It's interesting to listen to stories like this because they make it truly difficult to access your own feelings. You want to dislike or even hate it but a moment later you realize, in order to do so, you'd have to pass those judgements onto yourself. And so you kind of brush it off or feel like you're somehow doing the right thing by just hearing about it. There is no option other than simply not using electronics, or maybe only buying used electronics claiming the recycling karma offset. And whats kind of crazy is that I love programming. It's not only my job to use these devices, but I love to make them do new things. If I'm to continue to love it I have to live in a mind with forgetful acceptance or forced ignorance. I don't see a 3rd option.
A point which seems to be missed (and which is, thankfully, made in the podcast) is that these terrible conditions are better than the alternative.<p>The situation China, in many ways, better than it was in the Western world when we were going through our Industrial Revolution.<p>It made me think back to a TED talk from Hans Rosling on Population Growth, and the relation to economic status: <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_g...</a><p>Although it seems bad to us now, globilization is, over all, a net positive.
Hopefully the story is more honest than the title, since Foxconn is less an "Apple factory" than it is the company that pretty much assembles all of the best electronic devices in the world (at least according to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn#Clients" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn#Clients</a>).
This is incredible storytelling and is very humanist. I'd really recommend listening to it. We use these devices everyday and don't even think about it.<p>Here's an article from Gizmodo about an undercover journalist: <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5542527/undercover-report-from-foxconns-hell-factory" rel="nofollow">http://gizmodo.com/5542527/undercover-report-from-foxconns-h...</a><p><a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/metro/2010-06/02/content_9922076.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/metro/2010-06/02/content_992207...</a><p>and a direct link to the mp3: <a href="http://podcast.thisamericanlife.org/podcast/454.mp3" rel="nofollow">http://podcast.thisamericanlife.org/podcast/454.mp3</a>
I find Steve Jobs repellent, but he was once committed to manufacturing hardware in the United States.<p>The minor undercurrent of criticism since his passing has been Apple's manufacturing vendors in Asia. Forgotten is the drag on NeXT by its decision to build a factory in Fremont, CA. It was way overbuilt, and sucked up a lot of the money fronted by Canon and Ross Perot to keep NeXT alive while it was largely unable to sell much of anything.<p><a href="http://allaboutstevejobs.com/pics/places/fremont/place/lightbox-iframe.html" rel="nofollow">http://allaboutstevejobs.com/pics/places/fremont/place/light...</a>
This isn't as exciting, but along the same lines, I once spied on the people repairing my MBP: <a href="http://ecritters.biz/applecarefacility/" rel="nofollow">http://ecritters.biz/applecarefacility/</a>
If anyone gets the chance to go see the Mike Daisey monologue excerpted (The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs) I'd highly, highly recommend it whether you love Apple, hate Apple, or are somewhere in between. He's an amazing storyteller.<p>He's performing in NYC on January 31st.
Great storytelling and I have no doubt that it is all true. One thing that bothered me in this monologue was he kept saying things like, "Do you think that THEY don't know?" "Do you think that Apple doesn't know?"<p>Problem for me being that Apple is a corporation and doesn't have one mind. Does anyone at Apple know? I'm sure people who visit the factories do. Does the information get passed around throughout the organization so that everyone knows? I'm pretty sure it doesn't. Do most people who work at Apple want to be intentionally ignorant? Probably, but I don't think there's some huge conspiracy going on. Most Apple employees are no different than consumers. They have no knowledge of this from Apple internals and don't think about it much.
Just to turn this around a bit for a different perspective.<p>How many US products are made by prison labour? Who has worse conditions: a Foxconn employee paid a low wage and living in a dorm or a US prisoner deprived of liberty, exposed to violence and paid practically nothing? Who will live better and longer, the grandchildren of Foxconn employees or those of US prisoners?<p>The US has an astonishingly high incarceration rate compared to other countries thanks to government policy. The US economy clearly benefits from the misery caused by this system. Why would any foreigner want to support it?
"There are 20 cafeterias at the Foxconn plant. Now you just need to visualize a cafeteria that holds 10,000 people."<p>I'm still trying.<p>This story tells you everything you already know, but makes you really realize it. Like you should play it once a month to remind yourself of what we all conveniently forget.<p><i>edit</i> It's more likely the cafeterias seat only 4,000. I guess that's better.
If one of you guys, someday happen to be wealthy; i highly recommend hiring people that work at Foxconn and other corporate farms of misery; they would probably be really, and i mean really the most loyal and thankful workers in the world if you can give them a decent salary for decent amount of hours.