Microsoft Responds to Abusive Labor Conditions at Chinese Manufacturer

They are interested in generating controversy, which generates buzz, which generates ad revenue.

What is a good way to watch it, if you don't live in the UK? The web site only seems to have a trailer?

Well, we could afford to pay more for our tools. And would be willing to, if it came with a fair trade label associated.

That's a business model which works well for the food industry, both with fair trade and organic production.

Or, I don't know--we could pay the same provided more of the income went to the low-paid workers and less to the big corporations.

Crazy thinking.

Well, there's the crux of it. I have a friend, an Irishman, who is livid that Dell is closing their operation in Ireland and moving it to Poland, putting lots of Irish out of work. But when he wanted a PC, he shopped around for the cheapest one, that's how he ended up with Dell in the first place. It's the same with a lot of people I notice. All about the worker's rights but they buy their clothes at Primark, their food at Lidl, their MP3 players are brands you've never heard of from China, everything as cheap as they can.

If you want to see what people believe, look at how they spend their own money.

I am not sure I buy this thinking. If labor was more expensive things might cost more to begin with, but eventually people will figure out how to do stuff with machines. So eventually things will get even cheaper than they were with cheap labor. There is no reason a computer mouse should be assembled by hand at all. But of course nobody wants to invest in automating tasks that can be done for breadcrumbs by some desperate poor people somewhere.