Yes, it is irrational to worry about a suicides rate of a subset of people which is not statistically different than the suicide rate of the nation as a whole. You'll note that I'm not applying any double standard to China - I made the exact same argument two years ago about France Telecom: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=872813
You did not respond to his point that the suicide rate of people who jumped to their deaths is unlikely to represent the entire number of suicides. I tend to agree with him.
Given that someone is posting an infographic here that appears to tacitly claim that the few workers who jumped represent the entire list of suicides at Foxconn, you'll forgive me if I want to examine the data sources and know exactly how the reporting mechanisms work.
Because when I see how anomalously low it is compared to the suicide rate pretty much everywhere else, exactly one thing springs to mind: under-reporting.
I was merely responding to his point about 3 hypothetical suicides at GM, not defending Foxconn against all charges. If you have better data on the suicide rate at Foxconn, go ahead and post it.
Fair enough, but I sincerely doubt that anyone has accurate information on the suicide rate at Foxconn. I just can't believe in anomalously low statistics compared to everywhere else given with no data on how the information was collected.
I work in the game industry. It is, traditionally, a higher stress environment than other jobs. If someone can't take the stress of the job, is it the fault of the industry, the company, or the mental processes of the person in question?
I won't say that the company has no blame, but fobbing off 100% of the responsibility for suicide onto the company is faulty logic at best. When you're considering committing suicide, there's definitely an issue, and more than some of it may be in the way you process stress and/or your environment.
It's irrational to be alarmed about a company driving workers to commit suicide? Are you seriously making that argument?