And pay no attention to the 15-year-old girl whose hands have been ruined using a toxic chemical to clean your new iPad's pristine little screen? After all, it's not like any of us will ever have to see the useless claws she'll have for hands by the time she'd be graduating from high school in a sane society.
And anyhow, didn't that handsome actor with the big nose and nice pecs (sorry, "journalist") on Nightline (owned by NBC, owned by Disney, controlled by Apple) just visit one factory (six weeks after acquiring permission from a authoritarian government, with a stealth crew of 50), and tell us it's all fine and we don't have to care about it? After all, if they don't see themselves as being mistreated because all their other options are even worse, that makes it ok, right?
My solution to this dilemma is simple: I'm going to buy one luscious new iPad as soon as I can afford two. That way I can do what the corporations I have to do business with will not: help people who aren't as lucky as (terminally ill, unemployed, lonely, angry, with marginal access to healthcare) I am. It turns out that there are organizations full of better people than I who use even small amounts of money to do the sort of right thing I've never bothered doing. Who knew?
It seems to me I've spent most of my life being kind of an asshole. No doubt I still am. (Who but an asshole would write this, right?) It's just that now that I have nothing to do all day and chronic pain is keeping me up most of the night and there's an awful lot of time to think but not many days left in which to think it, I've discovered that thinking about a young person trapped in something very like my circumstances makes me cry.
I guess I'd like every young person to have the opportunity to be a self-involved jerk like I was. Not notably evil, mind you Just selfish, vain, entitled, obsessed with getting laid, and very busy buying shit, nearly all of which ends up in the trash within six months. I'd like those kids on the line in Shenzhen to spend 4 hours a day working, 4 hours in school, and the rest of their waking hours gossiping, flirting, and spending a reasonable portion of their excellent wages on cool clothes, makeup, and contraception. And if they remember to put in a couple of hours a week trying to make a better world for the children they may choose to have when they're ready, well, that'd be kind of beautiful, wouldn't it?
)
give you that point.
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