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0 pointshunterb1233y ago0 comments

So OP can't shame Apple for this moral behavior because others buy Apple's product?

Would you apply that same standard and does it hold up to other scenarios?

If people were buying textile products from the slave trade, would you say "perhaps" when other (or the same) people shamed those industries for supporting slave labor?

If people were buying nuts and fruit from exploited migrant workers, would you still be able to shame the industries for better conditions or to hire minimal wage workers?

If people were buying cobalt or lithium mined from child slaves would you be able to shame those industries into sourcing minerals in a more humane way even though people buy EVs?

Or because people bought those products those companies/industries have immunity from criticism?

You cannot avoid products made in China because of the current status quo for the same reasons you couldn't avoid textiles made with slave cotton.

That doesn't mean you can't advocate change to the status quo.

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bell-cot3y ago

OP is free to say "Shame on Apple", boycott Apple, and publicly pray for the gods to smite Apple from On High. If OP's actual interest is in discouraging such corporate behavior, then only the second of those options seems likely to accomplish anything.

Re: Cotton - even if every ill-treated cotton worker suddenly became a well-treated union member, there's still the huge moral problem of how much of the Earth's scarce fresh water and farmland are devoted to growing cotton - when millions of poor people face grim shortages of food and safe water. I admit that being an old geezer makes it easier, but my approach is to buy far fewer new clothes & textile products than the average American. That strategy completely fails to grant me 100% moral purity on the issue. OTOH, it does far more good than fashionable kids decrying the deplorable status quo.

hunterb123OP3y ago

First, my reply was to your retort of "perhaps" to GP's shaming of Apple. It's not perhaps, they should be shamed.

Second, I was talking about the textile industry both in the past and today, ie: the transatlantic slave trade and Ughyur slave labor in China today.

Sometimes you can't boycott because the entire industry is doing the morally corrupt thing.

I and many people I know avoid Chinese products, but sometimes it's impossible. At the same time we can also voice our concern.

There's not much a normal person can do other than boycott and protest, and I'm suggesting both. You're suggesting only one.

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