Free Beer, Tomorrow.

[vjosullivan]

I bought some Ubuntu Cola (http://www.ubuntu-trading.com) from our
staff shop, today. "Great" I thought "free Cola" but when I got to
the counter, not only was it not free but it cost more than the "real
thing"! :(

[Casper Bang]

How can that be surprising? Fair trade means the farmers and suppliers have been given a decent price for their goods (their work), regardless of whether this is coffee, salt, sugar, rice or... cola. Large international companies typically have no or little ethics (economic incentives) to treat the environment, farmers, animals etc. properly. It's sort of the backside of the mass-marked capitalistic medal, which usually goes hand in hand with closing the eyes for a vast array of things, which we in the west seems to be particular good at doing.

[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 15:27:29 +0200, Casper Bang <caspe...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> How can that be surprising? Fair trade means the farmers and suppliers
> have
> been given a decent price for their goods (their work), regardless of
> whether this is coffee, salt, sugar, rice or... cola. Large international
> companies typically have no or little ethics (economic incentives) to
> treat
> the environment, farmers, animals etc. properly. It's sort of the
> backside
> of the mass-marked capitalistic medal, which usually goes hand in hand
> with
> closing the eyes for a vast array of things, which we in the west seems
> to
> be particular good at doing.

Well, I think that in the west we're particular good at doing. For
instance, about worker exploitation in China's factories, I've never seen
a story that didn't start from west attention, or because a west
manufacturer was involved (e.g. Apple).

--
Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager
Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere."
fabrizio...@tidalwave.it
http://tidalwave.it - http://fabriziogiudici.it

[Reinier Zwitserloot]

Conditions in china are pretty bad and 'we' (the western world) should definitely try to do something about it, but blaming western companies for this is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.

England, the US, and europe went through this phase too, and we didn't have another continent goading us into it (the triangle shirt factory fire, untold numbers of kids in the coal mines, etc). In fact, if you look at what's happening in china right now, it's a vast improvement compared to Europe/UK/US's days of labour force abuse. It's not 'right' by any stretch of the imagination, but it's better. Either China is learning from example, or the pressure of western companies is helping, or China is just naturally more inclined to value human life highly.

Sure, big corporations are amoral. But they aren't bond villains wearing a monocle, raising their pinky to their mouth, and going "Muhahahahaha!!!!" with a cat in their lap - they are amoral entities that just look out for the bottom line. They aren't any more or less evil than that. There is virtually no money to be earned i.e. employing kids on a foxconn production line, and there's hundreds of millions of dollars worth of brand damage on the line if it comes that apple by willful negligence or worse is the source of it. If it were up to apple, 0 kids would be on that production line, purely because that's the right economic answer.

NB: That last bit is also why you SHOULD get upset when companies do things you find morally objectionable - in order for said company to take your moral complaint seriously you have to make it so that they lose more by ignoring you than by addressing your objection. However, what, exactly, is apple doing that is morally objectionable? This is the same reason why I keep getting annoyed at Joe's continued defense of apple's patent and programmer restrictions with 'they are just a company'. Yes they are. Which is why WE the geeks needs to force them into being nicer to us, they aren't going to do it out of the goodness of their hearts! There its easy to point out what apple is doing that I as a programmer find, well perhaps not _morally_ objectionable, but certainly pretty bad for my future: stoking the fires of the patent war.

NB: Insert pretty much whatever hardware selling tech brand you wish in place of 'apple', and insert any of many hundreds of factory conglomerates operating in the shenzen area in place of 'foxconn', if you want.

[Rakesh]

Reiner,

"blaming western companies for this is an extraordinary claim that
requires extraordinary evidence"

Apple has yearly reports about violations in its factories in China.
EVERY YEAR there are major violations. Do you not think if Apple
wanted zero violations it would get it?

I would strongly urge you to listen to the podcast episode of This
American Life (460) where they interview a journalist about the
'iEconomy'.

Rakesh

I would point you to the recent podcast by This American Life where
they had to apologise about the

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[Reinier Zwitserloot]

Replies inline.

The short of it: Rakesh has been hoodwinked by Mike Daisey.

On Wednesday, March 28, 2012 7:20:19 PM UTC+2, raks wrote:

Reiner,

"blaming western companies for this is an extraordinary claim that
requires extraordinary evidence"

Apple has yearly reports about violations in its factories in China.
EVERY YEAR there are major violations. Do you not think if Apple
wanted zero violations it would get it?

