I frequently go to the factories in Guangzhou and deal with the workers there.
The housing is not substandard. There are employee dorms and employee cafeterias at every factory I've been to. These things are completely self contained. I've toured them, and they're like college dorms. The workers stay there, in the dorms and eat there. They're not prisoners. Everybody goes back home, (often over a thousand miles) every year for Chinese New Year, for example. They also leave the factory grounds in the evening, just like you'd leave a college campus you lived on to hang out downtown.
Now, all that said, the competition for those jobs, I think, is quite intense. I've been repeatedly impressed by the level of dedication in the engineering staffs I've worked with. You say you need a fixture modified to allow a certain PCB component to be tested in a different way, and they're back in 30 minutes with the changed fixture, for example. Those engineers make things happen in minutes, not days. It's quite motivational to be among them. However, I'm sure there's a certain fear component that's driving them. It's a very good job, and they don't want to lose it. I'm not certain how such a thing can be addressed. It's just a function of the supply and demand of factory jobs.
I also sense a bit of colonialism mentality in many of my fellow engineers when we travel over there. We're smart, and they're idiots, is an attitude that is almost constant among western engineers dealing with Chinese factories. It's your typical client/vendor bullying, but multiplied by 5 due to this attitude. When you bully the factory manager, he'll pass that down the line, I'm sure.
Now, I've never worked with Apple, but I'm told it's a bit scary there. Lot's of pressure, even for the American engineers to perform to perfection. I imagine being an Apple vendor is a bit of a nightmare, and a Chinese vendor, of course is bullied by normal companies, so an Apple Chinese vendor, I have to assume, is in hell.
Couple all that together, and I can imagine this kid being pretty stressed out.
Okay, that's an anecdote. But the problem is that you may well be seeing a good factory. There are thousands of others that you aren't seeing. You also aren't seeing what they don't want to show you.
There have been plenty of documentaries and articles about human rights abuses at Chinese factories over the years. Google for it. It isn't fiction. Maybe the electronics industry is an island of civility of in the midst of a sea of corruption and abuse, but somehow, I doubt it. In a country where people are tainting food with plastic to pinch a penny, I don't give the benefit of the doubt.
"financial exploitation, physical exploitation, and psychological exploitation and we’re all part of it"
Yes, we are. Even if the factories are "no prisons" etc. People in China live in the factories and sleep in dorms because they work 7 days a week for a wage that does not even allow them to pay rent. Even in case they could afford a flat they wouldn't have the time to go back and forth after a 12 - 14h workday.
The whole premise of this editorial seems to be that electronics are cheaper today than they were twenty or thirty years ago because workers are now being terribly exploited and abused. And we should feel guilty about that. There are several obvious flaws in this argument. The first is that electronics prices have come down for a whole raft of reasons ranging from currency exchange rates, to miniaturization, to automation. Labour is only one small part of the equation. The second is that crappy working conditions are not unique to electronics factories in China. Those pyjamas you wore last night, the one's where the crotch split the second time you put them on, were also made in a sweatshop somewhere. Years ago it might have been a sweatshop in New York City. Today it's a sweatshop in Nicarauga or Malaysia. I'm very keen on seeing working conditions improve for everyone, I just don't think that price is a meaningful metric for trying to gauge whether the factory worker is getting a fair shake.
What you say is true - manufacturing techniques have changed more than he lets on, it's not all labour. However I still think he makes a good point when he says "it's going to cost" us. We talk about how living conditions need to improve in 3rd-world countries, but we buy products that exploit that system. We talk about how gas prices need to come down, but most people haven't changed their driving habits. We talk about how the economy needs to improve, but banks are still offering irresponsible mortgages.
He does exaggerate the situation somewhat, but it's true that people will generally ignore issues that aren't immediately in front of them, and fail to take responsibility for their own way of life.
> You should buy more stuff from the third world, if you want to help them. Not less.
To a certain extent, true. If they don't have sweatshops to work in, they end up in worse situations, like prostitution. My point was that people criticize the conditions in other countries, and the corruption - but they don't stop and think about how that's partly why they have the lifestyle they do.
> Not a problem. High gasoline prices are good for the environment.
Only if people change their driving habits accordingly, and I know very few people who have actually altered their lifestyle. Increased sales of hybrids and less driving is a good thing, but it happens relatively rarely compared to complaints against OPEC.
> If the banks can afford the offer and you think it's a good deal, why not take it?
Because that's exactly how the housing bubble collapsed. My point is that the banks should offer deals they think they are good, but people shouldn't be complaining about the economy when they have mountains of debt themselves. I know a couple of people who have over $10G of credit card debt, and just got mortgages with no down payments. They also have no formal education and poor employment. How is that GOOD for the economy? It's good for the bank, yes, but the irresponsibility has been a major factor in the slow economy.
>> Not a problem. High gasoline prices are good for the environment.
> Only if people change their driving habits accordingly, and I know very few people who have actually altered their lifestyle
That sounds then like gas prices aren't high enough to drive the behavior change to the extent needed. $4 a gallon gas changed some habits. $10 a gallon would drive even further behavior change.
