't necessarily mean increased prices, as long as said organizations aren't given any special privileges. Not in the long run, anyway. It just requires production processes to shift from labor intensity to capital intensity.

[Guardsman Bass]

God bless Terry Gou and Foxconn, for bringing an escape hatch into sight for millions of impoverished Chinese workers to help them escape agricultural debt peonage.

3. Fuck you, too.

Working at Foxconn may as well be peonage. They work people like fucking machines until they're of no further use, and then fire them for not being able to do their jobs. If they complain to the authorities who are supposed to handle that sort of thing, they get blacklisted. If they organize, they're sent to jail for years.

You're gonna justify that as an improvement right now, before spouting any other weaseling bullshit.

Per capita income in Chinese urban areas is three times that of rural areas.

Does it make sense now that they choose to migrate to work in the cities? A shitty factory job in the city pays way more than they could be making back on the farm, and the cities have other benefits as well (such as better education, more entertainment options, other potential jobs, etc).

[General Brock]

The only way for these workers to get better rights is to unionise. Which, in a country like China with no existing worker protection, will result in a lot of spilled blood. But the alternative is waiting for these big corporations to develop a conscience, which they are legally barred from doing, so that would be a long wait.

I think China does allow unions, but they tend to be 'company' unions.

Part of the 'savings' western companies enjoy when they ship jobs abroad are not just cheap wages, but the general lack by the host nation of consistent maturity as an industrial society. Some companies are more than happy to encourage this. To use a non-manufacturing example, part of the problem of rare earth extraction in the West, was that it is so environmentally damaging, its unprofitable with reasonable precautions, but China is a major world supplier and is only now realizing the steep environmental price.

The only way around the problem would be to make workplace safety laws more extraterritorial; some Western company breaks a law there (if there even is a law) that wouldn't fly here, and they are held liable for it here. Even so, that would only apply to branch plants, not indigenous suppliers.

At least with a company like Apple, there are first world standards noticeably in the breech.

[Simon_Jester]

Per capita income in Chinese urban areas is three times that of rural areas.

Does it make sense now that they choose to migrate to work in the cities? A shitty factory job in the city pays way more than they could be making back on the farm, and the cities have other benefits as well (such as better education, more entertainment options, other potential jobs, etc).

The guys working twelve hour shifts at a Foxconn factory aren't benefiting from those other benefits, though- and more and more Chinese factories are being moved out into the hinterlands.

Not all factories in China have rotten working conditions, and if you actually asked the workers in many of those factories 'are you toiling like a slave?' they would say 'no.' But that doesn't absolve people who set up actively dangerous working conditions and try to squeeze the life out of their employees to save those last few dollars. Nor does it negate Ryan's point, which is that Shep's drive-by post is raving gibbering bullshit when we're talking about this kind of factory.

They may be making more money at a place like that, but it does them no good if they're working themselves to death to get it. The "escape hatch" only matters when the working conditions are decent and there's a meaningful choice, not just a choice between agricultural peonage and industrial-minion peonage.

[K. A. Pital]

Oh, sure, I'll just go get my copy of The Big Book of Alternate Historical Timelines, I'll get right to you.

No, just go grab your brain and come back.

Have you ever worked on a farm? Long, long hours, hard, hard work. High effort, low return. I mean, there's a good reason these people are able to put up with working for FoxConn at all: They're used to it.

I know that agrarian labour is very hard. However, not all industrial factories in China are even remotely like Foxconn. I saw some of them. So don't fucking bullshit me with the "Foxconn is par the course" crap.

Coincidentally, the 70's is when China's economy began to open up.

1979, and that was the very beginning long before all the China investment buzz. So why has China not had a famine in 1965-1980?

[aieeegrunt]

The only way for these workers to get better rights is to unionise. Which, in a country like China with no existing worker protection, will result in a lot of spilled blood. But the alternative is waiting for these big corporations to develop a conscience, which they are legally barred from doing, so that would be a long wait.

I think China does allow unions, but they tend to be 'company' unions.

Part of the 'savings' western companies enjoy when they ship jobs abroad are not just cheap wages, but the general lack by the host nation of consistent maturity as an industrial society. Some companies are more than happy to encourage this. To use a non-manufacturing example, part of the problem of rare earth extraction in the West, was that it is so environmentally damaging, its unprofitable with reasonable precautions, but China is a major world supplier and is only now realizing the steep environmental price.

