Can You Buy Tech With a Clean Conscience? 412
Barence writes "Is it even possible to buy technology with a clean conscience? With the vast majority of gadgets and components manufactured using low-paid labor in Asia, manufacturers unable to accurately plot their supply chains, and very few ethical codes of conduct, the article highlights the difficulty of trying to buy ethically-sound gadgets. It concludes, 'The answer would appear to be no. Too little information is available, and nobody we spoke to believed an entirely ethical technology company exists – at least, not among the household names.'"
maybe not, but it isn't all equal either (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, if you care about preserving the right of the public to control their own computers, you're going to stay away from Apple and maybe from Android.
If you care about working conditions of workers in factories, you'll stay away from some of the low end suppliers.
If you care about privacy, you will stay away from Facebook.
And so on. Just because there are problems everywhere does not make everything the same.
Clean Consciences and False Premises (Score:5, Insightful)
Can I buy a piece of tech that was not assembled by an Asian Worker making considerably less than his American Union Factory Worker counterpart? No.
Can I buy a piece of tech and still have a clean conscience? Sure. Of course.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Clean Consciences and False Premises (Score:4, Insightful)
Can I buy a piece of American tech guaranteed as "union free", such that no overpriced $30/hr loading dock workers or longshoremen or even office workers, had anything to do with it?
No? Okay then. Chinese children will suffice.
More seriously, TFA has a major failure in one of its assumptions - That most people care enough to feel bad. Yes, I would rather buy from someone making a living wage in my own country, and might pay a bit more for it; No, I won't pay 3x as much for it. And no, that doesn't really bother me.
Re:maybe not, but it isn't all equal either (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, to expound on "problems everywhere", if we weren't buying tech, they wouldn't be making tech and would be much worse off with no work at all.
Just because Charlie Chaplin ate shoe leather in a movie, doesn't mean the "socially conscious" have a right to demand that third world and Asian countries should dismantle what little work they have available. Does being "green" have to mean "Soylent Green"?
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Android itself doesn't wall you in, you are free to install what apps you like and no hacks are required for rooting (basically just install the su app). It is the phone manufacturers and networks that lock down bootloaders and the like, but you can always get a Google Nexus phone.
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Tradeoffs = Life.
People don't seem to understand this. For every choice and action you do there is a tradeoff. If you want tech that is High quality, and made under your ideals of working conditions be prepared to pay a lot more (say $1,500 for an iPhone like device), If you do pay that price then you spent that money on a phone where you could have used it to shop at a local store and support your local economy, or give it to a charity... Tradeoffs.
There are always going to be problems in the world, the
Re:maybe not, but it isn't all equal either (Score:4, Insightful)
About 80% of the price of an iPhone, even in the US where they're cheaper than most places, is pure profit for Apple. That's not 20% of the cost to manufacturing it's 20% of the cost to manufacture, package, market, ship, and sell. Apple can afford to pay living wages(or at least treat their employees like human beings instead of slaves) and still make a healthy profit.
Unfortunately somewhere in the last couple of hundred years we've lost our moral compass when it comes to money. At present we seem to live in a society where if it's not illegal then it's just fine to do it whatever the costs or consequences and if it is illegal you buy off some politicians to change the law.
This is why we need so much legislation these days because business seems to have become incapable of making moral decisions, if we don't outlaw it and require them to fill in huge amounts of wasteful paperwork to prove they aren't doing it, they'll continue to do it.
Apple is a purely immoral company, in every possible way. They pay the people who make their stuff nothing and those people are treated like something less than human(I'm not talking about any of the accidents, I'm talking about the story straight from an Apple exec of waking the entire factory crew up in the middle of the night to redo the iPad screens). On the other end they gouge consumers and restrict their freedom above and beyond what is justifiable. All in the name of profit at any consequence, and it's become rampant in our society. Society will not survive this continued concentration of all wealth into the hands of a small minority.
I'm fine with that (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sure laborers in Asia prefer low wage over no wage.
Re:I'm fine with that (Score:5, Insightful)
"I'm sure laborers in Asia prefer low wage over no wage."
That's how the West built its industry and we'd do well to remember that.
When goods cost too much to buy people can't afford to buy them so the people who make them can't SELL them and therefore can't CONTINUE making them.
Almost all Asian industry is YOUNG (and I'm not talking from a Gary Glitter perspective!). China is advancing MUCH faster than did the US over the same amount of time.
