My experience of whistleblowing even here in the west is that usually it goes very very badly. The only real thing open to you is to refuse to do anything unethical, quit and walk away. Many people can't afford to do that. Things ought to be different but we live in corrupt societies where the law is different for the rich and powerful than for everyone else.
I encourage anyone interested in the consequences of whistleblowing to watch The Insider. A truly excellent film about a whistleblower at a tobacco company and the terrible things they did to try and stop him. Russell Crowe, Al Pacino, Bruce McGill, Christopher Plummer, many others.
A similar film is Silkwood, which is about the life of Karen Silkwood, who reported concerns about corporate practices related to health and safety in a nuclear facility where she worked. She was severely harassed by her employer and then died in a suspicious car accident.
So many good scenes. Personal favorite, grappling with the role of journalism: "What are you?! Are you a businessman or are you a newsman?" Such a powerful question.
Of course, but I don't think it's specific to "the west" or "corrupt societies". It's human nature. If you're part of a group and you speak against the group, esp. to another group, the group will move to destroy you.
It doesn't matter if you're right; it doesn't matter if the group is doing bad things; it doesn't matter if speaking up will help save lives.
The function of the group is to survive as a group; it will do whatever it takes to achieve that.
Laws that go against human nature fight an uphill battle; it doesn't mean we should not try, but it does mean we should be aware of the difficulty.
So many laws go against human nature; those might be the most important laws.
I don't expect the greedy and powerful to change, but as a society we should do more to protect whistleblowers, the same way we protect threatened witnesses.
Also, more solidarity between workers, although not always possible, would go a long way. So many Google employees can definitely afford to quit in solidarity, or strike. Not saying it's easy, I recognize it isn't.
> Laws that go against human nature fight an uphill battle
I'm reluctant to name it "human nature", but let it be.
Most laws are needed to restrict "human nature". Moral codes exist to restrict "human nature". So it is the fate of a law.
> The function of the group is to survive as a group; it will do whatever it takes to achieve that.
It is an oversimplification I believe. Groups have very different goals, and sometimes money is more important then group existence. Groups can accept additional existential risks to increase profits, in such cases it means money has more importance for a group than its existence.
No indeed it's not specific to the west, but the emphasis was worth it: many western people have such an high opinion of their country that they believe it could only happen in Iran, Russia, North Korea and the likes
You'd do good to expect a threatened group (or individual) to lash out, but that's precisely why we have anti-retaliation laws. Think of them not as telling people they shouldn't try to destroy opponents, but that the society around them will punish them if they do, since it's beneficial for that society.
After all, laws in a rule-of-law country are better thought of as restrictions on the state, not the individual. Without criminal law, what's stopping a police officer for killing you if they think it's appropriate? Laws protecting whistleblowers can then be seen as a promise by society to individuals: "If you come forward, we have the power to protect you."
> If you're part of a group and you speak against the group, esp. to another group, the group will move to destroy you.
Not all "groups" are created equal though. I think a big factor in this is how much people make the group a part of their personal identity. If they feel like they are the group (ie "I am American"), then they feel like an attack on the group is an attack on them (is "Americans are dumb" means I am dumb).
Not all groups latch on to their members sense of identity like that, and in that case an attack on the group is much more acceptable to members of the group.
> I don't think it's specific to "the west" or "corrupt societies". It's human nature.
The west is unique because it has created a very believable façade of cleanliness, majority of the population believes that whistleblowing works and often allegations of corruption are treated like conspiracy theory.
In, let's say, Russia, everyone knows that things are corrupt, at least they are realists.
> fight an uphill battle
For some reason our ideology talks about entrepreneurs as wealth creators and completely forgets about wealth creators that our society doesn't reward or punishes, like whistle-blowers.
I don’t think it’s normal human nature to assault / murder / psychologically torture / ruin the life of / etc someone who points out what your group is doing wrong. It may happen from time to time, enough that it should be a potential expected response. But just like psychopathy and schizophrenia are abnormal, so is murdering or ruining the life of a whistleblower.
