I was offered a job at Foxconn to assemble iPhones for $1.7 per hour

Like China could do anything about it.

What makes our trade with them different than our trade with Saudi/Israel/etc?

This is what I mean when I say that people are forgoing critical thinking in favor of smelling the farts of their moral outrage,whether it's tied to reality or not.

Saying that Foxconn workers are being paid "starvation wages" is an infinitely different question from whether they're getting paid "adequately" (a squishy term that contains several orders of magnitude within it) relative to Apple's margins. It's very difficult for me to believe that people who are as uninterested in understanding the facts of the situation as your comment implies actually care about the situation or these people at all.

Understanding the factual landscape of the situation is separate from having an emotional response to it, but it is a prerequisite. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and economically illiterate (or willfully ignorant) emotional appeals like the one you're making have done immense damage to humanity.

I'm not even just talking about the standard examples of Communist dictatorships: there are a million less dramatic examples, like the straightforward Indian child labor law that did almost nothing but damage to the people it was supposed to protect: metrics across the board worsened for the families in question, including years of education, calories consumed, and most damningly, _hours of child labor_ (which increased).

By the way, I'm not insensitive to the notion that the balance between capital and labor's share of income could use some improvement. My point is about the damage that disinterest in understanding the distinction causes.

"If not to buy Apple, what’s the substitute – Samsung? Don’t you know that Samsung’s products are from its OEM factory in Tianjin? Samsung workers’ income and benefits are even worse than those at Foxconn. If not to buy iPad – (do you think) I will buy Android Pad? Have you ever been to the OEM factories for Lenovo and ASUS? Quanta, Compaq … factories of other companies are all worse than those for Apple. Not to buy iPod – (do you think) I will buy Aigo, Meizu? Do you know that Aigo’s Shenzhen factory will not pay their workers until the 19th of the second month? If you were to quit, fine, I’m sorry, your salary will be withdrawn. Foxconn never dares to do such things. First, their profit margin is higher than peers as they manufacture for Apple. Second, at least those foreign devils will regularly audit factories. Domestic brands will never care if workers live or die. I am not speaking for Foxconn. I am just speaking as an insider of this industry, and telling you some disturbing truth"

- Anonymous Chinese Worker

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/many-...

Again, I don't point this out because I think the conditions are OK. I simply point this out to provide context and relativity to the situation. Do you really think Apple is responsible for fixing China's problems? I don't think so. But they DO take responsibility and have made strides in improving conditions for workers that work on their products. And that, I can appreciate.