Re:I'm fine with that (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh bullcrap. The west built it's industry through the industrial revolution - machines increasing productivity.
Yes the industrial revolution gave them the economic power to build empires, but if your society doesn't have a competitive economic system, well it's going to be a backwater.
Japan got smart and bought into the new ways, and China is moving along that path now.
It's a choice people have to make if they want it.
Re:I'm fine with that (Score:5, Informative)
Oh bullcrap. The west built it's industry through the industrial revolution - machines increasing productivity.
You might want to check the history of the industrial revolution a bit more carefully. Worker conditions in Foxconn factories look like paradise in comparison to conditions in England back then.
Re:I'm fine with that (Score:5, Insightful)
You might want to check the history of the industrial revolution a bit more carefully. Worker conditions in Foxconn factories look like paradise in comparison to conditions in England back then.
It doesn't mean that such conditions are a necessary part of the industrial revolution. Back then, it was the best anyone offered anywhere in the world. I'd like to think that we have advanced since then, and things that were okay then are no longer okay today.
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But really, do you know what life was like in Tsarist Russia? Lenin and Stalin managed to effect huge amounts of change to improve life for most people, the same as Mao did in China.
Hah. Hahaha.
Okay, I've posted this family story before but sure let's rehash it. See my mother was born over in what was east Germany. Her father was Ukrainian, see where I'm going here? Now to the part where he spent 25 years in a soviet gulag because they took all but one of his cows, and he couldn't provide the same the following year. Not seeing a problem here? Oh sure he made "Great amount of change" for the people in Kiev, not so much for anyone else. Everyone else starved, or were close to sta
Re:I'm fine with that (Score:5, Informative)
Oh bullcrap. The west built it's industry through the industrial revolution - machines increasing productivity.
Okay, you're ignorant. No way around it, you're simply ignorant.
In the last 400 years when north america was settled and went through the industrial revolution, europe shoveled off all of their 'heavy' industry here to the americas. In Canada in particular back int he 1700's they would pay children to work in the mills, to make wagon wheels. These would then be subsidized by the crown and sent back to england at less than cost to undercut the industry there to send more of it over here. The dutch did it, the french did it, the germans did it, every-single-one of them did it. And that's one example of many.
We were a backwater still 180-200 years ago. And they were still shipping their medium and heavy industry off to here. The difference between Japan and us was? We bombed the shit out of them, and fully rebuilt their economy. They were already working to be fully industrialized and on par with the west even during the Boshin war. [wikipedia.org] Which slowed things down a bit.
Re:I'm fine with that (Score:5, Insightful)
China, on the other hand, has no elections (the vast majority of the wealth generated so far is in the hands of party officials and their family) and the country has a history of brutally cracking down on dissident voices.
So in the US we had a good incremental mechanism for transitioning. In China it would require the dismantling of their government, probably via violent revolution, which has a way of undoing economic gains.
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China is growing old fast. Which means workers are going to be in short supply soon. Which is good for workers.
China has had a surfeit of workers, and thus workers were competing for jobs. It's likely to be the other way soon.
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"We managed to transition because of labor unions and public outrage... but we also have a system of elections (so public outrage can effect who gets elected) and, while there were abuses, we have pretty strict rules about retaliation against dissidents."
Getting there required VIOLENT protest. Read US labor history. There was plenty of "retaliation" including murder of strikers by Pinkerton thugs.
What the US does have is the Second Amendment, and gunfire met gunfire more than once.
Don't EVER forget that the
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unless socialist nonsense drags them downward. They will end up more advanced and with longer-living people than the west does.
Socailist nonsense? The US has *less* socialist nonsense than most, and lower average lifespan than a number of the more socialist places. So given that reality proves you wrong, I'm not sure what your point is.
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Still lower than the socialists. If capitalism was so great, it wouldn't be a matter of the socialists beating us by a few months, but we should be beating them by years. Nope, the US is the loser.
See what I wrote in http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2876563&cid=40123989 [slashdot.org]
And if I had to choose between living in a restrictive society where the lifespan is 78.82, versus living in a freer society where the lifespan is 78.37, I would choose the latter.
