Apples to Apples

There's been a bit more kerfuffle than usual in the press lately regarding Apple and the way in which their enourmously profitable [pdf] laptops, iPhones, and iPads are manufactured: in China, by hand, by literally thousands of Chinese who labor at nothing but.  

The other night, Nightline aired an episode on the matter that I can only describe as astoshiningly authentic journalism, such as that is today.  It really is worth the watch if you have twenty minutes you'd otherwise spend on facebook.

   If your facebook time is precious, here's the long and the short.  

1.) Chinese factories like Foxconn leverage the poor socio-economic status of a vast portion of China's population into a massive and willing work force.  

2.)  The conditions in these factories are deplorable when compared to similar manufacturing enterprises in the United States.  The pay is also ludicrously low in comparison.

3.) The factory working and living conditions--because the workers don't just work there, they live there too--are still superior to those found throughout much of China and the pay is considerably better as well.

And that's essentially all there is to the story. Which leads me to believe that the problem isn't that there are hard-labor factories in China building expensive technology for the more affluent world.  The problem is that we're at all surprised and upset.   In a sane world, high school students in this country wouldn't be taught about free market capitalism as if it were a cuddly teddy bear here to save us all from godless communism!  In an ethical world we'd teach all Americans that free market capitalism is a bear, to be respected, trained, and occasionally feared.  The same free market that makes the enourmous wealth of Wall Street and Exxon Mobile possible sends millions of potential jobs overseas and puts thousands of Chinese in massive factories working insane hours building luxury goods.  The free market that made America and her allies the undisputed victor of the Cold War is the same free market that gutted Detroit.   It is now more important than ever that we, as a nation, understand intrinsically that free market forces are powerful, that when the market corrects itself it often does so swiftly and to great consequence, and that these forces are not inherently aligned with our values, are not inherently pro-American, and are in some cases not even pro-humanity.  If we can grasp these things and come grips with them, there's a better chance we can manipulate them (yes, often through government, but sometimes through vociferousness) rather than find ourselves at their mercy.  

My many thanks to the illustrious (and topical) Bear Lawyer for inspiration and laughs.