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And yet Tim Cook has the cheek to get 'woke'. Apple could easily afford to build everything in a country that isn't an awful dictatorship running concentration
by barnacled 6y ago
And yet Tim Cook has the cheek to get 'woke'. Apple could easily afford to build everything in a country that isn't an awful dictatorship running concentration camps and still earn obscene profits.
And yet they still somehow maintain this aura of being the 'good guys'...
- mgh2 6y agoApple's magic (i.e. brainwashing) clearly seems to work!
- Talyen42 6y agoApple's supply chain is more than 1,000 companies. Do you really think Apple has the expertise and personnel to replicate what 1,000 companies have spent decades mastering? Not likely. No company on earth has ever been able to make a smartphone entirely themselves, and no company ever will, although i'd like to be proven wrong.
- izacus 6y ago> Apple's supply chain is more than 1,000 companies. Do you really think Apple has the expertise and personnel to replicate what 1,000 companies have spent decades mastering? Not likely. As one of the richest corporations on the planet which always smugly tells everyone how nice they are and how much they respect people? Yes, fuck yes. They're not a mom and pop shop. They're a corporation that finds millions to lobby governments against making your electronics repairable. They can redirect those to paying the manufacturing workers directly.
- danudey 6y agoOne of the reasons Jobs cited as being an important factor for locating in China is the availability of skilled labor. It would have taken them years to hire enough industrial engineers to handle the scope and scale and volume that the iPhone required in the US, if they could even manage it at all, but only weeks to do so in China. The supply chain is also important. One person who worked in Shenzhen commented that, as a manufacturer, if you suddenly discover you need a certain kind or size or shape or length of screw, you can have a shipment at your door the same day, because the factory that produces a thousand different kinds of screws is just down the road. To move to the US, they'd either have to replicate most of that manufacturing in the US, which would take decades and be extremely expensive, or deal with a week of latency every time they need a new or different part as they get it shipped from China anyway, making most of this process moot. Yes, Apple should do something about this issue, and yes it's horrible to imagine them profiting off this with their "nice guy" image, but keep in mind that if they did this and increased the cost of the iPhone, other companies wouldn't, and it would put Apple at a huge disadvantage. One thing we've seen over the last century of western civilization is that cheaper wins over better. Cheaper toasters that don't last, cheaper fridges that break down after their three-year warranty is up, cheaper laptops that come infected with bloatware and adware. If Apple refused to manufacture in China because of forced labour issues, then they'd lose out on sales to companies who kept benefitting from it, because consumers, as a whole, just don't give a shit. I mean, if anyone cared about what it takes to provide them with cheap products, they'd be enraged that Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world even though the workers that run his company are subsisting on food stamps and burnout quotas. That said, Apple is working on moving production to India, and I'd wager that the more they can do that and expand their operations there, the less and less they'll deal with China for manufacturing, but right now no one who manufactures electronics in large volumes can do so without involving China. In the meantime, they can work on cutting this supplier out of their supply chain; the article is talking about only one of their suppliers, though a long-term supplier, and not actually people working for Apple or manufacturing iPhones directly, so hopefully they can draw a line in the sand and force Lens to either stop using forced labour or lose the contracts. Fingers crossed.
- guessbest 6y agoThis doesn't sound like they are using skilled labor. > It suggests that iPhone glass supplier Lens Technology has been using Muslim minority Uighurs, who were given the stark choice of working in the company’s plant or being sent to detention centers which have been likened to concentration camps
- nubb 6y agoAnd yes we see how well this is working out with the recent uprising at the Indian iphone plant.
- racl101 6y ago> One of the reasons Jobs cited as being an important factor for locating in China is the availability of skilled labor. It would have taken them years to hire enough industrial engineers to handle the scope and scale and volume that the iPhone required in the US, if they could even manage it at all, but only weeks to do so in China. So, potentially, if the phones were made in the US they'd be like Ferraris? Very expensive and only a few made at a time?