By the way, the enormous amount of immigration into the US (the US takes more immigrants than the rest of the world combined) is a huge testament to the fact that America is a nice place to live. Just like the fact that Marxist-Leninist governments oft
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But do those in the West reflect on their industrial past and tell themselves that it was a necessary step or that it was an era of shame? Because the issues here are issues of morality, consistency is vital. If when Westerners of today look on their past, and accept the sweatshops, union-busting, child labor, and hazardous conditions as unavoidable and necessary events in the course of progress, then accepting what is happening in China today is consistent with their morality. But if when Westerners of tod
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But this is what I'm not fine with... (Score:5, Insightful)
When /. discusses labor and wage issues in the US (unions, living wage, income inequality), the common sentiment is that executives/owners/investors can afford to give up more of their profits to help ensure a more livable life for their workers.
When /. discusses labor and wage issues in China (again, labor rights, wages, inequality), we rarely if ever touch on the above line of reasoning, and the common sentiment is that it's better for them to be paid meagerly than to be out of a job.
There is a palpable moral double standard.
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>the common sentiment is that executives/owners/investors can afford to give up more of their profits to help ensure a more livable life for their workers.
The problem with that statement is that it isn't necessarily true. Look at what Eton Musk is doing with his profits. Are you sure that letting him keep more of his profits wouldn't be better in the long run?
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Re:But this is what I'm not fine with... (Score:5, Insightful)
in the US ... executives/owners/investors can afford to give up more of their profits to help ensure a more livable life for their workers. ... it's better for them to be paid meagerly than to be out of a job.
in China
I don't think the double standard is as palpable as you think. The difference is that US labor market has deteriorated to change the ratio of worker/executive compensation from a difference of 50-100X a few decades ago to 1000X. Hence reversing the trend would be good. In China, however, the measly wages paid by Apple, etc. constitute an improvement of worker life.
This is not to say that all is well, but the two situations are different, IMHO, in that US has gone from good to bad and China is going from very bad to somewhat bad (and I've heard arguments that you can't simply go from very bad to good in a large country without taking at least a decade or two).
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How would you factor in Chinese factory owners becoming overnight millionaires (in dollar terms!) while factory workers are stuck at around 1200RMB/month, often working overtime without legally required overtime pay? Isn't this the same inequality that we at /. abhor? How is it that we can write excuses for Chinese companies that would never get past -1 moderation when speaking in defense of US conditions?
Re:I'm fine with that (Score:5, Insightful)
The exact same argument was used to justify continuing slavery - "slaves are better off with the food and housing their masters provide them - setting them free would be cruel".
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The exact same argument was used to justify continuing slavery - "slaves are better off with the food and housing their masters provide them - setting them free would be cruel".
Judging by Detroit, I have to think that whoever made that comment may have been on to something.
Then perhaps you shouldn't judge by Detroit. I could be wrong, but didn't the majority of blacks in the North get there because they said "Fuck this!" and bolted from the segregated South as soon as they could? I know there was a huge wave of this going on as late as the 60s.
If the choice is between an assembly line job at Ford, or hanging from some cracker's tree for "lookin' funny" at his daughter, I'd take the former.
Re:I'm fine with that (Score:5, Insightful)
But we wouldn't all buy from it. Because it'd be more expensive.
Would not work (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the idea is that if one Asia corp paid high wages and we all bought from it, then that company would grow and engulf the competition, or otherwise convince the competition to raise their wages to join the buyer's whitelist and prevent extinction.
Every country has a level of attractiveness to investment. One of the key characteristics is the availability of cheap labour. Another is the productivity of said labourers. Chinese workers are probably not very productive due to low education and poor infrastructure. But companies find it is economical to manufacture in China because the low wages compensate for the small productivity.
If consumers demand higher wages, then China would lose that attractiveness and companies would simply relocate to more developed countries.
Please read about Gramsci and Herbert Marcuse (Score:3, Interesting)
Read about Antonio Gramsci's works, and also those of
Herbert Marcuse - specially his concept of "repressive tolerance".
Long story short, Gramsci and Herbert Marcuse are the fathers of the New Left,
which is the Marxist Left that works within the framework of democracy (instead of
attempting to take power through a violent revolution and then institute
a one-party dictatorship) and has decreased a little the focus on poverty
and vastly increased the focus on feminism, homosexual militancy,
racial militancy (such
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It exists, well sort of.
