There’s been a lot of press this past week about Foxconn, the Taiwanese company whose Chinese factories produce iPads, iPhones and many other high-end consumer electronics. The New York Times and This American Life rightly highlight working conditions, and problematic trade issues. 

“The reality is that Apple, adhering to a sound business model, strives to make the best products possible at a quality level that is second to none. Unfortunately, the workforce and infrastructure in the United States is not up to the task.”

Adam Clampitt, Made in the USA: It’s More Complex Than You Think

Apple’s business model is no surprise and no secret. It relies on an imbalance of value, of material, of labor standards, and, yes, of human expectations. In essence, it is the business model of roughly the past 2000 years of trade.

Trade on the Silk Road began in the Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) and created some of the most successful cities and empires of the ancient world. Despite the name, the Silk Road was not about silk. It was about goods being brought from one end of the world to the other, across continents, cultures, and value systems. Fabrics, spices, medicines and tools were manufactured in one place where they were relatively abundant and cheaply produced and brought to other places where they were not. 

What we see with Foxconn, and with the lurking and enormous problem of manufacturing goods in the USA, is the inevitable trajectory of a system which makes the world much smaller and infinitely more connected.

When I was a child, my family took a vacation to eastern Pennsylvania. For me this was a trip to Hershey’s Chocolate World, where I had fantasies of diving into natural lakes of chocolate alá Augustus Gloop. But there was another part of the trip, which probably made my chocolate induced hyperactivity a little more excusable for the adults involved. We stopped in Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, outside of Wilkes Barre to see where my grandmother, then in her 60s, grew up. 

She always spoke excitedly about riding the Mauch Chunk Switchback Gravity Railroad. If you’re into trivia, you’ll want to know that it was built in 1827, and it’s considered the first “roller coaster” in the US. Actually, it was built to be an innovative way to shuttle coal from the mines of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company to the Lehigh Canal, where it would be shipped off to the rest of the country, to warm houses in New York, run steam trains to the Dakotas, and power the steel industry in Pittsburgh. Coal, and the things it ran, were the microprocessors and iPads of the day.

When we arrived in Jim Thorpe (the modern, de-natived name for Mauch Chunk), I remember driving around for a long time. It’s not a big place but my grandmother couldn’t quite figure out where the house used to be. It was a long time ago, it was all gone. We asked, “Well, what was the address?” She answered, “Mine 7”. Needless to say, Mine 7 was no longer the name of anything there. You see, all of her family worked in the coal mines, almost as soon as they could hold a shovel. Because women were ‘not suited’ for mine work she was able to stay in school until eighth grade, longer than any of her brothers. It was a town of immigrants and cheap labor and the ones that weren’t killed in accidents eventually got what they called “the black lung.” They worked in appalling conditions, lived at their workplace, and owed their paycheck to the company store.

The point that I’m trying to make, is that nothing has changed. Some day, the workers at Foxconn will have just as difficult of a time pointing out “Dormitory 82” as my grandmother did finding “Mine 7.” The thing that has changed are our expectations of humanity, our understanding of human rights, and our global interconnectedness. Those three things are at odds with the 2000 year old system that relies on imbalances in values and standards. They will not let the old model of a free market stand much longer.

I am not an opponent of the free market, or of capitalism, but I believe the current system is breaking down in ways that may not be fixable. We are all going to need to come up with new ways of thinking, and set new standards and expectations if we are hoping to thrive in this increasingly connected world economy. I don’t know what the answer is, but I know we’ll need to figure it out sooner than later.

Gabe Scelta is the Innovation Director at Ethicodes and Research Associate at theEthiopian Global Initiative. A fellow at the Emerge Venture Lab, Gabe’s deep knowledge of the technology industry keeps Ethicodes pushing the frontiers of the fair trade industry. He holds a master’s degree from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and a bachelor’s degree from Boston University. He lives in New York City.

Related articles

• The Cost of Doing Business: Foxconn, Apple, and the Fate of the Modern Worker (readwriteweb.com)
• Apple-Foxconn tale goes well beyond Apple, and tech (news.cnet.com)
• How iPad Demand Led to Last Year’s Deadly Foxconn Explosion [Foxconn] (gizmodo.com)