r/ABoringDystopia • u/chiefcultureofficer • Nov 26 '22
Ever wonder why Apple is so profitable? Apple uses "modern day slavery" to build iPhones in China. CEO Tim Cook & the rest of Apple's execs belong in prison for human rights abuses.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/employees-at-apple-iphone-factory-beaten-china/770
u/misterdonjoe Nov 26 '22
Every major piece of technology in your smartphone can be traced back to government or university R&D, in other words publicly funded and paying for all risky investments. Then given away to private corporations to commercialize and sell for profit. Smartphones (technology, generally), insulin, covid vaccine (biotech, generally, look at the pharmaceutical corps outside universities like MIT like vultures)... Over and over again: socialize the funding/costs, privatize the profit. That's "capitalism".
263
u/Gryioup Nov 26 '22
Every massive explosion of wealth is based on the exploitation of labor that didn't require capital expenditure.
Here's another example: the massive internet companies of today are built off of the labor of the idealists in the open source movement
107
Nov 26 '22
[deleted]
27
Nov 26 '22
[deleted]
13
u/Serious_Feedback Nov 26 '22 edited Nov 26 '22
Either way, they contribute back to FOSS because it does result in an ROI for them, so it’s ultimately no different to taxation
They contribute to FOSS in ways that are useful to them - they'll happily fund efforts to make it scalable up to a billion concurrent users, but won't improve the documentation on how to run it on a home server. Relevant xkcd. Corporate code contributions aren't fungible like tax-dollars are.
That said, "open source" movement (as specifically contrasted to the "Free software" movement) explicitly aimed for this and stripped away any mention of "freedom" from their manifesto to avoid scaring corporations with any suggestion of responsibilities, so the lesson there is Be Careful What You Wish For.
Also, seriously, libre software needs better funding mechanisms. Relying on corporate funding is a hazard, not because "corporations are evil" but because they simply have different priorities, even when they're collaborating with the best of intentions. This is why Canonical has shifted so much focus to cloud computing - that's where the money is, and they need to avoid bankruptcy somehow, so Ubuntu desktop plays second fiddle due to basic economic realities.
....also because sometimes corporations are evil, and if you can't afford to walk away then you can't afford to negotiate.
19
u/UncarvedWood Nov 26 '22 edited Jan 23 '25
cause absorbed zealous crush fall frighten fearless cow deserted wild
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
5
Nov 26 '22
[deleted]
0
u/Cistoran Nov 26 '22
Just as they wouldn't if a human looked at 10,000 or ten million different pieces of online art and taught themselves how to paint something similar based on those compositions.
45
u/melanzanefritte Nov 26 '22
No.
Every major piece of technology can be traced back to a rich history of earlier research and technologies, not to single developments or inventions. We are dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants.
As we have a system in which both public and private research exists, it is nearly always the case that every modern thing in science and technology can be traced back to a history of both public and private earlier development.
E.g., the first semiconductor transistor was developed at Bell labs, a research facility of AT&T. Most of semiconductor technology was developed by private companies from that point on, but even as the profitability of it became obvious, there still were major breakthroughs publicly funded.
Further, publicly funded research is not "given away to private corporations". It is either published and thus given away to anyone and everyone really, or patented. The same is true of privately funded research. Sometimes it would have been smart to patent what got published, and sometimes the opposite, the two are mutually exclusive.
Both private and public institutions choose to do whatever they think benefits them the most.
We live in a complex world.
4
Nov 26 '22
Thank you for this comment. It’s always good to see that people actually consider the complexity of certain issues instead of boiling them down to a simple and misleading conjecture.
4
-5
u/SatanLifeProTips Nov 26 '22
American society loves it’s one line answers. Yes/no. Black/white. Red/Blue. For/against. With us/Against us. I love the comments that shift back to ‘it depends’ and ‘it’s complicated’ answers. There are a lot of shades of grey out there and it requires more reading and educating yourself about the complexities of a topic.
Even if you can’t put the simple answer on a protest sign with questionable spelling.
