Saturday, January 28, 2012

The Cost of What We Value



The New York Times authors Charles Duhigg and David Barboza presented a series of articles recently showing just how much our love of Apple products such as the iPad cost to get that patented blitz to market and up to the famous Apple standards.

It was President Roosevelt who said "Goods produced under conditions under conditions which do not meet a rudimentary standard of decency should be regarded as contraband, not to pollute channels of commerce."

It's a paraphrase, but even 70 years ago people were grappling with the question 'is this good worth the cost to my fellow human beings?' Over time, I think the answer always becomes no. We are human, I don't think as a species we can escape our hardwired instinct to feel empathy for the living conditions of others. It's how we took cooperation as a species to a whole 'nother level. Golden Rule and all...

But I like my iPad, so some goods take longer to get to 'no' than others. Again, because we're human.

UPDATE:

CEO Tim Cook of Apple has issued a statement defending Apple after the NY Times' series. Whatever you believe about Apple and whatever you believe about the statement, there are two things I take away from this:

  1. People today cannot avoid the actual costs of what they value to the degree that we used to. There are just too many avenues for information to get to us. 
  2. Apple was forced to respond quickly, and (whatever you think of the timetable) they'll have to mitigate this issue in the long run. There is a feedback system, and businesses respond to it at a pace unmantched by previous generations.

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