No. How? I'm guessing that if Apple is willfully doing this they wouldn't be making reports about it. Also, what's the upside for apple in having these violations on the books? It's  fairly obvious to me that [Brand Damage * Chance this turns into a worldwide stink] is many orders of magnitude larger than the amount apple saves on the contract with foxconn because these practices continue. So, what's apple's motivation?

I firmly believe companies do things mostly because it earns money, and very slightly to stroke the ego of upper management. I rather doubt upper management is getting off on continuing unfair labour practices. But if it's not that, then either apple is stupid, or the financial gain of continuing these practices are incredibly large. I'd be very surprised if either is the case, so, either I'm missing something, or you must be wrong, i.e.: Apple would like there to be 0 infractions on the books but it is not capable of making this happen.

 

I would strongly urge you to listen to the podcast episode of This
American Life (460) where they interview a journalist about the
'iEconomy'.

You're referring to episode 454, which is a lengthy interview about this with Mike Daisey. That entire episode is a lie.

This episode was retracted in a full length episode named 'retraction', which is in fact episode 460:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/460/retraction

 

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[Rakesh]

Reiner,

you didn't get what I was saying. I AM referring to the latest episode
where Mike Daisy's claims were challenged.

Towards the end of that episode, there is an interview with a
journalist who wrote an article about the 'iEconomy'. Apple knows
about violations.

Try again,

Rakesh

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[Reinier Zwitserloot]

Relevant:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/30/uk-apple-foxconn-idUSLNE82T00B20120330

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[Cédric Beust ♔]

After Steve Jobs passed away, I predicted we would start seeing a new, more gentle and more humane Apple. I think this is yet another indication of this.

Here is another quick prediction: in the next twelve months, Apple will start donating to charities again (Jobs killed all charity donations when he rejoined Apple in 1997).

-- 

Cédric

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[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 06:15:59 +0200, Cédric Beust ♔ <ced...@beust.com>
wrote:

> After Steve Jobs passed away, I predicted we would start seeing a new,
> more
> gentle and more humane Apple. I think this is yet another indication of
> this.
>
> Here is another quick prediction: in the next twelve months, Apple will
> start donating to charities again (Jobs killed all charity donations when
> he rejoined Apple in 1997).
>

I don't know about Apple's future, but what I don't get is "gentle" vs
"non gentle" corporates. Corporates are made to make money and their
primary moral obligations are towards their stakeholders. Period (that's
why I've always considered Google's "Don't be evil" an intolerable pulling
of my and others' legs). This means that they know about problems with
their providers, such as for Apple with their chinese providers, and tend
to ignore that. So, in this respect Rakesh is right. But it's irrelevant.
What makes the difference is the context where corporates operate: the
laws they're subjected to, the public opinion, free speech, etc... The
typical qualities of liberal democracies (we're lazily referring them as
"western countries", but fortunately they are more spread than the
geographic term "west" means). In countries where there's no or limited
free speech, thus a misinformed public opinion, corporates will do
whatever they want. That's why I'm always puzzled when I hear blaming of
"western / liberal democratic" countries as whether the problem was due to
them: as a matter of a fact, they are the only countries where the problem
is faced with.

[Reinier Zwitserloot]

On Saturday, March 31, 2012 12:39:23 PM UTC+2, fabrizio.giudici wrote:

That's why I'm always puzzled when I hear blaming of  
"western / liberal democratic" countries as whether the problem was due to  
them: as a matter of a fact, they are the only countries where the problem  
is faced with.

This is exactly right - the reason apple is releasing all these reports and trying to browbeat foxconn into actually complying with the anti-labour-abuse terms that are part of the contract between apple and foxconn, is not because apple all of a sudden grew a moral compass. Business are legally obligated not to have one, in that their moral compass is legally defined as being: "Maximize value for shareholders".

The reason they are doing it, is because the media and their customers are in effect holding their feet to the fire. Apple is simply trying to maximize value for shareholders, and they are doing it because the brand damage caused by bad news from china is larger than the money saved by ignoring these issues.

Therefore: No, it is silly to ascribe some sort of Zorg-esque evilness to any one company, and, no, it is silly to dismiss complaints about a company's behaviour by saying that that's simply 'capitalism'. The system is working when a company changes to address something that's gotten a lot of hullabaloo in the media and elsewhere. Whether or not this is a good system is a topic for another day, of course.