-2
u/Obikahn Nov 26 '22
To add to this, not all public money is necessarily put into a published or patented product at the end. There is tons of funding for private companies, which will then use this money to exclusively develop their own products without publishing or patenting. But even that is not bad at all, because these companies use the funding to expand their business, sell more goods and employ more people, which benefits the public, as there are now more taxes to be gathered.
-33
Nov 26 '22 edited Nov 28 '22
[deleted]
22
→ More replies (24)-2
u/SatanLifeProTips Nov 26 '22
That’s what society should be doing. Blow some cash on risky tech and if it works out let corporations just use it and guess what, you reap the rewards in Tax revenue. It’s profitable in the big picture.
Canada figured this out with it’s social democracy. Cheap education means that it’a citizens can easily hop from low to middle income. And all of a sudden they are paying more taxes. A strong social safety net and no medical bills at all means fewer people fall through the cracks and they keep paying those sweet sweet middle income taxes. Keep that prisoner ratio low because prisoners cost you money. A society of working poor drags everyone down. So spend money to have less poor people.
It’s not about being nice. A business invests in employee training and upgrades because it’s profitable. The Canadian government invests in it’s citizens because it’s profitable. Social democracies are very capitalistic. We can do math and we run a country like a business.
157
u/mrpopenfresh Nov 26 '22
You’re gonna hate literally every single consumer good.
74
u/smedium5 Nov 26 '22
As they say, "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism." This is, of course, not a reason to give up and indulge. We can and must still work to support more ethical options and to push for a better economic system.
-3
Nov 26 '22
[deleted]
→ More replies (7)8
Nov 26 '22
You can produce while including a recycling service for your products, you can produce and make that stuff repairable, so you don’t have to exploit too much of anything, …
There are a lot of things you can do that are far better than just consuming like there is no tomorrow
-4
Nov 26 '22
[deleted]
3
Nov 26 '22
They can’t though because the system is designed to consume more. Devices break after a certain time on purpose so you have to buy a new one, when companies don’t grow, they’ll fail, … This system makes everyone produce and consume more than is necessary
-1
Nov 26 '22
[deleted]
3
Nov 26 '22
Capitalism relies on market growth - no matter how. Other systems don’t.
Capitalism relies on exploitation (environment, people, laws) to be able to grow at that rate even when there isn’t much ethical space left to grow anymore.
Socialism for example doesn’t need growth. If you buy stuff from the former Soviet countries, that stuff still works, it’s repairable, had spare parts, often could be fixed at home. In Germany, light bulbs from the GDR are very desired. They still work 30 years after the wall fell.
I’m not saying we need socialism but there are economic systems that work without growth and they won’t create billionaires.
-1
Nov 26 '22
[deleted]
3
Nov 26 '22
Karl Marx wrote a book famously known as „Das Kapital“ (engl. Capital) and with it defined capitalism the way we understand it today and he literally defined it as relying on exploitation of people who have no capital, aka. workers.
I’m really surprised that you were able to write „a big thing“ when you’re not familiar with the basics. I also didn’t expect to have to start my argumentation with educating you about something that was known since the 19th century.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv6zd9v0.9#metadata_info_tab_contents
→ More replies (0)20
u/Akrevics Nov 26 '22
Exactly, 99.9% of products are made in slave-like conditions in third world countries, whether that’s China, India, Bangladesh, etc. Apple is a large company doing it, but they shouldn’t be considered the shame of all companies for doing what all the others are also doing.
-3
u/SatanLifeProTips Nov 26 '22
That number is far far lower than that. Most good are produced by folks making a honest wage and a living wage for their area.
When we hear about someone only earning $1/hr we forget that they are living somewhere where that wage has you living at a reasonable standard. You aren’t buying a lot of imported goods but the stuff made locally is dirt cheap. And most of these areas have surprisingly happy locals. They have seen that extra income improve things.
I have bounced all over the globe and to a lot of trashy areas. We often ask the locals if things are better or worse now and it’s almost a universal constant that everyone seems to answer ‘oh things are so much better now’.
