Pfft! Console gamers....

/flame on!

gopher321: "Jump!"

But first tell me where to apply for you now opened position.

lol China

Suicide isn't much of a threat when you're disposable.

Nobody is going to stop buying electronic crap because you're sad.

Welcome to the future. You're one in 7 billion.

wait...

Dont Asians usually die while PLAYING video games???

//just sayin..

insert callous and sarcastic comment here.

Capitalism! Yay! Driving workers to poverty and suicide since... forever, I think.

gopher321: "Jump!"

I hear that if you hit Y twice really fast, you can glitch it into a double jump. Unless they patched it.

This is actually brilliant. Threats of a strike earn you a truncheon to the head while the owner poses for photo ops in front of your beaten body.

Mass suicide kind of makes the company look bad.

I would gladly pay double for my electronics if I knew they were being made by workers who received a good wage and were treated well. HAHAHA just kidding.

cbackous: ObscureNameHere: Pfft! Console gamers....

/flame on!

silly console gamers..

If anyone needs me, i'll be playing Zork Skyrim.

And Medieval II Total War.

To be fair, the workers didn't call "no backsies."

My god those Foxconn employees like to kill themselves a lot.

ObscureNameHere: Pfft! Console gamers....

/flame on!

or anybody that buys products from the following companies:

Acer Inc. (Taiwan)
Amazon.com (United States)[23]
Apple Inc. (United States)[25]
ASRock (Taiwan)
Asus (Taiwan)
Barnes & Noble (United States)
Cisco (United States)
Dell (United States)
EVGA Corporation (United States)
Hewlett-Packard (United States)[26]
Intel (United States)
IBM (United States)
Lenovo (China)
Logitech (Switzerland)
Microsoft (United States)
MSI (Taiwan)
Motorola (United States)
Netgear (United States)
Nintendo (Japan)
Nokia (Finland)[25]
Panasonic (Japan)
Philips (Netherlands)
Samsung (South Korea)
Sharp (Japan)
Sony Ericsson (Japan/Sweden)[27]
Toshiba (Japan)
Vizio (United States)

(so basically everybody)

AcneVulgaris: Suicide isn't much of a threat when you're disposable.

Nobody is going to stop buying electronic crap because you're sad.

Welcome to the future. You're one in 7 billion.

No but it would be a PR nightmare for Apple and Microsoft and they may decide to cut off their contracts with Foxxconn and go to smaller factories. Foxxconn is smart enough to know that Westerners get irked enough by high suicide rates. That's why they started putting nets up around their buildings.

9beers: I would gladly pay double for my electronics if I knew they were being made by workers who received a good wage and were treated well. HAHAHA just kidding.

No worries, the workers are treated / paid like shiat, and you're still paying a shiatload more for your electronics than they're actually worth.

Except that Foxxconn has had suicide problems for their workers, has used (and likely still uses) child labor, and is, in general, a very shifty company that treats their workers like shiat. This is hardly a revelation, and it hasn't hurt any of those companies PR yet. Considering the size of Foxxconn, it's pretty much impossible to avoid doing business with them these days (at least when it comes to electronics). I'm not sure even a tragedy on the order of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire would do more than slow their business for a few months until it dropped out of the news cycle.

I tried posting this yesterday. Twice, even and was denied each time. I cannot remember the last time I was this sick to my stomach. Here are 300 people whose only form of filing their grievances is to commit suicide-that their lives are soul crushing and painful enough to end it all. OK, I can see a lone jumper and rationalize that they were driven to the brink, but when I see 300 arm in arm collectively looking to jump, you can't chalk that up to one person being off anymore. This number of jumpers are consciously deciding they're worth more dead than alive and willingly able to go through with it.

They toil so we can have digital devices that numb us with SOMA-inducing entertainment.

Something's rotten in the State of Denmark everywhere.

Fits quite swimmingly with this (new window)

"Mike Daisey performs an excerpt that was adapted for radio from his one-man show "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs." A lifelong Apple superfan, Daisey sees some photos online from the inside of a factory that makes iPhones, starts to wonder about the people working there, and flies to China to meet them. His show restarts a run at New York's Public Theater later this month. (39 minutes) "

I find his voice... soothing.

Approves

A few years ago, one of the co-op students I worked with told me about his parents. They were slaves in an iPod factory.

