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Can You Buy Tech With a Clean Conscience?
Barence writes "Is it even possible to buy technology with a clean conscience? With the vast majority of gadgets and components manufactured using low-paid labor in Asia, manufacturers unable to accurately plot their supply chains, and very few ethical codes of conduct, the article highlights the difficulty of trying to buy ethically-sound gadgets. It concludes, 'The answer would appear to be no. Too little information is available, and nobody we spoke to believed an entirely ethical technology company exists – at least, not among the household names.'"
For example, if you care about preserving the right of the public to control their own computers, you're going to stay away from Apple and maybe from Android.
If you care about working conditions of workers in factories, you'll stay away from some of the low end suppliers.
If you care about privacy, you will stay away from Facebook.
And so on. Just because there are problems everywhere does not make everything the same.
I'm sure laborers in Asia prefer low wage over no wage.
Tell me, what can you do with a clean conscience? Can you eat meat you buy from the store? Or even produce for that matter? Can you flip on the light switch in your home and consume electricity? Start your car? Wax philosophical all you want, but life is inherently unfair, whether within a species, or amongst species. Sure, many things can be improved, but you'll be afraid to take a step lest you kill an ant if you delve too deep here.
Better known as 318230.
And what type of waste. Flint is innocuous. Heavy metals from discarded electronics isn't. Personally I try, I am dependent on tech for my livelihood, by hanging on to gear as long as it will work and then try to find an ethical recycler.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
If you look far enough down the line, nothing is "ethical". Fair trade coffee means farmers aren't growing food to feed their own starving communities, organic means we need to use more land and cut down more forests. The local farmers at the market drive trucks filled with oil from the middle east and use the money you spend to buy African blood diamonds for their wives. If you want to be ethical, the best thing to do is to stop buying so much stuff in the first place. No you don't need a new phone every year and you will probably do just fine without a 70 inch television, and that car probably can last another year or two.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Sure you can.
Why limit the question? The same could be asked about clothing and most household and business items, too.
The summary's grasp on ethics seems a little shakey to me. Those low paid workers in Asia are damn glad to have the job, and what they do get paid goes a lot further than in the west. This is a process of enrichment, whereby poor countries in the far east get wealthier, develop a middle class, and start demanding democracy, resulting in not only a greatly enhanced standard of living but new markets for western countries as well as fresh innovations and freedom of choice.
Capitalism. It works.
Your argument is a bit like the slave owners who stated that their slaves were damn glad to have their job and get fed, too. Exploitation is exploitation, regardless if one can find some good to come from it or not.
I just don't really care
When /. discusses labor and wage issues in the US (unions, living wage, income inequality), the common sentiment is that executives/owners/investors can afford to give up more of their profits to help ensure a more livable life for their workers.
When /. discusses labor and wage issues in China (again, labor rights, wages, inequality), we rarely if ever touch on the above line of reasoning, and the common sentiment is that it's better for them to be paid meagerly than to be out of a job.
There is a palpable moral double standard.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Who the fuck says the factory workers are low paid? The people who work on iPads get paid *MORE* than engineers and computer programmers, on par with pilots. HOW IS THAT LOW PAID?
As for the other parts of your question, Apple seems to be the most ethical of them all, having invited audits of the factories and requirements that flow on down to subcontracting factories.
You could buy from some no-name branded Chinese knock off assembled with second rate parts. Or you could purchase from Apple, a corporation that has made serious efforts toward improving the supply chain. The same is true for any product. There are companies out there who are indeed more ethical than others.
exactly. the reason why most things are so cheap that you as a non-rich person. can buy them is that somewhere along the line of it's manufacture is either a slave wage paid person working 16 hour days, actual slave labor, etc. if you don't want to participate in this process there is basically only a single option. join the amish or similarly minded groups.
the current civilization, as in what's generally called 'western' or 'European' is based solely on exploitation. if not of people through actual slave labor or slave wages. then through exploitation and destruction of land for natural resources. oil, natural gas, coal, diamonds, ore mining.