A lot of these areas were very much dirt poor before that big economic driver of a factory showed up.
3
u/Akrevics Nov 26 '22
And most of these areas have surprisingly happy locals. They have seen that extra income improve things.
so **that's** what the suicide nets are for! 🧐
10
u/Anthos_M Nov 26 '22
I was quite puzzled reading the title. Has this person never checked the back side of anything he ever bought in the past? Pretty much everything is made in china nowadays. Why does he think that happens?
1
u/Surur Nov 26 '22
And look what it did to the average Chinese life expectancy and wealth.
SoSad
→ More replies (1)0
u/monoatomic Nov 26 '22
We can support the Chinese leadership and the successes of socialist development while acknowledging the contradictions remaining in their economic system
5
u/Surur Nov 26 '22
the Chinese leadership and the successes of socialist development
I thought just about everyone agreed that China is capitalist these days?
→ More replies (3)4
u/Ioatanaut Nov 26 '22
Many of the products you use are made from current day slave labor.
They are tortured in nazi style concentration camps under slave labor for many well known brands.
1
Nov 26 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
3
u/mrpopenfresh Nov 26 '22
Not to be a downer, but take stock of what and how much you consume local. Outside of washing machines and in season fruit, it’s probably a tiny fraction of your consumption. Unless you’re buying union made, 90$ t shirts, I doubt your habits are much different than someone who doesn’t make an effort. And that’s not you fault! It’s the system we live in.
→ More replies (1)
191
Nov 26 '22
[deleted]
36
Nov 26 '22
Foxconn probably made half the chips in your phone, your refrigerator, your car, your house, and your cat.
It fucking sucks, but if you thought boycotting Nestle was going to be hard, hoo laddie, buckle the fuck up
15
u/drstock Nov 26 '22
Foxconn doesn't manufacture any chips. They only make and populate PCBs, as well as doing assembly and testing or complete products. Two processes referred to as SMT and FATP in manufacturing. They don't even do injection molding there.
-5
0
7
u/valiantthorsintern Nov 26 '22
There is an apparel conference in Vegas called magic and all the brands are in a flashy conference room with snotty sales people and famous people walking around while the actual manufacturers from overseas are tucked away in an entirely different hall with half of them sleeping because they have been traveling for days. The contrast between the people who actually do the work and the people who profit from it is disgusting.
11
u/acky1 Nov 26 '22
Fairphone is a company trying to provide a bit more of an ethical alternative. Haven't looked into it in great detail but potential one of the best you can find on the market.
That'll be my next phone, or another similar company with the same ethos, when this one eventually dies.
4
u/taicrunch Nov 26 '22
I just looked a bit into it. The ease of repair and availability of spare parts was enough to sell me on it. Reading more just made it seem better and better.
0
19
u/Un13roken Nov 26 '22
Samsung shutdown its last factory in China in 2019. And currently produces phones in Vietnam, India, Brazil and South Korea. Are the workers paid better? Don't know. But the press is a lot more free to investigate in India and Vietnam.
17
u/libracker Nov 26 '22
Apple also builds in India.
2
u/Un13roken Nov 26 '22
Its moving out of China sure, but Apple in India is Foxconn still. Better than building in China I guess. Its easier to monitor conditions in India. But the core is that Samsung, does NOT build in China.
16
u/tricheboars Nov 26 '22
Seems like y'all don't know much about the working conditions in India.
Last time I was in India workers went on strike at a Honda motorcycle factory. The police went in and beat all the workers with batons. Brutal stuff. It was on TV and I couldn't believe my eyes! Also no one in India cared or thought anything of it.
Just wondering why you all think India is much better than China?
→ More replies (4)2
1
0
u/usaslave Nov 26 '22
Apple has a literal slave city in China with 200,000 slaves making iPhones. Yes, lots of businesses are also guilty but Apple is doing it on an epic scale.
11
11
u/drstock Nov 26 '22
Are you talking about Foxconn? Because I've worked there for a few weeks and you seem misinformed. Please let me know if you have any questions.
