/ Rob Beschizza / 4:42 am Tue Mar 1, 2011

iPhone guilt

On feeling complicit in the working conditions of Chinese tech workers, which are relatively good but absolutely bad. [Wired]

25

  1. “Out of a million people, 17 suicides isn’t much—indeed, American college students kill themselves at four times that rate.”

    “…rooms about the size of a two-car garage, are “like college dorms.””

    So, if college dorms are a more likely cause people commit suicide, why make it look like college dorms? ;)

    1. In Chinese universities, undergrads typically live 8 to a room, masters candidates 6 to a room and PhD candidates 4 to a room.

  2. Every BoingBoing reader should do a week in a Foxconn factory and then decide how they feel about workers rights to collectively bargain.

  3. Just think – if American companies hadn’t outsourced all their production to China, we’d be living this hell ourselves.

    I produce consumer electronics in my home workshop. I have no intention of outsourcing the production, but I have no competition so there’s no pressure to reduce costs. Even if there were, I’d think long and hard about it.

    Has anyone else noticed that when Converse All-Stars moved production from the US to China, the retail price didn’t drop?

    1. Just think – if American companies hadn’t outsourced all their production to China, we’d be living this hell ourselves.

      Or more likely we’d just be paying a lot more for consumer goods.

  5. What’s interesting is that this sounds like fairly normal factory conditions. Like a factory in the US only like five times the size.
    Remember that like half of the stuff we use is made in China, I don’t think that we should feel badly about our iPhone use; I use mine for work, not as a fun gadget. And I don’t really have an alternative than to own some sort of cellphone.
    In terms of the morality of our purchases, I’m really curious about working conditions in the factories that make IKEA furniture. I imagine worker conditions must be a lot worse, and that *is* a situation in which we could choose to buy well-made furniture that will last a long time, made by smaller local companies.
    Also, the comments in that wired article do a good job refuting the suicide rate issue.

    1. I’m really curious about working conditions in the factories that make IKEA furniture. I imagine worker conditions must be a lot worse

      Actually, I don’t believe that to be the case. IKEA takes the working conditions both in their stores and in their contractor’s factories seriously, and it’s earned them praise in the media before. They have company employees working on site in their contractors factories keeping an eye on things. They even make some of their furniture in the US, Sauder is a contractor for them and they produce some of the furniture and cabinets in Ohio.

  6. Always a little depressing, (of course) these things. various semi-connected thoughts re: ‘who is to blame?’:

    Once upon a time, lots of chinese mommies and daddies made lots of chinese people. this meant that, somewhere down the line, their lives would be very hard.

    ANY job that causes you to sit/stand in the same place hours on end doing something repetitive will wear anyone down.

    How much unhappiness is too much, who standarizes it? At what point is it measured? Who monitors our unhappiness to ensure that it meets standardized criteria? What should happen to out-of-normal persons who react badly to the level of unhappiness that is standardized as “normal”? Because you see this is where it all leads.

  7. Unfortunate that this piece never mentions Mike Daisey’s monologue “The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” which is touring now (about to come to DC), where one of the great modern storytellers takes on this exact story. Here’s his blog: http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com/. And the NYT just did a story on Steve Wozniak seeing the show, and says, “I will never be the same after seeing that show.”

  8. Foxconn is one of the most reliable and professional CMs in the business. If you have a problem with the legality of working conditions in the Special Economic Zones, refocus your guilt on the US’ trade relationship with China. I’m happy to continue building my virtual sweatshop playing Game Dev Studio on my iPhone.

  9. This article should have put less emphasis on the suicides, more on the whole “this is completely inhumane and unsustainable”. It would have kept the statisticians from immediately attaching to the whole ‘it’s not that bad, this is taking away from poor suicidal americans…” band wagon.

    Yes. Suicide happens anywhere. Mental diseases are also brought upon by social realities, they typically aren’t just chemicals in a person’s genetics which predispose them to end their genetic line.

    We, in the West, have boxed up and categorized mental disease to take the blame away from society, it’s now YOUR FAULT if you’re not just like the mythical ‘normal person’.

    Anyway, sure, tons of depressed people kill themselves every year, and as a society we should try to stop every one of these. However, this article isn’t about that. It’s about the social costs of Greed and Materialism, and how few people who are on the very pleasant receiving end of endless entertaining things think about those on the very dehumanizing ‘service end’.

    So maybe this article shot itself in the foot. Or maybe mental health practitioners in the west are so afraid of having all their years of study suddenly dashed agains the rocks. Or maybe we all need to just wake up and smell the and think hard about what makes you truly happy.

    And if you say your iPhone, I hereby welcome our dehumanized overlords, once again.

    1. Wikipedia puts the overall suicide rate in China at 61/million. Therefore, if we should feel guilty about anything, I guess we should feel guilty about not buying enough iPods to keep Chinese employed.

  11. “Every BoingBoing reader should do a week in a Foxconn factory and then decide how they feel about workers rights to collectively bargain.”

    Not a problem. I worked in a nuclear power plant for an outage when the federal govt. decided that the number of “rads” that a person get per day was raised to near unacceptable levels to get the work done.

    I also worked in a titanium extraction factory where I had to clean up salt pits that were 4 ft deep.

    So, you can get that guilt trip to yourself.

  12. The poor working conditions that you complain about are life saving, not life destroying, compared to the alternative.
    Therefore you should feel proud instead of ashamed, as you are helping them as they are helping you.

    Now, I agree that the conditions are still terrible (although a huge improvement over the alternative). To that end, I would suggest a few lines of action: don’t stop buying chinese goods, open the US borders (the quickest way to alleviate poverty in the world and fill up our oversupply of housing), and invest capital towards productive ends (real wages and life conditions improve with labor productivity, which is derived from capital investment).
    And of course, there is always charity, although I fear it does less good (but may make you feel better) than the above options.