What sort of behaviour change are you after, though?
It's all very well saying petrol prices should go up to help the environment, but the people hit hardest are those in rural areas. Should everyone go and rent a city centre apartment and give up on the countryside because they can't afford to get about?
If they can't afford to get about with a doubling or tripling of gas price, they probably wouldn't be able to afford to move to the city center either.
A square foot of housing in the city center is much higher priced than a square foot in a rural area. Ditto (but to an even greater extent) for land prices. Doubling/tripling the price of gas still wouldn't make it advantageous cost-wise to move from a 3000 sq ft/280 sq meters residence in the countryside to that same square footage in the city, at least not in Cambridge/Boston from say a rural or suburban area on 128 (the ring road). (And this would be even more pronounced once energy tax policy made city property more valuable than rural property.)
To whatever extent that I am after change, I'm after change that taxes energy consumption with the aim to discourage wasteful or "frivolous" use of energy. One or two people living in a 5000 sq ft McMansion? Wasteful, IMO. They shouldn't be barred from doing it, but I don't mind if their energy is taxed to discourage it. Same with my cars, airplane, or 2400 sq ft house for the 3 of us. I think that economic [dis]incentive and personal choices given that landscape is the most fair means to allow people to decide what's important to them and act accordingly.
Should we ban cars older than 5 years, or 10 years from now ban non-electrics, or mandate that you can only have 600 sq ft + 400 sq ft/person, mandate thermostat settings, insulation retrofits to existing buildings, etc? Absolutely not; just adjust the energy rates until you get approximately the macro effect you want, and people will make choices within that framework.
For the record, I'm not strongly advocating that we should triple energy cost via taxation, merely observing that small behavior changes came about from $4 a gallon gas, and that larger changes would come from $10/gal pricing. On that point, I strongly suspect you and I agree.
My only point is that I hear a lot on the news and from people I associate with about how gas prices are too high, and they tend to blame it on the government or on corruption. We hear all this talk of America's 'dependence on foreign oil', but very few individuals stop and ask themselves why that all is.
The behavioural change I'd like to see, is for people's reaction to high prices be "well I'm not going to buy gasoline, then". Granted, gasoline is almost a necessity in some situations. But if people really did care about their dependence on oil and the high prices, they wouldn't use it for non-necessities. If that happened, OPEC would get the message REAL fast.
edit: So for instance - you mention that those who live in rural areas shouldn't have to rent city center apartments just to get around. Well... everyone I know who lives in the city (downtown) own cars and drive them everywhere. I'd like to see more people question each trip and say, "do I really need to take the car?" I walk to the grocery store, and it only takes me a 1/2 hour, if that. Most people would take the car, but hey - I don't ever have to pay for gasoline unless I go out of town.
And I'm not talking about disabled people, or delivery companies. I'm talking about the average person - if they want to complain about high prices and government corruption - they should walk. It'd solve the obesity epidemic, too.
Disclaimer: I live in Europe and do not own a car. Instead of walking to the grocery store, I usually use the streetcar or a bike. If you have to feed a family, it be more convenient to use a car for your groceries, since you can load so much more onto it than on a bike or on your back. Though, I know a family that only rents a car for going on vacation, so you can make it work.
And people always like to complain, no matter what.
A few years back when I was working at a fabless chip design firm, I was assigned to manage and liaison with our overseas (Taipei-based) ODM partner when they came over here for CES. And I got to know the lead engineers and designers on their products that work out of China at the factories. After the shows we went out to party and just talked about random things and have been corresponding with them ever since. One thing that I've always wondered about was exactly this situation: the living and working conditions of factory (not just electronics) workers in China.
The response they gave was that while to outsiders, meaning non-Chinese, it may be deplorable, but they don't understand the circumstances. To a Chinese person that was raised in poverty, the slight bump in opportunity offered by the factory work is much more preferable than nothing at all. In a country where it's still mostly destitute and farming-based, the manufacturing jobs are sought after. The money they receive gets sent back to support the family or gives their next generation of children a shot at middle-class life. It is what it is.
The other thing they said to consider is this: there are a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of people in China. And they are all looking for jobs, any kind of job, to feed themselves and support their families. People are paid to sweep floors for 10 hours a day even if there's nothing there. People are paid to watch parked cars on the street to prevent break-ins even in safe neighborhoods. The access to this massive and cheap labor pool has benefits and allows for abuse. Laws and regulations are not able to save them all, for every illegal factory that gets shut down another one pops up down the road and before morning a line of people gathered based on whispering rumors will be lined up wanting to work.
People may suffer, people may be abused, people may even die but this process went on and on each time a country underwent an industrial revolution and decided that the invisible hand of capitalism was worth the price for admission to the big boys club. Be it children working on textiles in England to children working in coal mines in the United States. And for every human rights activist in the USA feeling guilty about paying $199.99 for a WalMart PC or $2.99 for a dozen socks at Target, there are a handful in China, trying to fight for not just human rights but also democracy, journalistic integrity, communist principles, or even Confucious teachings. Meaning, there are people equally, if not more so, concerned about this over there in China and Taiwan.