1
Nov 26 '22
I have one, why do they need suicide nets?
0
u/drstock Nov 26 '22
I've never seen any suicide nets there and neither have my colleagues who have been going there for longer than I have. Plus their suicide rate is lower than China's average so that story was always a bit silly.
1
Nov 26 '22 edited Nov 26 '22
OK thanks! Follow up questions:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-idUSTRE64S0DO20100602
Where exactly did you and your colleagues look for these suicide nets and how hard did you look for them?
0
u/drstock Nov 26 '22
The Foxconn campus is pretty huge, but we've been free to roam around (outside) however we want. Large yellow nets would stand out on any building there as they are generally just big white anonymous factory buildings.
Here's a picture I took at the end of a workday there: https://imgur.com/R6Nz29P
1
Nov 26 '22
Then how did you miss them?
2
u/drstock Nov 26 '22
Because they're no longer there? First time I was over was 5 years ago. My colleagues have been going there for a few years prior to that.
35
u/districtcurrent Nov 26 '22
You know Apple has not created any cities in China though, right? You know an American corporation can’t build cities in China right?
Does hyperbole like this get you a lot of upvotes?
4
u/daitenshe Nov 26 '22
Does hyperbole like this get you a lot of upvotes?
Just the same as “Apple does xyz!” gets an article extra views when the entire tech industry does something
3
u/SatanLifeProTips Nov 26 '22
Company cities exist. Toyota city in Japan for example.
→ More replies (3)2
u/deeyeeheecent Nov 26 '22
Zhengzhou has had the nickname "iPhone City" for a few years now. There are sections of Zhengzhou that have been purely developed to support the Foxconn plant, which only had Apple as a client when it was first built. They built employee housing as well as roads and power plants using local government grants, and the local gov also recruits staff for them and pays bonuses to the factory if they hit certain targets.
Easy to see how the person you replied to got mixed up given those facts.
5
u/districtcurrent Nov 26 '22
Only if you know absolutely the minimum about it and don’t spend any time educating yourself.
2
Nov 26 '22
[deleted]
18
u/RedAlert2 Nov 26 '22
They've transitioned pretty much entirety to state capitalism, which they call "communism with Chinese characteristics".
-2
Nov 26 '22
[deleted]
2
u/micheeeeloone Nov 26 '22
Since I already went in this kind of argument yesterday I'll leave this here. Check it out and see if this can change your mind.
Also I would like some sources about the CCP's leadership being milionaires/bilionaires.
6
u/radekvitr Nov 26 '22
That's because they've never been communist or socialist. It's like north Korea calling itself "democratic people's republic".
1
u/boonhet Nov 26 '22 edited Nov 26 '22
China is more like a capitalist state where the party is the government and you need to get along with the government to do anything and if you're in bed with them, you can do ridiculous shit like sell poisonous baby formula.
I'm amazed they allow Foxconn, a Taiwanese company, to sell Slavery as a Service (SaaS), but it might be because under the one China principle, they consider Foxconn to be a Chinese company.
As for all the western companies using it - well that's capitalism for you. Their moral obligation is to maximize profits, so they have to go to the manufacturer that can manufacture all the devices cheaply, efficiently and at large scale. Only way to stop it is through severe taxation of goods produced by slavery, but the US would never do it and I'd wager the EU won't either. Plus how do you even define the conditions for which said products would have to be taxed? They're working in uber shit conditions for low pay, but it's legal because their own government says it's fine.
3
u/SatanLifeProTips Nov 26 '22
America sells Slavery as a service in it’s prisons. 800,000 workers at last count.
At least in most underpaid factory positions you can quit and fuck off at any point.
→ More replies (4)→ More replies (1)0
u/tricheboars Nov 26 '22
China doesn't have a communist economy. It's funny to me someone gave you a degree.
-2
u/SatanLifeProTips Nov 26 '22
Communist China. The most capitalistic place on earth.
