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Comment by jfoutz | Hacker News Reader

I think it's time for me to check out of the smartphone game. I really like them for travel, but this is crazy.

Open up any desktop computer and look around. I guarantee you'll find at least half a dozen parts made by Foxconn. This isn't just about smartphones, and it never has been. Foxconn has been all over the technology market for a long time.

I'm conflicted. Conditions for the lower class in China are abominable with industry or without. The alternative for those workers is to go back to their home village and do subsistence farming. It's not like they have a ton of options.

Or you could buy a Galaxy Nexus, made in Korea. I agree, those workers are probably better off working at Foxconn than if they stayed in rural areas and survived by subsistence farming, but it's still a moral grey area. It's akin to saying that slaves lived longer and in better conditions picking cotton in Alabama than growing beans in Africa. It might be true, but it doesn't make it good.

Your analogy isn't applicable. What made them slaves is they were not allowed to return to Africa to do whatever. The Foxconn workers are not slaves. They can go back to farming or choose another job.

An employee who serves you is not a slave because he makes less than you.

That's not the analogy I was making. I was saying that there is a certain class of worker who, despite their bad conditions, is probably better off than they would be without the job. Forced or free doesn't factor into it; the question is to what extent supporting their employer is a moral act. Obviously forced labor is worse than free, but there's a continuum of ethical labor practices that both slavery and Foxconn (and any other employer) reside on. I was speaking to the ethical quandary of supporting companies on the low end of that scale, if the options for their employees are something even lower.

> They can go back to farming

Where? At the government-mandated pick-a-plot-land-for-free fair?

What is it with the assumption that every employee is an ex-farmer?

Most factory workers are characterized by Western media as being poor, uneducated peasants from rural China who migrate to cities as they have little or no opportunities in their home villages.

Now whether this is actually true or not? I don't know.

A few decades ago, buying anything made in Korea or Japan was fraught with the same moral dilemma. Until we bought so much stuff from Korea and Japan that Korea and Japan turned into rich countries. You could buy stuff that was made in America, but crack open a history book sometime--this was how America became a rich country, too.

Nice observation, but are you sure that the analogy is equally applicable? China has a much bigger population than either Korea or Japan...

Foreign demand only speeds up the process; it's not a necessary component. The Western world went from no industrialization at all to sweatshops and tenements to riches within 150-200 years or so with no rich foreign countries buying their exports. (I'm thinking 1750/1800 to 1950.) That's only three times as long as it took Korea and Japan. China could make the same transformation based entirely on domestic demand the way the Western countries did, but instead, China gets the demand from the Western countries, plus Korea and Japan to speed up the process, plus all the cool technology we've developed to make it go faster. And the relevant population figures aren't China vs. the importing countries, because a lot of Chinese are already rich.

You're missing that it wasn't just factory workers that created all that wealth - current developed nations benefitted massively from the immense amounts of wealth they pulled from the 'new world', an option that is no longer available these days.

On the other hand, they had 19th century technology. It's hard to tell who's really better off.

During the age of conquest Spain was able to extract natural resources (such as minerals), but for the most part, Britain, Portugal, France benefitted from the trade with their colonists --not trade with new world peoples.

I think it could be argued that this reliance on natural resources by Spain, contrasted with commerce favored by Britain, for example, resulted in the slow decline of imperial power by Spain. I think by the 1800s, Spain had pretty much ceased to be economically relevant vis-a-vis the more commerce oriented Empires of the time.

A crude analogy would be China selling to their diaspora outside China proper.

There isn't much of a distinction between exploiting natural resources and settling colonists so the colonists could exploit natural resources for you. The colonial American south exported tobacco and cotton, for instance.

The UK extracted immense amounts of wealth from India alone - where is China's India? Africa was plundered in all senses of the word by western Europe. It's not just Spanish gold that I'm referring to.

My point is that the strength of the UK economy of the time wasn't just 'factory workers', conquering a quarter of the world's landmass and nicking their stuff also helped significantly. China can't replicate this.

The question is whether it's more productive to conquer other continents and plunder them with 18th century technology or just produce stuff with 21st century technology. And it's not as easy as you'd think. Most of the imperial powers spent a lot of money on things like shipping people across oceans, maintaining vast military forces to guard their empires, building massive amounts of infrastructure in their empires, trying to convert the natives to Christianity or at least stop them from immolating themselves on their husbands' funeral pyres, teaching the natives to govern themselves, getting into wars with your colonists when they want to be an independent country, and getting into wars with the natives when they want to be an independent country. Adding insult to injury, having huge empires means a war with the neighboring European country turns into a huge world war between your colonies and the enemy's colonies. It gets so expensive that eventually you have to abandon your colonies--and it's not like India or Africa just ran out of natural resources. Quite the opposite, really.

