Probably because it was a stupid remark made to elicit emotion and try to blame one person/entity and diffuse responsibility from those responsible, which is everyone.

Even Apple is not capable of being able to sell a product that can’t take advantage of the economies of scale of Chinese/southeast Asian electronics manufacturing, or the metals that come from the middle of Africa.

No one is going to pay $10k for an iPhone versus a $1k Samsung. One company might be able to push the wages and quality of life a little bit, and be able to sell at a 10% or 30% premium. But it is not going to be enough.

Gervais was probably wearing clothes made of materials coming from some Asian country from factories with even worse wages. Easy to criticize and make “smart” comments as a comedian, certainly easier than working in the supply chain and managing logistics for 3 decades and actually knowing what is and is not possible.

A better use of time would have been if Gervais asked Cook what can be done to speed up the improvement in working conditions or what the roadblocks are that prevent it from happening.

>Gervais was probably wearing clothes made of materials coming from some Asian country from factories with even worse wages

Impressive, usually that type of "no u" argument needs a specific target; how much more useful it is when one can tar anyone wearing clothes with the easy certainty that somewhere in the supply chain substandard working conditions exist.

Even more impressive is the snuck premise that, since Gervais is implicitly OK with his clothes (probably) originating in some sweatshop, he should be OK with the state of modern electronics in both their manufacture and their role as panopticon.

I do not know what "no u argument" means, but that is not the argument.

The argument is that even something as simple as clothing is difficult to have an economically viable business in if not sourcing from places around the world with low wages and lax labor and environmental laws. I would expect Gervais to recognize this, and understand that Tim Cook cannot be expected to have the power to completely rectify the situation regarding the inputs of the most complicated devices every made in history.

>Even more impressive is the snuck premise that, since Gervais is implicitly OK with his clothes (probably) originating in some sweatshop, he should be OK with the state of modern electronics in both their manufacture and their role as panopticon.

I do not agree with this interpretation of my premise due to the ill defined word "OK". It is possible to be realistic and expect solutions to take time, but that does not mean one would be "OK" with labor conditions if they did not have to be.

People like to blame big corporations, politicians, other countries, anyone but themselves. But push comes to shove, where is the political support for higher fossil fuel taxes? Where is the patronizing of local businesses that use local labor to make goods?

What is the purpose of asking Tim Cook about child labor when people in society destroyed every business that did not offer products at the lowest possible prices? I have known about clothing made with child labor since I was in grade school, and I am in my mid 30s, and clothes still come from Bangladesh and we (society as a whole) still buy it from there. Nobody is going to pay the premium required to make an iPhone outside of SE Asia or without the metals from Africa, it is probably not even possible.

> I have known about clothing made with child labor since I was in grade school, and I am in my mid 30s, and clothes still come from Bangladesh

There are many companies that produce and sell american made apparel. [0] I buy from several of them (on the the rare occasions when I buy more clothes.)

> Where is the patronizing of local businesses that use local labor to make goods?

Perhaps if you spent less time making assumptions about where other people buy their clothes and more time looking for local options you would actually be helping.

The end goal should not be the end of international trade but an insistance that we do not allow international trade to facilitate abuses. The core problem is that people like you and Tim Cook brush off legitimate concerns about the practices of international trade partners as "just the way things are".

Edit: I would hope that Ricky Gervais, when confronted with a question about the source of this clothing, would respond thoughfully and even consider changing where he buys his clothes. Ethical business practices may be a niche market today, but the way we expand that market share isn't by just accepting the way things are.

[0] https://www.rather-be-shopping.com/blog/american-clothing-ma...

That was not Gervais point.

His point was dont act like you are Saint and lecturing the public when you not Saint.

This is such a bad take. Holy shit.

I'm pretty sure murica could make the same kind of phones that are built in Japan, South Korea, etc. without costing 10x the South Korean phones. And child labor isn't exactly endemic in all of SE Asia.

Samsung uses the same company to make its phones, Foxconn, that Apple does to assemble its phones. Whatever the case is about child labor, my point is expecting a single company to be able to sidestep the enormous labor arbitrage from manufacturing in China/SE Asia is naive. Surely there are many qualified people who work to determine what price premium the public is willing to pay versus going to a competitor.

Are you saying that the $1K phones that Samsung manufactures in South Korea are made by Foxconn? If you are, then please present proof. If not, then you're missing the point.

Same for Sony, LG, etcetra.

This article is from 2012:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2023286/foxconn-samsung-face...

But Samsung has facilities in China too:

https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/about-us/location/manu...

Another 2012 article about labor practices at Samsung factories:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/these...

The point is everyone uses cheap labor for manufacturing if possible, whether it's China or elsewhere. If they did not, then their mass market products would probably be priced too high and customers would reward competitors and they would go out of business. No one is paying higher paid people in South Korea or Japan to assemble phones if it can be done drastically cheaper elsewhere.

Another article about Sony using Foxconn and other ODMs:

http://www.xperiablog.net/2012/06/19/sony-mobile-partners-wi...

I assume LG and Samsung are big enough to have their own facilities and be ODMs themselves, but I would guess the smaller players like Sony have to outsource to them.

Yes, they've partnered with Foxconn in the past and have had (now closed) factories in China. This is not what I was asking about.

Fact is, they do manufacture phones in South Korea. Not all their phones, but they do manufacture them. Evidently it's still profitable enough to do so, and evidently they do not charge $10K for their top-of-the-line Galaxy S phones made in SK. https://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-gumi-factory-2014-5?...

Sony has also made phones in SK and Japan.

Obviously these are not contenders for the cheapest phone, but we weren't talking about the cheap Xiaomis and Huaweis anyway. And evidently lots and lots of people are happy to pay for more expensive phones. Apple has ridiculous profit margins and people still pay for it.

$10k was a made up number to show that it would add considerable expense to bring every element in the supply chain up to par with the living standards in developed countries. For example, do the South Korea phones still use materials that originate from mines in the Congo?

I assume if Samsung had figured out how to make phones with better labor practices than Apple, then they would be advertising it. Seems like pretty easy PR points to win business, so I would have to wonder why not? I am guessing it is either inconsistent across their product lines or labor practices are increasing over the years.

>Samsung uses the same company to make its phones, Foxconn

They dont. The only model they did that was some specific Chinese Model. And even that was small volume.

I realize this, thank you.