Xbox360 vs PS3 ( the big choice!! )

Yeah I heard that. When I was younger I was one of those kids who thought Twinkies would last through a neclear war. I've never liked those little yellow bastards anyway. Too spongy.

Wow. This conversation feels so shallow now, when compared to sweatshops and such.
 
Darth_Jonas said:
The ornery part was more of a generalization of how you present your points. The morality comes from the type of labor they do utilize. Sure it isn't quite as bad as a sweatshop, but it is still exploiting poor people. I've seen the inside of a Mexican Freightliner factory. Sure the machines are still good and the air cleaner around the important stuff, but the general quality of the employees reminds me of what happened here in America before we had child labor and labor laws. It isn't exactly a sweatshop, but it isn't far.

I think Freightliner is a bit different than manufacturing electronics. Still, I don't have anything solid to back this up, so if you do it'd be nice to see it. remember, we're talking about components that have to be assembled under tightly controlled conditions, and this is fairly highly skilled labor.

You'll also find that in some instances, when international companies go to a developing country for labor, they actualy treat the laboroers quite well. Volkswagen, for example, pays the workers in their Mexico factory more than three times the average wage* in that country. It turns out that even at that level, the labor is still cheaper than it would be in America or Europe, they attract and retain quality workers, and the workers are able to live at a high quality of life. Everyone wins.
*Actually it may be more than that; after a little searching, the numbers I found were that VW pays it's Puebla workers $10-$25 per day and the average wage in mexico is something like $20-$30 a week.

I guess what I'm really getting at is that the tone of your post made it sound like you knew what the conditions are at the plant(s) that manufacture the 360. if you do, feel free to share with us so we know what we're talking about. if you don't, then we can't really discuss the issue in a realistic way.
 
I've not visited the microsoft factory myself, and you are absolutely correct about how it has to be a sterile environment. No argument there. Much of Freightliner's production has to be done under controlled conditions as well. The part I find shady is that even though they give the foreign workers more than they would have earned at almost any other job in their native country, it is still much less than they would pay American workers. If looked at from the business standpoint, it is more profitable for the company if you do it overseas. From the standpoint of equality (treating someone in a foreign country with the same priviledges and pay as an American), then in a sense, you are giving a starving man a piece of moldy bread and feeling good about yourself.

It also irks me that some companies (like the one I work for) like to take their customer service and tech support over to India. Our facility there is great, but a coworker that went over to help setup a project that moved there said the people still live in squallor.
 
Ok, Jonas, here's the thing. Let's just say, hypothetically, that the whole world deals in American money. America, I think, has 1.5 trillion dollars, China has about 1.5 trillian, Russia has about 1 trillion, France would have about .7 trillion, Mexico would have about .5 trillion, and lets say that this developing nation in Central America has 20 BILLION. So, lets say that the average salary in America is about $50000, which would give him about .000000003% of America's total about of money. Lets say that the developing nation worker gets paid 500 a year, which would be about .000000003% of their total money. Now, lets say the company paid their workers 50000 a year, like their American workers. That would cause an INCREDIBLE amount of inflation, which would pretty much cause them to go into a depression that would make the 1930s look like the Great Gatsby.

THAT is why they only pay the workers such a small amount of money. What would buy a moldy piece of bread in America would be a down payment on a car somewhere else.
 
wow. Now that's some math. Here's a question: Hypothetically, let's say you own a big business (or perhaps you do already). Would you open a cheaper plant outside the US, or would you keep it in the States?
 
Darth it's a tough issue. Like I said, I don't know if this applies to the 360, I haven't heard anything about how they treat or pay their workers.

But no country can be economically islolated. It's a recipe for negative growth and disaster. We are in a globalized economy, and that means that some of the prodiucts we use will rely, in part or in whole, on foriegn labor. Part of the issue is that our standards of living in the U.S. are extremely high, and maintaining them requires both high quality products and high wages. In order to keep prices at a tolerable level, it's practically impossible to maintain those high wages and keep lower prices. If your labor is also your consumer, how do you make a profit? Hell, people already complain that $400 is a lot for a 360, what if it ere $800 or $1000 or more because the manufacturer has to pay high U.S. wages?

The U.S. is icnreasingly becoming an employer of service labor rather than production labor simply because it's difficult to outsource service to places where labor is cheap. It's hard to send production of pizzas at the corner shop to India.

On the other hand, you could look at the ways businesses are running things. The U.S. has the highest CEO-worker wage rate gap in the world. The average CEO:laborer wage is over 400:1 in the U.S. In Japan, for example, it's under 50:1. Look at it this way, it seems like either wages are artificiallay low or prices are artificially high. Of course mentioning this at all will make some people plug their ears and scream "class warfare!" at you.

It's an extremely, extremely complex subject and it's very difficult to just say that one practice is wrong or right. We enjoy low prices on a variety of products because of the low wages companies can pay to foriegn workers. If all foriegn labor were paid U.S. rates, we'd be paying many times what we now pay for simple products, like clothes. That t-shirt at Wal-Mart for $5? Try $50. Electronics prices would be through the roof. In a way, we're very spoiled by this wage inequality. It's hard to say what's "right", but there are minimum standards. I don't think being paid a U.S. wage is necessarily part of those standards, but I could probably be convinced.
 
My market analysts here at work (aka, stock market dabblers and Bill Gates wannabees) just said pretty much the same thing. Some are accountants, and they pointed out the huge gap between CEO and worker paychecks. It is speculated that as this gets larger, another thing may offset it, and that is the rapid growth of entrepeneurs. Where the middle class is shrinking in some aspects, it's growing in others. Which is why companies like UPS and EDS (they do data systems) have been courting small businesses. And the standards for business ethics have long since been cloudy.

The complexity of it all is too overwhelming for me, so I will bow out on this one (after I've gotten your very good thoughts). I do wonder, though. What do other countries do? Places like Japan that have rebuilt their economy into a power house?
 
The way Japan made their money was rooted in the car and electronic companies that popped up in the 60s. They payed millions to build the plants, then they actually sold their products DEEPLY under the MSRP of other companies in America, which made them lose millions, and put out the highest quality product possible (while Ford and ESPECIALLY Chevrolet were putting out a wimpy, delicate car). They kept this up for a few years until many of the American companies closed up, and then they had a shared monopoly (more or less), and then readjusted their prices to normal, then raked in more and more profit from their expanding customer base that were drawn in because of references. THAT is how Mitsubishi, Sanyo, Suzuki, Yamaha, Toyota, among others became big.
 
What kind of government do they have? I never hear anything about it except for the emperor, and I think he's more of a figurehead. I never learned that part when I was taking Japanese in college. We focused on the language and culture.