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Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

We moved manufacturing out of the west because wow, other countries could do it so cheaply. It never occurred to us to ask how they would achieve that. (Or perhaps some of us already knew).

What good is ending slavery here if we're still receiving the benefits of effective slavery taking place there? Did we win some moral victory by not doing it within sight of our citizens?

Companies that manufacture elsewhere but sell here should need to prove that the people who made their products did so ethically. Clearly, we can't take that for granted.

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My dad was in US manufacturing his entire career. He retired at a pretty high position and was largely responsible for keeping that manufacturing from going overseas. He said by far his biggest difficulty was that he had to pay a living wage, conform to rigorous environmental standards, and worry about pesky things like people losing hands or digits, where none of his competitors had any of those concerns. We’ve passed much needed internal regulation without requiring the same standards from importers. This is one of the reasons the blue collar middle class has vanished here, and it’s a real shame.

We just outsourced slavery and it makes us a bunch of hypocrites yes each time we use "human rights" to chastise countries in the south. Our politicians are fully aware of this exploitation dynamics and legal arbitrages they engineered.

The stupidest thing is that despite getting our stuff from slaves by the very definition of that word, our stuff ain't cheap at all, especially Apple which are luxury goods, it's just Apple making crazy margins. Apple could produce all their stuff in the West they would still be filthy rich. But it's not as profitable. But hey, 'carbon neutral','diverse and inclusive' or something, it makes yuppies in California feel good about themselves...

Yet many folks would call you racist or xenophobic for speaking out against globalization.

The thing here though is the wage Apple thought they were paying was a good-ish wage, its lack of labor protection that allows the contractor to corruptly reduce it.

>Or perhaps some of us already knew

Come on now, we've all known this for decades, anyone who didn't is incredibly naive and sheltered in my opinion.

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