Simply put, the US is now a nation of full of people who can't think past a sound bite.
I think you can safely extrapolate that observation to most of what we like to call the 'developed world'. It's no different over here in most of Europe. The collective wealth of developed nations turns people into complacent, ignorant, gullible and eventually mindless fools. Note that I'm not necessarily talking about education, intelligence or job skills. It's just that people get so used to all the stuff they take for granted (whether they can afford it themselves or not, it doesn't matter) that they forget about the big bad world outside that provides for it. For now at least...
I'm sure if you keep looking you can find people who have it a little worse, and a little worse still. But you could just say, "hey, they're alive, and that beats being dead!" Except for a lot of foxconn employees, who felt that that wasn't the case.
I would say, however, that both of these things are unfortunate, and shouldn't be defended as "Just" or "necessary" by any stretch of the imagination. Why is that so impossible to admit, to yourselves and to others?
It's pragmatism, plain and simple, the workers of Foxconn are a lot better off than the five year olds collecting plastic bags on rubbish dumps to sell in order to buy enough food so they don't starve to death, in which case no-one would really care.
Though it's kind of unfair to blame just Apple. Pretty much almost all eletronics get there stuff done were its cheap. I guess only time will tell whether this will affect Apple in a big horrible way.
It's not just electronics. I've been in factories in China for all sorts of products and the conditions are abysmal.
The difference is that Apple is actually doing something about it. After the suicides at Foxconn, Chinese manufacturing executives reported that Apple was the ONLY American company that actually audited them or made any efforts to improve conditions. If Apple were like Dell or HP or any of the others, the conditions would be far worse.
Furthermore, from what I've read about working conditions at Foxconn, these sound like some of the best manufacturing jobs in China. Pay rates and working conditions are at the high end of the scale and people are lined up waiting for those jobs. So Apple is the only supplier auditing the plants for health and safety matters and their contractors offer some of the best jobs in China - yet the press is still attacking Apple????
Quote:
Originally Posted by AjitMD
It is about time Apple spent the $Bs in cash to built its own factories right here in the US. There are automated machine tools that can produce all kinds of glass structures, screws, circuit boards, etc as well as assemble them. It is an oxymoron to give $Bs to Samsung plus the designs of the microprocessors so they can build them in Texas. It looks like the entire destiny of Apple is dependent on the tender mercies of China.
Tax laws here need to be changed to favor domestic manufacturing. WTO? Right... dump that. We need fair trade.
In case you haven't noticed, it's not just Apple. It's a national problem affecting all companies and industries. And the solution won't come from one company. If Apple built factories in the U.S., they'd spend many billions of dollars for the necessary automation, but they'd still be buying most of the content from China because there aren't U.S. suppliers for much of what they'd buy. Plus, they would lose money from doing so which would damage the company and all its shareholders. How many iPhones do you think they'd sell at twice the price?
Beyond that, the problem goes far beyond a company's willingness to build plants here. There are MAJOR structural impediments to doing so:
- Tax structure
- Liability laws
- Health and safety laws
- Environmental laws
- Infrastructure costs
- Currency exchange rates
- Shipping costs
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if it would cost more than twice as much to build things like this in the U.S. That is pretty close to what I saw when I was sourcing things from China.
We missed our chance 20-30 years ago when China started getting serious about manipulating their currency. If we had poor our foot down at the time, we wouldn't be in the bind we're in today. Getting out of it will be much harder. Personally, I think that we should have environmental and health and safety standards and should require that they be met for all imported products as well as products produced here. If the supplier can not prove via independent verification that they meet our standards, either the product should be rejected at the port or an import duty equal to the cost of meeting the standards should be applied. And we should demand an immediate cessation of currency manipulation. Those steps would be a start toward addressing the problem, but it would still take a long time. It took us decades to get into this mess and we're not going to get out of it easily.
What Steve didn't know is that the restaurants served Taco Bell quality (Grade "D" or "medically ingestible") meat.
The USDA doesn?t have a grading system for beef. There is no such thing as ?Grade D? or ?Medically indigestible? beef. It either passes or doesn?t. Dairy is graded beef is not.
Here we go again, with the NYT-fed, condescending, biased swill.
All those anti-Apple, anti-Chinese sweatshop types, what are you typing on? What router are you using to send your grand thoughts out to the world? Where do you think the fiber optics that carried it got made? And where does NYT's electronics - that make stories like these magically appear in our living rooms and offices - come from?
