Supporting the likes of Foxconn isn't your inescapable fate

[jpgray]

Many of the excuses for these kinds of hideous labor practices are rooted in a sense of fatalism - that the practices are industry-wide, they are inescapable for the consumer, and criticism of the worst actor lets off also-rans who would gleefully replace it at the top too easily.

Two of those premises are certainly accurate, but the unavoidable stain of enriching a modern kind of slaver isn't unavoidable at all - certainly not in all cases. What cell phone are you using right now? Odds are it was made from the same or similar labor practices. An important follow-up question to my mind would be: did you purchase it new?

The very idea of purchasing and using consumer electronics from two or more years ago, used, feels somehow reflexively offensive, and is strangely frightening to many, myself included. No one would agree it is more offensive and frightening than those labor practices we regularly denounce. While we may fear invidious comparisons with our peers or a lack of ability to read blogs on the bus with our ugly two-year old used phones, certainly we could never be pained more by that loss than by the inhuman exploitation of thousands, right?

I'm not so sure. Adam Smith said something once about an Englishman who reads of a horrible earthquake in a far land that will unquestionably cause deaths in the hundreds of thousands. He feels awful for them, truly, and thinks about them every now and again as he goes about his day. That same Englishman is told later that the very tip of his little finger on his right hand will be severed. He cannot go about his day. He is stricken, existing in a miserable agony of anticipated loss and pain, feeling himself the ruined victim of some cosmic tragedy.

Asked to measure his fingertip against hundreds of thousands of lives, he'd give the right answer. But you'd never know it by observation of his actions, right?

[napoleon_in_rags]

1. God, that's a good post.

Its off to the greatest. But what IS that? That gap between intellectual realization and tangible actions? I feel if you could address that 90% of the worlds problems would be solved.

[snagglepuss]

2. Hear!Hear! Your remark about people not wanting to be seen with old electronics brings to mind

Thomas Frank's Conquest of Cool. Cool is bought and sold and no one sells cool more effectively than the computer industry. The latest electronic defines cool and to be without the latest gizmo is to be marginalized.

[boppers]

3. Who cares about the age of their electronics?

Vapid, selfish, people, that's who.

My phone is used. My car is used. My laptop is used. My desktop is used. My TV is used. My Wii is used.

Yay me.

[jpgray]

5. That's me as well

"Yay me" is about right - it's not going to change the world or mark you out for moral righteousness, but it's a way to personally avoid participation in some fairly wicked practices.

[raouldukelives]

4. Yeah I would have zero qualms using old stuff

I've never had a cell phone anyway so it's not much of an issue. Old second hand comp. Used car. Used bike. Used books. Used clothes on my back. It's all good. But again, if it wasn't for the mass consumerism my choices of second hand items would be greatly limited. Thus the conundrum. Supporting those industries happens to some extent at any level of ownership.
Guess I need to learn to make stuff. Maybe everyone does. As my granny used to say
"Use it up, wear it out. Make do or do without."