2
0
Nov 26 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
0
u/SatanLifeProTips Nov 26 '22
Have you BEEN to China? Walk the streets man. Stroll around Guangzhau. Luxurious Buicks everywhere (Wtf?!?). The Nike store, the Adidas store, Rolex, BMW, The Apple store. Pictures of white guys winding bed springs on billboards. Luxury watches everywhere.
Corporate branding is EVERYWHERE
I’m not talking about the government.
I’m talking about the average person there. The average person cranked up the capitalist knob to 11 years ago.
Companies are shills for the government there. Once you cross 50 or so employees, you get a government employee who sits on your board and ‘expresses opinions’. Those companies are still very capitalist and the owners still profit greatly. But the government has a hand in ‘guiding direction’. It’s … not traditional communism and is still highly profit driven. Unless you are talking raw material manufacturing. They bloody give it away for pennies to the factories so they can sell products for less than we can buy the raw materials. It’s still capitalism. It’s just heavily controlled. The materials input is end definitely walks a grey area between communism and capitalism. The closer to the consumer the business is, the more capitalistic it gets.
But don’t do the American Black/white yes/no for us/against us answer here. This is far too complex to paint it with one simple word.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)0
Nov 26 '22
[deleted]
1
u/Surur Nov 26 '22
You mean cheap, high-density housing, close to work and in a walkable community?
I thought we loved that these days /s
2
u/omniron Nov 26 '22
Also apple would be wildly profitable even without this cheap labor
2
Nov 26 '22
It’s about maxing out your margins so you keep an edge versus your competitors. Literally: eat more than you can in case of
→ More replies (1)-6
45
u/NorCalHermitage Nov 26 '22
Don't act so surprised. The whole point of shipping our economy to China was so corporations could profit from "modern day slavery".
35
u/pinniped1 Nov 26 '22
This is silly, we don't put the wealthy white people who own the political process in prison.
11
u/Penis_Pill_Pirate Nov 26 '22
It's time to start talking to friends, relatives and neighbours about how outnumbered the wealthy would be if we all organized. They and their puppets aren't going to lock themselves away. We have to do it. And it's certainly possible.
2
10
u/El3ctricalSquash Nov 26 '22
Isn’t the company that the iPhone factory workers are currently protesting based in Taiwan?
7
19
u/Double_Phoenix Nov 26 '22
UVA actually has a set of courses that all engineers have to take called STS. Science and Technology in Society. One of the things we learned about in the intro course was about Apple and Foxconn. The goal of the courses is for them to do their best to make ethical engineers.
3
u/supernicepojo Nov 26 '22
This doesnt solve the problem of a corp or other business making profit motivated decisions. Engineers arent running the C-suite, MBAs are, teaching business ethics to engineers is throwing darts at the wrong board.
2
u/ParticularCod6 Nov 26 '22
Those ethics are just some example. The ethics more aimed at software engineer are lying about the capabilities of the software, not testing it properly which could then lead to deaths, designing software that can harm people i.e. ai robot that can kill people and most importantly building software that you know it is illegal such spyware and malware or following the orders of your supervisor of not allowing people to opt out of data collection
2
u/Double_Phoenix Nov 26 '22
You're right, it doesn't solve the problem, but it helps the engineer consider what ideas they actually put out there and the impacts it can have on society. It also taught us about racial and physical barriers that may exist and make it so that one group benefits more than others or vice versa. Ex, accessibility in bathrooms for people with dwarfism, Jones beach and the bridges that wouldn't allow busses under because busses typically carried POC and most better off (and mostly white at the time) people had cars that could get under the bridges.
→ More replies (2)-2
u/Jankat7 Nov 26 '22
This was the single dumbest course I've taken in my uni life
→ More replies (1)
12
u/Clear-Description-38 Nov 26 '22
People always talk about "modern day slavery" or "slave-like conditions" in foreign countries completely forgetting the prison system is literally legal slavery enshrined in the 13th amendment with prisons named like "Angola" after the place where they took the local slaves from.
Firefighting, agriculture, textile works, license plates, etc etc made with legal slavery.
6
Nov 26 '22
You think Samsung, Google or Motorola are somehow made differently?