It's pragmatism, plain and simple, the workers of Foxconn are a lot better off than the five year olds collecting plastic bags on rubbish dumps to sell in order to buy enough food so they don't starve to death, in which case no-one would really care.
And now these former employees are just mentioning this information. Sounds fishy that they would start spilling these secrets right after Apple agrees to work with the FLA.
I for one believe that Apple along with other tech companies have made a pack with the devil to get the lowest manufacturing costs possible. It is the shame of the west and our incredible need to consume regardless of the conditions workers in countries without laws to protect these people's rights as workers.
There is just too much money to be made with the sweatshops of China (and elsewhere) for morality to prevail. These workers are subject to conditions that nobody in this country would stand for. Steve Jobs told President Obama that "those jobs will never return" and that is true until the US has abandoned all fair labor rules and laws and returns to business as usual circa 1901.
We could learn a lesson or two from the Chinese work ethic. We had it at one time....post WWII until the 70s....but we eventually got fat, spoiled and lazy. It's sad, really.
Naw. We had the Chinese system here from the post-civil war era until around the 1920's. Company towns and peonage were once common in the US, especially in extractive industries. Post-WWII, people actually were able to earn a living wage and had the mobility necessary to avoid abusive semi-slavery.
Why? Is Apple guilty of everything they are accused of until we prove them innocent?
Or is it the job the shadowy accusers to bring the proof?
ISTM that consistent news of these abuses has appeared in a wide variety of fora. Is there reason to think that all of the consistent sources are all making up the same types of stories?
The difference is that Apple is actually doing something about it. After the suicides at Foxconn, Chinese manufacturing executives reported that Apple was the ONLY American company that actually audited them or made any efforts to improve conditions.
If turning the spotlight on Apple causes them to insist that the past abuses by suppliers be rectified, then we should all be very happy that the spotlight has been turned on Apple.
Indeed, we should turn the spotlight onto more companies as well.
Environmental issues used to be swept under the rug. Now every company knows that it must use reasonable care to protect the environment. Maybe labor practices will similarly benefit from public outcries.
It is supremely ironic that NYT happen to have these series about Apple timed as it is around an expected outstanding quarter of sales reported. Or not, depending how cynical you are. The NYT exists to sell ad space supported by news (note: it used to be the other way around in the beginning) - thus a series like this is uniquely planned and designed to leverage the most possible web hits and paper sales and media coverage out of Apple success. Are anonymous executives being interviewed for this immediately suspect in their motives and intentions? OF course they are and NYT is protecting them from possible legal responses by keeping them anonymous - and thus protected they can say anything they want. As former executives, they have no skin in the game and no inherent reason to be either truthful or lie, depending on their personal motivations, resulting in essentially a questionable source.
Are conditions in China worse than in the US for labor - of course. It's even worse in those regions where unemployment is very high - which is why so many are migrating to vie for line jobs in factories like FoxConn's in order to somehow raise themselves out of abject poverty. Is FoxConn (and other manufactories) exploiting them - absolutely. Again, China's government is responsible for this climate, not Apple. Apple alone among all the world's electronic companies is reviewing working conditions of those companies that compete to supply Apple devices, and asking these companies by leveraging their pull in the supply chain, to raise the bar. Is it a perfect or completely altruistic approach - of course not. Apple is not a non-profit organization dedicated to the ultimate wellbeing of every worker on the planet. Unfortunately a balance must be struck somewhere.
So when someone in the western countries smugly decry these abuses, lambasts commenters who challenge unrealistic criticism or the opportunistic media coverage to generate ad revenue for a failing media source, they are not standing on pristine moral high ground.
The whole of western civilization and its prosperity stands on the backs of exploited workers around the world. The entire structure of the comfort, the convenience of every aspect of western life is mired in this unfortunate fact. And unless these self-appointed critics are voluntarily surrendering all of their comforts and conveniences, from the food they eat to virtually every single manufactured item around them, they are part of the problem not a part of the solution, and ultimately hypocritical.
The west enjoys its accomplishments purely because not only were there companies willing to exploit workers, but workers who were willing to be exploited instead of starving or dying. You want to speak power to truth, put your most valued possessions on the line. Set aside your comfort and convenience and embrace an austere lifestyle sans Starbucks, sans modern transportation of all types, sans telecommunications, internet, and convenient grocery stores. No one in the west is empowered to judge others until they embrace a lifestyle that places them outside of the very culture that enables the comfort and prosperity on which they depend.