There exist in every society a small number of people who get offended by pretty much everything. They attack anyone who violates their version of the norms of society, and they tend to write an awful lot of letters. They are however, for the most part, just sad pathetic individuals with a form of personality disorder, the actual societal framework they supposedly follow is for the most part immaterial, they just like moral outrage. Some get upset when a woman wears a short skirt, so
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If people were willing to pay more for goods we wouldn't have destroyed our domestic manufacturing industry in the first place.
Re:I'm fine with that (Score:4, Insightful)
If people were willing to pay more for goods we wouldn't have destroyed our domestic manufacturing industry in the first place.
Yes you would have, because the people making the decisions about where to manufacture things are motivated by the margins. Manufacturing was still profitable in the US when it started moving overseas, and it is still profitable today in some niche markets. It's just not profitable enough. Why would you want to net $5 profit per unit when you could net $50 by paying the worker half as much?
Yes. (Score:2)
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The summary's grasp on ethics seems a little shakey to me. Those low paid workers in Asia are damn glad to have the job, and what they do get paid goes a lot further than in the west. This is a process of enrichment, whereby poor countries in the far east get wealthier, develop a middle class, and start demanding democracy, resulting in not only a greatly enhanced standard of living but new markets for western countries as well as fresh innovations and freedom of choice.
Capitalism. It works.
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The summary's grasp on ethics seems a little shakey to me. Those low paid workers in Asia are damn glad to have the job, and what they do get paid goes a lot further than in the west. This is a process of enrichment, whereby poor countries in the far east get wealthier, develop a middle class, and start demanding democracy, resulting in not only a greatly enhanced standard of living but new markets for western countries as well as fresh innovations and freedom of choice.
Capitalism. It works.
Your argument is a bit like the slave owners who stated that their slaves were damn glad to have their job and get fed, too. Exploitation is exploitation, regardless if one can find some good to come from it or not.
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You are a fucking idiot if you think US$1 is worth the same, in living standards, in China.
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China is an agricultural economy, and they are transforming it into a manufacturing economy. The factory workers are paid _more_ than prevailing wages in the area. Do you think people will travel over a thousand miles just to get a worse paying job?
But Americans seem to believe everyone needs a 2.2 kids + dog + 2 cars + 4 rooms + garage + air conditioning.
Not everyone lives like that. Nor does everyone want to live like that.
You also seem to think all 1.5 billion people live in one place. People travel
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Insightful)
By the way, the argument usually advanced was that the Negro was too foolish to provide properly for himself, and that servitude allowed him to contribute to the well-being of mankind while still enjoying the benefits of Christianity and white management. And, of course, in real life there were limitations on how badly slaves could be treated. For starters, they were expensive, equivalent (last I looked) to about $100k apiece today plus the cost of feeding and housing. You don't want to mistreat your capital investment like that, any more than you would run your family-owned factory without maintenance. The great evil of slavery wasn't that the slaves were badly treated (many were, but the lives of poor whites were not much better); it was that they were slaves.
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You know, having to u
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I'm going to assume you're just misinformed rather than being woefully full of shit.
http://blogs.theprovince.com/2012/03/05/andres-oppenheimer-rising-wages-in-china-will-benefit-workers-in-the-americas/ [theprovince.com]
So, because the wages are rising in Asia, and now US companies are moving their manufacturing back to Central America where wages are low, will benefit who? Obviously, the workers in Central America, but not US workers. The US corporations are just chasing the lowest wage base they can find. Ten years from now, when Central American wages start to rise, and Asian economies have declined because US companies have pulled out, they will return to Asia, because the wages will again have fallen to become the
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The whole theory you are running off of was something developed by neocon think tanks in the US to justify a position of non interference and economic interaction with China... if you talk to actual
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Capitalism. It works.
Where? To whose benefit?
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flint knives (Score:2)
We are still finding flakes from the first flint knives made. So it is not really tech. It is anything a creature does creates waste. It is almost like it was a law of thermodynamics or something like that. The problem is when there are to many of us creating to much waste.
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And what type of waste. Flint is innocuous. Heavy metals from discarded electronics isn't. Personally I try, I am dependent on tech for my livelihood, by hanging on to gear as long as it will work and then try to find an ethical recycler.
