[buddylw]

I am no fan of Apple - mainly for their closed architecture, but I am also a cold-hearted economist when it comes to these types issues and this article is a bit of a one sided hit piece.

I would like to throw in a few counterpoints so we can all maintain a proper context.

1.) When companies become as large as Apple and begin purchasing products from vendors. It is not possible for them to guarantee the safety and operation of every vendor. Just as when you go buy oranges at the grocery store, you might know what country or farm it came from, but you don't know working conditions at that farm. Even if you could know you don't have time to dig through that info - you just want an orange. You, like everyone else, just respond to the major media outrages and exposés and blindly avoid Wal-Mart, etc.

Apple has more leverage here since they are a large company, but when it comes down to it, Apple ordered more screens and the vendor made the bad decision to use n-hexane. All Apple can do is lean on the vendor to make it right and not let it happen again. Believe me, even if Apple hates the workers and secretly wants them to die a horrible death for their stock holders, they don't want this bad press and would have avoided it if they could have.

2.) Outsourcing has real costs. It's not just cheaper because labor is cheaper. When you outsource you have to worry about the government, the infrastructure, shipping, recruiting talent etc. If you paid the Chinese workers American wages, it would not be worth the other costs to outsource at all.

3.) You can't compare living and working conditions between countries. As bad as a 3rd world outsourced job is to us 1st worlder's it's still generally BETTER than what they would have otherwise. In fact Apple and other 'outsourcers' are the one and only reason for the breath-taking trend line that is China's per capita growth: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=china+income+per+capita

Just read about living in China in the 60s. It's horrifying to even think about and makes China today seem like paradise. In short the Chinese are better with Apple than without.

4.) There are not a fixed number of jobs in the world - there are only a fixed number of resources. If China can make us a product cheaper than we can make it WE benefit. Our resources are free to build other things for China when they want to cash in some of those US Dollars they so graciously accepted from Apple in exchange for real goods. Voluntary trade benefits both parties by its very nature or it doesn't happen.

Also, the US unemployment issue is bit off the main topic of an already lengthy comment, but it has much more to do with sticky wages and our past decisions than it does outsourcing.

5.) Finally you can't not outsource. It's impossible. In this age of globalization everything is from everywhere. You can't even build a toaster by yourself: http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toast...

[erikpukinskis]

When companies become as large as Apple and begin purchasing products from vendors. It is not possible for them to guarantee the safety and operation of every vendor.

Yea, but here's what's scummy: they refuse to even disclose who their suppliers are. Which means that neither journalists nor customers can go out and find out what's going on.

I don't need Apple to spend billions verifying that the children of every last worker are getting their shoes tied in the morning. But I think they should at least give us the chance to look it up ourselves.

Maybe it should be federal law that you should have to report all of your suppliers if you want to sell goods in the US. Maybe report (anonymized) salaries of everyone too, benefits, etc.

[naner]

As bad as a 3rd world outsourced job is to us 1st worlder's it's still generally BETTER than what they would have otherwise. In fact Apple and other 'outsourcers' are the one and only reason for the breath-taking trend line that is China's per capita growth

This always seemed like a bullshit argument to me. So it is marginally better to work 16 hour days in terrible conditions while dumping chemicals in local groundwater than it is to starve to death. Well, it turns out that overworking people and polluting is still bad behaviour. These outsourcing companies shouldn't be commended for it. Provide these people good working conditions and a safe environment or don't bother outsourcing.

As an analogy, you wouldn't commend me for purchasing a mail-order bride from a poor country with sex trafficking problems. Yeah, it is marginally better for her than prostitution and she'll have better living conditions, but my behavior is still abusive and exploitative.

[forensic]

We can't save the world. Even if our entire country voted for it, we could not save the Chinese from their own policies.

They are adults living in a sovereign nation; they are responsible for their own working conditions.

I'm not going to feel white-guilt for stuff that happens in a foreign country over which I have zero control.

[m_eiman]

Even if our entire country voted for it, we could not save the Chinese from their own policies.

Vote with your wallet. If nobody will buy products produced using awful methods, they will no longer be produced that way. It's quite simple. Then you'll say "But everyone else is buying them, so it doesn't matter if I do it too". To which I say "Don't care about what others are doing, just do the right thing yourself".

[forensic]

It's impossible for me to have perfect information, or even relatively accurate information about the working conditions of the people who made my stuff.