it used to be in the 1800's the people portion was here at home, the labor conditions in china right now strangely mirror the ones in the united states during this time. 12+ hour days. company towns/complexes where your in perpetual debt to the company(i sold my soul at the company store), payed so little you could barely eat etc. all so the richer people here could enjoy a very similar lifestyle to what you and i do now(they did not have the advanced electronics but a lot of modern gadgets were around back then at least in the later 1800's in one form or another.)
the people then had enough, through years of violent labor strikes and other means people here won better wages, shorter work days, rights and protections. but this also came about because technology improved and a lot of the labor that was done by people could be replaced with machines. the labor that could not would be pushed elsewhere.
to make a long explanation short. the reason your here right now, able to have time to worry about the 'ethical implications' of buying widget A instead of widget B is that you knowingly or unknowingly live in a society that has exported it's exploitation in it's majority to countries 'far away' for stuff that machines can't do, and replaced human workers with machines when they can. exploitation is in the nature of the machine and is the only reason why you have the free time to worry about these things in the first place.
Can you eat meat from a store? I can buy locally produced organic meat. I can also eat meat two times a week, instead of every day.
Produce? I can have a garden, or again, buy local.
Flip on a light switch? I can buy energy efficient light bulbs that use a fraction of the electricity and last for decades.
Electricity? I can install solar panels, or even buy more energy efficient appliances and electric monitors to lessen electric use.
Start your car? This one is easy, I can use a bicycle, live closer to work, use public transport, car pooling, or even invest in a more sustainable form of transport
Lesson? Everything can be improved.
...is that you are not deciding for yourselves what's 'ethical'.
You are simply taking directions from various activist organisations about what is 'ethical', and which companies meet that standard. And it is in the interests of those activist organisations to find 'unethical activity' - they would have no purpose if they didn't find some....
Ethics is just another word for efficiency and standards. As standards and efficiency increase so do the ethical ramifications. As populations in Asia become more prosperous and knowledgeable, they too will demand better standards for pollution control and quality of life.
They are unlikely to start 'demanding democracy'. The people actually getting rich are already party members (anyone who develops wealth outside the party is either invited in, or taken down), and unlike here protest is illegal there so demonstrations get cracked down on. So there is no incremental mechanism.
The whole theory you are running off of was something developed by neocon think tanks in the US to justify a position of non interference and economic interaction with China... if you talk to actual economists, political scientists, and historians they will tell you it is complete BS.. but it doesn't matter because it was designed to sound reasonable to people without significant knowledge in that domain. It is about on par with that antivaxx stuff.. it sounds logical and fits a narrative, but it doesn't actually hold up.
Why focusing only on low-paid labour from China?
Another product that should awake peoples consciences is oil.
Oil comes from very oppressive and aggressive places - Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran. By buying oil we fund a future Jewish genocide. We engage Israel's enemies militarily (thus enlarging the already excessive US military, and feeding anti-Americanism) with our right hand and throw bags of money at them with our left hand. This is *extremely* counter-productive; it would be very funny if it wasn't so tragic. The government should overtax gas-guzzlers (including SUVs!), subsidise economic cars and lift the barriers on Brazilian ethanol.
This shit gets insightful? Slaves are... slaves. You could rape them, beat them, kill them, in fact you could do anything you damned well pleased to them. As bad as the lives of Chinese peasants are, and as bad as the lives of Chinese factory workers are (hint: it's a lot better than being a peasant), they're almost unimaginably better than the lives of actual slaves.
By the way, the argument usually advanced was that the Negro was too foolish to provide properly for himself, and that servitude allowed him to contribute to the well-being of mankind while still enjoying the benefits of Christianity and white management. And, of course, in real life there were limitations on how badly slaves could be treated. For starters, they were expensive, equivalent (last I looked) to about $100k apiece today plus the cost of feeding and housing. You don't want to mistreat your capital investment like that, any more than you would run your family-owned factory without maintenance. The great evil of slavery wasn't that the slaves were badly treated (many were, but the lives of poor whites were not much better); it was that they were slaves.