So instead of messing around with all of that, China's expenses are limited to building infrastructure in China, maintaining vast military forces to guard China and occasionally menace Taiwan, and converting the Chinese to some vaguely secular state-approved worldview. And they have the benefit of modern technology and the entire developed world to crib notes from. They don't have to figure this shit out the first time. A factory anywhere in the West in the 19th century was a best guess--a Chinese factory today benefits from 200 years of experience and empirical research into how to run a factory, robots, computers, a huge foreign population of people buying stuff, and thousands of Western-educated professionals. I think China has the advantage.

China has plenty of shit to figure out for the first time - things like the one-child policy are evidence of this. But my real issue is that the idea that western europe industrialised and became an economic powerhouse just on the basis of it's own factory sweat is a poor reading of history.

Also, not sure what you mean by world war between colonies. Spain, England and France had numerous colonies, but didn't abandon them when warring between each other. Germany, Austro-Hungary and Italy weren't big on colonies, and neither World War involved much in the way of colony-on-colony fighting - pretty much all things you would call a colony in some way were fighting on the side of the Allies in both wars.

There were probably a half dozen wars before World War I that involved colonial theatres. The Dutch-Portuguese war, the Seven Years' War, the War of Austrian Succession, and the War of Spanish Succession are some examples. Many of these are considered world wars for that very reason.

Oh yeah--France actually did abandon their American colonies during the Napoleonic Wars. Haiti had a revolution and Napoleon needed money to try and conquer Europe, so he sold Louisiana to the United States.

I'm the first to admit I'm quite ignorant of my own history, let alone the economic history of Korea and Japan, but surely you aren't suggesting that if we keep buying stuff from China they will turn into a rich country and magically increase the working conditions?

It's not really magical, but yeah, that's how it's always worked.

Yes, someone has to actually fix the working conditions, but it's not going to be you or me, it's going to be the Chinese workers themselves. American and British workers formed unions and engaged in often violent struggles to improve pay and working conditions; some enlightened industrialists like Henry Ford voluntarily and profitably improved pay and working conditions on their own as well. The same thing will eventually happen in China as soon as the country has enough wealth to bargain for. It'll probably happen easier because the Chinese can learn from our history.

Outsiders can't fix them directly, but they certainly can bring pressure by publicizing things like this and pushing for change at the WTO and other fora.

Basically that's how it's worked for everyone else.

And that's working for China. As has been pointed out -- 12 hours in a factory beats 16 hours in a rice paddy. These people aren't slaves -- they are working hard to secure a better life (mainly for their children).

China is turning into a rich country. Go and watch this video: http://www.gapminder.org/videos/hans-rosling-asias-rise-ted-... and play around with the gapminder tool: http://www.gapminder.org/world/

Thanks for the links, I will check them out.

It's actually already happened. Most of the really nasty stuff (electronics recycling, sweatshops, etc) is now happening in places like Bengal and Sub-saharan Africa.

> Or you could buy a Galaxy Nexus, made in Korea

Do we know that the Galaxy Nexus is completely Foxconn free? Foxconn may not assemble the phone, but they make a lot of electrical components and Samsung is a Foxconn customer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn#Major_customers

Any sources that the Nexus is actually built in Korea without Foxconn involvement? Samsung is a Foxconn customer.

Now that you mention it, none that I'd rely on. My initial claim was made based on a cursory glance at the results page for "where is the galaxy nexus made?"

Digging a little deeper, it seems some people have Nexii with "Made in China" on the back, whereas some say "Made in Korea". I suspect even the Korean phones are only assembled there.

That's a shame. I was hopeful that the Nexus would present an ethical option for smartphones.

Why not just ditch every piece of technology then?

It's a really tough call. Is it ok to keep using the phone i have? well, yeah. the damage is done. i'd think of that as something like a vintage fur. the animal won't get any more dead.

the bigger question is, is working at foxconn better than starving on the farm? I don't know much about rural China. I have a hard time believing that people would be driven to suicide without the factory job.

also, a lot of stuff i could likely make myself - i'm just to freaking lazy to buy the parts, solder them up, 3d print a case, and code up the OS.

