So many people have iphones and and they are fantastic things, but do we "deserve" to get them so cheap, when the low price is determined by near slavery of the factory workers making them? They are not essential devices for most suburban dwellers and we'd probably be better off excercising our brains more not less. There's no good reason why we can't learn to find our way across town by using our map reading skills or memory, rather than satellite guidance for instance.

Has western culture moved on from the days when Africans were transported as slaves? I don't think so. Instead, we tolerate slavery abroad because its convenient for our sense of injustice to halt at our national border.

Have you any thoughts about modern day slavery? If so I'd like to hear them.

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/tec ... 3756035431

http://annares.wordpress.com/2010/05/09 ... -sickness/

As one who has a simple phone that I carry because of family pressure and never switch on, except to check the time or to make a call, I would not kill for an i-phone although I might be tempted to kill an i-phone.

Are you willing to kill to impose your standards on others?

Please explain.

You impose your standards, which exist in the relative luxury of the U.S., on poor people trying to get ahead and they lose their jobs. Their children starve.

When I was young I got a job in a factory that had relocated from a rich area to a poor area specifically to find people who wanted to work and were willing to work and for less money. I was very glad to have a job. I was making very good wages for my area. The people in the rich area, who were having to find new employment, hated me. I was still young but most of the men I worked with had wives and children and the job meant even more to them. So, assume the disgruntled workers in the rich area got a successful boycott on the products and our plant closed. Would you have felt good about that?

A few years later, I had a wife and two children. I still worked in a relatively poor area. I saw what unionized auto workers in the rich area were making for doing simple, repetitive jobs on assembly lines and was amazed. I thought it was crazy. Well, it turns out, I was right. That rich area is now referred to as the Rust Belt. The industry is gone. There are no jobs. And, the welfare state that was funded by those industries is now hitting the poor people harder and harder to maintain the system.

So, in the Iphone example, are you willing to risk sending those people back to subsistence farming where their children can slowly starve or live with the legacy of infant malnutrition?

The news articles included in the original post were about the health issues of iphone workers.

They had been required to use a chemical to clean the screens that was a severe health hazard. Several workers had been committing suicide because of the work conditions.

I know that people have low wages in some places and I don't have a problem with that or child labour either, but I think inhumane conditions such as those described in this case are unacceptable.

Yet another iphone worker has jumped out of the window, now a total of nine workers have died, where the devices are made in Taiwan, not China as I had wrongly assumed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/asia_p ... 137101.stm

The management has come up with a solution to the problem of their employees horribly frequent suicides.
New workers are required to sign a pledge not to kill themselves. As a second precaution nets have been placed outside the windows.

Its a crazy world all right.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/techno ... utostart=1

I might not kill for an iPhone, but I would probably kill for an iPad, and would undoubtedly kill for a Mac laptop or desktop. Provided, of course, I would never be caught and convicted of the murder.

I just killed a post on iphones that sneaked in a link to a toy seller

Christine

I don't have a mobile much less an Iphone. They aren't permitted in the facility I work in. Many of the other places I frequent for work don't permit phones with cameras. Personally, when I leave the house I don't want people to be able to get in touch with me. I wish I had a beanbag or potato cannon for my ute so that I could should the vehicles of people I see driving and talking or texting on a phone.

I wouldn't kill for an iPhone, but I'd like to be able to take action against those who use them to the endangerment of others.

I have a very basic phone that I leave switched off, this has the advantages that no one can ring me and the battery stays charged; i have the phone for my convenience. The younger generation cannot understand my attitude to phones but having lived for a time when I was in almost constant wireless contact i value my privacy.

On people using phones while driving I doubt that it is a real problem as I've seen hundreds of people doing just that, in India, and there doesn't seem to be a problem.