Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China • Hacker News Board

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

#771

Post by valuearb » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 3:49 PM UTC

arminiusreturns wrote: post #719

wolverine876 wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My countries government should understand the implications of the policies it impliments, including the impact on people in other countries, but my governments first concern shouldn't be those other peoples, it should be it's own citizens! The people in other countries are human beings with exactly the same value and rights as I have. The responsible thing to do is to do both. Just like my responsibility is to both…

> The people in other countries are human beings with exactly the same value and rights as I have. This is untrue. I am very much a believer in individual rights as set forth in the decleration of independence, so on a philosophical level to an extent I agree, but the to say people in other countries have the same rights as a citizen of the empire is just silly. > The parent assumes a zero-sum tradeoff, but that's no…

> I have listened to plenty of pro-globalist/pro-free-traders talk about how America and other first world countries are just going to have to get used to the idea that their wealth is going to decrease as it equalizes out globally

Anyone who says this doesn’t understand free trade, even if they advocate it.

And US/Western anti-communist policies of supporting friendly dictators has nothing to do with allowing citizens freedom to trade. Again the same politicians often can support two different policies, one invaluable and one abhorrent, with no physical requirement that they are linked.

And US manufacturing post NAFTA has been stronger than ever, so stop repeating that old saw. If you thought NAFTA would create gumdrops rain showers and candy coated roads in Mexico, you are mistaken. NAFTA brought many better jobs to Mexico, but it can’t solve the war on drugs, bring back circular migration, eliminate governmental corruption, or reduce the stifling influence of the Catholic Church.

And while Smedleys book is a classic, free trade isn’t responsible for mercantilism, they are literally polar opposite philosophies. Mercantilism is the use of government resources and restrictions to support a small set of favored businesses, while free trade dictates a level playing field for all participants.

And wake me up when you can think of a coherent criticism of the law of comparative advantage. It’s been a bedrock of economics for over two hundred years because it’s critics have never been able to disprove it and it’s massive benefits.

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

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Post by 99_00 » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

c0nducktr wrote: post #654

99_00 wrote: post #561

What will these poor soul's fate be if/when they can't be forced to work?

Is this sarcasm/irony? Hard to tell on the internet.

Not sarcasm or irony. A genuine question. What will happen to them once they stop being a revenue source for the CPP and start being a cost.

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

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Post by 5tefan » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #766

5tefan wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Foe the sake of argument I put it rather bluntly: I don't think this happened by accident but on purpose. There is simply no way to end up in a situation where you use forced labor by accident. Poverty and forced labor are just the other side of wealth and freedom. Same coin. Someone has to to pay the price. Earth's ressources are limited and if not shared you'll end up where we currently are.

> Poverty and forced labor are just the other side of wealth and freedom. Same coin. Someone has to to pay the price. For me to be free, someone else must lose their freedom? There's a finite amount of freedom? For me to be wealthy, someone else must be poor? There's a finite amount of economic output? Both completely reject reality and well-established theory (such as economics). Both freedom and wealth per capita h…

Some examples. Some might be good others less. But I want to convey something.

Your freedom to kill people is limited to zero to ensure their right to live.

Our freedom to pollute the environment is limited by nature's ability to compensate.

My freedom to watch the latest shows for free is limited by e.g. Netflix to earn some money.

You are free to by e.g. Apple stuff. But you know... seems to limite quite some people's freedom.

I'm not free to live by the sea. To expensive.

I say therfore freedom of choice does not translate to freedom bit it is often confused to be the latter

The other thing is simply inflation. Too much money around and you have it. Kind of offer and demand out of balance. For any given state of the earth's economy there is a perfect amount of money to keep everthing going. That means the amount of money is finite. If the economy growth the amount of money can grow as well (what you described). But is is still finite unless you want to have inflation. But if this money is disproportinally distributed you have the rich and the poor. Being rich requires poverty somewhere else.

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

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Post by ogre_codes » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #597

unethical_ban wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And u/echelon was never seen in this thread again.

[flagged]

You seem to think you can damn everyone who buys Apple for their participation in abuses, even as you enjoy products which are likely far deeper into this bullshit.

All you've done is point out your own biases and willingness to dive deep into hypocrisy.