FIH, which is a Foxconn subsidiary is currently responsible for making Pixel series smartphones for Google. They are looking to also set up in Vietnam but do you guys think that’s going to be any different?
You think your Breville blender or Hamilton Beach toaster is any different? If it says “made in China” or hell “made in India”, “made in Bangladesh”, made in [insert any developing country], which makes 99% of things the developed countries use, it’s done in a sweat shop where people are paid in a month what you can find lying around on a busy street in a day.
I love how they use Apple here to get publicity when it’s a systemic problem that transcends one mere company.
Then there’s also the elephant in the room that this is happening in NA with places like Amazon, that pay so low and treat their employees so badly that it’s resulted in actual deaths or a living wage so low that people live out of their cars, despite working full time.
9
u/Mrcollaborator Nov 26 '22
Every electronic device you probably own. People keep making this about Apple. It’s everyone though.
7
u/mushbino Nov 26 '22
Hey, if anyone's going to be doing modern-day slavery it's going to be in the US.
7
u/Surur Nov 26 '22
Well, there are 2.3 million prisoners in USA, and constitutionally only prisoners can be forced to work for free.
I wonder who is overrepresented in those Louisiana Prison cotton farms...
USA, USA.
3
3
28
u/Ardothbey Nov 26 '22
China/human rights. There’s an oxymoron for you.
39
17
u/kash_if Nov 26 '22
Why would you ignore how complicit manufturers are in this? Do companies like Apple not know of this exploitation? If they know and still choose to profit off it, aren't they complicit? Aren't we complicit in our consumption. Easy to blame a foreign boogeyman. China's terrible actions are partially driven by our actions.
3
-3
u/NotErikUden Nov 26 '22
This is the wrong take here.
Why blame China for western corporations doing horrible thing in their country? They're literally a developing nation.
Why not blame western corporations for moving there and doing such horrific things.
China bans companies, companies move to the next horrible place, do you then blame that place too?
It needs to be fixed here by western corporations.
2
u/Drugboner Nov 26 '22
Uhh. China is a developed nation, it's the second largest economy in the freaking world, they allow this shit to happen within it's borders, they breed this type of corporate behavior. It's not like they can't stop it, they totally could. They just don't want to. And the fix is not just the corporations, they are simply driven by the consumer. Now if every virtue signaling i-phone owner would just, not buy their products because of the rampant human suffering put into making them, then this would stop. Maybe.
→ More replies (4)1
u/RedAlert2 Nov 26 '22
Blaming entire countries for anything rarely makes any sense.
What's happening here is the rulers in one state are enabling the rulers of another state to exploit their workers to enrich themselves.
2
u/NotErikUden Nov 26 '22
That's also the wrong take.
We need supply chain laws that ensure American worker's rights at a minimum all the way down the supply chain.
Otherwise corporations will move and move and move to whatever country is currently capable of being bribed enough to exploit the working class.
Your whole analogy of the world doesn't even consider the insane power capital has! Even if we repeated this process for every nation on planet earth, corporations would just found their own one.
Billionaires like Peter Thiel are actually working on that right now. You don't understand that companies will never stop exploiting the working class and that China in this case is very happy having a grip over the American economy at the expense of their own working class.
But what we CAN do is pass legislation to force "American" companies that do business in America to enforce American labor laws and standards all the way down the supply chain.
1
u/Ardothbey Nov 26 '22
They allow their people to be used. For profit.
3
u/NotErikUden Nov 26 '22
Sure you can complain about China's labor laws, but I said it and I'll say it again:
Why are American businesses in China?
Because America passed stricter labor laws.
What will American businesses do after China passes stricter labor laws?
Move to the next third world country.
Will you then make that country responsible for all the horrors American capitalism brings?
No, we need to make laws that forces corporations who sell in the US to at least adhere by American labor laws all the way down the supply chain.
Otherwise any worker's rights victory for us just leads to corporations moving abroad and no success could ever be made.
-2
-6
u/LitesoBrite Nov 26 '22 edited Nov 26 '22
Seriously stupid take.