But even that runs into problems. The modern world is built on spending - that's how the economy works. It must always grow, or else it falls apart. If enough people lived as you suggested, and stopped throwing money away on unneeded luxuries, what happens to all those who work in the factories that produce those luxuries, and those who mine the resources to feed those factories, and the workers in retail who sell them? All unemployed, which means they have no money to buy even essentials, which leads to more unemployment in a positive feedback loop that will destroy civilization. The economy depends upon wasteful spending, and civilization depends upon the economy. So you can't even advise people not to spend at all.
First, most people buy too much and are dangerously into debt. This means that, with any mild recession, they become unable to pay their bills and default, thus increasing the crisis. Those few and rare responsible people who don't buy more than they can pay help the economy.
Second, your scenario of mass unemployment is impossible in a voluntary economy. In a voluntary economy, people would only stop working if there was no work to do - meaning that all human wants are satisfied. This scenario is impossible, and, even if it happened, would actually be a good thing - a post-scarcity Utopia.
Do you oppose prison labour? Why?
Why would anyone support prison labour?
At best it takes jobs away from low-paid workers and gives them to criminals, at worst it encourages the government to lock people up in order to make money.
I think the idea is that if one Asia corp paid high wages and we all bought from it, then that company would grow and engulf the competition, or otherwise convince the competition to raise their wages to join the buyer's whitelist and prevent extinction.
Every country has a level of attractiveness to investment. One of the key characteristics is the availability of cheap labour. Another is the productivity of said labourers. Chinese workers are probably not very productive due to low education and poor infrastructure. But companies find it is economical to manufacture in China because the low wages compensate for the small productivity.
If consumers demand higher wages, then China would lose that attractiveness and companies would simply relocate to more developed countries.
Can I buy a piece of tech that was not assembled by an Asian Worker making considerably less than his American Union Factory Worker counterpart? No.
Can I buy a piece of tech and still have a clean conscience? Sure. Of course.
I'm going to assume you're just misinformed rather than being woefully full of shit.
http://blogs.theprovince.com/2012/03/05/andres-oppenheimer-rising-wages-in-china-will-benefit-workers-in-the-americas/
So, because the wages are rising in Asia, and now US companies are moving their manufacturing back to Central America where wages are low, will benefit who? Obviously, the workers in Central America, but not US workers. The US corporations are just chasing the lowest wage base they can find. Ten years from now, when Central American wages start to rise, and Asian economies have declined because US companies have pulled out, they will return to Asia, because the wages will again have fallen to become the new lowest wage rate. And the cycle will repeat.
Of course one only has to look at Mexico to see what is left out of the article you point to. When the local economies collapse because the US companies pull out, then poverty and crime skyrocket and the local governments cannot contain it and we end up with whole new kinds of problems.Many economist would argue that if US companies paid a just wage in whatever country they were in and quit chasing lowest dollar wages, it would stabilize local economies and world markets. But instead, buy trying to squeeze out the last iota of profit available, they are actually destabilizing local economies, causing disruptions on world markets and ultimately disrupting their ability to generate sustainable profits in the long term.
As one economist put it "Sometimes doing the right thing means less profit now, but the prospects of steady profit tomorrow." Oh, btw, that was written just after WWII and referred to Japan's Economy and how they needed to reinvest profits to pull themselves out of their situation. Seems to have worked quite well.
You know, having to use the toilet out back is insulting to the dignity, but it's not really comparable to slavery. Sure, any egalitarian is going to have problems with the very idea of a servant class (even without the racial issues), but servants can negotiate and servants can quit. Slavery was a different situation entirely.
Those low-paid Asian jobs are still an improvement on those workers' lives. Soldering boards in a plant beats sticking rice seedlings in a field fertilized with liquid human shit any day.
The ethics of the companies producing the goods are not my problem. If the workers want more money and better working conditions they need to stand up for themselves.