There is a big problem with forced labor. Apple is one of the few companies who is remotely transparent about their supply chain. As much manufacturing as Apple does, they are bound to end up buying from some of these vendors. But unlike most of their competitors, we've seen Apple adjust their buying from suppliers who get caught doing this.

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

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Post by dmingod666 » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

Cyberthal wrote: post #728

dmingod666 wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not Chinese.. sorry if I was too rude... Agree that slavery is just hidden now and called by a different name.. it's sad, America with it's literally unlimited resources can do much better for it's own citizens, but it's too divided on class and uses race problems to divert attention from the real problem that the lower classes are screwed over in every possible way.. I think if the politicians there were a little less corrupt it would have been so much more nicer for regular folk..

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

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Post by bstar77 » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #756

bstar77 wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These phones can't do much to address a glass supplier that is mean to their workers. These are just more environmentally sustainable phones. I'm all in on putting pressure on Apple and others to clean up their supply chain, but it can't just be Apple that's held to this standard. Right now it is.

Fairphone actually does; their (screen) glass for the Fairphone 2 was from Korning. See https://open.sourcemap.com/maps/57bd640851c05c0a5b5a8be1 . Why did you say they “can't”?

My point is that there are too many components to have complete control over the whole supply chain, so these types of issues will come up and hopefully responded to accordingly. I really appreciate that these sustainable devices exist, and I think they are a huge step forward.

Getting back to the initial comment I made... I think it's important to keep a company like Apple/Google/Samsung honest regarding their attention to their supplier's ethics. A company like Apple is going to be pretty responsive to concerns of worker mistreatment, if presented in an honest way. If we are too quick to incriminate Apple whenever a story like this comes up, it comes off more like we have an agenda against them, especially if we are not vetting the story before expressing outrage.

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

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Post by CountSessine » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 5:43 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #753

pydry wrote: post #749

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They failed in Venezuela recently but that didn't stop them from trying. There was a democratic Senator who ascribed the failure to Trump's incompetence. Most of Latin America had had a US backed coup at some point in its history. Many very successful. Pinochet, etc.

And this is a very good example of what I said. US only ever managed to use staged coups to unseat civil governments, and failed miserably with tougher targets like real totalitarian regimes. The only notable exception I think was Noriega, who was a joke of a dictator, and possibly even put in power with American help in the first place.

Except that the spooks failed even when it came to unseating Noriega because they had to call in the military to stage an invasion.

The only two cases that I’m aware of where the US clandestinely toppled a foreign government were Chile and Iran - and apparently even the Iranian operation was mostly driven by the British secret service. And by all accounts, Chile was more of a nudge than a push.

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

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Post by philwelch » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 6:12 PM UTC

fedreserved wrote: post #727

philwelch wrote: post #702

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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

That’s door number 2. I’m not opposed to going through door number 2.

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

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Post by onepointsixC » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #105

onepointsixC wrote: post #82

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It changes by holding companies like Apple accountable. They are the largest company in the world for goodness sake. Their audits when so little as a picture of a manual gets leaked are incredibly thorough, yet when it comes to literal slavery they're unable to reign it in? If we were to hold executives liable for acting as slavers then it would be miraculous how quickly corporate leadership would suddenly be interes…

I think there's always some manufacturer willing to do this thing with any product, even with Apple and just continue on. We talk about slavery, that ended with state actions. I'm not sure China cares, and accordingly the practice will continue.

Right, I'm not disputing that there will always be someone horrible willing to do that. What I'm saying is that large American companies and their executives should be held legally responsible if that gets into their supply chain.

If a Sword of Damocles is hovering continuously above their head in the form of criminal punishment then they would have no choice but to think twice about off shoring to a region where it is "conveniently" difficult to enforce basic labor rights. My point is that purposeful ignorance as a defense is unacceptable.

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

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Post by riffraff » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 6:56 PM UTC

h0l0cube wrote: post #601

BigJono wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does some private company getting labor for 10c an hour benefit anyone but them? It's "compensating" for jack shit. You might have a point if they had to pay minimum wage for each employee to the government to be used on social services.

Add to this a perverse incentive to increase the 'labor pool' by corrupting the justice system.

and the incentive for private prisons to not even try to behave as a "correctional" facilities, since your revenue is tied to having more criminals, not less.