'This American Life' Retracts Mike Daisey Story About Foxconn Factory Visit

Is the entire progressive Empire imploding?

Did not watch the Daisey broadcast ,and I'll not make excuses for such fabrication of an expose. However ,I have read so many other independent reports about the conditions at Foxconn to believe that conditions there are terrible compared to our standards... but not necessarily as bad as other places in Shenzhen or other 3rd world factories .

Conditions there began to receive international attention last year when there were a series of suicides at the compound in 2010 ;and the threat by about 150 workers to commit mass suicide last year.
Because of the size of the compound ,that would seem like a lot of workers .But ,is it really out of the national norm ? Unknown..

No doubt by our standards ,the workers are 'exploited ' .But is it possible that Foxconn is the gold standard compared to the rest of the PRC ? Unknown.

Most likely Daisey attempted to link conditions there to Western and American greed and desire to get cheap consumer products. That may be a fair point. If workers there were paid western standards ,would the cost carried over to the price of the product reduce consumer demands for the products built at Foxconn ? Probably... then the workers there could move back to their previous rural existence they were trying to escape from when they migrated to Shenzhen . Call it a return to the Cultural Revolution .

I don't have answers . Over time I presume worker conditions will improve there ;robotics will take over many of the functions that are performed by manual labor now .Many of the workers will be displaced ,and some will get the skills needed to thrive . Meanwhile other nations will be the focus of the cheap labor controversy.

As for NPR... well ,as a rule , I'm uncomfortable with state run news content . Most of the shows that are successful on NPR would also be successful on commercial broadcasting networks . So NPR exists to underwrite ,with our tax dollars ,shows that would not make it on commercial networks . Given the fact that NPR's shows are frequently also underwritten by those 'evil' corporations makes me think that there really is no need for public subsidized broadcasting .

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Originally Posted by Beardedsumo

Is the entire progressive Empire imploding?

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Hello sumo:

Posting a bumper sticker and expecting a discussion to break out, doesn't happen around here much... But, knock yourself out.

excon