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

They’ve made phones and devices so thin that packing in a larger sized battery to help make up for the difference should be manageable.

But Apple is a US company... lots of US companies take advantage of (domestic) prison labour.

How is the US not part of this discussion???

Humans envy wealth not justified by the generous hunter archetype, who shares his kill's meat with the tribe. Humans also lust to devour chips and candy until their teeth rot and their hearts explode. A three-pound brain comes with legacy firmware. Vulnerabilities should be patched in the next 10,000-year release. Please hold.

Tribal politics are mediated by emotion, settled by sex and violence, and recorded in genes. Unfelt but underlying is the telos of life: to accelerate the heat death of the universe and achieve a more perfectly-uniform field of lifeless subatomic dust. Inspiring! If God is the universe, then life is the cancer She dies of.

So if you really hate God, become Elon Musk and advance humanity along the Kardashev Scale. Which brings us to what international pressure really is: the race up the Kardashev ladder. Those left behind enjoy a century of humiliation, as China discovered when the European nations forcibly opened her ports for business in classically-rapey colonial fashion. If forcible anachronism is a form of societal slavery, then this was a liberation of the Chinese peasant, who now owns a cell phone and several outfits.

Later Mao attempted his Great Leap Forward, but gave up on it before meeting the fate of Pol Pot, whose supreme ideological commitment weakened Cambodia so badly that Vietnam invaded. Thus the threat of invasion checks the degree of enslavement feasible. Of course, it rarely comes to that. Even Communists can be reasonable.

> Isn’t that what’s already happening though?

China should be enjoying her Asian tiger rise in per capita GDP, and filling the vacuum left by the USA's receding thalassocracy. However, it's always possible to overplay a good hand, and it appears Xi did exactly that. If he's replaced by moderate after Deng's heart, it will be partly due to the pressure Trump put on China, in a reversal of the USA's prior indulgence. Not that Trump is doing much on an absolute scale, but relatively, it's a dramatic shift. Mostly though, it's China's own fault. Burning all her international goodwill to hoard COVID19 PPE will prove very expensive, among other shenanigans.

Just because I make a factual historical observation, doesn't make me a neoliberal. Slave societies are an extreme case. I doubt China could be described as one at her current levels of forced labor.

> For producers in the market to be competitive, they must (over)optimize for profit. One of the best ways to do that is by reducing cost. One of the best ways to reduce cost is by employing cheaper labor (“efficient human resource utilization”, you said), and to do that, tech companies must outsource to manufacturers located in poor countries with weak state institutions where the transacting parties can get away with slavery.

Here's where you're right: Tribal politics represent the genetic feedback system, and they dislike arbitrary wealth because of its damaging distortion of genetic fitness feedback. The market economy makes wealth a much less arbitrary signal of genetic fitness, but it is nowhere near a replacement for tribal politics. Unless you think Bill Gates should get all the California girls...

That's why successful societies balance the interests of the rich against the interests of the commoners.

However, I wouldn't call China a "poor country with weak state institutions". If their slaves are outcompeting our free skilled tech workers, there's a simple solution for that: Slap a tariff on it. This move will garner enough popularity to guarantee a crowd of adoring iPhone assembly technicians in front of the golden statue of yourself you erect with the proceeds.

What a depressing world you must live in. In reality, the news is pretty good: Freedom has expanded dramatically. Freedom was expanding in China until Xi took over, with many working and planning for democracy. A local downturn isn't at all 'inevitable'; we can easily turn it around.

Freedom has expanded dramatically in the U.S. too. Minorities such as Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Irish, Italians, Germans (once reviled!) and more are now unquestioned members of society. Women went from an oppressed majority to full members of the workplace, expanding participation in government, etc. Few would dream now of suggesting women shouldn't work - something that was a norm a couple of generations ago. LGTBQ+ people's rights have expanded: They can marry, they don't lose their jobs over it, they can serve openly in the military and in government.

African-Americans enjoy far more rights: Obama was elected, as was Kamala Harris. Education has expanded; discrimination is socially unacceptable - no politician would survive using certain language. Law enforcement abuse of African-Americans is widely seen as a problem. Even Republicans voted to remove Confederate names from military bases.

We still have a long way to go, including for African-Americans, women in the workplace, LGBTQ+, Muslims, and more. But to suggest oppression is inevitable is just ignorant; it denies the facts. One wonders why some people seem to want it to be true?

This is fun!

Apple is a U.S. Company

Lots of U.S. companies take advantage of (domestic) prison labour.

Domestic prison labour is responsible for mental health problems.

Mental health problems are treated by psychiatrists.

How are psychiatrists not part of this discussion???