As long as companies Apple are not legally responsible for their supply chain in front of developed countries’ courts nothing will change. In Switzerland a law that would have changed this was recently rejected. Hopefully another country makes the first step.
I’d really be curious to see how far we could push this.
Cobalt is an essential part of lithium-ion batteries. 70% of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, much of it in forced conditions.
So I guess we have three options: go without lithium-ion batteries, enforce a minimum standard of labor conditions in the DRC by any means necessary, or just try not to think about it too much. Is it any wonder that we picked door number 3?
It is a very simple and clear difference, yet it is a common tactic for a debater to change the narrative and manipulate the argument away to prove some other point.
Honestly, you remind me of “Thank you for smoking”. I will not be surprised if this is how lobbying or CCP’s campaigns work.
... or, we could nudge companies to go to LFP batteries, which can be made without cobalt, and have much better safety. It takes a lot more to make them blow up.
The energy density's a bit lower though, but not so low you can't make a Model 3 with it for the Chinese market...
A downstream issue with importing the product of forced labor into the US is that US manufacturing markets, business (small & medium in particular), labor, & markets affected by finance are distorted. The argument that an influx of cheap foreign goods & cheap labor costs are good for the economy does not properly consider the long term & strategic costs of hollowing out large markets where the USA once lead the world as well as the poverty/blight incurred by former middle-class communities.
I grew up in Hawaii, which used to have a large sugar cane industry. I found it strange that the sugar cane was shipped to the mainland, to be processed, then packaged, shipped back, & sold to the consumer in Hawaii. The value added was effectively removed the local market, which created a monopoly for H,C,&S to buy land, have authority over water rights, allowing them to break treaties & promises to the citizens of the islands. There were also celebrated things that occurred due to the sugar industry, such as importing many people of different ethnicities to work in the plantations.
Today, Hawaii has highly prized land, which is expensive, & many families living there for generations who do not make much money. With few employable industries (government & tourism being the largest employers), the economy is vulnerable to Black Swan events, such as the Covid lockdowns.
> A downstream issue with importing the product of forced labor into the US is that US manufacturing markets, business (small & medium in particular), labor, & markets affected by finance are distorted. The argument that an influx of cheap foreign goods are good for the economy does not properly consider the long term & strategic costs of hollowing out large markets where the USA once lead the world.
That's potentially a very valuable point politically: Those complaining about unfair competition from China and those concerned about human rights can find common cause, and maybe enough support to pass such a bill.
'American workers should not have to compete with slave labor!'
This reminds me of a piece of local history I recently learned in my hometown (Northeast FL).
In the late 1800s, a number of slave families traveled down-river from Georgia after being emancipated and homesteaded in my area on the St. Johns River. As property values increased and they started being taxed more heavily on their (mostly waterfront) land, many of these families (whose patriarchs were mostly illiterate and not at all business-savvy) ended up selling to (i.e. getting taken advantage of by) housing developers, basically losing their identity and heritage.
The story isn't necessarily a direct parallel, but the pattern reminds me of the "milkshake" scene from the movie There Will Be Blood. People shouldn't have to worry about their basic livelihood and property being stripped away by anything other than perhaps a natural disaster of some kind.
I have a friend from Ibiza who described the same problem of vastly disproportionate income opportunity for locals compared to the price of real estate. For them, moving out from the home means leaving the island.
Keep in mind part of the demographic you are talking to here- (mostly) high salaried tech and the elite. Does this affect them? They will happily ignore these issues as long as they keep on getting their shiny iPhones and Macs.
It's a shame that a country as rich as Switzerland is unwilling to do that first step. I think that would have been a good way to start making corporations take responsibility.
The majority of the population was actually willing to do this, as it was a referendum that captured 50.3% of the vote. But it also had to capture a majority of the cantons in the country, which it did not do. And so the initiative failed.
The USA still allows prison slave labor, so good luck with that.
Examples: [1]
Whole Foods – This organic supermarket buys artisan cheeses and fishes from companies that employ inmates.
McDonald’s – Certain McDonald store items such as cutlery and containers were made in prison. Prisoners also sew their employee uniforms, and they only make a few cents an hour from it.
Target – Since the early 2000s, Target has relied on suppliers that are known to use prison labor.
IBM – Apparently, inmates from Lockhart Prison in Texas manufacture this tech giant’s circuit boards.
Texas Instruments – Like IBM, their circuit boards are also made by prisoners. They even got a new factory assembly room specially made for inmate laborers.