1-2% of the population may be a sociopath / psychopath — but its still considered “abnormal psychology”.
If someone had proof that a device I made was hurting people, I wouldn’t try to destroy their life or kill them.
A lot of this whistleblowing doesnt even have jailtime as a consequence to those who failed their duty of care - often it just means they’ll make a few million less dollars but still be plenty comfortable.
We shouldn’t feel its “normal” to murder / torture / assault or ruin the lives of these whistleblowers any more than we think sociopaths are “normal”.
This. Its an uphill battle, and given the risks and rewards ratio definitely the smartest thing is to quietly walk away and report to regulators anonymously if possible.
The amount of cases where C-suites or owners take it very personally and go on vengeance streak are many... you don't want to fight bunch of very well-connected rich sociopaths hell-bent on destroying you or worse, and from position of a 'nice guy'.
well stated! i would add that the solution is to find a path of action that does not actually go against human nature but rather embraces it. My favorite historical example is religion, e.g. Moses and the 10 Commandments.
Oh yeah… a country where most safety features… seat belts (for example or lead poisoning) are results of whistleblowers, yet the path is paved with retaliatory actions , hr taking it like a personal jihad to prove the conversation wrong …. I can personally relate to what it feels to take punches
If the person has pre existing medical condition like diabetes, doing good will literally cost one’s life . Living the experience, for voicing discrimination at employment situation
Have interviewed 176 attorneys over 2 year period with only 5 confirming that the discrimination is illegal , but they had signed agreements to not represent employees.
Found out that one can buyout judges, apparently a judge can punish a legal practice if they don’t want a whistleblower case be presented
Being rich definitely allows one to be ignorant all these ongoing friction in life
TBH that's the only circumstance in which I think it would make sense to whistle blow.
"In 2012, as a consequence of his whistleblower status, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) awarded him $104 million, 26% of the total $400 million in taxes returned. It was the 4th reward paid to date since the IRS Whistleblower Program went into effect in 2006."
I think part of the problem is there aren’t really any “good guys” in most cases.
With regulatory capture and the revolving door between .com and .gov, those who run the corporations and those who are supposed to respond to the whistle are often hanging out in the same back rooms.
The general response seems to be a slap on the wrist and a hardy “Don’t get caught doing that again!”
Forget about whistle-blowing in Europe, it will likely blow up in your face. Best thing is, if you are in a company with unethical behavior, to pack your stuff and leave ASAP and hope that you don't get anything of the fallout.
One of the reasons I like the SEC solution so much: It is annonymous, you can provide info through am attorny and the payouts for whistleblowers are high enough that people can, theoretically, stop working and retire.
Not surprising that it will go badly. Most of us have some secrets to hide, so the individuals that make up society have an incentive to exclude such people from their lives.
I couldn’t trust a whistleblower. While grateful for a lot of the work they do, I never want to be their target and would never risk getting close to them.
It's a bit reductionist to consider the things that get whistleblown about as just "everyone has their secrets". Alice is illegally spying on all of society, well, everyone has their secrets. Billy has a porno magazine hidden in his closet, well, everyone has their secrets. Charlie is stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers, well, everyone has their secrets. Daryl is running a child trafficking ring, well, everyone has their secrets. Not all secrets are the same.
> I couldn’t trust a whistleblower. While grateful for a lot of the work they do, I never want to be their target and would never risk getting close to them.
So, you make it a little more likely that whistleblowers will have a hard time, and a little more likely that whistleblowers will be discouraged from ever whistleblowing in the first place. The end result is that you are a little more likely to be affected by the corruption that might have been stopped by whistleblowers.
Everyone has their definition about what a "good person" is. Let me offer my definition. A "good person" is someone who is more likely to benefit than to be harmed by widespread wistleblowing. Good people should want whistleblowers to be protected and commonplace.
I have secrets, but if someone were to leak them nobody would seriously employ the term "whisteblower".
