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It really is in the power of the consumer to force companies to change. The heads of corporations are required and expected to be seeking out the highest possi

It really is in the power of the consumer to force companies to change. The heads of corporations are required and expected to be seeking out the highest possible returns for their investors. If their competitors use foreign labor with very cheap standards then that company is at a disadvantage in the marketplace. Only when consumers take into account the working conditions of the laborers does the marketplace change and that empowers/forces heads of companies to change so that they can continue to bring maximum returns. Terrible tragedies like this have to be revealed thank you for brining this up.

jiggy2011 13y ago
It seems sort of perverse that working conditions in China are dictated by the whims of consumers in the west. How would one go about convincing the consumer to change? That is the hard question. There are already various organisations out there who campaign to make people aware of these conditions, so it's unlikely that people are totally ignorant. Yet these don't seem to have affected widespread change in spending habits, I guess because people in the west have their own struggles and it is hard to say no to cheap. So this makes it easy to dismiss such campaigns as "leftist commie crap". It also requires options, for example if I wanted to buy a smartphone that was free from bad labour conditions right through the supply change, how would I go about that?
- bryan11 13y ago
  It's not a case of saying no to cheap. For most, it's one of buying stuff from China or doing without. Most middle-class consumers in the USA really have few options. Whether from local stores or online, the majority of all toys, tools, electronics, and household items are made in China. If another option exists, it's frequently available online only from Europe or Japan that's twice the cost.

jiggy2011 13y ago

It seems sort of perverse that working conditions in China are dictated by the whims of consumers in the west. How would one go about convincing the consumer to change? That is the hard question. There are already various organisations out there who campaign to make people aware of these conditions, so it's unlikely that people are totally ignorant. Yet these don't seem to have affected widespread change in spending habits, I guess because people in the west have their own struggles and it is hard to say no to cheap. So this makes it easy to dismiss such campaigns as "leftist commie crap". It also requires options, for example if I wanted to buy a smartphone that was free from bad labour conditions right through the supply change, how would I go about that?

bryan11 13y ago
It's not a case of saying no to cheap. For most, it's one of buying stuff from China or doing without. Most middle-class consumers in the USA really have few options. Whether from local stores or online, the majority of all toys, tools, electronics, and household items are made in China. If another option exists, it's frequently available online only from Europe or Japan that's twice the cost.