the part of my brain that contains my sense of irony just melted...

this link might work better-

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/17/opinion/nova-apple-foxconn/

Also, my $0.02 on the China government apologists- it's all about the free speech/press. Without that, any corporate working condition reporting lacks credibility. I.e. the above comment 'now how about random inspections over a period of 6 months'. Though I went to the trouble of posting the fixed link because that piece covers that issue pretty well (see aluminum dust explosion issue).

I'm certainly guilty of being a Foxconn/Apple hater, and agree that propogandists like myself are only singling that pair out due to the predicted higher effectiveness of that tactic, versus going after clothing companies, that people gave up caring much about long long ago. But with apple's high profile ipad success, and Jon Stewart's highlighting the Foxconn suicide net issue repeatedly, and it is clear that as unfairly unrepresentative as this example is, it is the one that is resonating with the public the best. To be honest, it's probably all about the Foxconn suicide nets. Nothing makes one look as evil as a slaver, as putting suicide nets outside your factory. Argue your bizarre, and perhaps even correct ethics you want, but that's not going to let up, until I suspect they take down the suicide nets, perhaps after more fully securing all the windows and roof access.

"And above all, no lies. No propaganda. Just the truth, detailing what we do know, what we do not know, and where any potential problems may be."

That is a good sentiment for the long term. But I live on this planet called Earth. And here, we do a lot of lying, a lot of propogandizing, a lot of glossing over what we don't know, and a lot of ignoring problems that can't be solved without sacrificing short term comforts.

My hope, is that the major religions of the world, will go far beyond the roman catholic pope's recent easing of dogmas related to birth control. Such that it becomes politically feasible for richer countries to provide as much contraceptive aid as they do food aid. And that as a result of both of those things, the world population decreases, such that we need less energy, and produce less dangerous nuclear waste (yeah, you could throw something at me for that 'propaganda', but recent history suggests a departure from the safety that scientists can design on paper, and what actually happens in reality (think back to my first paragraph- there is the ideal, and then there is planet earth).

It seems too much to me, that when it comes to energy production and global society, that we are just building up a ponzi scheme, that will come crashing down. And it's all about the desire to have nice, biologically rewarding large families, living with all the modern comforts that cheap energy provides. But the same basic thing is I suspect at play with a heroine addict, preferring the pleasures of the moment, to the long term best interests of those they care about.

I mentioned Invisible Hand, because, yes, I am versed in the theory, though some of the more important writings I may have most recently read 20 years ago in college. Without much certainty, I suspect that if I reviewed the classic texts, that I'd find most express what you expressed, though squarely in the realm where the various actors you mention, are all playing on a level capitalistic/legal field. When you start talking about international trade with key players that still call themselves communist, and actually do run very efficient factories with clearly not so rewarded workers (i.e. call it halfway from the 1st ammendment to slave labor)... then it becomes a different equation. Hence the subject of my comment- that the emphasis on the calculous at hand should be the rules of the playing field, and not the choices made within the rules by any particular players.

Fair labor practices are not something that takes care of itself via an Invisible Hand, be it that of Capitalism or of God. So long as the playing field tells the players that they can outsource slave labor, or even just significantly unfair labor (folks with nothing like 1st ammendment rights), then all players that chose not to do so will quickly lose and cease to exist. The only way to solve the problem (that I'm thinking of right now in full on rhetoric mode) is to have better national standards of who we do business with in the global international trade community. Put standards in place, and make it profitable for international actors to meet the improved standards. But as can be evidenced by opening your eyes in the morning and looking at the world, there will be a lot of political pressure against that path. But hopefully one day the incessant light - fueled by real freedom of speech and the press- shining on exploitive employers/slavers, will cause things to move in the right direction. I hope.

For me it was the Nintendo-DS. Probably the newton came earlier, but I still think the DS w/ 802.11 and enough 3D to do mario64 on a mobile device with all the hardware needed for open source encrypted VoiP calls... But sadly for both of us they are effectively walled software gardens that did not reach their potentials. Both Nintendo and Apple have done ammazingly efficient jobs of stifling the homebrew/end-user-software-developer communities.

Thanks for reminding me of the quote, but I don't think it significantly applies to my thinking in this case (though I certainly considered it for a minute). To the extent there is wisdom in that quote, I would say that it shines a light on our societies failure to produce a crop of 18 year olds that are capable of what 36 year olds (like myself) would consider 'fully informed consent'. And while at 36, I consider myself to have a significant respect for conservatives and conservatism (in the mainstream, actual reality, not idealist sense), for precisely the reason your quote has wisdom in it. But at the same time, I blame that traditional mainstream conservatism in healthy part (always keeping in mind myself and the others have more than enough remove for self-improvement)- for this global cultural failure in producing 18 year olds that in my mind are fully capable of giving 'fully informed consent' for sex/prostitution/pornography/new-car/student-loan/etc serious life decisions.