Implying that because someone doesn't want to stay quiet when he sees unethical/unlawful things they can't be trusted on a personal level is a dehumanizing thing to say.
I might be breaking a rule here, but this comment could probably be found verbatim in some company's playbook to discourage whiteblowing.
You see, it makes sence, consider that guy over there - corporate drone, climbing the ladder, would sell his own mother - totally trustworthy, you know what he is gonna do.
But this guy, who values his abstract principles and integrity above any social contract? Can you tell when he has had enough? Do you even know what his values are? What if, one day, he decides that the place is so miserable, so corrupt, so complicit in suffering, that he just burns it all to the ground?
There is truth on this. People love treason but they hate the traitor.
In the US you can get a lot of money for whistle-blowing. You will need it. Don't expect to ever find a decent job afterwards.
This was horrific ! Foxconn acted like a thug with connections to the local politicians and police to bully the whistleblower. I knew there were shady things going on in corporate China, but this was revealing.
This would definitely not be as bad in other countries like India where Foxconn is also trying to setup production.
The story is so juicy. Taiwanese exploitation of the common worker just shows you how in bed the Taiwanese and Chinese Elites are, and also why production will never move to India. Apple loves that productivity
I'm always amazed how cheap and well China can manufacture a wide variety of devices. There is ofc a lot of expertise and economies of scale at work, but the letter is a sad reminder that at least some part comes from exploitation.
"Under Chinese competition law, the complainant has to show proof that their business operations were hurt by the theft of trade secrets. Foxconn said that, as a result of Tang’s disclosures, it had incurred costs of Rmb1.4mn (about £150,000) in August from having to raise its salaries."
I guess the distinction would come from whether salary levels are considered "trade secrets". In the US it definitely wouldn't fly, salary discussions are specifically allowed and retaliation against people discussing their salaries is illegal. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen under some other pretext, but it definitely won't be as blatant.
> As our report describes in detail, the labor conditions of incarcerated workers in many U.S. prisons violate the most fundamental human rights to life and dignity,” said Clinical Prof. Claudia Flores, the director of the Global Human Rights Clinic. “In any other workplace, these conditions would be shocking and plainly unlawful
The US constitution actually allows slavery/involuntary servitude as a punishment for a crime, as per the 13th amendment:
> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
So it makes little sense to compare prison labour programs to "any other workplace".
The slavery and working conditions in China no longer really surprises me, what I do struggle to understand is that Western companies apparently DO NOT CARE.
I can sort of accept, reluctantly, that the Chinese have a different way to thinking than I do and that I can't necessarily apply my moral code to China. What I cannot accept or understand is that the owners and managers of Western companies, who supposedly share my moral ideals, continues to do business with China, solely to increase profit. It's absolutely disgusting. The mental gymnastics these people have to do to justify or just ignore the problems is beyond what I can even imagine.
Nobody in power in industry and almost nobody from the consumer side cares about working conditions in any typical outsourcing country. Quite the opposite, "less regulation", "lower cost" and things like that are directly caused by ignoring worker rights and human rights (as well as a few other things).
China is not alone in this, just more present in the HN-relevant IT/tech sector. But clothing in southeast asia, mining in africa and south america, logistics/trucking in eastern europe are relevant examples from other regions and industries.
I don't intend to disperse responsibility here or distract, quite the opposite: One of the main reasons the aforementioned abuses can continue is that "the civilized west" systematically ignores those problems on all levels. There are some EU regulations coming up to improve this situation, but we'll have to wait and see on those...
Another huge problem is that most of the time there's really no other choice than to buy "Made in China". Even if you have the money and willing to spend more.
The people would be like: "If our company does not benefit from chinese slaves, someone else will and steal our profits!". Which is kinda sadly true, because Amazon does not care were the stock items come from.
You can produce in countries with strong work laws, but it is just too expensive.
(same with countries where we get energy resources from - they don't have ideal reputation for human rights, but they are cheap).
