[POLL] PS4 BEING MANUFACTURED WITH CHILD SLAVE LABOR

The Guardian posted an article (Link) that goes way more in details about students working in Foxconn factories up to and including:

The Guardian
What do I mean by the connivance of government? The summer before Zhang was packed off to a Foxconn plant, a city in his home province of Henan ordered all its vocational schools to send their students to a Foxconn factory in the same city of Shenzhen.

I'd c/p the article and bold the worst parts but I'd bold half the damn thing at least. I have once again grossly underestimated "There is always more and it is always worse".

preemptive shots fired

GRS, link?

um

wow

yeah no, based on chinese immigrants to the US who I've been friends with, this sounds like exactly the kind of awful intolerable shit that china is filled with; this is a much better news article and I totally believe it.

You'd think a company paying the city government to forcibly draft all its teenagers into joining a labor force working for that company would be something that would not happen in a communist country. Corporations controlling the government sounds very capitalist to me. And yet there you go. Slavery isn't even an exaggeration.

The fact that it's a high school instead of a college is really appalling, not only because it means they're 16 instead of 19, but also because it means they really can't just opt out and transfer to a different school. High school is mandated by the government.

I didn't expect, based on the first article, for the government to literally be selling its own citizens into slavery to a corporation. WTF China. I know they don't consider human life to have any particular value, and consider humans to be no more important than any other tool... but every time I hear a particular story about the end results of that philosophy, I still have a hard time believing it because it's always so horrifying.

author=GreatRedSpirit
I had it in my original post but the link color and regular text color blend in too much, I'll make it more explicit.

Ah, sorry, I didn't notice.

And that article kills me a little bit. I think unpaid internships here are bad enough; buying out local government to get high school kids to work in factories with the barest of standards is nothing short of legally supported slavery, and that teacher comparing it to some noble effort is ludicrous; it merely puts more money in the hands of corporate owners.

I have incredibly serious doubts about value of business ventures that require sustained unpaid labor to stay profitable.

author=mawk
and at the root of this is the frenzied consumerism that drives the media's target markets. it really is a shame that a comprehensive boycott is impossible, because as long as people support these practices with their money they're also putting pressure on other companies to adopt them in order to remain competitive.

while I don't particularly care what this knowledge motivates any single person to do, I think it's very important that you know when this sort of thing happens, and that you spread that knowledge. the people who perpetrate this shit very much rely on public ignorance to keep their operations out of scrutiny. the brighter the light of everyone's gaze is, the more frightened they'll be.

That's about the 5th time you've said that.

We shouldn't have to boycott stuff. If the companies weren't hellbent on making maximum profit and every company played fair, these kinds of things wouldn't happen. They will bend or break the rules if given the chance. That's the root of the problem. Hell, that's pretty much the root of every problem. The people in charge are corrupt and looking out for their own interests.

It's not our fault for buying things, it's their fault for doing whatever it takes to outsell their competitors. In the process they sell out human rights, the environment, and whatever else gets in the way. But since they are going to keep doing what they do, then yes it is up to us to start doing something about it. I'm afraid anything short of a full-on revolution isn't going change a damn thing before it's too late.

and at the root of this is the frenzied consumerism that drives the media's target markets.

I guess it depends on what you meant by consumerism. I took it to mean the mindset of average people who buy more and more stuff. As in, it's everyones fault for buying so many things and that's why companies employ these practices.

You said "it's too bad we can't boycott", why would you say that if you didn't think that we should? I have been reading what you said, you repeat it over and over.

I know that I probably could do something, I just don't feel like it. Even if we stopped our planet harming practices, our planet is already poisoned beyond repair. I'm going to spend my remaining time doing something enjoyable. I don't care if that's defeatism. It only takes so many people to bring about change and I'm banking on there being enough people who care to get it done.

edit; Sigh...I'm not upset about anything.

You made me think of this quote, and so I had to go track it down.

Former CIA agent: "If you bloggers self organize and attach yourself like leeches to specific issues, corporations, organizations, challenges, whatever, you will be the intelligence minutemen of this century, the power is in your hands."



His speech is actually about the NSA bullshit but felt strangely relevant to the Foxcomm bullshit. There are a lot of similarities in that they're both bad things done by huge powerful organizations that we don't feel like we have any meaningful influence over. But we do. We have the ability to create publicity. With the advent of the web, every human being is now a journalist. You don't need to actually boycott a company, because the world moves faster than that now. As soon as a company thinks it is in danger of losing customers, or a politician thinks they are in danger of losing voters, they will react.

#firstworldproblems