- oarsinsync 6y ago> One thing we've seen over the last century of western civilization is that cheaper wins over better. Cheaper toasters that don't last, cheaper fridges that break down after their three-year warranty is up, cheaper laptops that come infected with bloatware and adware. If Apple refused to manufacture in China because of forced labour issues, then they'd lose out on sales to companies who kept benefitting from it, because consumers, as a whole, just don't give a shit. Apple customers have made it very clear that as a whole, they are not price conscious. Better beats cheaper, or they’d be all using cheapo Android phones. Apple has very high profit margins compared to their competitors in the same industries. Apple can pay their suppliers more, rather than driving them down to the bone, which of course results in workers being exploited. Or they could be more transparent that the only thing that matters is the size of their profits, instead of cultivating a good guy corporate image, as the hypocrisy stinks.
- justapassenger 6y ago> One of the reasons Jobs cited as being an important factor for locating in China is the availability of skilled labor Highly skilled forced labor? Let's not kid ourselves - it's all about cost cutting. They're trying to diversify and move to another low wage country, India. Not - I'm not saying that China or India lacks skilled labor, or highly paid experts. But that's not why companies like Apple are there. They're there for cheap labor, and close to non-existent labor protections. But China is starting to change, so Apple is looking for new places. > Yes, Apple should do something about this issue, and yes it's horrible to imagine them profiting off this with their "nice guy" image, but keep in mind that if they did this and increased the cost of the iPhone, other companies wouldn't, and it would put Apple at a huge disadvantage. It's like saying that Google and Facebook should continue to disregard privacy, because their huge margins relay on that?
- geodel 6y ago> As one of the richest corporations on the planet .. Huh, they are richest because they are not swamped with mass manufacturing and all issues that come with it.
- jbay808 6y agoFoxconn (also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co) makes pretty good money for themselves, too.
- raffraffraff 6y agoAs the Daleks put it, "EXTERNALIZE!"
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- emteycz 6y agoWhy should a business be doing the job of a government and multinational governmental organisations such as the UN?
- barnacled 6y agoInteresting that large parts of that supply chain coincidentally operate in parts of the world which have extremely low wages and virtually no worker rights. Having worked at a company that Apple bankrupted in order to bring their work in-house I respectfully disagree that they lack the will or ability to avoid complicity with a genocidal totalitarian state.
- AndrewUnmuted 6y agoPerhaps the OP's point was missed here. Pointing out that no company can make the entire smartphone by themselves is all well and good. The OP was applying that wisdom to the "woke" culture Cook is seeking to solidify within Apple. It's just as unrealistic for Apple to be woke as it is for them to make the whole phone by themselves. They love existing under that banner, though, because it succeeds in tricking many people into believing they can use iPhones and avoid being hypocrites.
- desiarnezjr 6y agoThe point of any kind of messaging is to broadcast intent and is always at least a little aspirational. That's the first step. I'd honestly be far more wary about companies who doesn't broadcast anything, just to make whatever profit at whatever cost. Any Chinese phone brand right now (correct me if I'm wrong) or companies like Huawei or Lenovo, where, like it or not would have that approach to business possibly baked into their DNA.
- CydeWeys 6y ago> Apple's supply chain is more than 1,000 companies. And whose choice was that? Apple has chosen to do business with all of these companies and they have chosen to consistently do business in China even despite the long history of China's violations of human rights abuses. Of course Apple is responsible for their choices of who to do business with!
- tyingq 6y agoI do think they have the market share and leverage to strong arm those 1000 companies into reasonable labor conditions.
- ada1981 6y agoYes. Plus they can lobby governments for increased standards so their competition doesn't benefit from their higher standards.
- xbmcuser 6y agoApple annual income is more than the annual budgets of many countries they don't need to make everything themselves but they can have few thousand trained inspectors which monitor all the places where it products are being produced. If they are able to keep new phone designs months into production secret they are also capable of monitoring and finding about worker abuse.
- cghendrix 6y agoBut think about the abuse of the shareholders! The horror
- lumost 6y agoMost companies can and do prioritize vendors who meet non-monetary criteria. Apple can easily ask vendors to complete external ethics audits, these audits usually request information on each vendors suppliers, suppliers of suppliers, etc. Apple absolutely has control over who they buy from in this regard. Failing their willingness to act the US federal government has the authority to enforce labor law parity with trading partners through trade negotiations, tariffs, and bans.
- imglorp 6y ago> Do you really think Apple has the expertise and personnel to replicate what 1,000 companies have spent decades mastering? Yes absolutely. They do supply chain all day, every day: in order to keep high quality, they need to be in tight control. They're very, very good at outsourced manufacture or they wouldn't be a US$1T company. Foxconn was only the first to reach our awareness but it seems there's many other vendors with dubious HR.