It is kinda simple: you can buy a tshirt from Italy produced in Italy and having price tag 3 times more. Or you can buy from China... Now think you are a company with thin margins and have to do the same... And your items are after getting sold on Amazon, which algorithms would force you to sell as cheap as possible, otherwise your item would not be seen in the search results.
The companies respond mostly to what the public is willing to do about something. If the only thing people do is complaining on social networks then companies will not address the issue. If people will avoid a certain company based on their behavior then they will change it.
> ...the owners and managers of Western companies, who supposedly share my moral ideals, continues to do business...
SUPPOSEDLY - just like Big Tobacco has always wanted everyone to know the scientific truth about the health effects of smoking tobacco, right?
Capitalism optimizes for profit. If some profits need to be foregone or spent on pretending to share the moral ideals of the consumers - that also gets optimized, to minimize performative idealism and its costs.
Does it even matter? Lots of products on Amazon are produced by non-Western companies which very likely have questionable labor practice. Oh, these days people buy thing on Temu and Shein and things are shipped from outside the US. Consumers always look for the cheapest products, and nothing will change as long as that is true.
> I can sort of accept, reluctantly, that the Chinese have a different way to thinking than I do and that I can't necessarily apply my moral code to China.
Do you really believe that Chinese are different from US in this regard? I.e. that most Chinese people believe that it's perfectly ok to exploit people to the bone, because they have alternatives? No, they, just like us, believe it's a rotten thing to do, and agree to it only because well, they have no alternatives. No different than the extremely exploited workers in hellish factories in XIX century US or England.
> continues to do business with China ... It's absolutely disgusting.
I want to inject some nuance here. Competition in the labor market, which drives business to low- or middle-income countries like China, is really really good for the typical low-middle income person in China. If wealthy countries pulled out entirely, then China's GDP per capita will probably drop from $12,000 back to sub-$5,000 and you will be causing more suffering for the people you're concerned about. By all means, advocate for better pay and conditions and regulations, but don't advocate for pulling out of poor or middle income countries with lax labor protections entirely. It wasn't clear to me which avenue you're arguing for but I feel it's an important point worth stressing.
> what I do struggle to understand is that Western companies apparently DO NOT CARE.
Here's what it is: in law corporations are essentially given a weird kind of personhood. It's that way so corporations can get things done.
Unfortunately, corporations aren't people: they don't care, they don't have ethics, they don't have morals, they don't have values, they don't have family, they don't have a conscience.
It's not an original observation, but due to this, the type of person a company most resembles is one of posessing profound psychopathological traits.
"I can sort of accept, reluctantly, that the Chinese have a different way to thinking than I do and that I can't necessarily apply my moral code to China."
so, give them a pass with what they are doing and then criticize others that are giving them the same pass, and also choose to profit from it.
What about people who buy stuff made in China? do they get a pass too? So the only party at fault is the middle-man? slave owners get a pass, consumers that enable the slave owners get a pass and the only party at fault is the evil middle-man corporations?
If its wrong, its wrong for all parties, if its OK, its OK for all parties.
Western companies can't afford to care, as their consumers are buying based on price. Bad working conditions usually mean lower prices, and more success for the company using this.
You can't expect companies to fix this, this needs to come through politics and government. Unfortunately, these days governments who try to address it will be considered enemies of capitalism, considered leftish or communist. As prices will have to rise and consumers won't allow for that.
this is news to me. although i understand they have different systems im not sure ive ever heard it called slavery... do they? (i guess you could say some of the systems in western countries are a little like slavery but lets not get into that)
Didn't the US have a whistleblower bounty with the IRS? I heard it was one of the most successful programs they ever ran. Whistleblow on your company's tax evasion and you get paid a pretty good chunk of money from the IRS. IRS collects its due and you get paid proportional to the amount of tax revenue evaded (I remember a few cases where the whistleblower got tens of millions of dollars).
