http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business … pad/47886/A huge A1 story in The New York Times about safety problems at Chinese electronics factories is sure to turn up the heat on Apple as Americans become more and more aware of the true price of their beloved gadgets. The deep investigation into Apple's supplier practices opens with the horrifying images of an explosion that killed four people at a Foxconn factory making iPads in Chengdu last May:
Two people were killed immediately, and over a dozen others hurt. As the injured were rushed into ambulances, one in particular stood out. His features had been smeared by the blast, scrubbed by heat and violence until a mat of red and black had replaced his mouth and nose.
Reporters Charles Duhigg and David Barboza go on to detail the lengthy charges of worker abuse and safety violations that seem to plague many of the companies that Apple relies on overseas, while also tying it to the human story of Lai Xiaodong, the young man who lost his life in that blast. Oddly, it is Apple's own internal reports that reveal most of these problems to Western observers, but attempts to correct the issues and improve the fortunes of laborers have a tendency to clash with the company's own insistence on low costs and high volume. Their own "code of conduct" is routinely violated by companies that are simultaneously being squeezed by Apple's other codes:
“The only way you make money working for Apple is figuring out how to do things more efficiently or cheaper,” said an executive at one company that helped bring the iPad to market. “And then they’ll come back the next year, and force a 10 percent price cut.”
According to the story, more than half of Apple's suppliers have violated the codes every year since 2007, but few, if any, have lost their contracts due to safety. As one former Apple executive put it, “If half of iPhones were malfunctioning, do you think Apple would let it go on for four years?”
Remember that whole Occupy Wall Street thing? Remember how many people were at the protest with ipods and macbooks? Have you been in a humanities class on any major university and seen how many macbooks are in the class? The humanities people are the same group that would go to a OWS protest and bitch about the rich screwing with their lives and rah rah rah. So why don't these people protest Apple and try to get better conditions for the people who make apple stuff? I know in the west everything we own is covered in blood but Apple products go above and beyond your typical western luxury.
Sure it would make apple products a bit more expensive if they made manufacturers have safe environments for theirs workers. But it's not like current customers can't afford to pay a little more. Apple products are obscenely overpriced as it is. When you buy Apple you pay a large mark up from the manufacturing cost. The products are worth about a third of their shelf price. Apple products are pretty much a middle/upper middle class thing. There's no poor people using macbooks. So why can't this group pay a little more for their toys if it means easing general human suffering?
So is your typical apple consumers ignorant, hypocritical, or both?
