Commentary: Morality versus Incentives

Photo from Gizmodo.com

I don't follow much news these days, at least I don't feel like I do. I'm sure more headlines make it through my buffer zone than I intend and lately one of the stories that seems to be continually in front of me is the very sad case of multiple suicides (and even more suicide attempts) by wage laborers in the Chinese factory known as Foxconn.

Foxconn is located in Shenzhen which is less than 1 hour from where we used to live in Tin Shui Wai, Hong Kong. A side fact: Shenzhen is where most Walt Disney World company paraphernalia is produced. And now I have come to realize that many Apple products such as the iPhone, iPad and iPod are produced there as well. It is unfathomable that this Foxconn company employs 400,000 people (nearly 10 times the population of the entire city that I live in), and that the facility operates 24/7.

To be completely honest: I'd really like to have an Apple iPhone. Although I'm sure once I start pricing monthly plans I won't want one as much, but they are an incredibly neat and handy device, not to mention well designed. Nonetheless I have been confronted with the reality lately that in so many ways I often support the very paradigms and institutions that in my gut - I stand wholeheartedly against.

Why is that I wonder?

In fact - how many ideals and paradigms do I support because the incentives are good for me and at the same time condemn these same ideals and paradigms in my morality? Let me see: the 40 hour work week, guilt tripping as motivation, consumer debt, the meat industry (actually we're pretty good at not supporting that one - being vegetarians and all), shame slinging, and judging by appearance just to name a few.

There is a chasm between the morality I wish to uphold and the incentives that drive my decision making. It was easier to take loans for college than to work my way though. I want and iPhone to support my life style so why should I care who in Shenzhen made it and what their state of living is?

One of the first ironies that come to mind is the comparison between who is being sold these high-tech devices and who is making them. Foxconn hires young adults generally between the ages of 20-30 (my age) to make the gadgets that I want to consume. Interesting.

Have you ever tried to remove yourself from the momentum of a social trend that you are very much a part of but are increasingly aware of its detrements? It is enourmously difficult. Like swimming against an undertow.

Growing up in Florida I can remember going to the beach as a child with my family, and as I would venture into the oceans waves to swim and play my parents would call out, "don't go too far - you'll get caught in the undertow." For me the undertow was always really hard to define becuase I would never notice it until it was too late. I was lucky that the undertow never dragged me deep into the sea, but what it would do is move me farther and farther down the beach as I tried to swim against it. So even though I was not getting totally dragged out to sea and beyond, I was being moved little by little farther from my starting point, or the place my parents had set up camp on the beach. The movements of social culture seem to be strangely similar.

All that to say: I find the situation in Foxconn to be incredibly tragic. It is unfortunate that such a high cost is associated with such neat devices. It seems to me that the social context of our economic incentives and morality will always be as invisible, deceptive and powerful as an undertow.