http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/02/foxconn-apple-and-the-fair-labor-association-respond-to-abc-news-exclusive-report/
just read this report on foxconn working conditions for apple product production. Feel free to read it, but I mainly want to point to the comments made after. I could not believe how many people commented about how the report mischaracterized Foxconn. Many many (at least way more than I thought) people commented on how it is "better than the alternatives", or that "the wage cannot be so hastily compared to american wages due to cost of living." Maybe this is nothing new, but I feel like more and more people are starting to think in the right direction. Some of the comments aren't totally on point, but they are getting there. Just thought I would share.
Sadly, I think it is brand loyalty guiding their defence of Foxconn/Apple. Secondly, there is nothing wrong with criticizing Foxconn and putting pressure on Apple to address working conditions. As long as government is not involved in the pressure building of course.
It is like the 1990's and NIKE all over again.
The people who complain about factory and sweatshop labor are academics and elites who have never done a day of manual labor in their lives. They are almost like 18th century luddites who want to go into a factory and wreck all the machinary, not understanding what it does or how such a system of labor operates. Foxconn has 100's of factories covering the broadest range of assembly, I have seen 6-7 tours of their motherboard assembly operations since 2004, and let me say the factory I worked in here in our western world had poorer conditions than those seen in that report.
The foxconn girl employee had to save 3 months of wages to buy an iPhone. I had to save 12 months of my wages to buy the product I was making. Some fool in the comments said they wanted to buy that poor girl an iPhone for her presumed slave labor exploitation. I should send them my address and they can compensate me for capitalistic exploitation too.
I should add the reason why academics, progressives, liberals and the left think any sort of mass production is slavery and exploitation. It all has to do with the indoctrination that begins during childhood education.
They have re-written history - they truly believe that before industrialisation the human race was living an idyllic lifestyle on the farm ......and then came the Industrial Revolution (roll the evil sound effect). According to this story, we were then forced to work as chimey sweeps, or in evil sweatshops and factories for capitalists, churning our products and being exploited for our labor, paid a subsistance wage.