It is kind of bizarre, but the incentives are perfectly aligned, if the tax evasion sum is low you get paid less therefor it is not worth whistleblowing. The IRS doesn't want to catch the small fries, to some extent tax evasion is desired for smaller companies.
That does come across weirdly but the IRS is a perennial favorite defund target so they don't have the resources to go after everyone, they should only choose juicier cases in that respect.
There are some good points in this article (the optimal amount of fraud is non-zero) that can be extrapolated to other parts of the financial world. The highest level point is that sometimes, a little slippage is needed for business to get done, and getting business done is the main goal of the economy.
As a regular reader of Matt Levine this sounds like an opportunity for a securities fraud suit. Surely Amazon has said that its factories follow local labor laws, that whistleblowers are protected etc. That seems like a fairly standard thing for a large corporation to claim.
After reading both the article and his letter, I can't help but feel so, so sad. There's no glory for this guy. In the States, you'd be able to parlay something like this into a speaking/podcast tour, a book deal, and some consultancy gigs.
This guy's life is ruined, his extended family's social credit sullied and, in addition to serving time, he's become the one of the abused workers he tried to protect.
If I was the owner of a company and I had read that letter, I wouldn't be able to live with myself without first trying to do something about it. Maybe that's why I'm not the CEO of Amazon. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised. I know a guy who went mentally ill after his tenure there. Took him ten years to get back into another job. We're talking about the guy who thought a Vogue Cover with Lauren Sanchez was a good idea.
I'm not anti capitalism, anti manufacturing in china, or anti billionaire. I only wish that a human would deliver that letter to Jeff.
I would guess that Bezos has never read this letter. An underling of his would never present this letter to him unless Bezos has specifically asked to be presented such letters, and the fallout from this letter will never be sufficient to warrant his attention.
It's unfortunate that American and European voters don't realize that allowing our companies to do business with places famous for worker's rights abuses and lack of environmental controls affects them, too.
> I would guess that Bezos has never read this letter.
I would guess someone might have informed him of this letter or he might even as well have read it already. What I would not guess about is whether he would give two fucks about it. Because no he would not. Yes, he and his company has proven this.
Business and profit over all else. That is not just really a Chinese problem.
It surprises me how people still love to try to think that “Oh, this is such a horror! If only the Western corporate overlords had the time in their busy schedules to know of these, this would most likely go away”.
Nope, those cheap contracts were signed with this expectation to begin with it.
I would guess that Bezos read this letter, shruged and said something along the lines of "sucks to be him" while ordering a solid gold toilet for his yacht, because the platinum one was "too flashy"
Isn't US using prisoners for (effectively) forced labor ?
US and EU are abusing (often illegal) immigrants and turning a blind eye to their terrible working conditions (eg. the slaughter house scandals in the EU that broke out during COVID).
Plenty of shit on our doorstep and people don't seem to be bothered that much stepping over it. Why would we be upset about a larger pile of shit a continent away ? We are so isolated from Chinese culture, I know very very little about China compared to NA and EU.
Also the west is happy to trade with way worse systems (by "our" standards) than China, middle east being the first to come to mind.
Not justifying China, just confused where these moral standard expectations are coming from.
Readit News
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Wigand
Trailer: https://youtu.be/MGOb29aePyc
The best scene: https://youtu.be/gNKmmA6_oTQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/silkwood
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe2vBnfKCC4
Surely there's better sources to read/watch than a fictional dramatization?
It doesn't matter if you're right; it doesn't matter if the group is doing bad things; it doesn't matter if speaking up will help save lives.
The function of the group is to survive as a group; it will do whatever it takes to achieve that.
Laws that go against human nature fight an uphill battle; it doesn't mean we should not try, but it does mean we should be aware of the difficulty.
I don't expect the greedy and powerful to change, but as a society we should do more to protect whistleblowers, the same way we protect threatened witnesses.
Also, more solidarity between workers, although not always possible, would go a long way. So many Google employees can definitely afford to quit in solidarity, or strike. Not saying it's easy, I recognize it isn't.