The only way around the problem would be to make workplace safety laws more extraterritorial; some Western company breaks a law there (if there even is a law) that wouldn't fly here, and they are held liable for it here. Even so, that would only apply to branch plants, not indigenous suppliers.

At least with a company like Apple, there are first world standards noticeably in the breech.

The only way a capitalist corporation is going to behave is if the decision makers are held liable for unethical behaviour. The factory I work in nobody gave two shits about lockout tagout for years, in fact you were actively discouraged from locking out your machine to do setups and/or tooling changes ("you're holding up the line") even though the fines and penalties for doing so were pretty steep, and the company of course could wash it's hands of any responsibility if you did get hurt. Then the law got changed so that the bosses got punished too if a worker under their command broke this particular regulation.

Hooo boy you better believe they were suddendly all over that shit. You couldn't fart without locking your anus out first. We started attaching lockouts to our fridges, microwaves and lockers as a joke because of how nitpicky they got.

If Apple was held accountable for making workers in China work in a cloud of fucking aluminium dust (those guys are walking corpses) they would be all over it as well. Seriously, they're walking out of there with multibillion dollar profits and they can't part with a few hundred thousand to install more filters and scrubbers? What does that tell you? That without the Big Stick of regulations, and maybee some union guys burning down their fucking mansions in the night these assholes absolutely will and do literally work people to death so that the rich can be marginally richer.

[LaCroix]

So why has China not had a famine in 1965-1980?

It seems that population growth was slowed considerably after the famines, while food production increased at the same rate since 1960. Don't know why, it couldn't have been the one child policy, that was introduced in 1978.

From the 90's on, I guess, food imports increased and allowed the birth rate to spike again. After all, china was making big money by then.

[MKSheppard]

From the 90's on, I guess, food imports increased and allowed the birth rate to spike again. After all, china was making big money by then.

Yeah, you know why the Arab world is all un-rest-y? It's because the leaders have long subsidized basic food staples like grain at super artificially low rates to keep the masses low.

Well guess what? CHINAAAAAAA and it's umpty billion chinamen want to have a steak each night. And they have the money to pay for the grain to feed those cows.

Thus, the Arab world is getting priced out of the world grain market; causing state budgets to begin to be squeezed; so they start talking about reducing subsidies to save money; which in turn causes unrest, as the masses have lived on subsidized everything for so long, that they've lost sight of the true value of everything.

Meanwhile, Joe Chinaman gets richer and fatter.

Black Cat? White Cat? Who cares as long as it makes money.

Thus, China's rise is good for humanity as a whole, as it indirectly chokes to death the poisonous fever swamp inhabiting the middle east.

[Simon_Jester]

...Shep, that's even stupider. By your own argument, it's creating the swamp, or at least the fever of it.

I'd much rather have a hundred million basically content Arabs eating subsidized food than a hundred million pissed off Arabs throwing bombs and blaming random people for increased grain prices.

[Flagg]

So are we allowed to say "chinaman" now?

[Simon_Jester]

I'm not sure I'd count it as a racial slur; it's impolite perhaps, but mostly just because it's a word whites used for the Chinese at a time when racism was universal. It doesn't imply any particularly bad quality about people from China.

[Ralin]

I'm not sure I'd count it as a racial slur; it's impolite perhaps, but mostly just because it's a word whites used for the Chinese at a time when racism was universal. It doesn't imply any particularly bad quality about people from China.

Yes it's a racial slur, or at least fairly offensive. Wong said so himself.

[mr friendly guy]

The funny thing is, as far as I can tell from Shep's recent, say last 3-4 years post on China its been positive, unless my sarcasm detector is broken. Even if sometimes the positive in the sense that if China gets more stuff, its bad for those Mohademians Muslims, or its good for the US military since they get more gear to match China.

Frankly Shep seems more pro China if I can use that term, than those on this board who bitch about peak oil and how its wrooooong for China to industrialise and in doing improve the standard of living of its people, never mind that the West has done it. But then its apparently not a contradiction to point out China is poor yet criticise them for trying to fix it. We need our cake and we have to eat it too.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm quite happy that China's industrializing, but I think they're fools if they don't try to avoid pumping as much carbon and sludge into the world as the West did during its industrialization.

The first billion people to be jumpstarted into an industrial way of life caused a lot of environmental damage. If an equal amount of harm is done by the next billion (or two billion), then the planet may soon lose the capacity to support all those people- in which case China becomes a major participant in digging its own grave.

