Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonpost.com

721–730 of 820 posts

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

#721

Traditionally slavery was an alternative to death for the conquered. I'm morbidly curious what the effects of all Western corporations banning slave labor would be. I doubt it would result in liberation. Would working conditions for the slaves worsen when they worked for local, lower-margin factories instead? I can't imagine them improving. I have little faith in legal remedies to liberate slaves. Arming them seems t…

Doing good starts from home. Arm your prison labor and minimum wage workers. Let us know how that goes..

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

#722

Traditionally slavery was an alternative to death for the conquered. I'm morbidly curious what the effects of all Western corporations banning slave labor would be. I doubt it would result in liberation. Would working conditions for the slaves worsen when they worked for local, lower-margin factories instead? I can't imagine them improving. I have little faith in legal remedies to liberate slaves. Arming them seems t…

Having spent several years in Chinese supply chain activities, the factories building iPhones, XBoxes etc. Are some of the nicest ones around. Clean, large campuses with organized activities for workers etc. There are several tiers of factories below that, with worse worker accommodations, Longer working hours, worse working conditions. Some of the smaller, poorer factories will provide little in terms of personal pr…

Nice to have theory confirmed by experience.

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

#723

I’ve decided to leave the Apple ecosystem in 2021. But the problem is not isolated to Apple. In fact, I’d be surprised if other, cheaper products aren’t quite a bit worse. Is there an electronics company that does a better job? (That’s not a rhetorical question.)

Apple is one of the better ones in a sea of really bad. It's a low bar and certainly doesn't mean Apple is perfect. There might be some boutique phone makers who claim to be better like Librem or Fairphone, but because they have fewer resources than the big players it's much harder for them to really know. And if you dig into the mining side of the rare earths, worker conditions drop quickly.

I believe, a good guess, this company is forced to take these laborers.

The CCP calls the shots and if you own the company you have to go along or become one of the prisoners.

The CCP even has the forced laborers in a parade. They have their hands on it from start to finish.

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

#724

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 fra…

Is a "legal system that pays for itself" even desirable? Having revenue at all would seem to bring with it all kinds of terrible incentives. Moreover if the full cost of incarceration is borne by the taxpayer, then everyone has an incentive to fix the underlying causes of imprisonment.

I would happily pour money from incarceration system into universal medical care and basic income, then we can talk about the incarceration system. Focus only on the incarceration system lose focus of how governmental budget works, and how society works. We don't even have generally available low-cost higher education yet.

People always have this sense that we are responsible for prisoners, more than we are responsible for law-abiding citizens in worse conditions. We often ignored those who need it most among the general population, we only do things unless they become criminal, because a criminal is at least seen, tried, in court, in news report, and those non-tried people almost have zero visibility. We can see the prisoners, since they are in low-quantity, and wouldn't be too much burden on the state fund and we can not ignore them, because we put them there. And yet we ignore those can be ignored, the homeless folks on the streets of San Francisco and everywhere else. It creates a weird system where if you are in worse conditions, you might be better off committing a crime than being a law-abiding citizen. It happens often because it cheaper to build better prisons than to offer better social welfare system for everyone, not because we have a better sense of morality, but it made us feel better about ourselves.

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

#725

IMO this article launders slavery by referring to it as "forced labor".

I think the reason for saying forced labor was to distinguish it from chattel slavery (what most people think of when they see the word slavery), not downplaying the actions of this supplier.

The CCP has enslaved the Uighars, and gifted this manufacturer with some of them. How is this not chattel?

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

#726
post #265

I'm amazed the world isn't taking more action on China. Its quite sad really, 20 years ago, any one of the headlines from this year would have prompted sanctions and denunciations...

Are you also amazed the world didn't take action against the US under Trump?

Trump is well-respected internationally, and will be remembered as having the best foreign policy since the Marshall Plan in 1948.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan

A lot of what Trump and Pompeo had to overcome was the treaty abandonment that peaked under Obama. Asia is arming itself to the teeth because Obama allowed China (Xi was actually personally involved) to steal the Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarborough_Shoal

If you're referring to NATO members underpaying their contributions to their own defence, that's on them. Of course they're whining about an increase from 1.5% of GDP to 2.0 - 3.0%.