I'm reluctant to name it "human nature", but let it be.
Most laws are needed to restrict "human nature". Moral codes exist to restrict "human nature". So it is the fate of a law.
> The function of the group is to survive as a group; it will do whatever it takes to achieve that.
It is an oversimplification I believe. Groups have very different goals, and sometimes money is more important then group existence. Groups can accept additional existential risks to increase profits, in such cases it means money has more importance for a group than its existence.
No indeed it's not specific to the west, but the emphasis was worth it: many western people have such an high opinion of their country that they believe it could only happen in Iran, Russia, North Korea and the likes
After all, laws in a rule-of-law country are better thought of as restrictions on the state, not the individual. Without criminal law, what's stopping a police officer for killing you if they think it's appropriate? Laws protecting whistleblowers can then be seen as a promise by society to individuals: "If you come forward, we have the power to protect you."
Not all "groups" are created equal though. I think a big factor in this is how much people make the group a part of their personal identity. If they feel like they are the group (ie "I am American"), then they feel like an attack on the group is an attack on them (is "Americans are dumb" means I am dumb).
Not all groups latch on to their members sense of identity like that, and in that case an attack on the group is much more acceptable to members of the group.
The west is unique because it has created a very believable façade of cleanliness, majority of the population believes that whistleblowing works and often allegations of corruption are treated like conspiracy theory.
In, let's say, Russia, everyone knows that things are corrupt, at least they are realists.
> fight an uphill battle
For some reason our ideology talks about entrepreneurs as wealth creators and completely forgets about wealth creators that our society doesn't reward or punishes, like whistle-blowers.
1-2% of the population may be a sociopath / psychopath — but its still considered “abnormal psychology”.
If someone had proof that a device I made was hurting people, I wouldn’t try to destroy their life or kill them.
A lot of this whistleblowing doesnt even have jailtime as a consequence to those who failed their duty of care - often it just means they’ll make a few million less dollars but still be plenty comfortable.
We shouldn’t feel its “normal” to murder / torture / assault or ruin the lives of these whistleblowers any more than we think sociopaths are “normal”.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/ebay-execs-sent-... <- this is not just normal “human nature”. It’s the result of abnormal psychology.
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The amount of cases where C-suites or owners take it very personally and go on vengeance streak are many... you don't want to fight bunch of very well-connected rich sociopaths hell-bent on destroying you or worse, and from position of a 'nice guy'.
If the person has pre existing medical condition like diabetes, doing good will literally cost one’s life . Living the experience, for voicing discrimination at employment situation
Have interviewed 176 attorneys over 2 year period with only 5 confirming that the discrimination is illegal , but they had signed agreements to not represent employees.
Found out that one can buyout judges, apparently a judge can punish a legal practice if they don’t want a whistleblower case be presented
Being rich definitely allows one to be ignorant all these ongoing friction in life
TBH that's the only circumstance in which I think it would make sense to whistle blow.
"In 2012, as a consequence of his whistleblower status, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) awarded him $104 million, 26% of the total $400 million in taxes returned. It was the 4th reward paid to date since the IRS Whistleblower Program went into effect in 2006."
He did 40 months in prison as well but stil...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Birkenfeld
It's equally-lucrative in Defense. You won't work anywhere ever again, but the DoD pays out enough to make it worth your while.
With regulatory capture and the revolving door between .com and .gov, those who run the corporations and those who are supposed to respond to the whistle are often hanging out in the same back rooms.
The general response seems to be a slap on the wrist and a hardy “Don’t get caught doing that again!”
Forget about whistle-blowing in Europe, it will likely blow up in your face. Best thing is, if you are in a company with unethical behavior, to pack your stuff and leave ASAP and hope that you don't get anything of the fallout.
I couldn’t trust a whistleblower. While grateful for a lot of the work they do, I never want to be their target and would never risk getting close to them.