Boeing – A subcontractor of Boeing was found to have used inmates to cut airplane components. Unsurprisingly, the prisoners only get paid less than a quarter of the usual wage for such type of work.
Nordstrom – The company was once under fire for selling jeans made by inmates. They have since stopped the practice though, and have promised not to use involuntary labor of any kind again.
Intel – Like other tech giants in this list, Intel has also outsourced labor from prison. Some of their computer parts were made in a prison manufacturing facility.
Walmart – Despite pledging not to sell products made by prisoners, some of the retail giant’s subcontractors were using prison labor to dispose of customer returns and excess inventory.
Victoria’s Secret – The top American underwear designer was paying inmates peanuts to make their expensive lingerie.
AT&T – Rather than outsource their call centers to other English-speaking countries, AT&T hired prisoners instead. The problem is, they only receive $2 an hour for a job that usually pays $15.
British Petroleum (BP) – In 2010, BP hired Louisiana inmates to clean up an oil spill. They received no payment from it.
Starbucks – We all know that Starbucks employees make little hourly. But the prisoners who make the packaged coffee sold in their stores make even much less money. They only receive as little as 23 cents an hour.
Microsoft – In the 1990s, Microsoft made a conscious decision to hire prisoners to pack their software and mouse. A spokesperson at that time even claimed that the company sees nothing wrong about it.
Honda Motor Company – The Japanese car company hires inmates from Ohio Mansfield Correctional Institution to make some of its car parts. As expected, the company paid them next to nothing.
Macy’s – Like Walmart and Target, this retail giant also uses prison labor to save on its operating costs.
Sprint – Following the footsteps of its competitor, AT&T, Sprint also staffs its call centers with underpaid inmates.
Nintendo – To pack their Game Boys, Nintendo hired a subcontractor who, in turn, hires prisoners at deplorable rates.
JC Penney – Since the 90s, JC Penney has used prison labor for its clothing line. Female inmates used to sew leisurewear sold in their stores, and more recently, prisoners from Tennessee are making jeans for them.
Wendy’s – As part of its cost-cutting measures, Wendy’s uses prison labor to process beef for their hamburgers.
I am surprised by today's lack of ethics discernment - there is big a difference.
Prison labor is compensating for crimes committed against society and other people, while uyghur labor is direct discrimination against an entire minority without probable cause.
If they happen to commit terrorism, then yes, those specific individuals' forced labor is justified as debt, but right now they are just labeled as "enemies of the state" because they threaten CCP's interests. This is much like what happened with Nazi Germany or the USSR, even the controversial US Japanese internment camps.
In the original thread it was mentioned that Apple fans are brainwashed by the brand, it is obvious from the responses here that this is clearly working...
There is a big difference between slave/forced labor and paying for cheap labor.
Majority of your examples state something along the lines of "paying inmates peanuts to make expensive things"... which literally is not the definition of slave labor.
The article is about literal Chinese Slave Labor camps. There is no comparison with any of the things in your list.
Most people would also agree, providing a purpose - jobs, training and skills to inmates is a net win for everyone involved, and is a core component in rehabilitation - directly combating rescindance.
What do you think should be done about Xinjiang? Do you believe the U.S. and Americans will do nothing simply because it has issues with prisons (so different that they are practically unrelated)?
Recently, Apple's supplier, Wistron faced revolt after treating workers unfairly here in India. And India is not really the most shining example of protecting our workers from unfair and harsh working conditions. So, if such treatments don't fly here, I don't think they will fly anywhere else. The kind of labor expectation that these companies have after their stints in China is ethically incompatible with most other countries. So, I can't see the condition improving in the near future, companies will continue chasing profits at all cost and China will remain the most fertile ground to do that.
Note that immediately after this become public, Apple put Wistron on probation refusing to award them any more work and requiring them to resolve the issues.
Governments really need to do the heavy lifting though because apart from refusing to hand over money/work they are very limited in what they can do.
I respectfully disagree. The only heavy lifting that governments need is to hold Apple and their executives criminally responsible. Apple has shown ruthless effectiveness in tracking down leakers and prosecuting them. But making sure the workers who are making their parts and assembling their devices aren't slaves or being abused is a bridge too far for the richest company in the world?
I don't believe it. It's Apple's responsibility, and if achieving such a goal in some backwater is too difficult then maybe it shouldn't have been doing business there in the first place.