Try doing anything with a clean consciousness (Score:2)
You'll probably end up in cabin (oh but a cabin made of wood? that's deforestation) eating what you're trying to plant and raise (trying, because fertilizers come from cattle raising: bad or petroleum: bad and no herbicides)
Everything (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell me, what can you do with a clean conscience? Can you eat meat you buy from the store? Or even produce for that matter? Can you flip on the light switch in your home and consume electricity? Start your car? Wax philosophical all you want, but life is inherently unfair, whether within a species, or amongst species. Sure, many things can be improved, but you'll be afraid to take a step lest you kill an ant if you delve too deep here.
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Amen. It's either buy or do without.
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Re:Everything (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, the only ethical thing to do is to die. As soon as possible.
To use your examples... (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you eat meat from a store? I can buy locally produced organic meat. I can also eat meat two times a week, instead of every day.
Produce? I can have a garden, or again, buy local.
Flip on a light switch? I can buy energy efficient light bulbs that use a fraction of the electricity and last for decades.
Electricity? I can install solar panels, or even buy more energy efficient appliances and electric monitors to lessen electric use.
Start your car? This one is easy, I can use a bicycle, live closer to
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Electricity? I can install solar panels, or even buy more energy efficient appliances and electric monitors to lessen electric use.
Yes, those 'help', but the hardware comes out of the same factories, with the same ethics, as most other electronics. So the problem is reduced, but not eliminated.
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Produce? I can have a garden, or again, buy local.
Why would you buy local (assuming it is not cheaper)?
Please see http://www.mises.org/books/defending.pdf [mises.org] , chapter 23 - The Importer
Importers make the economy grow.
Re:Everything (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell me, what can you do with a clean conscience? Can you eat meat you buy from the store? Or even produce for that matter? Can you flip on the light switch in your home and consume electricity? Start your car? Wax philosophical all you want, but life is inherently unfair...
Actually, when I go to the store, I can buy produce (or meat) from local farmers--or I can go to the farmers market, subscribe to a CSA, grow it myself, or use any of various alternatives that will allow me to know more about the product. At the very least, I can buy according to some legislated standards (e.g., USDA Organic) that I am OK with. Similarly, instead of starting my car (which I definitely do NOT do with a clean conscience), I can walk or bike. I can use renewable energy instead of coal for the lights, and I can use LEDs or other efficient illuminators.
I think you have a point, but I think tech is different because, short of not buying it at all, you don't really have these alternatives--at least according to this article.
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> Tell me, what can you do with a clean conscience?
Precisely. There is no cut and dried, absolute way to know for sure if what you're buying came from a "righteous" source. Not that many years ago, if you bought vegetables, many were harvested by badly-abused migrant workers. Before that, if you bought anything made of iron or steel, it was produced by people who were forced to work in horrible conditions where many died. The coal that was mined to create the steel resulted in the deaths of countless min
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Tell me, what can you do with a clean conscience?
Get it nice and dirty again.
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Tell me, what can you do with a clean conscience? Can you eat meat you buy from the store? Or even produce for that matter? Can you flip on the light switch in your home and consume electricity? Start your car?
As a general point, if those things bother you, you really ought to be careful the next time that you make fun of snake handlers. You're just as fastidious in religious observation as they are.
nothing is ethical (Score:3)
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Wrong (Score:3)
But even that runs into problems. The modern world is built on spending - that's how the economy works. It must always grow, or else it falls apart. If enough people lived as you suggested, and stopped throwing money away on unneeded luxuries, what happens to all those who work in the factories that produce those luxuries, and those who mine the resources to feed those factories, and the workers in retail who sell them? All unemployed, which means they have no money to buy even essentials, which leads to more unemployment in a positive feedback loop that will destroy civilization. The economy depends upon wasteful spending, and civilization depends upon the economy. So you can't even advise people not to spend at all.
First, most people buy too much and are dangerously into debt. This means that, with any mild recession, they become unable to pay their bills and default, thus increasing the crisis. Those few and rare responsible people who don't buy more than they can pay help the economy.
Second, your scenario of mass unemployment is impossible in a voluntary economy. In a voluntary economy, people would only stop working if there was no work to do - meaning that all human wants are satisfied. This scenario is impossible
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So if I stop buying stuff the third world wage slaves are out of work and can't buy food.
Read Paul Krugman's article, cited above. He's right. Being a wage slave sucks, but the alternative is much, much worse.
Can You Buy Tech With a Clean Conscience? (Score:3)
With Western countries exploiting Asian... (Score:2)
...industrial growth for half a century, I can't even imagine what the introduction of any kind of ethic would imply for our societies.
