The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker

Re:The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker by PeterisP on Monday November 12, 2018 @06:15PM (#18436887)

The answer to "How were people able to afford the technology of the 80s and 90s that were made in developed countries" is that many of them were not able to afford that, and did not, especially in poorer countries.

The number of households having such devices was much lower, in large part because of the cost; devices such as home computers, laptops and smartphones changed the world not when they were invented but when they became cheap enough to be really widespread; when you could buy a Japan VCR or USA computer without having Japan or USA levels of income, which the vast majority of global population don't. If we lose the bottom of the market with the cheap smartphones, well, then hundreds of millions of people worldwide would not have smartphones.

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Re:The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker by NeedMoreTea on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @05:37AM (#18440016)

Yeah, but no.

A VCR was pretty much ubiquitous. A home computer was not, in most part not because of cost but because of not being able to see the point. Smartphones are more expensive than they've ever been. If you buy cheapo you're buying something a few years old and terrible.

There was no lack of them in other countries, what has changed is the number of countries able to afford consumerism at all.

Are you comparing like with like? No. The hundreds of millions of people worldwide buying cheap are NOT buying Apple or Sony either, are they? They're buying the brands that aren't even in first world countries.

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