It's a bit reductionist to consider the things that get whistleblown about as just "everyone has their secrets". Alice is illegally spying on all of society, well, everyone has their secrets. Billy has a porno magazine hidden in his closet, well, everyone has their secrets. Charlie is stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers, well, everyone has their secrets. Daryl is running a child trafficking ring, well, everyone has their secrets. Not all secrets are the same.
> I couldn’t trust a whistleblower. While grateful for a lot of the work they do, I never want to be their target and would never risk getting close to them.
So, you make it a little more likely that whistleblowers will have a hard time, and a little more likely that whistleblowers will be discouraged from ever whistleblowing in the first place. The end result is that you are a little more likely to be affected by the corruption that might have been stopped by whistleblowers.
Everyone has their definition about what a "good person" is. Let me offer my definition. A "good person" is someone who is more likely to benefit than to be harmed by widespread wistleblowing. Good people should want whistleblowers to be protected and commonplace.
I have secrets, but if someone were to leak them nobody would seriously employ the term "whisteblower".
Implying that because someone doesn't want to stay quiet when he sees unethical/unlawful things they can't be trusted on a personal level is a dehumanizing thing to say.
I might be breaking a rule here, but this comment could probably be found verbatim in some company's playbook to discourage whiteblowing.
You see, it makes sence, consider that guy over there - corporate drone, climbing the ladder, would sell his own mother - totally trustworthy, you know what he is gonna do.
But this guy, who values his abstract principles and integrity above any social contract? Can you tell when he has had enough? Do you even know what his values are? What if, one day, he decides that the place is so miserable, so corrupt, so complicit in suffering, that he just burns it all to the ground?
This would definitely not be as bad in other countries like India where Foxconn is also trying to setup production.
I'm always amazed how cheap and well China can manufacture a wide variety of devices. There is ofc a lot of expertise and economies of scale at work, but the letter is a sad reminder that at least some part comes from exploitation.
I don't think this would even fly in the US.
I would be surprised if this had ended differently.
https://news.uchicago.edu/story/us-prison-labor-programs-vio...
> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
So it makes little sense to compare prison labour programs to "any other workplace".
I can sort of accept, reluctantly, that the Chinese have a different way to thinking than I do and that I can't necessarily apply my moral code to China. What I cannot accept or understand is that the owners and managers of Western companies, who supposedly share my moral ideals, continues to do business with China, solely to increase profit. It's absolutely disgusting. The mental gymnastics these people have to do to justify or just ignore the problems is beyond what I can even imagine.
Are you really sure that these people share your own moral ideals? ;-)
They do care about profit margins, which is why they outsource slavery.
China is not alone in this, just more present in the HN-relevant IT/tech sector. But clothing in southeast asia, mining in africa and south america, logistics/trucking in eastern europe are relevant examples from other regions and industries.
I don't intend to disperse responsibility here or distract, quite the opposite: One of the main reasons the aforementioned abuses can continue is that "the civilized west" systematically ignores those problems on all levels. There are some EU regulations coming up to improve this situation, but we'll have to wait and see on those...
They do, they hired killers to murder Union leaders in Columbia
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/jul/24/marketingandpr...
Western Consumers don't care either
(same with countries where we get energy resources from - they don't have ideal reputation for human rights, but they are cheap).
It is kinda simple: you can buy a tshirt from Italy produced in Italy and having price tag 3 times more. Or you can buy from China... Now think you are a company with thin margins and have to do the same... And your items are after getting sold on Amazon, which algorithms would force you to sell as cheap as possible, otherwise your item would not be seen in the search results.
SUPPOSEDLY - just like Big Tobacco has always wanted everyone to know the scientific truth about the health effects of smoking tobacco, right?
Capitalism optimizes for profit. If some profits need to be foregone or spent on pretending to share the moral ideals of the consumers - that also gets optimized, to minimize performative idealism and its costs.