Ethics (Score:3)
Obligatory (Score:2)
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Well that goes without saying however thank you for being thorough with the matter.
It's the same problem as the food supply (Score:2)
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The fact of the matter is that the nature of the universe has culminated in creatures which require vast amounts of energy to accomodate their oversized brains capacity for being easily bored so I say it deserves whatever it gets. If trashing the planet wasn't part of the plan then I say go for it and waste away man!
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CORRECTION: If trashing the planet wasn't part of the plan then we wouldn't have evolved the capacity to do so I say go for it and waste away man!
China (Score:2)
Ever since Tienanmen Square, I've wanted to avoid buying anything Chinese. Also b'cos I support independence for Tibet. However, since that's a non starter worldwide, w/ every company of note having manufacturing there, and the few that ain't being unaffordable, I pretty much leave my conscience in the car whenever I go out shopping. Be it for tech or other items.
I'm just waiting for the Chinese economy to crash, just like Japan's did years ago, and the US did. As they say, the higher they rise, the h
China's government is far, far worse than that. (Score:2)
Ever since Tienanmen Square, I've wanted to avoid buying anything Chinese.
If you think the PRC's government was evil in its handling of the Tienanmen Square affair, then check out
the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
It involves deaths by the dozens of millions. It includes Marxist ideologues brainwashing children into spying
in their own homes and reporting their parents to the authorities for not being Marxist enough.
And while people focus on China's current growth, they forget the decades of economic disaster (including
catastrophic famines) that followed the Marxis
Why limit the question (Score:3)
Why limit the question? The same could be asked about clothing and most household and business items, too.
If you try hard enough, I'm sure you can (Score:2)
Try not to be a consumerist muppet (Score:2)
That is to say, stop buying into the notion of constant consumption. Take gadgets. Why are you buying a given gadget? Is it to fulfill a specific task or set of tasks? Or is it merely a transient status symbol? If the gadget serves a specific function, such as saving time, or making one more efficient, then it is creating value. Furthermore, the longer you use the gadget, the more efficiency it produces in the life of the user. We all know that rare earth metals are mined in horrible conditions, promote war
Taking this to its logical conclusion: (Score:2)
Reduce Atmospheric Use!
All that oxygen you're greedily sucking down when you go jogging just to make yourself look thinner and trimmer could be use by someone in the third world or animals. Ditto the food calories you burn up. And you exploited thir world labor for those
running shorts to be made.
How can you bear to keep existing and keeping others under the thumbs of your use of resources. Your existence prevents other more worthy beings like microbes from existing.
Commit suicide today in an environmentally
I know you're kidding but... (Score:2)
What is wrong with you people? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who the fuck says the factory workers are low paid? The people who work on iPads get paid *MORE* than engineers and computer programmers, on par with pilots. HOW IS THAT LOW PAID?
As for the other parts of your question, Apple seems to be the most ethical of them all, having invited audits of the factories and requirements that flow on down to subcontracting factories.
Low-paid labour is not the worst problem (Score:2)
IMAO the worst problem is funding a totalitarian Marxist dictatorship.
The PRC's government applies the death penalty for crimes as mild as
tax evasion, and keeps the executions as a state secret. It is estimated
that 5,000 people were executed in the PRC in 2009 (while the US executed
43 people in 2011).
See http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hFQaRjQMjW42oMtQteJRcaFeor4Q [google.com]
It censors democratic ideologies, criticism to their government,
and religion. It uses very heavy-handed tactics (including thro
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On the other hand you get damn near free labor from live prisoners.
Capitalism wins!
Were you being sarcastic?
Do you oppose prison labour? Why?
Re:Low-paid labour is not the worst problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you oppose prison labour? Why?
Why would anyone support prison labour?
At best it takes jobs away from low-paid workers and gives them to criminals, at worst it encourages the government to lock people up in order to make money.
Your real problem here.... (Score:2, Insightful)
...is that you are not deciding for yourselves what's 'ethical'.
You are simply taking directions from various activist organisations about what is 'ethical', and which companies meet that standard. And it is in the interests of those activist organisations to find 'unethical activity' - they would have no purpose if they didn't find some....
Clean water is.an example (Score:2)
Those are the good jobs (Score:2)
If you were a person in one of those countries, you'd be very lucky to get many of those jobs. Those are the good jobs.
