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by yequalsx
5953 days ago
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No one said anything about forced labor. I included it in a list of things that it is immoral to benefit from. In that list of things was child labor; the point of the discussion. Sorry for not making this clearer. I should have left it out. Corporations aren't building factories in China so that China benefits. They are building the factories so that they benefit. There are lots of reports of forced labor in China, of unsafe working conditions, and of worker exploitation. Our companies are fine with this arrangement because they fall back on the, "But we don't actually hire these workers. We contract this out." It's wrong. The American public is OK with the arrangement because it means we can buy cheap crap. We don't mind migrant laborers in this country being exploited because we want cheap food. What we lose sight of is the damage that this does to us and the world. That pollution that the factories produce in China to make cheap shit for us, in the long run, will do a lot of harm to China and the world. It's immoral for us to benefit from this. What we could do is make trade contingent on a base level of standards being met. Make companies run the factories instead of hiding behind, "We don't actually hire the workers." The externalities need to be addressed. |
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That's exactly what Apple does, and that's exactly why you're reading this story about Apple, instead of Asus or Lenovo or any other company--because Apple, unlike almost every other company, does the audits and enforces the standards on their contractors.