China is an agricultural economy, and they are transforming it into a manufacturing economy. The factory workers are paid _more_ than prevailing wages in the area. Do you think people will travel over a thousand miles just to get a worse paying job?
But Americans seem to believe everyone needs a 2.2 kids + dog + 2 cars + 4 rooms + garage + air conditioning.
Not everyone lives like that. Nor does everyone want to live like that.
You also seem to think all 1.5 billion people live in one place. People travel over 1000 miles - that means the supply of labor locally is *NOT ENOUGH*
On top of that, to bring back to the original question that the article started - Apple pays top dollars based on the links, and is probably one of the biggest factors for improvements in the area, in terms of child labor, worker safety, etc. And my point was - an iPad factory worker makes more $$ than a pilot or programmer, how the hell is that considered lousy? For a non-degreed worker...
I haven't read through all the comments yet, but in a previous story on a similar topic, someone posted an interesting anecdote about a southern town in the pre-civil war US. This town had strong feelings in opposition to slavery and they eventually outlawed the practice. The town was unable to compete in various markets because the surrounding areas still allowed slavery. The town was doomed until they repealed the anti-slavery law.
This story illustrates an important thing. Economic factors trump moral factors. The only way to defeat the economic factors to enable moral factors is to dictate them by law... and even that's pretty difficult to do. Take the prohibition of alcohol in the US as an example.
And here's the kicker: We are talking about imports from nations outside of the legal structure of the US. (As much as the US keeps trying, the world IT still outside of its legal structure.) So if there is to be any progress in the area of quality of life for workers in other countries, there has to be some serious changes made. And the way to make those changes? Some pretty extreme things need to happen... things which most people in the US and in other nations oppose.
So either learn to live with the guilt or buckle down and support some serious changes in world government because the leaders of other nations are not going to adopt our ideals or beliefs willingly.
Read about Antonio Gramsci's works, and also those of
Herbert Marcuse - specially his concept of "repressive tolerance".
Long story short, Gramsci and Herbert Marcuse are the fathers of the New Left,
which is the Marxist Left that works within the framework of democracy (instead of
attempting to take power through a violent revolution and then institute
a one-party dictatorship) and has decreased a little the focus on poverty
and vastly increased the focus on feminism, homosexual militancy,
racial militancy (such as affirmative action), immigration and so on. The Democratic
Party in the USA is strongly influenced by the New Left.
And Herbert Marcuse developed a theory that, if leftists were open to all ideas,
they would allow the Right to win. Therefore, leftists should be
"radically intolerant to everything from the Right, and radically tolerant
to everything from the left" a.k.a. Political Correctness.
This is why you see Anarchists (who support the immediate overthrow of
government) marching side by side with Socialists (who support a vast increase
of government power and size) marching side by side in Occupy Wall Street protests.
They are very different, but they tolerate each other because they are leftists.
This is also why leftists demonize the Tea Party, as if it was a huge threat to democracy
and the USA was on the verge of becoming Iran, except with the Bible instead of the Koran.
Since the Tea Party is right wing, leftists are radically intolerant towards it.
And the press is significantly influenced by the New Left. It is true that few journalists support
Stalin or Fidel Castro (old Left), but a vast majority of journalists support free abortion,
same-sex marriage,and so on - the tenets of the New Left.
One of the tenets of the New Left is multiculturalism and cultural relativism - so
they refrain from criticising other cultures, but concentrate all their criticism on the
Western Civilisation and specially America.
See how the press treats Muslims and Christians.
When some asshole artist creates some extremely offensive blasphemous
piece of "art", and angry Christians organise a boycott to the museum, the media
says the Christians are intolerant, have no sense of humour, etc.
But when some foolish pastor burns the Koran, and Muslims start _rioting. vandalising
and murdering innocent people_, the media says the pastor is intolerant and should
not have offended Muslim sensitivities.
Do you see the double standard?
I know this all sounds far-fetched, even crazy, but do read the works of Gramsci and
Marcuse - it will radically change your worldview.