Hmm, I was not putting the blame on Apple here, rather Wistron. While indirectly, Apple may be responsible for Wistron's behavior, most of the fault lies with Wistron and how they are used to treat their employees as disposable, while chasing higher margins.
> Note that immediately after this become public, Apple put Wistron on probation refusing to award them any more work and requiring them to resolve the issues.
Apple is currently incentivized to stay naive about the labor conditions of their manufacturing partners. As long as they can maintain ignorance, it's difficult to hold them accountable. We should demand better from a company as massive and profitable as Apple.
Traditionally slavery was an alternative to death for the conquered. I'm morbidly curious what the effects of all Western corporations banning slave labor would be. I doubt it would result in liberation. Would working conditions for the slaves worsen when they worked for local, lower-margin factories instead? I can't imagine them improving.
I have little faith in legal remedies to liberate slaves. Arming them seems the only long-term effective solution. Otherwise the man with the gun will order the slave back to work the second the man in the wig isn't looking. And the man in the wig will remain silent, to avoid revealing his impotence.
Slave labor is inefficient, so perhaps the best way is to topple inefficient slave societies through full-spectrum competition, from military to economic. This pressure incentivizes efficient human resource utilization.
One thing's for sure: Individual Westerner guilt over whether to buy the next iPhone will add zero value.
Having spent several years in Chinese supply chain activities, the factories building iPhones, XBoxes etc. Are some of the nicest ones around. Clean, large campuses with organized activities for workers etc.
There are several tiers of factories below that, with worse worker accommodations, Longer working hours, worse working conditions. Some of the smaller, poorer factories will provide little in terms of personal protective equipment, ergonomics, and make stuff for the local, African and South Asian markets where there’s little pressure on companies to have a “clean” supply chain. These workers would go there.
That sounds to me like "if we don't let our suppliers use child labor, those children's families will starve" argumentation.
We in the west are complicit in the use of child and slave labor when we buy products produced in this manner, but because it happens on the other side of the globe and is cheaper that way, we turn a blind eye.
The solution is not to ignore the issue. The solution is to draw a line in the sand and say "this is unacceptable, clean up your act or no deal", and for that to be backed by international trade agreements. It is up to us, as the lucrative market they wish to sell to, to make these demands.
Full transparency and accountability in all supply lines is a must. It should not be possible to hide behind "a supplier did this, we're not responsible".
I hope we'll see a move to more local production, instead of shipping stuff around the globe like crazy. It makes no sense for me in Europe to have my clothes produced in Asia, when we have world-class textile and garment production right here, with better environmental control and worker's rights.
> perhaps the best way is to topple inefficient slave societies through full-spectrum competition, from military to economic. This pressure incentivizes efficient human resource utilization.
Isn’t that what’s already happening though? One might even say that this neoliberalist take is precisely what brought about the current situation. For producers in the market to be competitive, they must (over)optimize for profit. One of the best ways to do that is by reducing cost. One of the best ways to reduce cost is by employing cheaper labor (“efficient human resource utilization”, you said), and to do that, tech companies must outsource to manufacturers located in poor countries with weak state institutions where the transacting parties can get away with slavery.
Humans envy wealth not justified by the generous hunter archetype, who shares his kill's meat with the tribe. Humans also lust to devour chips and candy until their teeth rot and their hearts explode. A three-pound brain comes with legacy firmware. Vulnerabilities should be patched in the next 10,000-year release. Please hold.
Tribal politics are mediated by emotion, settled by sex and violence, and recorded in genes. Unfelt but underlying is the telos of life: to accelerate the heat death of the universe and achieve a more perfectly-uniform field of lifeless subatomic dust. Inspiring! If God is the universe, then life is the cancer She dies of.
So if you really hate God, become Elon Musk and advance humanity along the Kardashev Scale. Which brings us to what international pressure really is: the race up the Kardashev ladder. Those left behind enjoy a century of humiliation, as China discovered when the European nations forcibly opened her ports for business in classically-rapey colonial fashion. If forcible anachronism is a form of societal slavery, then this was a liberation of the Chinese peasant, who now owns a cell phone and several outfits.
Later Mao attempted his Great Leap Forward, but gave up on it before meeting the fate of Pol Pot, whose supreme ideological commitment weakened Cambodia so badly that Vietnam invaded. Thus the threat of invasion checks the degree of enslavement feasible. Of course, it rarely comes to that. Even Communists can be reasonable.