I'm not saying every company needs to be lilly white, but i'd pay an extra $50 for a device that had a significantly lower probability of driving the maker to suicide.

-- edit -- to be clear, i could get a lot of what i want out of something like this: http://www.adafruit.com/products/330 + wifi + gps. i'm pretty sure i can get a cellular connection via a sparkfun board.

of course, i'd never get through security with a battery hungry monstrosity like that, but it's pretty doable.

Also, someone will probably point out the parts come from places far worse than foxconn, so perhaps i'm screwed.

I'm not sure what marknutter's intent was, but Foxconn really manufactures a lot of stuff beyond smartphones. PCs typically have Foxconn parts in them, as do routers. Any tablet you own has a good probability of being touched by Foxconn. Even if you get away from Foxconn completely, a lot of Chinese manufacturers have the same problems with less press.

So the more pertinent question in my mind is, "Is there any company that sells ethically built technical gear?"

I think the pertinent question is, "What constitutes ethically built technical gear?"

Aren't there some rare elements that are necessary for semiconductors to work that are only mined in impoverished African countries with poor political stability, working, and environmental conditions? Try going your life without ever using a semiconductor. You can't. Everything in the world is indirectly produced by a semiconductor. You'd have to practically move to Africa and become an open pit miner yourself.

On the other hand, people are fond of pointing out that people who work at Foxconn are choosing what is far and away the best of all available options. So it's really a matter of cultural relativism whether a given set of conditions is good or bad. 100 years from now, are people going to feel guilty about using software that was developed by programmers working in cubicles? It's more likely than you think.

> It's a really tough call. Is it ok to keep using the phone i have? well, yeah. the damage is done. i'd think of that as something like a vintage fur. the animal won't get any more dead.

It could be argued that by getting rid of your phone, the person buying from you (or being given it) would not buy the new smartphone that they would otherwise have.

"It's a really tough call. Is it ok to keep using the phone i have? well, yeah. the damage is done. i'd think of that as something like a vintage fur. the animal won't get any more dead."

I'm not taking a side, in this comment, on the Foxconn question.

I believe the response from the anti-fur side to your observation is that, by continuing to wear and display the vintage fur, you help to prop up the perceived value of fur in general and encourage more furs to be ripped from the rodents.

> Is it ok to keep using the phone i have? well, yeah. the damage is done.

Our society generally disagrees with the idea that the damage is already done. For example, we can look to child pornography. Technically speaking, the damage is already done, so we shouldn't be concerned about the photos themselves. However, the sale of the photographs still demonstrates a market for which others will continue to try to fill, and therein lies the problem.

By buying a phone, the manufacturer of said phone will set those workers to work on the next generation phone in hopes that you will buy another. It's going to take a few generations for them to finally realize that you are no longer interested in buying their products.

Actually the rural suicide rate in China is supposedly pretty high. It's hard to come by exact numbers for something the government doesn't want to publicize.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6711415.stm

Ditch every piece of technology that's got a foundation in exploitation and human suffering? Challenge Accepted.

So you're going to basically have to resign from your job and probably stop using every piece of tech you currently do.

I know this sounds overly snarky, but it's true. Those are the options. Either get out of tech on "principal", or realize that would be cutting off your nose to spite your face, and use these devices to help change the way of things.

You're really blithely willing to label avoiding manufactured products that where constructed on the back of what equates to slave labor as "cutting off your nose to spite your face"?

Simply put, until market pressures are brought to bear on companies like Apple to clean up their act on the manufacturing and sourcing side of the house nothing is going to change, regardless of what you do with your ipad.

The point is that nearly all the modern computing technology you're using is using what you call "slave labor" at some point in the supply chain. You name-drop Apple, and the article name-drops Microsoft, but its also Intel, IBM, Samsung, Sony, Acer, Asus, MSI, EVGA, and a myriad of other high-profile tech companies using Foxconn. It'd be more instructive to make a list of companies that are not using them. And even then, whats to say that they're not using equally poor labor that just hasn't been publicized like Foxconn has?

In other words, in order to ditch every piece of technology that's got a foundation in human exploitation and suffering, you practically have to ditch technology altogether. That computer you were using to post was probably built in part on human exploitation.

Is there a market for this? I don't know of any "fair trade" electronics makers, that claim to produce good ethically.

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