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Apple turing evil?
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[Joseph W. Bourke] “I probably didn’t see them because there wasn’t enough PAC money to air them properly. I like his approach.”
He’s got an interest and very smart approach about running campaigns against the system. He’s clients are always underfunded. He’s written about the art of media marketing and messaging when you’re not going to afford the “repeats”/market saturation, the insider candidates can afford.
If you get the chance read Hillsman’s book “Run the Other Way” There’s lots of good info on strategic use of Video and media in general, for under resourced clients.
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Has anyone here been to a manufacturing city, or rural China?
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Tariffs help in leveling the playing field with countries with lower wages. If a tariff is applied to raise the cost of a foreign-made product, so that its shelf cost is close to the same price as something made in the US, then a major incentive to manufacture overseas is removed. As a result, the jobs return to the U.S..
An earlier poster said that some people will have to bite the bullet and take a lower wage job. This is exactly the opposite of how we should be approaching the situation. Instead, we should bite the bullet, and spend more than $200 on a handheld supercomputer, or more than $8 on a pair of jeans (seriously, it cost more to buy a pair of pants 30 years ago than it does now). The end result is more jobs in the U.S, more demand for workers, and ultimately, higher wages. The relative costs of the gadgets works out to be about the same, since the wages are raised, but people have more money for commodities like food.
This is exactly what most corporations and the politicians that they own DO NOT want to have happen. They want cheap labor no matter what the cost is ethically.
Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee -
That is true, with job I mean if don’t have one get a lower paid before you become a social security zombie.
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Hi Jeremy –
I’ve been to rural China, and one of their smaller cities – Nanning, in Guangxi Province, about 50 miles from the Viet Nam border (about 5 million people – not many of them caucasian). It was a good lesson to me to see that a lot more of the world doesn’t look like me. I was in a minute minority of about 7 people in a city of 5 million.
It’s funny, but when I got back from China people suddenly considered me an expert on China – they’d ask these broad, general questions, and expect me to know it all. I’d say, “I’ve only seen about one ten thousandth of China.”, but they still expected me to know something they didn’t. The rural people were friendly, as were the city people, and I did find out that the further from Beijing you are, the less the one child rule applies. There’s also a great bit of confusion on the part of a people who were used to having the government take care of everything (job, housing, food), and suddenly capitalism is creeping in, and people can own their own businesses, homes, and to a certain extent, control their own destinies. The Chinese people (the one’s I met) don’t quite know how to deal with this, although many are getting rich off the shift to CommuCapitalism.
But you can bet that most of those succeeding hugely in business in China are those with close ties to the Communist Party, or have family members who were, or are, high ranking in the military. If you want an interesting (albeit controlled) look at what’s going on in China, take a look at the English edition of the People’s Daily Online, the official newspaper of the PRC:
https://english.peopledaily.com.cn/
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Labour is not the big issue, The issue is control and power. They want things fast and with our labor,enviornmental and culture laws its not possible.
The want to use people as tools without repect for their personal lives. Its what Fritz Lang portrayed in Metropolis the 1927 film.
Apple’s return is $400.00 bucks per employe they could still pay 20 per employ and make a killing but they wont. Because its about the system.
RC
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Apple is a popular case study because of they rise, fall and rise but I think singling out Apple narrows the discussion too much. Apple isn’t doing anything that other corporations aren’t doing so, to me, the thread shouldn’t be called “Apple turning evil” it should be called “corporations turning evil”.
Something I found interesting from the NY Times article is that if Apple, or another corporation, moved their manufacturing plants back to the US it would be logistic / supply management and man power problems that would cost the most money, not having to pay ‘American wages’ to workers. For example, the person from Corning said that they decided to open a new glass making plant in Asia instead of the US because, from a supply line stand point, it’s better to have it in Asia than to have it in the US and ship product to Asia.
-Andrew
2.9 GHz 8-core (4,1), FCP 7.0.3, 10.6.6
Blackmagic Multibridge Eclipse (7.9.5) -
Then you’ve seen a glimpse of what’s going on in China, Joe.
In rural provinces and even in manufacturing towns, the poverty in China can be pretty severe. Like you, I am no expert, but when meeting some of the people, they were happy to have a roof and food. I’m not saying it’s the best, nor should anyone settle for subpar conditions, but it is a bit relative to the area, and also to the culture. In one way or another “The State” owns all of the land, everyone simply leases space if they can afford it, including farmers. My bet is that Foxxconn probably has one of the “better” working conditions as they are a company that has been in the public eye.
Then you talk to someone who has grown up in Hong Kong, and it’s a completely different situation. As with anything on that scale, it’s complicated.
I read the Berry article that you posted, and I enjoyed it.
Ironically, W Berry should go see the effects of corporate greed in China. It’s a whole different ball game. Strip mining seriously has nothing on the absolute destitution of some places in rural and especially in industrial China. California smog quite literally pales in comparison to the amount of pollution in China. They spew and breath poison every day on an incredible scale. Some days, the sky is literally green, if you can see the sky at all. And then there’s the sheer humanity. It is arresting.
This situation is not unique to Apple, many global companies have manufacturing in Asia. This is not only to send product back to their respective home countries, but it is to service the growing Asian markets. Shanghai alone has over 20 million people in the city proper, with many million more in the surrounding areas. That represents a lot of great “opportunity” to these large multinational companies.
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[Richard Cardonna] “Apple’s return is $400.00 bucks per employe they could still pay 20 per employ and make a killing but they wont. Because its about the system.”
It’s not $400.00 per employee, it’s $400,000.00 per employer.
I agree that many of the logistic problems also stand in our way, but many of these things go hand in hand. For about 50 years following World War II, it was the US that had all of these advantages. Once we decided to create more jobs overseas than here in the US (and there is no question the WE started this, and empowered the evolving industrial might of China), we also stopped concerning ourselves with creating our own innovation. The laws were changed (i.e. deregulation) in a way that allows the corporations to leach more profits by abandoning our infrastructure.
Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee
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