Mr Daisey and the Apple Factory

Mr Daisey and the Apple Factory Response

    It may be a well-known fact that nearly everything we consume is manufactured in Asia, but it is obviously still something that is not talked about enough. Why is it that the average North American doesn’t know the the city of Shenzhen as the place where most of their technology is produced? Why are we so shocked when we hear about the dreadful conditions of the workplace in cities like this? Maybe if the subject was breached more often and talked about as earnestly as  Mike Daisey does, we would be more educated about this issue and  would be more resolved to put an end to it.
     Mike Daisey presents this subject to his audience is in such a way that it forces us to look critically at mass production, our purchasing power and to reconsider some of the notions we have about where our material goods come from. He fully engages the audience with his very personal experiences of traveling to manufacturing plants in China, and learning more about the lives of the workers. Daisey is witty, astute and yet very earnest when talking about this weighty topic. He appeals to our sense of humor and yet still manages to convey the import of this subject.
    Like Daisey, I love the suave simplicity of apple products, and, also like Daisey, when I found out a couple years ago that they were made in China, I was disappointed in a company I previously held in such high esteem. It was moving to hear about Mike Daisey’s experiences actually visiting the people who make these everyday items. Though this subject was not new to me, it served as an important reminder for an issue which we tend to forget about too easily.
    This article is especially relevant, with China rising as the next superpower, and most of the western world relying on it for cheap labour. All too often we fail to question where items we consume everyday come from, what conditions or chemicals they’ve been exposed to, and how their production has effected the environment and the people who make them. We need to curb our greed and the idea that the possession of more material objects makes our life better. People need to be more willing to pay for legal labour that produces quality, as well as fair conditions for workers. Companies need to be more strict when they outsource labour, and not allow worker’s rights to be violated. Like us, perhaps companies like Apple simply skim over the details and easily forget that there are factories such as those in Shenzhen in their employ. But  ‘forgetting’ doesn’t seem like a good enough excuse. Not many people could do what Mike Daisey did and actually pursue this issue to its source. 
    As human beings we are usually too wrapped up in our own individual lives to give much though to the lives of people who we’ve never met. There is nothing wrong with this, however I think we should take the time to consider how our relatively rich, democratic, western lifestyle is made possible by cheap child labour and corruption, and that we must try to change this.