I guess one way to sum it up for me, is that 18 years ago when I was 18, I think I bought into that "The US does not torture" political BS line. 18 years later, after seeing just how much of our global socioeconomic infrastructure is still entrenched with the realities highlighted by the final debate scene in 'the great debaters', and how those themes of dominance and exploitation trickles down into even the typical mundane arena of ordinary mainstream sexual socialization... Well, I don't think my position (not that I've really expressed a clear one) on this issue boils down to the proverb you quoted. I guess I'll throw this old russian one back at you- "Everything our leaders told us about communism was a lie. Everything they told us about capitalism was the truth."

I think you've reduced your end of this nuanced important discussion of ethics to useless oversimplification. But hey, we were modded the same. The world we live in I guess.

In answer I'll give a thought from a 36 year old on the issue of prostitution that I didn't consider when I was 18. I think of all women(people really), if you polled their opinions at age 36, as to whether or not the average 18 year old is likely to be maturely educated enough to deal fairly intellegently, and with sufficient basis in knowledge and experience, of life and death issues (such as those with the possible undesired/unintended consequence of the creation of a new life), I'd guess many would say- you know, even 18 year olds it's pretty sketchy as to how wise it is to act as if their consent is the same as what we mean in the ideal when we say 'fully informed consent'. And the same goes with the angle of the serious financial transactions of one's life. I.e. I, and I don't think I'm that unusual in this regard, consider myself to have been extremely naive about the fabric of the global economy at even the age of 18. All I'm really saying with this long winded comment is to take the next steps of your hypothetical journey into kids(or even naive young 'adults') consenting when there is significant $$ changing hands during the same event.

This is the real reason I bothered to reply. Kudos for make me laugh, at a scenario that my hypothetical ex-libertarian but still philosophizing mind hadn't ever considered.

Good for that guy getting the bad guy, but seriously this is hardly a new topic. This is just the pedophilia/privacy/anonymouscommunication/terrorism debate that has been squarely on the table in clear current TOR-level terms for a decade. What happened was the governments and cultures have seemed to just ignore it, with things like warrantless data dragnets and the USA PATRIOT Act, de-facto stating the global unwritten rules of the game. I.e. governments don't believe in citizens right to secure communications with the internet. Or that's how I see it.

And this pretty much has to be dictated by law, and it is another of these elephants in the room that have at the same time both been ignored and acknowledged in some inexplicably orwellian way. I.e. the expectation of culpability for running an open 802.11b router connected to your home ISP. I.e. clearly you are not culpable for the content, unless you monitor and become aware of it. But we see the slashdot trickle of laws trying to outlaw that. I'm torn between thinking it's the undecided issue of our age, or if the infrastructural power structures in place just decided it long ago, and any public democratic debate is so obviously unenforceable against the wishes of the elite establishment, that the mainstream hasn't bothered to have the debate. Eh... But I quoted your point because, if the public debate was to happen, and to matter, that is a core decision point (and yes, I know about common carrier laws in the US, but just like journalistic laws, we are in an undefined place where overnight, each individual on the planet has nearly been empowered to be both a journalist and a common carrier, and thwarting that causes a lot of people with a lot of power, to keep their power longer).

But doesn't the problem also include the Israeli's religious attachment to the same lands? If the Israeli's, the victims of the hypothetical acts you characterize as evil, believed the acts were evil for the same reasons you do, would simply pack their things, and move somewhere else. In the scheme of places with religious significance to humans, I think that particular acre, and surrounds, pretty much rank at the top. The only reason a sane tribe would try to live in that particular spot, is _due to the religious significance_. That, or one hell of a penchant for trolling other religious believers.

I'm a christian, though one without tremendous faith in my ability to interpret, or even be informed correctly about such geo-spatial correlations subject to translational errors and bitrot as those in question here. I.e. I'm pretty sure the LDS folks have radically different beliefs about those geo-spatial correlations. As such, I'm really pretty content that, amongst our global ecosystem of dog-eat-dog humanity, that the people with such religious passion and fervor have a kind of arena over there to duke it out. I suppose that's got the same flavor of cynicism as the belief that after 9/11, there was no way a U.S. leader could have possibly controlled the irrational backlash of domestic vengeance against a strategically disasterous amount of collateral damage in the middle east. I.e, God only knows what the gitmo and abu ghraib perpetrators would have done domestically if the wars hadn't been started. I dunno, random thoughts that have been percolating in one Christian's head for a decade. Maybe more access to street fighter 4, and other virtual combat might be enough to vent the rage to kill that I suspect all of us have burning within us, in a world where we haven't a choice but to fight and kill for food, and sadly, other material items.