> Isn’t that what’s already happening though?
China should be enjoying her Asian tiger rise in per capita GDP, and filling the vacuum left by the USA's receding thalassocracy. However, it's always possible to overplay a good hand, and it appears Xi did exactly that. If he's replaced by moderate after Deng's heart, it will be partly due to the pressure Trump put on China, in a reversal of the USA's prior indulgence. Not that Trump is doing much on an absolute scale, but relatively, it's a dramatic shift. Mostly though, it's China's own fault. Burning all her international goodwill to hoard COVID19 PPE will prove very expensive, among other shenanigans.
Just because I make a factual historical observation, doesn't make me a neoliberal. Slave societies are an extreme case. I doubt China could be described as one at her current levels of forced labor.
> For producers in the market to be competitive, they must (over)optimize for profit. One of the best ways to do that is by reducing cost. One of the best ways to reduce cost is by employing cheaper labor (“efficient human resource utilization”, you said), and to do that, tech companies must outsource to manufacturers located in poor countries with weak state institutions where the transacting parties can get away with slavery.
Here's where you're right: Tribal politics represent the genetic feedback system, and they dislike arbitrary wealth because of its damaging distortion of genetic fitness feedback. The market economy makes wealth a much less arbitrary signal of genetic fitness, but it is nowhere near a replacement for tribal politics. Unless you think Bill Gates should get all the California girls...
That's why successful societies balance the interests of the rich against the interests of the commoners.
However, I wouldn't call China a "poor country with weak state institutions". If their slaves are outcompeting our free skilled tech workers, there's a simple solution for that: Slap a tariff on it. This move will garner enough popularity to guarantee a crowd of adoring iPhone assembly technicians in front of the golden statue of yourself you erect with the proceeds.
Cedant arma togae: the man in the wig is not powerless. The man in the wig simply doesn't care about slaves. The man in the wig does, however, care about the opinions of the electorate (in a democracy), and so Westerner guilt may actually be useful.
Wow. A troglodyte on HN manages to get top votes by vomiting an incredibly incoherent spew of libertarianism, marxism, reactionary nationalism and militant western chauvinism. All of this in reaction to an article about slave labor going into every fanboy's favorite screen. Who woulda thunk it.
A lot of things you say are right: If Western civ actually held to its neoliberal values then things would cost more. Slave labor is inefficient (although it's more efficient and apparently more acceptable than executing people like they did during the Cultural Revolution).
But on what planet do you live where the only solution is armed violence? First of all, that's just not possible. Even in America, the idea that because we have guns we are able to stand up against oppressive government is nothing more than a wet dream fantasy of the far right. In China? Uighurs are going to arm up and stand to the CCP? Are you out of your mind? If that looked like anything, it would look like Islamic terrorism.
You and I in America, and the people in Hong Kong, and the Uighurs, are not in a "slave society", we are in a corporation. And our issues are not going to be cured by taking up small arms against nuclear states that act as part of that corporations, even if millions of us are armed. The only thing going on here is a battle for scarce resources, disguised as a bunch of ideologies.
Look, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have trillions of dollars they could spend to build up a Palestinian state rebuild Syria or help the Uighurs, but what do they do? Make arms deals with Israel and America and China. And logically they're doing what they need to do. There is no world in which your fantasy of small arms and liberation of slaves is a remote possibility.
The only possibility is people owning their own local resources. And not sharing them as marxists, either.
There are very few, if any, levers that we can pull from the West at this point to promulgate that strategy. We can't bomb the railway lines into the Uighur camps, as we should have in WWII, because it would cause a nuclear war. We can cut off trade, and encourage people not to trade with bad actors, that's about it. Everything else is just a wanker fantasy.
I didn't say arming slaves was good. I said it was the only effective long-term solution to the problem of liberating slaves. The consensus here is anti-slavery, so I accepted that premise.
The USA does permit minimum wage workers to purchase cheap pistols, which is probably why its police aren't brave enough to lock them down. Sometimes those workers even upset a predetermined election.
I do not support prisons. On average, it is better to be the slave of an individual and work for him than it is to be the slave of a state and live in a cage full of predators. Although of course I would rather be imprisoned for life in modern Scandinavia than serve 10 years of "indentured servitude" in Plantation America.
Since doing good starts from home, I suggest you liberate your extended family's children from compulsory labor. Let us know how that goes...
