[ryan-allen]

Suicide rates in populations around the world is much higher than you think. [1] The media don't report on them generally (if they did, there'd be more stories about them than horrific car crashes that the news outlets report on).

Car crashes in the US kill 40,000 people per year [2], and the US has a suicide rate of 11.1 per 100,000. With a population of 300 million, that's over 300,000 suicides in the US per year. 260,000 more than car crashes. Does that surprise you? What do the media report? Car crashes!

Given the number of Foxconn employees [3] (over 1 million) and the average suicide rate in China (13.8 per 100,000 per year), that's potentially 138 suicides of Foxconn employees per year.

Wired did an article on the suicides, there were 11 of them [4], to paraphrase the article "The nets went up after the 11th jumper took their life in less than a year.".

So there were another 127 people to kill themselves to get up to the national average in that year. The whole issue was a load of FUD. I bet you own heaps of junk that was made in China in factories with worse conditions. If you live in a first world country, it's inevitable.

You my friend, in Jobs' parlance, are a bozo!

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra... [2] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,146212,00.html [3] http://www.zerohedge.com/article/foxconn-employees-exceed-1-... [4] http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/02/ff_joelinchina/all/1

[r00fus]

> Car crashes in the US kill 40,000 people per year [2], and the US has a suicide rate of 11.1 per 100,000. With a population of 300 million, that's over 300,000 suicides in the US per year. 260,000 more than car crashes. Does that surprise you? What do the media report? Car crashes!

Your math is off by 10x. 11.1 per 100k * 300M/100k = 33,000 not 300,000.

The rest of your comment is still valid.

[exit]

there were 18 attempted suicides

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides

those suicides were still associated with work conditions at foxconn, regardless of whether the suicide is higher in the general population.

[ahoyhere]

Why should suicide attempts count? They can't be compared to the rate in the general public -- most suicide attempts don't succeed. More importantly, even if you did count them as successful, there'd need to be another 119 suicides for Foxconn employees to be up to the general population's rate of suicide.

That means, conservatively, that people who work at Foxconn are 7x LESS likely to commit suicide than in the general population.

11x LESS likely if you don't do intellectually dishonest things as counting attempts as successful suicides.

People also kill themselves over Tamagotchis. Suicidal people find a reason. So unless there's actually evidence of a higher-than-normal rate of suicide, the whole line of argument is a red herring.

[ScottBurson]

Downvoted. I was with you (and had upvoted your earlier posts) until the last sentence.

[spacefungus]

And why is that worthy of a downvote? Suicides aren't valid negative things? I am not against Steve Jobs. But to say all he did was hurt feelings is ignorant. He hurt feelings and perpetuated a supply chain with a lot of negative elements to it. And no, Apple is not the only company doing it.

[ScottBurson]

?? It wasn't your post I was replying to!

[spacefungus]

You're comparing a semi-controlled environment (Foxconn) to entire fucking society. That's some pretty shoddy statistics to say the least.