It's sad that I have to explain this to HN readers on a monthly basis. You literally don't know what you're talking about on this forum.

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

#727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to discount your point, but wouldn't a fourth option be to buy from the 30% of suppliers not in the DRC?

That doesn’t really scale. Minerals are where they are in the earth’s crust, and at some point we need to go to DR Congo if we want enough cobalt to go around. Especially if we want stuff like electric cars. And that’s just one example of one mineral. There is the notion of the “resource curse” —countries rich in natural resources often stay poor because why develop a modern economy when you can just become a warlord…

Where's the cia when you need them to topple a dictator who oppresses with slave labor

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

#728

Traditionally slavery was an alternative to death for the conquered. I'm morbidly curious what the effects of all Western corporations banning slave labor would be. I doubt it would result in liberation. Would working conditions for the slaves worsen when they worked for local, lower-margin factories instead? I can't imagine them improving. I have little faith in legal remedies to liberate slaves. Arming them seems t…

Doing good starts from home. Arm your prison labor and minimum wage workers. Let us know how that goes..

I didn't say arming slaves was good. I said it was the only effective long-term solution to the problem of liberating slaves. The consensus here is anti-slavery, so I accepted that premise.

The USA does permit minimum wage workers to purchase cheap pistols, which is probably why its police aren't brave enough to lock them down. Sometimes those workers even upset a predetermined election.

I do not support prisons. On average, it is better to be the slave of an individual and work for him than it is to be the slave of a state and live in a cage full of predators. Although of course I would rather be imprisoned for life in modern Scandinavia than serve 10 years of "indentured servitude" in Plantation America.

Since doing good starts from home, I suggest you liberate your extended family's children from compulsory labor. Let us know how that goes...

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

#729

Traditionally slavery was an alternative to death for the conquered. I'm morbidly curious what the effects of all Western corporations banning slave labor would be. I doubt it would result in liberation. Would working conditions for the slaves worsen when they worked for local, lower-margin factories instead? I can't imagine them improving. I have little faith in legal remedies to liberate slaves. Arming them seems t…

Wow. A troglodyte on HN manages to get top votes by vomiting an incredibly incoherent spew of libertarianism, marxism, reactionary nationalism and militant western chauvinism. All of this in reaction to an article about slave labor going into every fanboy's favorite screen. Who woulda thunk it.

A lot of things you say are right: If Western civ actually held to its neoliberal values then things would cost more. Slave labor is inefficient (although it's more efficient and apparently more acceptable than executing people like they did during the Cultural Revolution).

But on what planet do you live where the only solution is armed violence? First of all, that's just not possible. Even in America, the idea that because we have guns we are able to stand up against oppressive government is nothing more than a wet dream fantasy of the far right. In China? Uighurs are going to arm up and stand to the CCP? Are you out of your mind? If that looked like anything, it would look like Islamic terrorism.

You and I in America, and the people in Hong Kong, and the Uighurs, are not in a "slave society", we are in a corporation. And our issues are not going to be cured by taking up small arms against nuclear states that act as part of that corporations, even if millions of us are armed. The only thing going on here is a battle for scarce resources, disguised as a bunch of ideologies.

Look, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have trillions of dollars they could spend to build up a Palestinian state rebuild Syria or help the Uighurs, but what do they do? Make arms deals with Israel and America and China. And logically they're doing what they need to do. There is no world in which your fantasy of small arms and liberation of slaves is a remote possibility.

The only possibility is people owning their own local resources. And not sharing them as marxists, either.

There are very few, if any, levers that we can pull from the West at this point to promulgate that strategy. We can't bomb the railway lines into the Uighur camps, as we should have in WWII, because it would cause a nuclear war. We can cut off trade, and encourage people not to trade with bad actors, that's about it. Everything else is just a wanker fantasy.

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

#730

I’ve decided to leave the Apple ecosystem in 2021. But the problem is not isolated to Apple. In fact, I’d be surprised if other, cheaper products aren’t quite a bit worse. Is there an electronics company that does a better job? (That’s not a rhetorical question.)

The least harmful thing you can do is to only buy refurbished devices and to use them for as long as possible before replacing them.

You'll have to choose to get off the constant upgrade carousel.

Post reply on HN