They lived at the factory. They were under the control of the foreman. He'd decide when they woke up, when they went to bed, when they broke for food or bathroom, etc. Every day was basically a 16-hour workday, with 8 hours off to sleep and have time with your families.

Xmas rush was worse, they'd be lucky to get a few hours off to rest.

You want to know why Chinese kids excel at school? Motivation. You drop out of school you end up working in a mall. Chinese kids that fail at school go to Foxconn and leave in a box.

Mawson of the Antarctic: I tried posting this yesterday. Twice, even and was denied each time. I cannot remember the last time I was this sick to my stomach. Here are 300 people whose only form of filing their grievances is to commit suicide-that their lives are soul crushing and painful enough to end it all. OK, I can see a lone jumper and rationalize that they were driven to the brink, but when I see 300 arm in arm collectively looking to jump, you can't chalk that up to one person being off anymore. This number of jumpers are consciously deciding they're worth more dead than alive and willingly able to go through with it.

They toil so we can have digital devices that numb us with SOMA-inducing entertainment.

Something's rotten in the State of Denmark everywhere.

Ah but this nets profits for the job creators and they in turn allow us to play with the overpriced toys in order to pacify us with hours of brainless distractions.

AcneVulgaris: Suicide isn't much of a threat when you're disposable.

Nobody is going to stop buying electronic crap because you're sad.

Welcome to the future. You're one in 7 billion.

Couldn't say it any better if I tried.

I heard the NPR interview with Mike Daisey. Does anybody NOT make electronics with near-slave labor?

Egalitarian: Does anybody NOT make electronics with near-slave labor?

The short answer is "no". The manufacturing and assembly of electronics products is done at the lowest cost possible in order to meet demand for inexpensive consumer electronics and maximize profits for corporations. Horrible working conditions and rock bottom wages is evidence of the invisible hand of the free market.

Slavery hasn't really ever worked out very well, so far. And yet we still keep trying to make a buck off of it. Until the slaves go batsh*t and burn everything down.

: /

Why kill yourselves when you can kill the greedy managers? Do some good in the world before you ruin you life.

Omis: Why kill yourselves when you can kill the greedy managers? Do some good in the world before you ruin you life.

My philosophy is that if something is driving you to suicide, kill what's driving you to suicide. Not you. If nothing else, things will get really interesting.

Mawson of the Antarctic: This number of jumpers are consciously deciding they're worth more dead than alive and willingly able to go through with it.

No, they weren't. Nobody uses suicide as a bargaining chip unless they want to stay alive. If you want to die, you. . . die. No one can really stop the determined.

I'm speculating, but it's probably the result of the fact that China criminalizes just about every form of worker negotiation, bargaining or protest and isn't shy about executing dissenters. So the only way you can "negotiate" is by taking their countermeasure out of the equation -- it's hard to threaten a suicidal protester with death.

China couldn't care less about 300 deaths, but the workers know they can hurt them by making the news.

ObscureNameHere: cbackous: ObscureNameHere: Pfft! Console gamers....

/flame on!

silly console gamers..

If anyone needs me, i'll be playing Zork Skyrim.

And Medieval II Total War.

I still play Rome: Total War.

Love those games.

Cheap overseas labor force start acting like the American workforce (wanting rights n all or not to be treated like a mine mule) so much they 'cost too much' so companies start sending work BACK into hands of the recession hungry USA employee>

Must be Apple's fault, somehow.

And some people think China is the future... I'm curious to see what their immigration/emmigration ratio is. If they really are the future, you would see tons of people going there to get a head start.

avictor: Cheap overseas labor force start acting like the American workforce (wanting rights n all or not to be treated like a mine mule) so much they 'cost too much' so companies start sending work BACK into hands of the recession hungry USA employee>

Yeah right. Who do you know that would work in a factory?

Mass Suicide would be an awesome video game.

I have seen reports of the awful conditions of these factories and 'work dormatories' but I believe it wouldn't cost so much for FoxConn or whatever to provide some TVs, wi-fis, cafeterias etc etc to improve morale. Do they really need every penny?

I had the red ring of death once but some Preparation H cleared it right up.

Cue the idiots whining about Chinese labor conditions right after spending 1/2 an hour shopping to save 50 cents and won't spend 10% more for a 40% better product because "they are all the same."