I've used Apple products for more than 25 years, and I'm a devoted fanboy (and stockholder). But I'm not close-minded, either. Read the articles. If the main company profiled was M$, would you apologize for it as well?
My hope is that Apple and other companies demand better conditions for workers at its supplier companies. With this public shaming, those within the company who have advocated for change should have more leverage in the debate.
We may have to pay more for our goods, and they may take longer to produce. Then again, Apple may pay for the changes by not demanding annual price cuts from its suppliers.
Regardless, the ball is definitely in Apple's court. I await its increased action with interest.
Anyone that does business in China should know labor abuse is an issue. How many "willingly" work 12-hr shifts here in U.S. for low wages and not go postal???
They're called illegal immigrants and we hate their guts.
What Steve didn't know is that the restaurants served Taco Bell quality (Grade "D" or "medically ingestible") meat and the movie theater showed nothing but the worst Adam Sandler movies (that would otherwise be sitting on an idle Netflix server collecting dust) on a continuous loop. It's believed to be the cause of many Foxconn suicides, or failing that, a sense of empathy from Chinese workers for how some Americans spend Saturday nights.
I've used Apple products for more than 25 years, and I'm a devoted fanboy (and stockholder). But I'm not close-minded, either. Read the articles. If the main company profiled was M$, would you apologize for it as well?
Yes, unquestionably.
If Microsoft was actually leading the world forward in terms of working conditions and if Microsoft was the only one auditing their suppliers' plants and if Microsoft was the only one setting working condition requirements far in excess of what was standard for the region, then they would deserve praise, not criticism.
The hypocrisy that underpins this article stinks to high heavens. But even more heinous is the obvious attempt to create a "meme" that smears Appe Inc. The "powers that be" who control nearly all Western media are frightened to death by Apple, which seriously threatens to destroy their whole rotten operation.
I'm getting increasingly fed-up by all the news outlets spinning this issue in relation to Apple all of a sudden. My local newspaper had a similar horribly suggestive piece like this yesterday, conveniently using Apples blowout earnings (1 small column in the paper) report to fill half a page about how Apple was indirectly funding child labor, driving assembly workers to suicide, destroying the environment around the factories, etc.
I understand that stuff like this happens in the factories that make all the cheap shiny things we like to buy, and I'm all for changing that. But pinning this on Apple or using Apple as poster child for all that is wrong with Chinese labor conditions is the epitome of hypocrisy. The computers that were used to typeset and publish all these articles were probably made in the exact same factories. If the authors of said articles go shopping for whatever they are looking for, price will often be top of the list when it comes to buying decisions. Everyone is profiting from cheap stuff manufactured somewhere they have cheap labor.
The fact that Apple is now singled out as the prime example of a big bad western company exploiting Chinese factory workers is ridiculous. I advise anyone who disagrees to go have a look in (for example) the Chinese food processing industry, and see how employees are treated over there. Compared to that, working 70 hours a week behind a Foxconn assembly line is almost like retirement.
Moral of the story: if you are sincerely worried about labor conditions in most parts of Asia, go complain there, and vote with your wallet, instead of riding an individual company's success to make your point. And realize this probably means paying twice as much for electronics, toys, clothing, many processed food stuffs, and so on.
why pay twice as much? 100 billion in the bank, why can't they make due with 80 billion in the bank? we are expected to pay more to keep their high profit margins in place.
they can shove the greed where the sun doesn't shine.
Here we go again, with the NYT-fed, condescending, biased swill.
All those anti-Apple, anti-Chinese sweatshop types, what are you typing on? What router are you using to send your grand thoughts out to the world? Where do you think the fiber optics that carried it got made? And where does NYT's electronics - that make stories like these magically appear in our living rooms and offices - come from?
What a bunch of hypocrites.
There was a point, friend, when the cotton in everyone's linens was picked by a slave. It was those that were complaining about it that brought about a change in the paradigm, not those that "voted with their wallets" (a ludicrous idea.) Certainly, saying "that's just capitalism" isn't striking a bold new path into the welcoming arms of prosperity for the huddled masses (now deprived of hands and eyes, no doubt.) But the United States, built as it was on slavery, has only managed to displace said slavery, and it isn't surprising that those who benefit most from it are eager to justify it by any possible means, even if their logic is so patently incongruous with reality, justice and reason as to call forth bile in the throats of any onlooker with a chance modicum of decency. That makes you all the more a fool, however, and an enemy of humanity, akin to the champions of slavery that preceded you. It is a shame that the champions of slavery, now and then, are usually the majority, and likewise immune to principled thinking.