I’ve decided to leave the Apple ecosystem in 2021. But the problem is not isolated to Apple. In fact, I’d be surprised if other, cheaper products aren’t quite a bit worse.
Is there an electronics company that does a better job? (That’s not a rhetorical question.)
Sadly true. Years ago, I watched a brutal documentary on a mine where the life expectancy of the workers was insanely short. Their primary industrial clients were electronics manufacturers. I don’t know what I can do, though, as programming is my living.
I like the suggestion of always buying used goods. But obviously, a secondary market still encourages the primary market. It’s not a perfect solution.
Apple is one of the better ones in a sea of really bad. It's a low bar and certainly doesn't mean Apple is perfect. There might be some boutique phone makers who claim to be better like Librem or Fairphone, but because they have fewer resources than the big players it's much harder for them to really know.
And if you dig into the mining side of the rare earths, worker conditions drop quickly.
This is the big problem. Few of these companies have the resources to verify their supply chain is free of abuse. The smaller companies likely have even less control over their supply chain.
Fairphone have dozens of suppliers in China, some of them indirect, and they say in their own literature they can't directly vouch for every company in their supply chain.
They're in exactly the same boat as Apple. IMHO this is about China, not any one company.
Honestly i never felt the ecosystem to be that great, its just the same shit others are doing in a walled garden way. I am sure you will be fine finding your own stack
Would you consider only buying a used/refurbished phone/computer? Obviously it’s not scalable to the masses, but not putting any money in Apple’s pocket directly
I fault companies like Apple for doing business with companies who do these things.
But I'm not sure if anything changes if local governments aren't interested in stopping it (or actually support it) either.
Markets don't care about human rights... and if the local government supports this (in this case China, but other places too). I don't see how this ever changes.
It changes by holding companies like Apple accountable. They are the largest company in the world for goodness sake. Their audits when so little as a picture of a manual gets leaked are incredibly thorough, yet when it comes to literal slavery they're unable to reign it in? If we were to hold executives liable for acting as slavers then it would be miraculous how quickly corporate leadership would suddenly be interested in the well being of their fellow man.
> What I don’t understand is why companies want to be associated with these suppliers. Honestly the cost difference can’t be that big.
because ultimately the great majority of their customers do not care, as simple as that. They might care about local issues, wedge issues, but ethical and moral concerns in another country? not so much. Big luxury brands such as Apple pour billions in PR and marketing because they live or die by the reputation. The day their customers start caring more about it, things might change.
I just want to add, that I'm no way trying to diminish Apple's achievements when it comes to technology, product integration and creating remarkable ecosystems. I cannot think of another manufacturer that nailed that much in so little time. I think that Apple Silicon is game changer. But yes, they are a luxury brand.
Cost is part of it, but the other big piece is logistics. As we learned early in the year, Apple is moving manufacturing outside of China, but it takes time. Something like the iPhone is made in an industrial area where many of the part manufacturers are next to each other. This lets various parts be easily sourced and delivered. So when Apple wants to move to a new country, the end goal has to be to move the entire complex, and not just a piece. That takes time.
> While I question his motives, it’s kinda weird that Trump of all people seems to be the only one who is openly critical of China.
You fell into Trumps distortion field. Many are critical of China, but the difference is what to do about it. Trumps idea was to go it alone with tariffs, rhetoric, and go after things like TikTok. IMO, that's not a plan or a real policy.
If it were in the US you'd certainly see it in the news.
In China and other places just getting close to a factory can at times be difficult and crappy working conditions are sadly just assumed to be a fact :(
Trump's criticism of China I don't think intersects anywhere close to caring about the treatment of Chinese citizens... or anyone really.
Just a random anecdote, I'm American and work in the US. Trump personally approved the acquisition of a company I worked for and appeared with the CEO and talked about how all the great jobs that would come of it ... before the acquisition was official they laid most everyone off.
There's a Netflix documentary about the garlic industry where among other concerns journalists reveal that peeled garlic from China is the product of prison slave labor. Many of the prisoners work their hands raw and continue to cut garlic ends with their teeth. Prisoners have a daily quota with punishment for not meeting it.
I haven't come across peeled garlic that wasn't from China or was unlabeled. So, I stopped buying it entirely.
Netflix show "Rotten", Season 1, Episode "Garlic Breath". It's been a hotly contested episode. I haven't seen any debate about the peeled garlic, though.
I think the reason for saying forced labor was to distinguish it from chattel slavery (what most people think of when they see the word slavery), not downplaying the actions of this supplier.
