Re:The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker
by asdff on Monday November 12, 2018 @02:32PM
(#18434983)
No one is arguing that these factories shouldn't have been built. No one is arguing that these jobs don't pay more. The concern is the conditions for the worker are simply inhumane and the companies commissioning this work should be held responsible for knowingly profiting off this behavior. These would be Apple-owned factories, not Foxconn's, if Apple hadn't figure out they can pass the blame to rights abuses to whoever's name is on the building.
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Re:The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker
by savanaly on Monday November 12, 2018 @03:10PM
(#18435287)
In that essay Krugman treats wage and working conditions as interchangeable, and I think that's the right approach. Two different jobs with different wages can be equally desirable if one has better working conditions than the other. So to say "Apple should pay more" vs "Apple should have better working conditions" is the same statement, there's no meaningful distinction. Either way the workers would benefit at the company's expense, and the tradeoff between working for, say, Apple vs what the best job there was before Apple built the factory is the same.
Re:The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker
by asdff on Monday November 12, 2018 @03:37PM
(#18435520)
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here?
desirability = wage - working conditions?
Apple paying marginally more than another job doesn't excuse the working conditions in the factory. There isn't a formula that makes subhuman conditions acceptable.