Comments
Simply put, the US is now a nation of full of people who can't think past a sound bite.
I think you can safely extrapolate that observation to most of what we like to call the 'developed world'. It's no different over here in most of Europe. The collective wealth of developed nations turns people into complacent, ignorant, gullible and eventually mindless fools. Note that I'm not necessarily talking about education, intelligence or job skills. It's just that people get so used to all the stuff they take for granted (whether they can afford it themselves or not, it doesn't matter) that they forget about the big bad world outside that provides for it. For now at least...
I'm sure if you keep looking you can find people who have it a little worse, and a little worse still. But you could just say, "hey, they're alive, and that beats being dead!" Except for a lot of foxconn employees, who felt that that wasn't the case.
I would say, however, that both of these things are unfortunate, and shouldn't be defended as "Just" or "necessary" by any stretch of the imagination. Why is that so impossible to admit, to yourselves and to others?
It's pragmatism, plain and simple, the workers of Foxconn are a lot better off than the five year olds collecting plastic bags on rubbish dumps to sell in order to buy enough food so they don't starve to death, in which case no-one would really care.
C'est la vie.
Though it's kind of unfair to blame just Apple. Pretty much almost all eletronics get there stuff done were its cheap. I guess only time will tell whether this will affect Apple in a big horrible way.
It's not just electronics. I've been in factories in China for all sorts of products and the conditions are abysmal.
The difference is that Apple is actually doing something about it. After the suicides at Foxconn, Chinese manufacturing executives reported that Apple was the ONLY American company that actually audited them or made any efforts to improve conditions. If Apple were like Dell or HP or any of the others, the conditions would be far worse.
Furthermore, from what I've read about working conditions at Foxconn, these sound like some of the best manufacturing jobs in China. Pay rates and working conditions are at the high end of the scale and people are lined up waiting for those jobs. So Apple is the only supplier auditing the plants for health and safety matters and their contractors offer some of the best jobs in China - yet the press is still attacking Apple????
It is about time Apple spent the $Bs in cash to built its own factories right here in the US. There are automated machine tools that can produce all kinds of glass structures, screws, circuit boards, etc as well as assemble them. It is an oxymoron to give $Bs to Samsung plus the designs of the microprocessors so they can build them in Texas. It looks like the entire destiny of Apple is dependent on the tender mercies of China.
Tax laws here need to be changed to favor domestic manufacturing. WTO? Right... dump that. We need fair trade.
In case you haven't noticed, it's not just Apple. It's a national problem affecting all companies and industries. And the solution won't come from one company. If Apple built factories in the U.S., they'd spend many billions of dollars for the necessary automation, but they'd still be buying most of the content from China because there aren't U.S. suppliers for much of what they'd buy. Plus, they would lose money from doing so which would damage the company and all its shareholders. How many iPhones do you think they'd sell at twice the price?
Beyond that, the problem goes far beyond a company's willingness to build plants here. There are MAJOR structural impediments to doing so:
- Tax structure
- Liability laws
- Health and safety laws
- Environmental laws
- Infrastructure costs
- Currency exchange rates
- Shipping costs
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if it would cost more than twice as much to build things like this in the U.S. That is pretty close to what I saw when I was sourcing things from China.
We missed our chance 20-30 years ago when China started getting serious about manipulating their currency. If we had poor our foot down at the time, we wouldn't be in the bind we're in today. Getting out of it will be much harder. Personally, I think that we should have environmental and health and safety standards and should require that they be met for all imported products as well as products produced here. If the supplier can not prove via independent verification that they meet our standards, either the product should be rejected at the port or an import duty equal to the cost of meeting the standards should be applied. And we should demand an immediate cessation of currency manipulation. Those steps would be a start toward addressing the problem, but it would still take a long time. It took us decades to get into this mess and we're not going to get out of it easily.
What Steve didn't know is that the restaurants served Taco Bell quality (Grade "D" or "medically ingestible") meat.
The USDA doesn?t have a grading system for beef. There is no such thing as ?Grade D? or ?Medically indigestible? beef. It either passes or doesn?t. Dairy is graded beef is not.
All those anti-Apple, anti-Chinese sweatshop types, what are you typing on? What router are you using to send your grand thoughts out to the world? Where do you think the fiber optics that carried it got made? And where does NYT's electronics - that make stories like these magically appear in our living rooms and offices - come from?