Also since working conditions are subjective value judgements, I can't even objectively say that someone is working under bad working conditions.

In the first world there are high-rise window cleaners. Some people would consider washing windows a mile in the sky to be cruel and unusual punishment. Others consider it a thrill and would pay to do it.

I am not qualified to determine the difference between a sweatshop and just a highly efficient assembly line. Even if I was qualified, I would not have the necessary information. Even if I had the necessary information, I use too many products for me to examine the supply lines of each one. Even if someone did this for me, they would not be able to probe into the dark depths of communist China.

No, this doesn't fall to me. The working conditions of Chinese people are the responsibility of Chinese people. I will engage in trade with Chinese people and let them decide how they wish to work and how they wish to organize their society.

Ethnic paternalism is so 19th century.

[rimantas]

Ok, don't buy the products. Then they are without the jobs. How does it help exactly?

[Volpe]

Yes, because that's how capitalism works! If you don't buy a specific product, the whole market fails and everyone dies of hunger.

[olalonde]

> Well, it turns out that overworking people and polluting is still bad behaviour.

Fast-forward to year 2085

> Well, it turns out that asking people to do mechanical work 30 hours a week and dumping CO2 in the atmosphere is still bad behaviour.

[tomjen3]

This is the way every society goes - Milton Friedman pointed out when confronted with how horrible living in the cities at the time of Charles Dickens was that the reason people moved to the cities was that it was far worse in the countryside.

Also the reason companies outsource isn't to provide the workers with great work environments (that may or may not happen) but to save money.

[berntb]

>>Well, it turns out that overworking people and polluting is still bad behaviour.

I usually give this link at this point. http://www.slate.com/id/1918/

Krugman discuss, well, why you are a judging hypocr.. cough, a bit harsh. :-)

Edit: Let me put it this way. A millennia ago, my ancestors made today's Afghanistan look like a cosy and peaceful place. Now, it is a bit different -- a welfare state where there haven't been war for a couple of centuries. Both situations are inside the range of human behaviour/nature. The trick is to organise things so society works and so that it gets better over time. So few ways of doing things really works, so it is a bit funny when you complain about just those, from a moral perspective.

[naner]

I've read this before. I supposed I just have a hard time with the idea that doing harmful things is long-term beneficial.

[berntb]

>>I just have a hard time with the idea that doing harmful things is long-term beneficial.

I come from a protestant culture; we have problems believing that fun things can be beneficial. :-)

Krugman argued -- many of those things aren't harmful, given the situation the local people are in.

Instead of complaining about something that will be fixed automatically given good governance, work for good governance... Another of my standard links:

http://reason.com/archives/2006/03/01/why-poor-countries-are...

(Me? I am doing good by educating activists about the real problems. :-) )

[w1ntermute]

> When companies become as large as Apple and begin purchasing products from vendors. It is not possible for them to guarantee the safety and operation of every vendor.

It's one thing to have occasional issues of the sort. It's a completely different matter to be so bad at preventing these problems that you're ranked dead last amongst international IT companies in China. Apple's famous perfection clearly only applies to things that make it money:

> Ma Jun is one of the leaders of the Green Choice Alliance, a coalition of 36 Chinese NGOs that tracks pollution reports among international brands operating in China. In January, they released a report focusing on global IT companies that ranked Apple dead last among 29 companies in responding to inquiries about pollution and workers' safety. Last winter, Ma met with Jia and helped him pen a letter about working conditions and medical compensation to Apple CEO Steve Jobs. It went unanswered. So did a second letter.

[eridius]

Yeah, and PETA routinely ranks Apple very low in their reports (even immediately after praising them for their green efforts on whatever the newest product is at the time). They do this because it gets media attention. I have no idea what this group is that tracks pollution reports, and no reason to expect that they're a fair and impartial body that is portraying a completely accurate picture in their reports.

[r00fus]

cite?

[alexbowman]

Hello economist. Jack of all trades here. I agree it seems like a one-sided piece. But. Apple can very clearly know what happens in its vendors, it simply has to look in a very clever way. It has to run a very black black ops. Most multinationals don't do this, they take the word of these vendors literally.

A simple metric: ask the senior management questions that have clear quantified answers. If they, or if anyone reading this that has an outsourced operation, cannot answer that, then outsourcing is being done either badly or astoundingly badly.