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Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#291

Post by TimTheTinker »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #228
tiahura wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you've never been incarcerated? There's all sorts of volunteering: such as fixing the TV or coffee maker, teaching other inmates to read, helping another inmate file a frivolous appeal, and so on. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/07/20/538062911/wh... [What's It Really Like To Work In A Prison Goat Milk Farm? We Asked Inmates] But what do the workers themselves think? I find Jeremiah Pate in the…

The previous poster made a very obvious point that work is not voluntary when the alternative is punishment, which your post very helpfully illustrates as “sitting in [a] tiny little cell.” This doesn’t seem like a point that should require so much explanation for thinking people.

You and the previous poster seem to ignore that the punishment is just (to the extent that the criminal justice system is capable of justice).

It's not like they're forced to work; and if they take the option, they're still under punishment doled by the justice system. So it's not immoral forced labor as long as neither the work or the jail cell constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment".

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#293

Post by beaunative »

Forced labor is quite prevalent as state-sactioned punishment, and it is much better than other kinds of punishment that exist. I don't have problem with that, that's one way how legal system pays for itself rather than siphoning fund from tax-payers' money. The difficult part for me was how opaque the process is, how the Chinese government just put people in those "camps" without due process. It is worrisome and frankly quite terrifying.

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#294

Post by DenisM »

bigbubba wrote: post #274
amscanne wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are kept in camps, monitored constantly, have no privacy, are searched constantly and on top of that, they are forced to work or go to detention This also seems to describe prison labor that occurs in the US, which, putting problems and criticisms aside, is definitely different from slavery. I don't think the imprecision in language is helpful, it hurts the cause in the same way people constantly referring to…

> This also seems to describe prison labor that occurs in the US, which [...] is definitely different from slavery Did you sleep though civics class? Go read the thirteenth amendment.

Please don't do that here. From the guidelines:

> Don't be snarky.

> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#295

Post by YawningAngel »

amscanne wrote: post #266
downrightmike wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are kept in camps, monitored constantly, have no privacy, are searched constantly and on top of that, they are forced to work or go to detention. That is slavery. There's also the problem with them getting gutted for the organ transplants that China's own doctors have reported to be 4 times higher than they should be for the population size. So it is work, or go to detention and possibly get gutted.

> They are kept in camps, monitored constantly, have no privacy, are searched constantly and on top of that, they are forced to work or go to detention This also seems to describe prison labor that occurs in the US, which, putting problems and criticisms aside, is definitely different from slavery. I don't think the imprecision in language is helpful, it hurts the cause in the same way people constantly referring to…

It isn't clear to me that prison labour in the US is meaningfully distinct from slavery

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#296

Post by dirtyid »

animal_spirits wrote: post #231
beisner wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While there probably is an element of that, hard evidence that might paint the Chinese government negatively in general is much more difficult to obtain because of information and communications controls.

Agreed, I am just wary of journalist referencing other journalists as "evidence". But I have since found some very damning evidence here: https://shahit.biz/eng/ This is very sad to read and understand. I hope this site gets more attention than these articles

Some level coerced labour is inevitable, the entire "vocational" training is part of broader labour/rural transfer programs across many provinces affecting millions of individuals every year, with associate recruitment pressures and quotas. The question has always been scale and severity and every piece of solid data (i.e. GIS analysis) is demonstrating the scale and severity is much smaller than previous claims by western analysis funded by parties subservient to foreign policy. Which is exactly why database like shahbits won't get any attention when they "only" catalogue 12,000 victims, it was 6,000 at the beginning of the year. Granted this is just a subset of total interned - the real number is greater than China will admit and less than western manufactured consent is trying to sell, but 10s of thousands is not a remotely actionable amount of victims for geopolitics. Hence fabricated narratives by interest funded NGOs of millions of victim to rationalize sanctions, cherry picked data points and uncorroborated atrocity propaganda. XJ is horrible, but not horrible enough.

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#297

Post by mgh2 »

echelon wrote: post #275
barnacled wrote: post #229

And yet Tim Cook has the cheek to get 'woke'. Apple could easily afford to build everything in a country that isn't an awful dictatorship running concentration camps and still earn obscene profits. And yet they still somehow maintain this aura of being the 'good guys'...

If you buy an iPhone, you're complicit in human slavery. Period. Don't even try to explain yourself out of it.

Not really, there is a compromise - it is not black and white. You can buy out of necessity, just don't over indulge or be complicit in their lies - hype compounds the problem by pumping up demand.

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#298

Post by terr-dav »

barnacled wrote: post #229

And yet Tim Cook has the cheek to get 'woke'. Apple could easily afford to build everything in a country that isn't an awful dictatorship running concentration camps and still earn obscene profits. And yet they still somehow maintain this aura of being the 'good guys'...

Apple is a capitalist enterprise; Apple can only afford to maximize profit — everything else is just window dressing.

Wokeness, philanthropy, environmental consciousness, branding, origin story, etc.; all of these things are viewed favorably by the cultural mode. Therefore, you should expect capitalists to appropriate them to distract from, or justify, the profits they make and the concentrated power they enjoy as a result (i.e. labor exploitation, control over consumer choices, influence in the market, lobbying for legislation, dictating the terms of contracts with vendors)

Apple isn’t the problem, it’s behaving how it’s supposed to in the market capitalist system that currently dominates the world. This cruelty is inevitable in capitalism.

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#299

Post by wizzwizz4 »

bigbubba wrote: post #274
amscanne wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are kept in camps, monitored constantly, have no privacy, are searched constantly and on top of that, they are forced to work or go to detention This also seems to describe prison labor that occurs in the US, which, putting problems and criticisms aside, is definitely different from slavery. I don't think the imprecision in language is helpful, it hurts the cause in the same way people constantly referring to…

> This also seems to describe prison labor that occurs in the US, which [...] is definitely different from slavery Did you sleep though civics class? Go read the thirteenth amendment.

> The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...

This doesn't say “prison labor is slavery”; it says that prison labor is allowed to be slavery. You should've provided some reference to e.g. a news article to back up your claim.

It's legal to paint yourself blue and write obscenities on your face and walk into a library, but that isn't evidence that anyone does it. (Likewise, it's legal to make people pay you fifty times the inflation-adjusted value of a loan you gave them – things being legal isn't evidence that they don't happen, which would be absurd.)

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#300

Post by rangoon626 »

bitcharmer wrote: post #120
person_of_color wrote: post #11

What the fuck is Apple doing here. They could see an iPhone boycott if this blows up.

> They could see an iPhone boycott if this blows Do you really expect a typical Apple user to actually care?

Yes
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