bkdc

FROM BKDC: bwahaha - sounds so….civilized (in a very non-capitalist capitalist way) until you stop and think that you wouldn’t pay $1500 for the same device. You all (sometimes me too) demand better. Better prices, that is, and no ‘sane’ company/CEO is going to commit suicide by not trying to ‘make you happy’ and give you just that - more for less.

Netflix is being killed for a couple dollars more but you DEMAND better? pfff…try putting DVDs in envelopes for 8 bucks / day or whatever for a few hours of your life first.

Go in front of Walmart -demand you pay more for what they sell. Better yet, why not buy from a mom & pop store (10-30% more expensive) instead. Oh, they’ve been killed by Wallmart you already.

Go ask Apple to raise the prices AND pay the workers in China triple what they get now.

Go and demand that investors stop expecting 10-50% profits year to year on their portfolio TODAY. 

You do all that after you demand a voluntary salary cut.

shame, anyone? — citizen kerry (via azspot)

KERRY HERE: 

Please, help me understand why it’s silly to imagine that the Apple, which revolutionized the music industry, could be capable of improving labor conditions overseas? I heard this from several people yesterday so I’m hoping someone can explain. 

I’m not arguing that we triple wages at Foxconn. I’m wondering why it couldn’t implement safer working conditions, hexyl-hydride-free environments (before reports of irreparable nerve damage), a humane work day (8 hours?), and/or allow third-party inspectors to conduct safety verifications. 

I get your point that CEOs are driven by a need to please shareholders and that means being ruthless about keeping costs low. And I know that well-meaning liberals (like me!) have, in the past, called for better working conditions (read=more expensive labor costs) which had the unintended consequence of causing factories to move to cheaper parts of the world. And suddenly, all those people who’d taken factory jobs—because the choice was between working there or going hungry—were staring once again, at hunger. I understand that being the judge of “what’s best for people” isn’t always so simple. I even understand that on a macro-economic level, sweatshops can lift people out of poverty. (See: the American garment industry.) 

But I don’t understand why we can’t we aim a little higher than allowing our corporations to “routinely abuse, poison, and exploit” their overseas workers (to use Mike Daisey’s term)? And the onus is on companies like Apple because they’re the industry leaders. 

And this is part of a bigger question I have, which is: If we are going to live in a globalized world, why aren’t there global standards for work safety? Why is it OK for people in France, Sweden, and the US (for example) to accept labor conditions in other countries that they wouldn’t accept in France, Sweden or the US because they are, in theory, illegal? (Not always true in practice—plenty of workers treated terribly in the US.) 

What am I missing? I would be grateful for any illumination anyone has time to share. I’m actually looking into “How to Buy Clothes Ethically” and this Apple detour has provided a great deal of insight. 

(via citizenkerry)

Perhaps if we paid the true value of the goods we use, we’d be less likely to just consume mindlessly?  I know, shocker, but maybe we should stop seeing an abundance of cheap goods as our birthright as Americans.

We keep the monetary costs of so many of our goods - our electronics, our food, our gasoline - artificially low, so we can continue to consume and hence keep the economy growing, but that cost has to be paid somewhere, right?  We pay for cheap food in depletion of water and phosphate supplies.  We pay for cheap electronics in countries destabilized by poverty.  We pay for cheap gasoline in endless wars in faraway lands.

One way or another, we pay.  Frankly, I’d rather pay with the money in my bank account than pay with people’s lives, but I also recognize I am a minority in this.

(via whynotshesaid)

BKDC here (is it just me or is Tumblr not really built for this kind of ‘responses’):

Thank you ladies for your replies. The good news is that I think that you’re both right or at least not very wrong :)

Kerry, Apple is currently being praised as the most valuable IT company. This means many things that shouldn’t make anyone be proud of and yet, this ‘news’ has been doing rounds in the media/blogs/twitter/whatnot as if it’s the ultimate proof of US might (for lack of a permanent US hotel on the Moon which would have worked too). People looooved it.

You ‘could’ demand that Apple does a better job at looking after its employees and contractors. I agree that they should…no, I know that Apple ‘can’ for sure.

Look at Apple’s revenue per employee. That one’s from 2009 - it got bigger by now… What it says is that Apple doesn’t like to ‘share’ money but they’re very good at making them. Here’s a primer on corporate valuation - as you can see by page 3, Apple’s not very good at creating economic value.

Apple, just like a few other illegal in some parts of the world occupations, is in the very lucrative business of giving people (almost) instant gratification (give you technology and design / fire / patent the wheel while customers feel cool about all having identical phones - not anymore since now Apple gave all of us the white version too).

Ferrari does the same but without having to rape anyone (maybe just the customer) and it costs them a lot - did you know that Ferrari’s almost always bankrupt? Thank you Fiat for keeping them alive!

Apple did not look after its workers - we know that. Why? Because they’re not Ferrari :) They’re big and strong and…they’re willing to do the raping so that they can stay that way.

Apple would most likely not be the most valuable IT company in the world if they did things differently. Is it their fault? Would people LOVE a ‘so-so’ company? No - look at HP which works on high volume, low profit margins…you don’t WANT an what’s it’s name HP laptop, you NEED an iPad.

I don’t think that it’s Apple’s fault - customers gave them the power and Apple’s just riding the wave and enjoying it (I would too).

Stop camping in front of Apple stores for the new iWhatever 7 and Apple might change a bit. But that alone is not enough because there’s always a next business waiting in line to sneak up on you and pull the same tricks - and boy, people seem to fall for it every single time, over and over again :)

I guess that this is not about Apple or some CEO. It’s about us, the consumers, just like whynotshesaid pointed out.

PS: Planned obsolence (1), Pret a Jeter - Pyramids of Waste (2)

PS2:

There’s only one way in which they have become more expensive and that’s the banning of lead in solders. We have to use tin solders, not tin/lead now and as tin is worth much more than lead there’s that one component that is pushing the value calculation the other way. That tin solder also grows whiskers (really, you can get a pointy “whisker” growing out of a majority tin solder which then shorts the circuits) is one of the explanations why modern electronics now fail before becoming useless rather than becoming useless (for reasons of software bloat) before they fail, as they used to.

Tim Worstall, Is your old hardware made of gold, or just DIRT?

Funny how ‘saving the planet’ hurts it more.

PS3: some brick, Ericsson R320s, Sony Ericsson P800/P910, Sony Ericsson M600, Samsung Omnia 7 (all my mobile phones, bought many years apart). The technology was/is always there (long before Apple invented the fire) and you’d be amazed what the P800/P910 could do (still works but no AngryBirds).