To me, this is no more a question of fairness than "yes, I know, I got away with it, it's still a bad idea to go play under a tree in a thunderstorm." It's arguably hypocritical, but it's definitely practical advice.

[mr friendly guy]

The problem is, with modern technology available and the dangers of climate change understood, and the time the West had to pollute compared to China, its strange we would assume China would pollute as bad as the West has (when you count the TOTAL amount emitted). Environmentalists were raising the issue of climate change long before China's industrialising really started taking off.

The funny thing is, we ignore their plans to put out a carbon tax, having high amounts of solar (that most panels sold in Australia are made in China), their civillian nuclear plans (Nuclear is bad mmkay), tree planting (its only good when Australia suggests its used to offset carbon dioxide emissions), and their newer more efficient clean coal plants. All the well bitching when our carbon emission per capita is much higher than theirs.

The logic works both ways too. If China (or India or some other industrialising nation) needs to be careful with spewing carbon (I agree) then the developed nations should also do their part. I am just seeing some blame China rhetoric from people while ignoring the fact that we have already done it first, and we are still doing it (on a per capita basis). Its not just hypocrisy, its the inability to see the steps the developed world also needs to take.

Edit - with greener tech available, its also strange we assume China won't clean up its act the same way the developed world has (or at least cleaned it up in the sense it uses less carbon emissions to achieve the same goal).

[Simon_Jester]

Friendly, who the hell is this "we?" "We assume China won't clean up its act," "we ignore their plans to put out a carbon tax," "bitching when our carbon emission per capita is much higher than theirs..." who's "we?"

Who was the last person you actually caught saying "China should stop burning carbon and the US should not," or some such? I favor all the same carbon-reduction ideas for the US that I favor for China. I've just got a shitty government with tunnel vision that's deadlocked by idiots.

The Chinese are run by an unelected clique of technocrats; the only justification they have for holding power is being farsighted enough to plan things ahead of time. That I want them to avoid massive carbon emissions while industrializing... how is that hypocritical, or unreasonable, or "we ignore blah blah blah?" I can't push a button and make the climate change deniers in my own country go away, does that somehow mean I should stop expressing an opinion on the subject at all?

[K. A. Pital]

I think we had Ryan say here that China should't industrialize at all (so he could keep his fancy Xbox), but that was a long time ago.

[Lonestar]

I think we had Ryan say here that China should't industrialize at all (so he could keep his fancy Xbox), but that was a long time ago.

....Shep has NEVER been a console fan. IIRC the last console he has owned was a N64.

[mr friendly guy]

Friendly, who the hell is this "we?" "We assume China won't clean up its act," "we ignore their plans to put out a carbon tax," "bitching when our carbon emission per capita is much higher than theirs..." who's "we?"

Ryan Thunder in a post which got him his village idiot title.
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 5#p3081281

Vympel has also mentioned this in the past, taking glee in this because a China which isn't industrialising won't be able to build great military hardware.
https://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic ... &view=next


Also a lot of the Australian right wing electorate bitch about China's pollution but ignores our own, even in recent times when we finally got off our arses and instituted a carbon tax. I trust you agree that the climate change deniers in your country bitch about China but ignore their own carbon use.

Who was the last person you actually caught saying "China should stop burning carbon and the US should not," or some such?

Ryan Thunder. Unlike the others, he is actually less subtle and outright said it.

I favor all the same carbon-reduction ideas for the US that I favor for China. I've just got a shitty government with tunnel vision that's deadlocked by idiots.

I don't include you in that observation.

The Chinese are run by an unelected clique of technocrats; the only justification they have for holding power is being farsighted enough to plan things ahead of time. That I want them to avoid massive carbon emissions while industrializing... how is that hypocritical, or unreasonable, or "we ignore blah blah blah?" I can't push a button and make the climate change deniers in my own country go away, does that somehow mean I should stop expressing an opinion on the subject at all?

a) You already answered the hypocritical part
b) its not unreasonable IN ITSELF, however its unreasonable if we apply a double standard
c) I don't have a problem with the right to express an opinion under most circumstances (this one included by the way), but I do object to double standards being applied, and I believe I criticise this standard rather than the right to express oneself per se.

[K. A. Pital]

I think we had Ryan say here that China should't industrialize at all (so he could keep his fancy Xbox), but that was a long time ago.

....Shep has NEVER been a console fan. IIRC the last console he has owned was a N64.

Shit. I meant Ryan Thunder.