I don't suppose those workers can afford the results of their work, either.

bunner: Omis: Why kill yourselves when you can kill the greedy managers? Do some good in the world before you ruin you life.

My philosophy is that if something is driving you to suicide, kill what's driving you to suicide. Not you. If nothing else, things will get really interesting.

Worked at Columbine.

Doesn't Foxconn pay some of the highest wages in China for unskilled or low-skilled work?

Granted if the company is trying to cheat employees out of wages they legitimately earned, then yeah, they should be hit hard for that.

But I doubt they will, because it's easier to just grease the palms of a few officials.

bunner: Slavery hasn't really ever worked out very well, so far. And yet we still keep trying to make a buck off of it. Until the slaves go batsh*t and burn everything down.

Yeah, just like they did in 1865, right? In fact, slavery works *very* well. That's why it's been so popular for thousands of years. You think Americans went to all the trouble to cart helpless Africans across the ocean in wooden sailing ships, at enormous cost and risk, because they were just too stingy to pay fair wages?

Sylvia_Bandersnatch: bunner: Slavery hasn't really ever worked out very well, so far. And yet we still keep trying to make a buck off of it. Until the slaves go batsh*t and burn everything down.

Yeah, just like they did in 1865, right? In fact, slavery works *very* well. That's why it's been so popular for thousands of years. You think Americans went to all the trouble to cart helpless Africans across the ocean in wooden sailing ships, at enormous cost and risk, because they were just too stingy to pay fair wages?

Um, no. And, between all of he nations that have held a slave class and the sociocultural results thereof, I am disinclined to agree with your assessment. Thank you for your earnest reply.

nobody11155: Cue the idiots whining about Chinese labor conditions right after spending 1/2 an hour shopping to save 50 cents and won't spend 10% more for a 40% better product because "they are all the same."

I try to know the origins of most products I buy. (I don't get too fussy about produce out of season; it's not like the slightly more costly U.S. raspberries are right next to the Peruvian ones in January, and it's also not like there will ever be fresh Chinese ones there.) If I can avoid buying a Chinese product, I do. And I'm happy to pay more for something from somewhere else, and often do. I'll even pay double or triple, if it's made domestically, and especially if it's made regionally. Most consumer products are essentially the same, after all. So except where certain features or certain minimal quality standards are essential, my choices aren't usually based on price, but on origin.

Having said all that, there are unfortunately plenty of times when it's either very hard or impossible to know a product's origin, or where there's just no choice. That happens a lot with electronics. Probably at least half my electronics were made by hand by these same workers, and it does bother me that there's not much I can do about that.

This probably won't change without a widespread and sustained consumer movement, but I agree with you that that's unlikely. Part of it is just ignorance: many people, maybe most, never even think about where their products come from, never mind check. And part of it is, as you note, self-interest. I remember in the aftermath of that incident involving a Chinese plane about a decade ago, lots of Americans were biatching about the Chinese, but those $1 spatulas still flew off the shelves. (I also remember when the Chinese demanded we pay for the plane, and I said, "Didn't we already pay for it the first time?")

I can point to at least two trends that I believe are contributing to this. One is that for a lot of commodities, the current market is split between cheap-because-it's-from-China and costly-because-it's-from-Europe. The other, related, is that very little in the way of common goods seems to made in the U.S. anymore, or even North America. Such goods would obviously cost a lot more than equivalent Chinese-made goods, but less costly than those from most other Western nations (save for Canada and Mexico). The question, then, is: will Americans pay the middle rate, for American goods?

God-is-a-Taco: [images.businessweek.com image 600x350]

What "suicide netting" outside a Foxconn building may look like.

farking disgusting companies. CAPITALISM, HO!

last time i checked china was communist

bunner: Sylvia_Bandersnatch: bunner: Slavery hasn't really ever worked out very well, so far. And yet we still keep trying to make a buck off of it. Until the slaves go batsh*t and burn everything down.

Yeah, just like they did in 1865, right? In fact, slavery works *very* well. That's why it's been so popular for thousands of years. You think Americans went to all the trouble to cart helpless Africans across the ocean in wooden sailing ships, at enormous cost and risk, because they were just too stingy to pay fair wages?

Um, no. And, between all of he nations that have held a slave class and the sociocultural results thereof, I am disinclined to agree with your assessment. Thank you for your earnest reply.

Buy any Florida produce lately?