What a bunch of hypocrites.
It's pragmatism, plain and simple, the workers of Foxconn are a lot better off than the five year olds collecting plastic bags on rubbish dumps to sell in order to buy enough food so they don't starve to death, in which case no-one would really care.
C'est la vie.
Spot on.
And now these former employees are just mentioning this information. Sounds fishy that they would start spilling these secrets right after Apple agrees to work with the FLA.
I for one believe that Apple along with other tech companies have made a pack with the devil to get the lowest manufacturing costs possible. It is the shame of the west and our incredible need to consume regardless of the conditions workers in countries without laws to protect these people's rights as workers.
There is just too much money to be made with the sweatshops of China (and elsewhere) for morality to prevail. These workers are subject to conditions that nobody in this country would stand for. Steve Jobs told President Obama that "those jobs will never return" and that is true until the US has abandoned all fair labor rules and laws and returns to business as usual circa 1901.
We could learn a lesson or two from the Chinese work ethic. We had it at one time....post WWII until the 70s....but we eventually got fat, spoiled and lazy. It's sad, really.
Naw. We had the Chinese system here from the post-civil war era until around the 1920's. Company towns and peonage were once common in the US, especially in extractive industries. Post-WWII, people actually were able to earn a living wage and had the mobility necessary to avoid abusive semi-slavery.
Why? Is Apple guilty of everything they are accused of until we prove them innocent?
Or is it the job the shadowy accusers to bring the proof?
ISTM that consistent news of these abuses has appeared in a wide variety of fora. Is there reason to think that all of the consistent sources are all making up the same types of stories?
Here, have a real windmill to tilt at.
India has an 80% rate of recycling, this is why.
The factory workers of China who make the things that fill your stores with cheap goods are living in luxury in comparison.
And a man who has a crushed hand is "living in luxury in comparison" to one with no legs. Is that relevant?
The difference is that Apple is actually doing something about it. After the suicides at Foxconn, Chinese manufacturing executives reported that Apple was the ONLY American company that actually audited them or made any efforts to improve conditions.
If turning the spotlight on Apple causes them to insist that the past abuses by suppliers be rectified, then we should all be very happy that the spotlight has been turned on Apple.
Indeed, we should turn the spotlight onto more companies as well.
Environmental issues used to be swept under the rug. Now every company knows that it must use reasonable care to protect the environment. Maybe labor practices will similarly benefit from public outcries.
I say Keep Up the Pressure.
The USDA doesn?t have a grading system for beef.
USDA Grades for Meat and Poultry
Beef
Beef is graded as whole carcasses in two ways:
quality grades - for tenderness, juiciness, and flavor; and
yield grades - for the amount of usable lean meat on the carcass. There are eight quality grades for beef.
Quality grades are based on the amount of marbling (flecks of fat within the lean), color, and maturity.
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Factsheets/...ding/index.asp
Are conditions in China worse than in the US for labor - of course. It's even worse in those regions where unemployment is very high - which is why so many are migrating to vie for line jobs in factories like FoxConn's in order to somehow raise themselves out of abject poverty. Is FoxConn (and other manufactories) exploiting them - absolutely. Again, China's government is responsible for this climate, not Apple. Apple alone among all the world's electronic companies is reviewing working conditions of those companies that compete to supply Apple devices, and asking these companies by leveraging their pull in the supply chain, to raise the bar. Is it a perfect or completely altruistic approach - of course not. Apple is not a non-profit organization dedicated to the ultimate wellbeing of every worker on the planet. Unfortunately a balance must be struck somewhere.
So when someone in the western countries smugly decry these abuses, lambasts commenters who challenge unrealistic criticism or the opportunistic media coverage to generate ad revenue for a failing media source, they are not standing on pristine moral high ground.
The whole of western civilization and its prosperity stands on the backs of exploited workers around the world. The entire structure of the comfort, the convenience of every aspect of western life is mired in this unfortunate fact. And unless these self-appointed critics are voluntarily surrendering all of their comforts and conveniences, from the food they eat to virtually every single manufactured item around them, they are part of the problem not a part of the solution, and ultimately hypocritical.