  13. So from reading the comments so far, I have gathered the following:

    1) Sweatshops are awesome, because the workers get paid more than zero dollars an hour (slightly more).
    2) Suicides are okay, as long as some other place in the world has more of them.
    3) Foxconn are totally radical, professional d00dz making sweet gear.
    4) There are an increasing number of horrible, awful comments on boingboing. I’m going to go ahead and assume this is astroturf bullshit.

    1. @trav: I know bro.. sad, isn’t it?

      Remember..each dollar you spend is a vote for how the world should be!
      @zyodei: A – fucking – MEN

      Just think – if American companies hadn’t outsourced all their production to China, we’d be living this hell ourselves.
      nixie wins the prize for lack of understanding

      I don’t think that we should feel badly about our iPhone use; I use mine for work, not as a fun gadget.
      @derp: So as long as the suicides are for work not leisure, it’s OK? Fuck you, jerk. (I know ur handle is derf, but you should think about changing it to suit your intelligence level)

      While no suicides are “good”, those rates are actually far, far below average for a population of that size compared to published rates of any other population I’ve seen.
      @wfrancis: It is 100% asinine to compare suicide rates amongst people with (comparably to their peers) reasonable jobs to suicide rates of general populations. General population suicide rates include: drug addicts, alcoholics, mentally disabled, physically disabled, unemployed persons, students and the elderly (I’m sure I missed a few). None of these high-probability suicide groups are included in working populations which is why tech apologists such as yourself are merely clutching at straws to justify your choices. Compare apples with apples or your comparison (and opinion) is worthless.

      Actually, I don’t believe that to be the case. IKEA takes the working conditions both in their stores and in their contractor’s factories seriously
      @dculberson: Agreed… IKEA are just assholes because they are one of Eurpoe’s biggest tax cheats.

      The poor working conditions that you complain about are life saving, not life destroying, compared to the alternative.
      @Julien Couvreur: Yep that’s a ripping record of -17 lives saved. GO FOXCONN! Yeah… I vote for this froggy bastard as the next President of the US because his economist’s mind has thought of all the solutions: “Open the US border”. Umm…..

      You know people can ratchet back that “appalled privileged American” rhetoric a little bit.
      I’m gonna ratchet it right up, thanks. It’s known as: considering the impact of your choices…. quite complicated for simpletons like yourself. Go suck a tailpipe and do the world a favour.

      1. @teapot
        “that’s a ripping record of -17 lives saved”

        Compared to how many people would have killed themselves or died from poor living conditions being farmers or worse back in their chinese hometown, if foxconn hadn’t been available as a better alternative?

  14. You know people can ratchet back that “appalled privileged American” rhetoric a little bit.

    I understand why people are upset but have you been to China? To a factory city like Shenzhen?

    I have and let me tell you, it’s not uncommon to see things that look like a bombed out section of the Western city behind the “face” of the main streets. The places where the people actually live, not just work.

    The people there are ecstatic that they can even find a job in a factory like Foxconn. I know people who would be PISSED if they took the factory away since the area would be decimated. There are way, way, worse jobs there if there are at all and everyone is scrambling to find something to get a foothold if they don’t have any connections.

    Is it horrible? Absolutely!.. but you do realize when WE, the U.S., went through the same thing back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? I guarantee it was worse that this and now we have the gall to be pissed off because we are now in a better position?

    China will get better. The economy will slowly start to pull away from the export-centric model that sustained it for years. Wages will go up, a middle will better assert itself, and like clockwork…those factories will be pushed to somewhere else, be it the far interior of China (which is already happening) Southeast Asia, or Africa and the process starts again, until (hopefully) there is no where to go, and the companies will have to negotiate with the workers.

  15. What’s the simplest thing you can do?

    Simple: don’t buy new electronics.

    Both the human and environmental costs are very high, and you know, they aren’t hurting for sales.

    Why the obsession with having the newest shiniest thing? If something was totally cutting edge and amazing five years ago, is it any less cutting edge now?

    I use an 8 year old Compaq laptop I bought used for $60 a couple years back, and only dropped some more RAM in. It runs Ubuntu beautifully, and if I use a lightweight desktop like Xubuntu, it’s blazing fast – as fast as any new Win7 computer.

    Sure, it can’t do some things..like video editing or games. But I don’t need to. It fits my needs AMAZINGLY well (although I wish I could more easily upgrade the hard drive, which is not SATA).

    My cell phone I also got used, for $10. What does it do? It works! It takes and receives calls, and does text. I couldn’t give a damn about mobile internet or apps or anything else. I can live without the internet for a few hours…

    Sure, many people need the latest gear..video editors, CGI animators, etc. But most people (except people who care desperately about the FPS in their FPS) don’t: they just browse the web, use simple applications, and do basic stuff.

    Do more with less.

    Remember..each dollar you spend is a vote for how the world should be!

    1. I splurged $45 on a Samsung A777 phone a year ago, and I’m still rocking an Acer Aspire laptop from 2005. Couldn’t agree more.

  16. A word about the suicide rate numbers that are getting thrown about.

    Do people truly think we should take these numbers as factual necessarily? Is China self reporting the rate people are quoting?

    I feel in the US and western Europe the numbers are probably closer to reality but, even then, not all suicides are reported as such. Think of single occupant, single vehicle fatal accidents. Some of those have the scent of suicide about them, but do not get reported as such.

  17. @teapot

    For being such a “humanitarian” I see that you would easily want me dead for a difference of opinion? I thought all human life is sacred?

    Ohh, that’s right. Only the ones you don’t know anything about or interact with and has to be on your “side”.

    Way to show your true colors!

Comments are closed.