The Chinese sweatshop Apple employs for the iEverythings is Foxconn. Other stuff Foxconn works on/componies Foxconn works for:

• Playstation 3
• XBox 360
• Wii
• Kindle
• Nook
• Acer
• Asus
• Dell
• HP
• Intel
• IBM
• Motorola
• Netgear
• Every other technology company ever.

If you're not buying from a company that uses Foxconn, you're not buying tech.

You're wrong, and I've already given examples throughout this thread. Find them.

Haha, the Mythbusters mostly told me how to make thermite. And then I looked up the "secret ingredient" they wouldn't reveal. So I now I completely know how to make thermite. Not as hard as I was expecting.

Well, as a novelist, knowing how to make bombs could be very important for a book. Or maybe you're just curious. Or maybe you're wondering how bombs work. Or you could have a school report. Or maybe you're interested in fireworks and rocket ships (which are, essentially, bombs) or controlled demolition. Maybe you think the apocalypse is coming and you want to be prepared to fight the zombies with bombs made out of stuff you found in the ransacked supermarket.

Does it matter? I know how to make bombs (go high school physics!) but it's not like I'm going to bomb city hall. I know how to snort coke (and so do you! Everyone knows how to snort coke) should I be arrested for future snorting of coke just because I know how?

Measuring performance is pretty much the job of managers (principals, in this case), and is difficult in every industry. That being said, some teachers are really, really obviously bad teachers that need to be fired (screaming at the class, throwing chairs at students, and teaching incorrect "facts" [like Mars being the smallest planet in the solar system]), but can't be fired because of union regulations.

"Importance of subject matter" isn't 100% opinion based (can't do most subjects without a good math, English, and science foundations), but this can also be rarity of teachers teaching a certain position. If there's a billion people teaching English, lower pay, if there's four people teaching music, higher pay.

That's actually not true. Unions in other industries inspire fierce, fierce loyalty. You ever talk to a longshoreman? Or a miner? They love the union. Pretty much any manufacturing union as well, or any job with low pay and high danger, specifically because they know that, without the union, they'd be dead or maimed inside a week. If Foxconn employers unionized (if, you know, they wouldn't get thrown in jail for 5 years for doing so), they'd love the union, too.

Teachers, even when the unions are negotiating a better contract for them, pretty much always hate the union. They might actually be unique in this; I have not heard of any unions more hated by their own members than the teachers' unions.

That's a good point. I've been sucked into the "corporations are single entities" rhetoric a bit too much, I think.

That's typically not the complaint against teachers' unions (teachers should definitely be getting paid more). But that's independent from whether the teachers' unions are good or bad for teachers.

The complaint against teachers' unions is that they make it impossible to fire bad teachers. Pay and raises are based on the unions' bargained amount and not on a teacher's performance or importance of subject matter. And they actively lobby to increase the amount of standardized testing, which is useless. Further, most teachers hate the union, so you have a union composed of members that hate the union. How does that even make sense?

Or if you find a way to harvest energy more efficiently, i.e. nuclear power powering my matter compiler.

Alright, have your ribosomes pump me out a sammich!

Practically, that's not a big difference, especially if the union is forced to accept all members anyway. At the end of the day, if you want to work, you have to be a union member.