Sam Bowman points out the economic factors which many western critics miss when they slag Apple for working conditions in the factories where iPhones and iPads are assembled:
Like sweatshop workers in China and elsewhere, Foxconn employees endure long hours, low pay and dangerous working environments, but do so because there is no better alternative. In fact, jobs in sweatshops (and Foxconn factories) tend to be massively in demand, because the alternative is worse. It’s not uncommon for a new employee’s first action being to sign up their relatives to the waiting list for new job openings.
It’s easy to recoil from seen evils, while ignoring unseen alternatives that are even worse. No one in the West will ever have to put up with such bad conditions.
If wages and conditions in Apple’s hometown of Cupertino, CA, were as bad, nobody would work there. That people do so in China is because they have no better alternative. China’s economy is growing quickly, but much of it is still grindingly poor, and difficult to do business in. It’s poverty that makes China’s factories such unpleasant places to work in.
[. . .]
It’s no surprise that China is still very poor compared to neighbouring countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. Forty years of brutal socialism under Mao’s Communist state halted China’s development, and decimated institutions crucial for wealth creation, like strong civil society and the rule of law.
The exception, of course, is Hong Kong, where conditions and wages are much better than on mainland China — not because of a bigger government, but because of greater wealth caused by freer markets.
