The Foxconn factory in the southern Chinese boom town of Shenzhen is so vast that walking around its outer perimeter takes two hours. Its workers turn out components that are supplied to big Western electronics brands including Nokia, Hewlett-Packard and Dell. And it is here that most of the parts for Apple’s iPhone, and the much-awaited iPad, which goes on sale in the UK this week, are manufactured.
Yesterday, Li Hai, a 19-year-old employee of the firm, jumped from the top of the building in Shenzhen to his death. It brought the number of suspected suicides at the factory this year to 10. There have been another two attempted suicides.
All of the deaths have been of youngsters between 18 and 25 years old. Li Hai had only been working at the plant for 42 days. The incidents have prompted intense soul-searching in China, about conditions in its factories and the social cost of breakneck economic development.
If this was a Nike factory or a place associated with Kathy Lee Gifford, the media would be all over it. But Dell? Apple? Steve Jobs? Off limits.
Geez Guyver, did a librul kill your dad? I’ve never seen such a severe case of straw man. I got it, libruls embody All That Is Evil in your world. Backing slowly away…
And yes, I can see the Libertarians positioning themselves to claim Rand Paul isn’t a Real Libertarian, because he’s being rejected. And as every good Libertarian knows, if a Libertarian is rejected, it’s not because his Libertarian ideas are an incomprehensible pile of crap, it’s because he’s not a real Libertarian. You folks are like the religious fundies in that way.
But #51, you brought up a good point. I was thinking that the factory conditions were because China was experimenting with the “free market”, but it’s also entirely possible that the conditions are miserable because it’s a dictatorship and they have the power to make it that way. The employees get screwed either way, unregulated capitalism or totalitarian dictatorship.
Reminds me of the old John Kenneth Galbraith quote: “Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite.” The liberalism that I believe in, and that the founding fathers believed in, tries to restrain the power of both the government and the large corporations.
(Yes, I’m aware that wingnuts have defined “liberal” as nothing short of child-molesting coummunistic fascistic baby killers. I’m not interested in their bogus definitions.)
“The employees get screwed either way”.
Even more so would be to say, “The commoners gets screwed either way”.
This is the history of China. All the way from the Warring States period, when millions of commoners died for the ambitions of a few nobles, to Mao’s regime where millions of commoners died for the ambitions of a few nobles.
I guess you could call it a Chinese tradition.
I see now what I’ve foreseen for very long time and I’m hoping it’ll happen soon.
America will self-cannibalize, because of its own greed and self-indulgence. You’re trying to pack every open cavity in his/hers body with materialistic goods to feel richer and more empowered. History knows how tragic and wrong it is…
Regrettable; – Americans’ have only small holes in they head for venting its own insanity. The very many have poor sight,even worst education, and if it comes to envision true self-reflection in a mirror. What’s the worst, that 80% have replaced brain with fat to be able properly process what’s wrong in they life.
Not all!.. but most for great benefit of few.
Foxconn’s solution,
http://shanghaiist.com/2010/05/26/translated_foxconns_employee_non-su.php
🙂
Theone,
Wow!! Real sensitivity here!
What a letter. It should be titled”
“Foxconn Cover Your Ass Agreement.”
Unbelievable.
(PS, thanks for that find!)
64, Ah_Yea,
Sadly, most Americans are shocked to hear of this coming out of China. IMHO I think our own public education system is creating a wealth of problems. Look at what it’s done to Phydeau. 🙂
#70 Thanks for your bogus definition of liberalism, Guyver. You are so predictable. Now you can go pound sand. 🙂
Like most wingnuts, you are unable to understand the balance that must exist between government and corporate power. Government regulation must be strong enough to rein in the corporations, but not too strong that it stifles creativity and entrepreneurism. There is no contradiction in those two statement, you are just unable to see it. You have your Libertarian hammer, so everything looks like a nail to you. You will be forever on the fringe, babbling your BS while the adults try to get things done in the real world. But it’s cheap and easy, so go for it. 🙂
And you can spin, spin, spin Rand Paul all you want, but it’s not going to wash. You Libertarians have been yammering for years about how popular Libertarianism really is, and now that you have your candidate, things aren’t going so good. As the Republican candidate he may yet carry Republican Kentucky, but if it’s not a landslide you can STFU about it.
#65 Phydeau
“The liberalism that I believe in, and that the founding fathers believed in, tries to restrain the power of both the government and the large corporations”
Classical liberalism you speak of has nothing to do with modern liberalism, which is quite the opposite.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
This liberalism you speak of is nearly identical to modern libertarianism, which you abhor.
You can’t have it both ways. You either want to limit the rights and powers of government, or you want the government to limit the rights and powers of everyone else.
Government can and should regulate businesses to prevent fraud, corruption, abuse, etc. But the first priority of the law should be limiting government and preserving liberty. When government acts only in the scope it is limited by the law, you will see less corruption, and more laws that are actually fair and helpful to everyone. (As opposed laws that benefit one group at the expense of another.) Do you really expect you would ever see a sweatshop like this without government corruption? I think you have already admitted the answer to that question when you argued that the Chinese Communist party is not acting very communist.
Of course there has to some balance – Libertarianism is far from anarchy, which would give the government no powers. But the more powers the government has, the more incentives there will be for special interest to try to harness that power for their own benefit – whether it be corporations, lobbyists, unions, or large masses of uneducated lazy people.
Sorry, wasn’t too clear in that last message. The fatal flaw at the heart of Libertarianism is that it doesn’t recognize the need to rein in large corporations. It is correct in saying that government power must be limited, but this isn’t Ayn Rand’s Soviet Union in which corporations were non-existent and the government owned everything. But Libertarians don’t get that. They acknowledge the potential evils of unchecked government power, but there is no acknowledgment of the potential evils of unchecked corporate power.
So we have idiots like LibertyLover here at DU saying that if Exxon does something you don’t like, you can sue Exxon. See “Bambi Meets Godzilla” to see how that will work out. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bambi_Meets_Godzilla)
#73 You are correct, classical liberalism had nothing to say about large corporations like Exxon, because they didn’t exist back then. I’d like to think, though, that the founding fathers would have seen the perils in allowing large corporations the unfettered power that Libertarianism would give them.
You can’t have it both ways. You either want to limit the rights and powers of government, or you want the government to limit the rights and powers of everyone else.
You can’t have it both ways. The government must be strong enough to rein in the large corporations, or we will be just as enslaved by them as by the government. Libertarians don’t want to be enslaved by the government, but they seem perfectly happy to be enslaved by the large corporations that result from insufficient government regulations. And that’s not just theory, we’ve seen it in America during the days of the Robber Barons, when life for the average American was so brutal. “I owe my soul to the company store” wasn’t about government tyranny…
Sigh… thanks for playing Guyver. Hope you have a good Memorial Day weekend bashing your librul straw man. 🙂