- echelon 6y agoIf you buy an iPhone, you're complicit in human slavery. Period. Don't even try to explain yourself out of it.
- Talyen42 6y agoplease list smartphones i can buy that have no suppliers with any history of human rights issues thank you
- holstvoogd 6y agoMaybe fairphone?
- wizzwizz4 6y agohttps://www.fairphone.com/ https://www.fairphone.com/ https://www.pine64.org/ https://www.pine64.org/, to my knowledge.
- ratww 6y agoInteresting, I wasn't aware of Fairphone. Here's their supplier list btw, in case anyone wants to check out: https://www.fairphone.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/016_005_FP3_List_Suppliers_and_Smelters_Web_190930.pdf https://www.fairphone.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/016_005... Still seems to be mostly China (48 out of 65), but the fact they make it public is highly commendable.
- CubsFan1060 6y agoOther comment has a list of suppliers. https://www.fairphone.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/016_005_FP3_List_Suppliers_and_Smelters_Web_190930.pdf https://www.fairphone.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/016_005... One of which is "O-Film" Apple dropped them because they used forced labor: https://9to5mac.com/2020/12/03/iphone-camera-supplier-o-film/ https://9to5mac.com/2020/12/03/iphone-camera-supplier-o-film... So, it's probably reasonable to suspect that FairPhone does (or did) use suppliers that used forced labor. I only checked the one because I had remembered hearing it somewhere.
- 6y ago
- terr-dav 6y agoApple is a capitalist enterprise; Apple can only afford to maximize profit — everything else is just window dressing. Wokeness, philanthropy, environmental consciousness, branding, origin story, etc.; all of these things are viewed favorably by the cultural mode. Therefore, you should expect capitalists to appropriate them to distract from, or justify, the profits they make and the concentrated power they enjoy as a result (i.e. labor exploitation, control over consumer choices, influence in the market, lobbying for legislation, dictating the terms of contracts with vendors) Apple isn’t the problem, it’s behaving how it’s supposed to in the market capitalist system that currently dominates the world. This cruelty is inevitable in capitalism.
- zm262 6y agoI guess this kind of news paints the wrong picture, or more likely to believe in this kind of thing. The more likely case is that, there are a bunch of people who are unemployable having no skills or lack motivations to work or happen to be in miserable conditions (like the homeless in US) were forced (yes) to enter this kind of "de-radicalization camps", monitored (yes) and _given_ an opportunity to get employment (like an internship for students) and get _paid_ the market salary. Yes they were forced to have a job that they can potentially do (the work conditions are like other "normal" apple factory workers). If they decline, well they need to go back to the "school"..
- someelephant 6y agoIf you could trade some of your certainty for empathy both you and the `unemployables` would be much better off.
- zm262 6y agoChina is a society that traditionally (from its culture and also political ideology) values "the collective value" more than the individual value. It has always been the case, which is important to understand the mindset of the government and the Chinese society in general. The "unemploytables" constitute a "problem" to society, which must be solved. This is not much different than prostitution is a "problem" for most countries. If you follow Xi Jinping's rule and his propaganda (which I doubt), his big agenda for 2020 is to "eradicate" poverty, this makes it easier to understand what is really going on in Xin Jiang. Xin Jiang happens to be a place where both poverty and radicalism are intermingled, so their approach could be different than say, Gui Zhou province (where it's mostly poverty). But this year I've read so much from CCTV (CCP's media) that they lifted people from poverty by giving them "a means of living".
- insulanus 6y agoI translated your comment. > The more likely case is that, there are a bunch of people who are unemployable having no skills or lack motivations to work or happen to be in miserable conditions (like the homeless in US) were forced (yes) to enter this kind of "de-radicalization camps", monitored (yes) and _given_ an opportunity to get employment (like an internship for students) and get _paid_ the market salary. Yes they were forced to have a job that they can potentially do (the work conditions are like other "normal" apple factory workers). If they decline, well they need to go back to the "school".. This news makes it more likely to believe in this kind of thing.
- anshumankmr 6y agoHey he added his pronouns on Twitter and is gay, so that should make up for everything right? /s
- nabla9 6y agoIt's called Public Relations (aka propaganda)