Do you really believe that Chinese are different from US in this regard? I.e. that most Chinese people believe that it's perfectly ok to exploit people to the bone, because they have alternatives? No, they, just like us, believe it's a rotten thing to do, and agree to it only because well, they have no alternatives. No different than the extremely exploited workers in hellish factories in XIX century US or England.
I want to inject some nuance here. Competition in the labor market, which drives business to low- or middle-income countries like China, is really really good for the typical low-middle income person in China. If wealthy countries pulled out entirely, then China's GDP per capita will probably drop from $12,000 back to sub-$5,000 and you will be causing more suffering for the people you're concerned about. By all means, advocate for better pay and conditions and regulations, but don't advocate for pulling out of poor or middle income countries with lax labor protections entirely. It wasn't clear to me which avenue you're arguing for but I feel it's an important point worth stressing.
Here's what it is: in law corporations are essentially given a weird kind of personhood. It's that way so corporations can get things done.
Unfortunately, corporations aren't people: they don't care, they don't have ethics, they don't have morals, they don't have values, they don't have family, they don't have a conscience.
It's not an original observation, but due to this, the type of person a company most resembles is one of posessing profound psychopathological traits.
"I can sort of accept, reluctantly, that the Chinese have a different way to thinking than I do and that I can't necessarily apply my moral code to China."
so, give them a pass with what they are doing and then criticize others that are giving them the same pass, and also choose to profit from it.
What about people who buy stuff made in China? do they get a pass too? So the only party at fault is the middle-man? slave owners get a pass, consumers that enable the slave owners get a pass and the only party at fault is the evil middle-man corporations?
If its wrong, its wrong for all parties, if its OK, its OK for all parties.
You can't expect companies to fix this, this needs to come through politics and government. Unfortunately, these days governments who try to address it will be considered enemies of capitalism, considered leftish or communist. As prices will have to rise and consumers won't allow for that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
Dead Comment
It is kind of bizarre, but the incentives are perfectly aligned, if the tax evasion sum is low you get paid less therefor it is not worth whistleblowing. The IRS doesn't want to catch the small fries, to some extent tax evasion is desired for smaller companies.
What?
There are some good points in this article (the optimal amount of fraud is non-zero) that can be extrapolated to other parts of the financial world. The highest level point is that sometimes, a little slippage is needed for business to get done, and getting business done is the main goal of the economy.
https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...
This guy's life is ruined, his extended family's social credit sullied and, in addition to serving time, he's become the one of the abused workers he tried to protect.
If I was the owner of a company and I had read that letter, I wouldn't be able to live with myself without first trying to do something about it. Maybe that's why I'm not the CEO of Amazon. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised. I know a guy who went mentally ill after his tenure there. Took him ten years to get back into another job. We're talking about the guy who thought a Vogue Cover with Lauren Sanchez was a good idea.
I'm not anti capitalism, anti manufacturing in china, or anti billionaire. I only wish that a human would deliver that letter to Jeff.
It's unfortunate that American and European voters don't realize that allowing our companies to do business with places famous for worker's rights abuses and lack of environmental controls affects them, too.
I would guess someone might have informed him of this letter or he might even as well have read it already. What I would not guess about is whether he would give two fucks about it. Because no he would not. Yes, he and his company has proven this.
Business and profit over all else. That is not just really a Chinese problem.
It surprises me how people still love to try to think that “Oh, this is such a horror! If only the Western corporate overlords had the time in their busy schedules to know of these, this would most likely go away”.
Nope, those cheap contracts were signed with this expectation to begin with it.
US and EU are abusing (often illegal) immigrants and turning a blind eye to their terrible working conditions (eg. the slaughter house scandals in the EU that broke out during COVID).
Plenty of shit on our doorstep and people don't seem to be bothered that much stepping over it. Why would we be upset about a larger pile of shit a continent away ? We are so isolated from Chinese culture, I know very very little about China compared to NA and EU.
Also the west is happy to trade with way worse systems (by "our" standards) than China, middle east being the first to come to mind.
Not justifying China, just confused where these moral standard expectations are coming from.