You are right, copycats are definitely a concern.

The situation in Foxconn got so bad last year was partly because at first Foxconn compensated the suicide victims' relatives rather substantial amount of money, then copycat jumpers became epidemic.

The kid sold his kidney for $3000, a MacBook Pro 17" can easily command $3000. That's dangerously close to enough incentive.

The fact that one kid got a macbook pro's worth of money by selling a kidney by not being cautious (he was surely not aware of the consequences on his future life) doesn't mean that there will be an epidemic of kids with the guts or lack of wisdom to do something like this. A good thing, no doubt.

I struggle to see a great incentive with I put $3k on a scale vs health issues, a major surgery, etc. I like to think kids are generally smarter than this one was.

You just don't get it, do you. $3400 is A LOT of money for some poor inland kid from rural area in China. His family may never see such amount of money before in their life. People are really bad at dealing with astronomical numbers. Sadly to some boy in China, ￥22,000 is an astronomical number.

I'm Chinese, some of us are getting richer by the day，some of us are obscenely wealthy, most of us are still poor, and then there are young kids in China willing to jump off a roof so that their family will get some $100.000 as compensate.

$3400 is only A LOT of money in a poor rural area if it is spent on local, non-traded goods: the consumption value of an iPad 2 is roughly the same in rural China and in NYC. If anything, it may be far lower in the poorer country due to lack of complementing infrastructure.

It actually makes me think that the iPad 2 part of the story may be entirely fictional: perhaps the kid made it up in order to seek publicity and attention.

You are right, iPad is practically useless without WiFi. Still iPad/iPhone are just THE ITEMS to have in China. People in Asia are capable of crazy things for shiny gadgets they can wipe out and show off. Don't underestimate the lust. Especially in a case I think we can both agree is not rational to begin with.

Poor child (to that extent) and has (probably) Internet and also the interest to own an iPad? A little strange to me.

This thing is entirely surreal, and I'm sure the vast majority of kids in his situation would not in a million year do the same.

But some will, and it would be tragic.

Also internet cafe and school both provide web access.