Conditions in china are pretty bad and 'we' (the western world) should definitely try to do something about it, but blaming western companies for this is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.
England, the US, and europe went through this phase too, and we didn't have another continent goading us into it (the triangle shirt factory fire, untold numbers of kids in the coal mines, etc). In fact, if you look at what's happening in china right now, it's a vast improvement compared to Europe/UK/US's days of labour force abuse. It's not 'right' by any stretch of the imagination, but it's better. Either China is learning from example, or the pressure of western companies is helping, or China is just naturally more inclined to value human life highly. Sure, big corporations are amoral. But they aren't bond villains wearing a monocle, raising their pinky to their mouth, and going "Muhahahahaha!!!!" with a cat in their lap - they are amoral entities that just look out for the bottom line. They aren't any more or less evil than that. There is virtually no money to be earned i.e. employing kids on a foxconn production line, and there's hundreds of millions of dollars worth of brand damage on the line if it comes that apple by willful negligence or worse is the source of it. If it were up to apple, 0 kids would be on that production line, purely because that's the right economic answer. NB: That last bit is also why you SHOULD get upset when companies do things you find morally objectionable - in order for said company to take your moral complaint seriously you have to make it so that they lose more by ignoring you than by addressing your objection. However, what, exactly, is apple doing that is morally objectionable? This is the same reason why I keep getting annoyed at Joe's continued defense of apple's patent and programmer restrictions with 'they are just a company'. Yes they are. Which is why WE the geeks needs to force them into being nicer to us, they aren't going to do it out of the goodness of their hearts! There its easy to point out what apple is doing that I as a programmer find, well perhaps not _morally_ objectionable, but certainly pretty bad for my future: stoking the fires of the patent war. NB: Insert pretty much whatever hardware selling tech brand you wish in place of 'apple', and insert any of many hundreds of factory conglomerates operating in the shenzen area in place of 'foxconn', if you want. On Wednesday, March 28, 2012 4:43:40 PM UTC+2, fabrizio.giudici wrote: > > > Well, I think that in the west we're particular good at doing. For > instance, about worker exploitation in China's factories, I've never seen > a story that didn't start from west attention, or because a west > manufacturer was involved (e.g. Apple). > > > -- > Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager > Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere." > [email protected] > http://tidalwave.it - http://fabriziogiudici.it > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/javaposse/-/sduoCTcxf6sJ. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