Consider what labor meant during the industrial revolution. It meant the difference between your children starving or not. Literally. And often to make that happen you'd have to put the children to work as well.
These people are pulling themselves through hundreds of years of Western economic history in no time. It isn't literally over night but what took us hundreds of years is taking them
Have they fogotten about oil? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why focusing only on low-paid labour from China?
Another product that should awake peoples consciences is oil.
Oil comes from very oppressive and aggressive places - Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran. By buying oil we fund a future Jewish genocide. We engage Israel's enemies militarily (thus enlarging the already excessive US military, and feeding anti-Americanism) with our right hand and throw bags of money at them with our left hand. This is *extremely* counter-productive; it would be very funny if it wasn't so tragic. The government should overtax gas-guzzlers (including SUVs!), subsidise economic cars and lift the barriers on Brazilian ethanol.
Question is bullshit. (Score:2)
The whole premise of this is the assumption is that everyone is able to see where tech comes from - that people actually know where the tantalum in the capacitors in a cellphone comes from, for instance. That there is any choice to make between ethical and unethical. The thing is, as consumers, we don't know. Parts suppliers are under no obligation to tell their customers, the OEMs, either. There is no mens rea here on the part of the end user.. There is no guilty mind.
The only actual point of this que
Yes. Next question? (Score:3)
Those low-paid Asian jobs are still an improvement on those workers' lives. Soldering boards in a plant beats sticking rice seedlings in a field fertilized with liquid human shit any day.
Not my problem (Score:3)
The ethics of the companies producing the goods are not my problem. If the workers want more money and better working conditions they need to stand up for themselves.
Short answer? No. (Score:4, Insightful)
I haven't read through all the comments yet, but in a previous story on a similar topic, someone posted an interesting anecdote about a southern town in the pre-civil war US. This town had strong feelings in opposition to slavery and they eventually outlawed the practice. The town was unable to compete in various markets because the surrounding areas still allowed slavery. The town was doomed until they repealed the anti-slavery law.
This story illustrates an important thing. Economic factors trump moral factors. The only way to defeat the economic factors to enable moral factors is to dictate them by law... and even that's pretty difficult to do. Take the prohibition of alcohol in the US as an example.
And here's the kicker: We are talking about imports from nations outside of the legal structure of the US. (As much as the US keeps trying, the world IT still outside of its legal structure.) So if there is to be any progress in the area of quality of life for workers in other countries, there has to be some serious changes made. And the way to make those changes? Some pretty extreme things need to happen... things which most people in the US and in other nations oppose.
So either learn to live with the guilt or buckle down and support some serious changes in world government because the leaders of other nations are not going to adopt our ideals or beliefs willingly.
Re: (Score:2)
Why are you singling out technology? We have chosen to live in a capitalist society, people are going to be exploited, that's just the way it is.
We've chosen? I don't remember a vote on that.
Re: (Score:2)
Well Americans have one that seems to come down to it every 4 years.
More importantly though, that's got pretty much nothing to do with "capitalism" and seeing as how Ayn Rand couldn't but help contradict her own half-baked philosophy within the very text in which she instantiated, it should tell you something about it's connections to any serious theory of economics.
Re: (Score:2)
If by "capitalism" you mean "voluntary economy", this should not be subject to a vote,
as it is a human right (right to freedom, right to property).
The USA actually restricts the economy more than it should.
Note: I am not an anarcho-capitalist, but I do support
a small, decentralised, efficient government that doesn't intrude too much into people's freedoms.
Re: (Score:3)
exactly. the reason why most things are so cheap that you as a non-rich person. can buy them is that somewhere along the line of it's manufacture is either a slave wage paid person working 16 hour days, actual slave labor, etc. if you don't want to participate in this process there is basically only a single option. join the amish or similarly minded groups.
the current civilization, as in what's generally called 'western' or 'European' is based solely on exploitation. if not of people through actual slave l
Not all companies are created equal (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
You could buy from some no-name branded Chinese knock off assembled with second rate parts. Or you could purchase from Apple, a corporation that has made serious efforts toward improving the supply chain.
Or you could buy from Samsung, which makes at least some of its products in South Korea (e.g. some Galaxy S2 models). ~
Shame on you (Score:2)
Oh, so you're an ignorant teabagger then.
By lowering the level of the discussion like that, you just prove you have no real argument.