Two wrongs don’t make a right—hold every last one of them accountable, don’t excuse human rights abuses by anyone just because someone else has also committed abuses.
I think that there's an issue in how industrial nations abuse the lack of protection for workers in developing nations and how this usually results in profit extraction and massive human rights violations.
It would be nice to be able to force companies to take responsibility for crimes happening in their supply chain. I think this is the only way to prevent willful blindness. Otherwise the profit motive of the whole will always override the morality of the individual.
We should also improve whistleblower protections so that instead of just relying on hearsay and vague accusations we can actually have solid proofs of wrongdoing. Unfortunately, especially in tyrannical dictatorships like China this is very unlikely, given that even a 'democracy' like the US is struggling with those.
That said; I don't that China as a whole is a developing nation anymore. There are big chunks of the country that might still be 'developing', but as a whole China is very much an industrial superpower.
China Per person GDP: $9,770.85 USD
US Per Person GDP: $62,794.59 USD
China isn't a developing nation? So they should just be happy with 1/6 of the wealth US Residents get and stop now?
What Crime is happening in their supply chain? Prison Labour is not illegal in the US or China. US constitution specifically allows it... How do we force Apple to take responsibility for this?
There is solid proof of Labour camps, Prison Camps, Reeducation Camps, and persecution of the Uighurs, even the Chinese "tyrannical dictatorship" don't dispute it. It is fairly common knowledge among Chinese citizens as well. What will probably surprise you, is it has much wider support from the Chinese people than you'd expect. Now this could be that the context of "why" they are persecuted is not well known outside of china. It could also be that Chinese citizens are not comfortable objecting to it from fear of speaking out against their government. But it's not as clear cut of "wrongdoing" that this article nor this discussion makes out.
Yeah, well... I think the U.S. has some massive problems, but that's on another page and although I'd love to talk about these problems, let's stick with China for now. That a big enough pig.
Yes, my house is on fire, and that's a big issue that should be addressed, but check out the big fire across the road. Let's focus on that one.
(As someone who does not live in the US, it's hard to take the consistent negativity on China and the wilful ignorance on US domestic issues seriously, without just seeing it as propaganda...)
Since I don't live in the U.S. either, I don't see why we should include the U.S. in this discussion. I'll happily comment about the prison-industrial-complex or legalized corruption or about the dangers of militarized police... if it is the topic at hand.
The issue at hand is how China and Apple are profiting from slave labor, how much this is by design or by neglect and what to do about it.
Sure if you want to derail it. But the Actual post is about an American company taking advantage of essentially Chinese prison labour.
You think drawing a parallel to American companies taking advantage of American prison labour is unrelated to this discussion preferring to focus on the race of the 'prison labour' rather than the nature of the labour.
The US peoples voted into power a President who pardons war criminals. And the next incoming President supports (or has supported in the past) wars and bombings which cost the lives of countless non-combatants. Which places has China bombed? If the claim is China has lots its moral standing, then The US is not on any firmer moral ground either.
Well, those countries are not global powers, yet. Quite a bit of the China bashing comes from the US, and that's why I brought it up. If we judge the US and a lot of the other so called world leaders by the same standard as we judge China, things don't look so rosy anymore.
I'm quite willing to bash the U.S. too, believe me. The massive corruption in their political system, the systemic militarization of their police, the wasteful social inequality are just the tip of the iceberg of internal issues. Problematic is also their pursuit of dominance by military force, their financing and arming of groups opposing legitimate democratic governments. And that's just the beginning of my issues with the U.S.
In general I'm very skeptical that prison operators should be able to "rent out" their prisoners and that companies should be able to make profit of prisoner's work. The potential for abuse is just too high. (Maybe in a country like Finland that has some reasonable ideas about reintegration of criminals, but even there I see the dangers of corruption.)
The global production chains have put workers in jeopardy of exploitation. As long as there are no legal means to force companies to take responsibility, they will not take responsibility. It doesn't matter if a company is from the U.S. from Denmark or Finland; if there's no accountability, the profit motive will overrule any ethical concerns. Because that's what these companies were created for in the first place; to turn a profit.
Here we have just one more 'externality' that companies 'socialize' in their quest to squeeze out ever more profit. In this case it's not clean water or clean air, it's the mental and physical health of fellow humans that for one reason or another have deemed disposable.
That countries and the governments - whose job it is to server all their citizens - are such willing participants in these atrocities small and large is just the bitter icing on this putrid cake.