Readit News
Cobalt is an essential part of lithium-ion batteries. 70% of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, much of it in forced conditions.
So I guess we have three options: go without lithium-ion batteries, enforce a minimum standard of labor conditions in the DRC by any means necessary, or just try not to think about it too much. Is it any wonder that we picked door number 3?
Being “forced to seek employment out of poverty” is different than being forced to labor due to your ethnic background. Necessity vs. discrimination.
Ex: https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/global-devel...
It is a very simple and clear difference, yet it is a common tactic for a debater to change the narrative and manipulate the argument away to prove some other point.
Honestly, you remind me of “Thank you for smoking”. I will not be surprised if this is how lobbying or CCP’s campaigns work.
The energy density's a bit lower though, but not so low you can't make a Model 3 with it for the Chinese market...
I grew up in Hawaii, which used to have a large sugar cane industry. I found it strange that the sugar cane was shipped to the mainland, to be processed, then packaged, shipped back, & sold to the consumer in Hawaii. The value added was effectively removed the local market, which created a monopoly for H,C,&S to buy land, have authority over water rights, allowing them to break treaties & promises to the citizens of the islands. There were also celebrated things that occurred due to the sugar industry, such as importing many people of different ethnicities to work in the plantations.
Today, Hawaii has highly prized land, which is expensive, & many families living there for generations who do not make much money. With few employable industries (government & tourism being the largest employers), the economy is vulnerable to Black Swan events, such as the Covid lockdowns.
That's potentially a very valuable point politically: Those complaining about unfair competition from China and those concerned about human rights can find common cause, and maybe enough support to pass such a bill.
'American workers should not have to compete with slave labor!'
In the late 1800s, a number of slave families traveled down-river from Georgia after being emancipated and homesteaded in my area on the St. Johns River. As property values increased and they started being taxed more heavily on their (mostly waterfront) land, many of these families (whose patriarchs were mostly illiterate and not at all business-savvy) ended up selling to (i.e. getting taken advantage of by) housing developers, basically losing their identity and heritage.
The story isn't necessarily a direct parallel, but the pattern reminds me of the "milkshake" scene from the movie There Will Be Blood. People shouldn't have to worry about their basic livelihood and property being stripped away by anything other than perhaps a natural disaster of some kind.
Examples: [1]
[1] https://blog.globaltel.com/companies-use-prison-labor/Prison labor is compensating for crimes committed against society and other people, while uyghur labor is direct discrimination against an entire minority without probable cause.
If they happen to commit terrorism, then yes, those specific individuals' forced labor is justified as debt, but right now they are just labeled as "enemies of the state" because they threaten CCP's interests. This is much like what happened with Nazi Germany or the USSR, even the controversial US Japanese internment camps.
In the original thread it was mentioned that Apple fans are brainwashed by the brand, it is obvious from the responses here that this is clearly working...
Majority of your examples state something along the lines of "paying inmates peanuts to make expensive things"... which literally is not the definition of slave labor.
The article is about literal Chinese Slave Labor camps. There is no comparison with any of the things in your list.
Most people would also agree, providing a purpose - jobs, training and skills to inmates is a net win for everyone involved, and is a core component in rehabilitation - directly combating rescindance.
dang: All HN fonts should be mnonospaced programmer fonts. Know your audience - we're all getting older. :)
Governments really need to do the heavy lifting though because apart from refusing to hand over money/work they are very limited in what they can do.
I don't believe it. It's Apple's responsibility, and if achieving such a goal in some backwater is too difficult then maybe it shouldn't have been doing business there in the first place.
Apple is currently incentivized to stay naive about the labor conditions of their manufacturing partners. As long as they can maintain ignorance, it's difficult to hold them accountable. We should demand better from a company as massive and profitable as Apple.
That's far too late and at that point they had no choice. They deserve no credit for doing it.
Dead Comment
I have little faith in legal remedies to liberate slaves. Arming them seems the only long-term effective solution. Otherwise the man with the gun will order the slave back to work the second the man in the wig isn't looking. And the man in the wig will remain silent, to avoid revealing his impotence.
Slave labor is inefficient, so perhaps the best way is to topple inefficient slave societies through full-spectrum competition, from military to economic. This pressure incentivizes efficient human resource utilization.
One thing's for sure: Individual Westerner guilt over whether to buy the next iPhone will add zero value.