The west enjoys its accomplishments purely because not only were there companies willing to exploit workers, but workers who were willing to be exploited instead of starving or dying. You want to speak power to truth, put your most valued possessions on the line. Set aside your comfort and convenience and embrace an austere lifestyle sans Starbucks, sans modern transportation of all types, sans telecommunications, internet, and convenient grocery stores. No one in the west is empowered to judge others until they embrace a lifestyle that places them outside of the very culture that enables the comfort and prosperity on which they depend.
My hope is that Apple and other companies demand better conditions for workers at its supplier companies. With this public shaming, those within the company who have advocated for change should have more leverage in the debate.
We may have to pay more for our goods, and they may take longer to produce. Then again, Apple may pay for the changes by not demanding annual price cuts from its suppliers.
Regardless, the ball is definitely in Apple's court. I await its increased action with interest.
Anyone that does business in China should know labor abuse is an issue. How many "willingly" work 12-hr shifts here in U.S. for low wages and not go postal???
They're called illegal immigrants and we hate their guts.
What Steve didn't know is that the restaurants served Taco Bell quality (Grade "D" or "medically ingestible") meat and the movie theater showed nothing but the worst Adam Sandler movies (that would otherwise be sitting on an idle Netflix server collecting dust) on a continuous loop. It's believed to be the cause of many Foxconn suicides, or failing that, a sense of empathy from Chinese workers for how some Americans spend Saturday nights.
Well Taco Bell did win the franchise wars...
I've used Apple products for more than 25 years, and I'm a devoted fanboy (and stockholder). But I'm not close-minded, either. Read the articles. If the main company profiled was M$, would you apologize for it as well?
Yes, unquestionably.
If Microsoft was actually leading the world forward in terms of working conditions and if Microsoft was the only one auditing their suppliers' plants and if Microsoft was the only one setting working condition requirements far in excess of what was standard for the region, then they would deserve praise, not criticism.
I'm getting increasingly fed-up by all the news outlets spinning this issue in relation to Apple all of a sudden. My local newspaper had a similar horribly suggestive piece like this yesterday, conveniently using Apples blowout earnings (1 small column in the paper) report to fill half a page about how Apple was indirectly funding child labor, driving assembly workers to suicide, destroying the environment around the factories, etc.
I understand that stuff like this happens in the factories that make all the cheap shiny things we like to buy, and I'm all for changing that. But pinning this on Apple or using Apple as poster child for all that is wrong with Chinese labor conditions is the epitome of hypocrisy. The computers that were used to typeset and publish all these articles were probably made in the exact same factories. If the authors of said articles go shopping for whatever they are looking for, price will often be top of the list when it comes to buying decisions. Everyone is profiting from cheap stuff manufactured somewhere they have cheap labor.
The fact that Apple is now singled out as the prime example of a big bad western company exploiting Chinese factory workers is ridiculous. I advise anyone who disagrees to go have a look in (for example) the Chinese food processing industry, and see how employees are treated over there. Compared to that, working 70 hours a week behind a Foxconn assembly line is almost like retirement.
Moral of the story: if you are sincerely worried about labor conditions in most parts of Asia, go complain there, and vote with your wallet, instead of riding an individual company's success to make your point. And realize this probably means paying twice as much for electronics, toys, clothing, many processed food stuffs, and so on.
why pay twice as much? 100 billion in the bank, why can't they make due with 80 billion in the bank? we are expected to pay more to keep their high profit margins in place.
they can shove the greed where the sun doesn't shine.
Here we go again, with the NYT-fed, condescending, biased swill.
All those anti-Apple, anti-Chinese sweatshop types, what are you typing on? What router are you using to send your grand thoughts out to the world? Where do you think the fiber optics that carried it got made? And where does NYT's electronics - that make stories like these magically appear in our living rooms and offices - come from?
What a bunch of hypocrites.
There was a point, friend, when the cotton in everyone's linens was picked by a slave. It was those that were complaining about it that brought about a change in the paradigm, not those that "voted with their wallets" (a ludicrous idea.) Certainly, saying "that's just capitalism" isn't striking a bold new path into the welcoming arms of prosperity for the huddled masses (now deprived of hands and eyes, no doubt.) But the United States, built as it was on slavery, has only managed to displace said slavery, and it isn't surprising that those who benefit most from it are eager to justify it by any possible means, even if their logic is so patently incongruous with reality, justice and reason as to call forth bile in the throats of any onlooker with a chance modicum of decency. That makes you all the more a fool, however, and an enemy of humanity, akin to the champions of slavery that preceded you. It is a shame that the champions of slavery, now and then, are usually the majority, and likewise immune to principled thinking.