This Exploitive Life

Things are rarely black and white (Apart from Panda Bears and Yinyang symbols). There is a degree of nuance in everything, as NPR reminded me this morning. It's always better to try to get the entire story before acting on a piece of the story that grips your emotions and temporarily drives you to thoughts of eternal activism. I'll give you an example.

I listened to This American Life during my morning locutions today. The narrator was, from what I understand, a sort of self-employed investigative journalist. I missed the introduction, so I'm not certain how precise that characterization is. He recounted his experiences traveling around China and visiting the large factories where most of the components in our laptops and cellphones come from. In short, I got very indignant very quickly. The stories he told of the working conditions and other such topics were so upsetting that I wanted to write and submit an op-ed to the paper calling for everyone to boycott Apple's products (for all the good something like that would do). 16 + hour days, 13-year-olds working on the lines, a cheap and abundant labor force keeping workers from having the leverage to change anything, systemic fraud a part of all the external audit safeguards, it was all so depressing that I lost even more of what little faith I have in the human race. Why is it our inclination to get what we want through exploitation first rather than through fairness and humanity? I guess because those tendencies led our species to survive in the past, and brought us to where we are today. Are we okay with these things? I'm not certain. Some of us are. For some of us, it's the only we know how to get by.

Once the investigative journalist finished his story, I very nearly went straight to my computer to write a scathing blurb denouncing electronics companies, libertarians, and probably also the very nature of our society. I'm glad I didn't (and not just because I briefly forgot my hypothesis that these kinds of problems arise neither from the private sector nor the government, but rather from a certain kind of human being who is apparently pretty ubiquitous in our world). Instead, I continued listening. I learned the following:

Apple releases numerous, publicly-available reports describing the great lengths that Apple takes to maintain transparency in their supply chains. They contract independent auditors to check up on their suppliers overseas, and work with their suppliers to fix "bad" working conditions. They provide mental health counselors. They try to avert under-age working and force suppliers they catch employing children to send the children back to school and pay for their education. According to Apple, if things are bad enough and the supplier isn't responsive to Apple's requirements, Apple drops them.

Some of my faith in humanity returned once I learned these things. Does Apple do as good a job as we would like? Probably not. Is this their fault, not entirely. Many consumers don't know (and a small percentage probably don't actually care) about poverty-stricken workers in China dying from exhaustion on the job as they try to make our iphones and laptops. Part of me suspects that even if these problems were common knowledge in the States, our society is so dependent on the technologies and the exploitive systems on which their production relies that we may not stop buying the products anyway. Maybe that's not true. Companies like Apple are at least making effort, and I think they deserve credit for that. Although I think that the person who has the power to stop someone from mugging someone else but who instead just stands by and watches bears some of the responsibility for the crime, I'm more interested in why the crime needs to happen at all. Maybe we see a part of ourselves in the mugger. We can imagine being driven to such extremes by a few consecutive strokes of really bad luck. I may not agree with most of Ayn Rand's theories on how we should act and behave, but I think her observation that we are driven only by self-interested is perfectly accurate.

One last thought before I ramble too far. Thinking about the people and systems that let the story of Chinese factories happen reminded me of the lunch line in middle school, and the dynamics of cutting in line. I was not one of the lucky popular kids in middle school. I also had a strong inclination to follow the rules (don't cut in line). But, there was a limited number of the good non-school pizza slices. Everyone knew this. Often though, I would wait my turn in line, and hope there was pizza left. What usually happened was that other people would cut the line and get the last of the pizza. Terrible feeling. No one REALLY monitored the line, and the lunch ladies only selectively tried to keep people from cutting (which led to some very unfair situations). The whole system taught me at that age that there was no point in following the rules, and furthermore, you usually would get burned if you did. So I thought maybe I'd try cutting. It didn't work. All the popular kids who cut the line all the time, and who you couldn't call out on these things, would make a huge scene if they saw you trying to cut AND they would get the lunch ladies to put you at the end of the line. But they cut the line to stand with each other every day.

I didn't know what hypocrisy was at that age. All I felt was the crushing injustice of it, and my complete impotence to do anything about it. But you know what? I still wanted to be one of them. If I had been at that age, I'm pretty sure I would have done the exact same thing, even just to fit in. It's a startling realization, that I might not be all that different, or at least in middle school I wouldn't have been. I think the same kind of dynamic is at work in all places where people ignore the rules and take advantage of the system. We're wired to take advantage when we can, and to do everything we can to maintain the advantage. I can think of no other way to get past this than by having an incorruptible enforcement mechanism, but no such thing exists. What is the solution? I have no idea.