After reading and discussing the articles by Johnson and Sample and listening to the audio of Daisey’s interview on This American Life in class today; I was given the impression that while we admit the conditions of the Foxconn factory are dismal they are still better off than most of the people that live and work in China. This seems sensible and logical if we look at the situation from a as a whole, however it is impossible to do so.

We all have, use and benefit from the devices that factories, like Foxconn, make and distribute. As fellow classmate and friend Kole Reddig mentions in his post about the assigned readings, “…Johnson, Sample, Daisey, and Phone Story don’t mention the enormous benefit that consumers of smartphones experience.” This absence from the assigned readings illustrates an obvious bias towards viewpoint that what Foxconn does is evil.

I do not believe Foxconn is evil, but I also don’t believe it is fair for us to compare on part of the process of creating a smart phone to another. We cannot compare the people who design and sell the phones as Reddig states in his comment, “The people who design smartphones, write the software for smartphones, and market smartphones certainly have happier stories than the workers at Foxconn.” While I agree with what Kole is stating here, we cannot compare one section of the “phone story” with another. Of course the people who live here in the U.S., who design, write the software, and sell the phones are going to be happier than those that make the device. The factory conditions and regulations are completely different in China than the U.S. However, when we look at just Chinese conditions the Foxconn factory is actually pretty nice.

So while I am not for the conditions they might work in, Foxconn is a step in the right direction for China. They may not meet our standards yet, but if they continue on the path they are on they will someday. In the end, we cannnot compare the different “chapters” in a “phone story” to one another. They are all really separate and individual stories that should be observed and criticized under the regulations and conditions that surround them. I may not like how my phone is made, but I realize that no action I take here in the U.S. is going to change the laws that govern how badly the workers are treated in a factory in another country.