There are several tiers of factories below that, with worse worker accommodations, Longer working hours, worse working conditions. Some of the smaller, poorer factories will provide little in terms of personal protective equipment, ergonomics, and make stuff for the local, African and South Asian markets where there’s little pressure on companies to have a “clean” supply chain. These workers would go there.
We in the west are complicit in the use of child and slave labor when we buy products produced in this manner, but because it happens on the other side of the globe and is cheaper that way, we turn a blind eye.
The solution is not to ignore the issue. The solution is to draw a line in the sand and say "this is unacceptable, clean up your act or no deal", and for that to be backed by international trade agreements. It is up to us, as the lucrative market they wish to sell to, to make these demands.
Full transparency and accountability in all supply lines is a must. It should not be possible to hide behind "a supplier did this, we're not responsible".
I hope we'll see a move to more local production, instead of shipping stuff around the globe like crazy. It makes no sense for me in Europe to have my clothes produced in Asia, when we have world-class textile and garment production right here, with better environmental control and worker's rights.
Dead Comment
Isn’t that what’s already happening though? One might even say that this neoliberalist take is precisely what brought about the current situation. For producers in the market to be competitive, they must (over)optimize for profit. One of the best ways to do that is by reducing cost. One of the best ways to reduce cost is by employing cheaper labor (“efficient human resource utilization”, you said), and to do that, tech companies must outsource to manufacturers located in poor countries with weak state institutions where the transacting parties can get away with slavery.
Tribal politics are mediated by emotion, settled by sex and violence, and recorded in genes. Unfelt but underlying is the telos of life: to accelerate the heat death of the universe and achieve a more perfectly-uniform field of lifeless subatomic dust. Inspiring! If God is the universe, then life is the cancer She dies of.
So if you really hate God, become Elon Musk and advance humanity along the Kardashev Scale. Which brings us to what international pressure really is: the race up the Kardashev ladder. Those left behind enjoy a century of humiliation, as China discovered when the European nations forcibly opened her ports for business in classically-rapey colonial fashion. If forcible anachronism is a form of societal slavery, then this was a liberation of the Chinese peasant, who now owns a cell phone and several outfits.
Later Mao attempted his Great Leap Forward, but gave up on it before meeting the fate of Pol Pot, whose supreme ideological commitment weakened Cambodia so badly that Vietnam invaded. Thus the threat of invasion checks the degree of enslavement feasible. Of course, it rarely comes to that. Even Communists can be reasonable.
> Isn’t that what’s already happening though?
China should be enjoying her Asian tiger rise in per capita GDP, and filling the vacuum left by the USA's receding thalassocracy. However, it's always possible to overplay a good hand, and it appears Xi did exactly that. If he's replaced by moderate after Deng's heart, it will be partly due to the pressure Trump put on China, in a reversal of the USA's prior indulgence. Not that Trump is doing much on an absolute scale, but relatively, it's a dramatic shift. Mostly though, it's China's own fault. Burning all her international goodwill to hoard COVID19 PPE will prove very expensive, among other shenanigans.
Just because I make a factual historical observation, doesn't make me a neoliberal. Slave societies are an extreme case. I doubt China could be described as one at her current levels of forced labor.
> For producers in the market to be competitive, they must (over)optimize for profit. One of the best ways to do that is by reducing cost. One of the best ways to reduce cost is by employing cheaper labor (“efficient human resource utilization”, you said), and to do that, tech companies must outsource to manufacturers located in poor countries with weak state institutions where the transacting parties can get away with slavery.
Here's where you're right: Tribal politics represent the genetic feedback system, and they dislike arbitrary wealth because of its damaging distortion of genetic fitness feedback. The market economy makes wealth a much less arbitrary signal of genetic fitness, but it is nowhere near a replacement for tribal politics. Unless you think Bill Gates should get all the California girls...
That's why successful societies balance the interests of the rich against the interests of the commoners.
However, I wouldn't call China a "poor country with weak state institutions". If their slaves are outcompeting our free skilled tech workers, there's a simple solution for that: Slap a tariff on it. This move will garner enough popularity to guarantee a crowd of adoring iPhone assembly technicians in front of the golden statue of yourself you erect with the proceeds.
What, specifically, do you mean by this?
A lot of things you say are right: If Western civ actually held to its neoliberal values then things would cost more. Slave labor is inefficient (although it's more efficient and apparently more acceptable than executing people like they did during the Cultural Revolution).