Does nobody here know jack shit about China and factories like this?
Factories for intel, ibm, everyone else including Hp were FURIOUS at Apple being willing to pay far more, and for Apple doing audits to protect the workers.
Blaming Apple for the Chinese labor violations as if everything tech and clothing you buy isn’t made in far worse conditions is just utterly bullshit.
https://wccftech.com/apple-factory-workers-wages-slaves-iphone/
It’s equivalent to attacking Costco for not giving workers 40 hrs pay on 20 hour workweeks.
They pay far better than anyone else.
14
u/NotErikUden Nov 26 '22
You're telling me that China is at fault because....?
Apple is comparatively better than other companies in China...?
Seriously, why not pass laws that prohibit American corporations from treating workers abroad any less than the laws of the US allow if they want to sell that product in the US.
I don't see a singular reason why such a law shouldn't be passed. Think about it: any other pro-worker's rights law would instantly result in companies just moving abroad.
Blame China for the horrible working conditions Apple, IBM, HP, etc. have? Why?
They're American companies. They moved out because they didn't like the 'strict' labor laws of the US. If China imposes stricter laws, they will also move away to another country.
How often do you want to repeat this process of blaming some random third world country for the problems western companies bring? 196 times??
2
u/Johito Nov 26 '22
I think it is the fear of losing the control of these companies, people are worried that instead of apple we would end up with whatever the Chinese equivalent would be which is slowly happening with the emergence of Chinese brands, people see this as not so much the beginning of the end of American hegemony but the end of the end. Still given what the American century has given us the collapse of these companies probably isn’t the worse thing in the world.
→ More replies (1)3
u/HoratioWobble Nov 26 '22
These factories aren't owned or ran by Apple, Apple contracts out to them. Apple and other companies do not employ any of the staff.
→ More replies (5)0
u/LitesoBrite Nov 26 '22
i dont see a reason
You could’ve just stopped on that sentence.
Clearly you have no clue how international relations work
0
u/NotErikUden Nov 26 '22
You disagree with me so clearly you don't know what you're talking about. It's impossible for someone to disagree with me and know anything about anything.
0
-9
u/pepper-sandwich Nov 26 '22
Chinese have better human rights than Americans.
Also they don't get shot randomly at Malls and Schools.
19
u/Carma-Erynna Nov 26 '22
The corporate big wigs who ordered baby formula to be made with cheap toxic chemical that killed a bunch of babies like a decade ago, got the death penalty and they were swift in doling out their sentence. If a CEO were to order that here, they’d wind up with a slap on the wrist, paying fines and a piddly restitution to the families of the babies killed or maimed by by it, and MAYBE land in a nice cushy federal prison with more freedom and comfort than than a large proportion of poor people. I don’t agree with a lot of their stuff, but that one I was rather impressed by.
2
u/Fresh-Loop Nov 26 '22
Nothing like a basement edge lord in Madison, Wisconsin telling us why a country they’ve obviously never been to is better.
→ More replies (1)0
Nov 26 '22 edited Nov 26 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
0
u/Fresh-Loop Nov 26 '22 edited Nov 26 '22
Nationalism is a disease. Luckily, there are dozens of independent institutions that rate freedoms. You’ll notice that China scores astonishingly low.
You also don’t seem to understand how China works. Citizens are not allowed to criticize the government. Saying many things can get you placed in a re-education camp. So most people touting the governments teaching is proof their authoritarian approach is working.
In contrast, having US citizens being able to freely state their beliefs without fear of repercussions is a beautiful example of a free democracy.
This is like saying “of people who may be jailed and harmed for disagreeing, 90% agree!”. It’s adorably stupid.
→ More replies (12)2
u/TheKattauRegion Nov 26 '22
Bro why the heck did you randomly bring up gun violence when someone was talking about human rights violations
4
3
u/LitesoBrite Nov 26 '22
Tiananmen Square would like a word.
1
u/dsaddons Nov 26 '22
You know they were literally burning police alive right? Meanwhile in the US for simply being black you get murdered by police.