The point being that it's somewhat condescending to assume that Americans or Europeans know best how to solve every problem in China or any other country.
This suicide? Should be investigated. If people were at fault, bring them to court and prosecute them. Justice should be upheld and unhampered with, that's the best thing that can happen and should be the priority in this incident. Everything else is just a distraction, the name Apple is just thrown around for the extra attention. Would this have mattered if it involved another company like FastMaxChips Designs or Wireless Widget Corporation? It should and the investigations should all be treated equally whether or not a big name corporation is involved.
How to assuage your guilt about this overall trend? Considering the decades of cheap money, tech innovations, and better manufacturing/shipping logistics has warped our perception of value and pricing, I don't know how else to deal with it in a free market sense. Consumerism is just a double-edged sword.
I mean, we love technology (aren't we hackers?), but probably we feel (albeit indirectly and just partly) responsible for such things: a man has died for a lost phone/gadget. One of those we buy, use and work with.
So my question is: how can we change this? Is it still possible?
This is one of the better posts from the 'techcrunch' family. I wish they write better posts like these, they definitely have the talent, just need the will.
No. What's the connection? Hi-tech? Someone dying?
Antitrust is about a company developing and selling a product that is stolen from somewhere else. I don't remember anyone dying because someone wanted to see a Mr Blurry-Cam shot of the new iPhone on Engadget.
Not sure if you've seen the movie based on your assessment. It's been a while for me. The movie is not about stealing ideas and several people are killed.
The movie is about a corrupt iconic thought leader who bugs hackers' work and home lives and eventually kills them when they are no longer useful or become a threat.
Obviously a comment in jest, but Tim Robbins' character looks to have been based on Jobs (except for the psychopathic thing) and like many similar movies the "jumped" from 12 stories could be replaced with "thrown" for more drama.
Since when do we have to explain jokes to 3rd graders around here?
The central plot device of the movie is that the CEO tries to hire the people developing some innovative software. One of them joins, but the other refuses. The first guy realises that the CEO is stealing his friend's code in order to make their 'own' new product.
And as for '3rd graders' - lose the attitude. This is HN, not digg.
Rich world living standards could not be as high as they are if these enormous inequalities, transfers of wealth and deprivations were not occurring. It is a zero-sum game. If we get the resources necessary to produce throw-away affluent lifestyles, they are not available to provide basic necessities for most of the world’s people. The main beneficiaries are the very few who own or manage the transnational corporations and banks. They are rapidly increasing their ownership and control through their stunning success in promoting the free market ideology. The few biggest and most powerful and predatory actors on the level playing field win, and take almost everything that is worth taking. Capitalism has never been so triumphantly dominant and secure from threat. It's legitimacy and permanence is more or less undoubted at official, political and popular levels.
....
In a market economy there is also a powerful tendency for development to be inappropriate to the needs of most people and of the environment. Investment will flow into those ventures likely to yield the highest returns. These are never the ventures that are most likely to produce what most people need. Thus while most Third World regions urgently need more production of cheap and simple food, tools, appliances, housing and clothing, the development that occurs is of export plantations, mines, Hilton hotels, international airports, etc. Such development draws away from poorer people the productive resources which they once had and were able to use to produce for themselves many of the things they need. Possibly the most disturbing examples of this process are to do with the application of Third World land to export crops while many people are malnourished.
The housing is not substandard. There are employee dorms and employee cafeterias at every factory I've been to. These things are completely self contained. I've toured them, and they're like college dorms. The workers stay there, in the dorms and eat there. They're not prisoners. Everybody goes back home, (often over a thousand miles) every year for Chinese New Year, for example. They also leave the factory grounds in the evening, just like you'd leave a college campus you lived on to hang out downtown.
Now, all that said, the competition for those jobs, I think, is quite intense. I've been repeatedly impressed by the level of dedication in the engineering staffs I've worked with. You say you need a fixture modified to allow a certain PCB component to be tested in a different way, and they're back in 30 minutes with the changed fixture, for example. Those engineers make things happen in minutes, not days. It's quite motivational to be among them. However, I'm sure there's a certain fear component that's driving them. It's a very good job, and they don't want to lose it. I'm not certain how such a thing can be addressed. It's just a function of the supply and demand of factory jobs.
I also sense a bit of colonialism mentality in many of my fellow engineers when we travel over there. We're smart, and they're idiots, is an attitude that is almost constant among western engineers dealing with Chinese factories. It's your typical client/vendor bullying, but multiplied by 5 due to this attitude. When you bully the factory manager, he'll pass that down the line, I'm sure.
Now, I've never worked with Apple, but I'm told it's a bit scary there. Lot's of pressure, even for the American engineers to perform to perfection. I imagine being an Apple vendor is a bit of a nightmare, and a Chinese vendor, of course is bullied by normal companies, so an Apple Chinese vendor, I have to assume, is in hell.
Couple all that together, and I can imagine this kid being pretty stressed out.