But on what planet do you live where the only solution is armed violence? First of all, that's just not possible. Even in America, the idea that because we have guns we are able to stand up against oppressive government is nothing more than a wet dream fantasy of the far right. In China? Uighurs are going to arm up and stand to the CCP? Are you out of your mind? If that looked like anything, it would look like Islamic terrorism.
You and I in America, and the people in Hong Kong, and the Uighurs, are not in a "slave society", we are in a corporation. And our issues are not going to be cured by taking up small arms against nuclear states that act as part of that corporations, even if millions of us are armed. The only thing going on here is a battle for scarce resources, disguised as a bunch of ideologies.
Look, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have trillions of dollars they could spend to build up a Palestinian state rebuild Syria or help the Uighurs, but what do they do? Make arms deals with Israel and America and China. And logically they're doing what they need to do. There is no world in which your fantasy of small arms and liberation of slaves is a remote possibility.
The only possibility is people owning their own local resources. And not sharing them as marxists, either.
There are very few, if any, levers that we can pull from the West at this point to promulgate that strategy. We can't bomb the railway lines into the Uighur camps, as we should have in WWII, because it would cause a nuclear war. We can cut off trade, and encourage people not to trade with bad actors, that's about it. Everything else is just a wanker fantasy.
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The USA does permit minimum wage workers to purchase cheap pistols, which is probably why its police aren't brave enough to lock them down. Sometimes those workers even upset a predetermined election.
I do not support prisons. On average, it is better to be the slave of an individual and work for him than it is to be the slave of a state and live in a cage full of predators. Although of course I would rather be imprisoned for life in modern Scandinavia than serve 10 years of "indentured servitude" in Plantation America.
Since doing good starts from home, I suggest you liberate your extended family's children from compulsory labor. Let us know how that goes...
Is there an electronics company that does a better job? (That’s not a rhetorical question.)
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/oct/12/p...
I like the suggestion of always buying used goods. But obviously, a secondary market still encourages the primary market. It’s not a perfect solution.
And if you dig into the mining side of the rare earths, worker conditions drop quickly.
The CCP calls the shots and if you own the company you have to go along or become one of the prisoners.
The CCP even has the forced laborers in a parade. They have their hands on it from start to finish.
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They're in exactly the same boat as Apple. IMHO this is about China, not any one company.
https://www.fairphone.com/en/
You'll have to choose to get off the constant upgrade carousel.
But I'm not sure if anything changes if local governments aren't interested in stopping it (or actually support it) either.
Markets don't care about human rights... and if the local government supports this (in this case China, but other places too). I don't see how this ever changes.
We talk about slavery, that ended with state actions. I'm not sure China cares, and accordingly the practice will continue.
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Also why isn’t it news? It feels like something that should have journalists camping outside Tim Cooks office.
While I question his motives, it’s kinda weird that Trump of all people seems to be the only one who is openly critical of China.
because ultimately the great majority of their customers do not care, as simple as that. They might care about local issues, wedge issues, but ethical and moral concerns in another country? not so much. Big luxury brands such as Apple pour billions in PR and marketing because they live or die by the reputation. The day their customers start caring more about it, things might change.
I just want to add, that I'm no way trying to diminish Apple's achievements when it comes to technology, product integration and creating remarkable ecosystems. I cannot think of another manufacturer that nailed that much in so little time. I think that Apple Silicon is game changer. But yes, they are a luxury brand.
> While I question his motives, it’s kinda weird that Trump of all people seems to be the only one who is openly critical of China.
You fell into Trumps distortion field. Many are critical of China, but the difference is what to do about it. Trumps idea was to go it alone with tariffs, rhetoric, and go after things like TikTok. IMO, that's not a plan or a real policy.
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In China and other places just getting close to a factory can at times be difficult and crappy working conditions are sadly just assumed to be a fact :(
Trump's criticism of China I don't think intersects anywhere close to caring about the treatment of Chinese citizens... or anyone really.
Just a random anecdote, I'm American and work in the US. Trump personally approved the acquisition of a company I worked for and appeared with the CEO and talked about how all the great jobs that would come of it ... before the acquisition was official they laid most everyone off.
I haven't come across peeled garlic that wasn't from China or was unlabeled. So, I stopped buying it entirely.
https://www.ft.com/content/1416a056-833b-11e7-94e2-c5b903247... might be a reference.
Guess a public boycott of iPhone/Apple is easy move to fight this mess. I don't wanna think about labors when touching my phone every time.