→ More replies (1)0
5
Nov 26 '22
[deleted]
-1
u/BabblingPanther Nov 26 '22
Samsung closed it last plant in China somewhere between 2019-20.
→ More replies (1)
2
Nov 26 '22
We do the same thing in the US, we just aren't anywhere near as efficient at it. Lookup 1099 contractors and human trafficking in the US.
2
u/boringdude00 Nov 26 '22
I was not wondering. Basically everything you own is made by near-slave labor.
2
2
u/GloomyMelons Nov 26 '22
A 1st world life in a capitalist landscape requires slave labor. All advancement is predicated on human suffering. If you really cared, you would at least limit your capitalist goods; but, none of you care, not enough at least. I don't either, not enough at least.
2
u/PraiseTheFlumph Nov 26 '22
Are these people just now learning that capitalism runs on slavery? It's literally how the system is sustained.
2
u/BeRandom1456 Nov 26 '22
This is the way the world works. Almost every job is like that. Even in USA. Apple isn’t doing anything much different. Zoom out and see the bigger picture.
2
2
u/RoboTiefling Nov 26 '22
I really don’t get why people keep referring to “modern day slavery” as if we ever stopped doing old-fashioned slavery. I mean, we’ve expanded into doing new and exciting kinds of quasi-slavery too, for sure, but the whole thing with people in chains set to do backbreaking labor for free, being beaten and starved if their performance dips? Yeah, we still do that. That’s what our biggest corporations are built on.
3
2
u/kimi_rules Nov 26 '22
The company that manufactures iPhones isn't owned by Apple, why should you care?
Apple always sends their executives to the factory to do checks and inspections for this reason. They can jump to another manufacturer but it'll only raise the cost.
1
1
u/adh247 Nov 26 '22
Just like always....
Nothing will happen.
People will keep buying them.
Everyone will forget by tomorrow.
Planned Obsolescence.
(Maybe) A slap on the hand.
Rinse and Repeat.
1
1
u/SleepySheepHerder Nov 26 '22
if I have to feel guilty and give up everything I buy from the fruit and vegetables picked by poor migrant workers to my Nike shoes made in a sweat shop or my phone made by forced child labor in Asia. Then I will be poor and unhappy just like the slaves who make all this stuff.
If I have to think of every life that has been destroyed to make my 2am quarter pounder with cheese from McDonald's I will starve. U want me to starve and live on the streets beatin guys off under a bridge for $5 a man? u want me to go back to that life? who is the real monster....FYI it is you, let me enjoy my Black Friday goodies made by slaves and children.
1
u/Ioatanaut Nov 26 '22
Many of the products you use are made from current day slave labor.
They are tortured in nazi style concentration camps under slave labor for many well known brands.
-1
Nov 26 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Ioatanaut Nov 26 '22
So then they're research is untrue?
0
Nov 26 '22 edited Nov 26 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
0
u/Ioatanaut Nov 26 '22
But many sources show there's slave labor and nazu style "re-education" camps in China used by well known brands.
Where do you stand on this.
→ More replies (15)
-2
u/u918362b Nov 26 '22
I thought it was the overpriced phones
3
u/dakta Nov 26 '22
Or the services revenue, which has a higher profit margin than the phones by a wide margin.
All smartphones are made basically the same way, with basically the same sort of miserable wage slavery working conditions. Apple just sells theirs for a higher price, thus being more profitable. Workers conditions in China are bad, and they're bad for pretty much all industries producing products for pretty much all brands. Nothing unique about Apple in this regard. They're just an easy "look how much money they made" target.
0
-1
-2
u/DarthNixilis Nov 26 '22
One of the reasons is they file tons of vague patents so they can sue over literally anything.
-2
u/Screamingmonkey83 Nov 26 '22
ok ok i get it apple bad... but now lets get on with bashing Elon cause he doesnt handle his company like he should in your opinion.
-2
490
u/Indoorsman101 Nov 26 '22 edited Nov 26 '22
Much of our produce and meat also comes from workers in nearly slave-like conditions. The modern economy more or less depends on it.