In a story apparently prompted by my posts (ha!), Newsweek printed the following
"Robber Barons of Silicon Valley" story:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newswee...on-valley.html
It's a good article, pointing out the historical parallels between some of today's companies with many aspects of their businesses not regulated, and robber barons of the past. The article does not single out Apple. It has plenty to say about others as well, including even those who put "Do no Evil" in their corporate mission statements. However, this is pertinent to the Apple discussion:
"Take Apple’s manufacturing practices in China. By systematically outsourcing the assembly of iPhones and other gadgets to contract manufacturers like China’s Foxconn, Apple has shaved its overall cost of production and plumped profit margins for shareholders. That’s neither unique nor necessarily evil. It’s a practice regularly adopted by toymakers, chemical producers, and food packagers, not to mention most of the rest of the consumer-electronics industry. But establishing an arm’s-length commercial relationship does not absolve a company from moral responsibility for the way its chosen partners treat workers.
Nike taught American business leaders this lesson more than a decade ago when its use of far-flung suppliers employing children in sweatshops became a public-relations debacle. Although Apple has a code of conduct for suppliers, audits them, and has published summaries of the results for several years, the company resisted more-direct scrutiny until recently. Labor issues at Foxconn’s sprawling 230,000-worker complex in Shenzhen have attracted bad press for some time. It was not until that negative publicity spread from the relative obscurity of Mike Daisey’s off-Broadway monologue, The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, to the front page of The New York Times and then to broadcast networks that Apple took more-meaningful action, allowing the Fair Labor Association to conduct special audits of its suppliers’ factories in China."