I am no fan of Apple - mainly for their closed architecture, but I am also a cold-hearted economist when it comes to these types issues and this article is a bi

I am no fan of Apple - mainly for their closed architecture, but I am also a cold-hearted economist when it comes to these types issues and this article is a bit of a one sided hit piece. I would like to throw in a few counterpoints so we can all maintain a proper context. 1.) When companies become as large as Apple and begin purchasing products from vendors. It is not possible for them to guarantee the safety and operation of every vendor. Just as when you go buy oranges at the grocery store, you might know what country or farm it came from, but you don't know working conditions at that farm. Even if you could know you don't have time to dig through that info - you just want an orange. You, like everyone else, just respond to the major media outrages and exposés and blindly avoid Wal-Mart, etc. Apple has more leverage here since they are a large company, but when it comes down to it, Apple ordered more screens and the vendor made the bad decision to use n-hexane. All Apple can do is lean on the vendor to make it right and not let it happen again. Believe me, even if Apple hates the workers and secretly wants them to die a horrible death for their stock holders, they don't want this bad press and would have avoided it if they could have. 2.) Outsourcing has real costs. It's not just cheaper because labor is cheaper. When you outsource you have to worry about the government, the infrastructure, shipping, recruiting talent etc. If you paid the Chinese workers American wages, it would not be worth the other costs to outsource at all. 3.) You can't compare living and working conditions between countries. As bad as a 3rd world outsourced job is to us 1st worlder's it's still generally BETTER than what they would have otherwise. In fact Apple and other 'outsourcers' are the one and only reason for the breath-taking trend line that is China's per capita growth: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=china+income+per+capita http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=china+income+per+capita Just read about living in China in the 60s. It's horrifying to even think about and makes China today seem like paradise. In short the Chinese are better with Apple than without. 4.) There are not a fixed number of jobs in the world - there are only a fixed number of resources. If China can make us a product cheaper than we can make it WE benefit. Our resources are free to build other things for China when they want to cash in some of those US Dollars they so graciously accepted from Apple in exchange for real goods. Voluntary trade benefits both parties by its very nature or it doesn't happen. Also, the US unemployment issue is bit off the main topic of an already lengthy comment, but it has much more to do with sticky wages and our past decisions than it does outsourcing. 5.) Finally you can't not outsource. It's impossible. In this age of globalization everything is from everywhere. You can't even build a toaster by yourself: http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toaster_from_scratch.html http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toast...