Apparently there is some company called Foxconn who runs some factories where consumer electronics are built. They make products for iPod, iPhone, iPad, Mac Mini, Xbox, Wii, and most crappy PC computers. Even though ur really happy when u open up a new gadget toy, u don't realize that it was made in some 3rd world country by some uneducated ppl. I guess these people have 'human needs' and want to be rich + happy like every1 else. Guess they weren't really happy working long hours for minimal wages, so they started to 'off themselves', then the company got mad because they had to pay a bunch of money to their families when they killed themselves.

Last week, the Chinese media got hold of a contract that the electronics manufacturing company Foxconn recently asked its workers to sign. Call it a non-suicide pact—"I will not harm myself or others," they were asked to declare. The contract directed employees who are troubled by work and life to reach out to relatives or to call Foxconn's "worker care center." The letter also stipulated that from here on out, Foxconn would not be liable to pay damages to the families of suicide victims. The clause sparked outrage in the Chinese media because, according to news reports, Foxconn currently pays out about $16,000 to families of workers who kill themselves. That amounts to about 10 years of the minimum salary at a Foxconn plant—10 years of what is by all accounts a physically and psychologically brutal job of putting together products for Apple, Dell, HP, Microsoft, Nintendo, and other electronics companies.

It seems like Foxconn employees are performing suicides on business grounds, just to make sure that their loved ones get paid, or to serve as some sort of 'larger metaphor' for being trapped in society / poverty:

Foxconn exployees are killing themselves in the most gruesomely public way: Nearly all of them have died by jumping from tall buildings on Foxconn's campus.

Sorta wish I was just a poor AZN, and had all of my troubles taken care of for me on a huge business campus where I could chill with all of my AZN bros as we 'slaved away all day.'

Foxconn's factories operate like dystopian cities—the campuses house tens or hundreds of thousands of workers each, and everything that they need is provided by the company. Most employees are in their late teens or early 20s, and many are migrants from rural China. All kinds of social problems can arise in these close quarters, Foxconn points out: romantic troubles, homesickness, substance abuse, financial worries. The company says it's those realities of life, not the conditions in the company's factories, that have led to the deaths of its workers.

Feel like I want to work at Foxconn. Maybe because I have white skin, and come from the West, I will be on the fast track 2 middle management. Just sorta want to get an internship as an 'AZN slave herder', whipping AZNs as they put together iPods and webcams.

Do u think they can find a way to have robots make these products so that less people die?
Do u ever wonder 'where my Macbook came from' or are u too busy browsing the net to think about that type of stuff?
Do factory workers have rights, or should they just 'be happy that they are able to earn a few pennies' since we are in a recession?
Do u think u would 'off urself' if u worked at a factory that put together iPads because u would never be able to afford an iPad?
Should we think more about technology manufacturing's impact on the Third World, or should we just continue praying to our Lord Savior Jesus Christ about being from the white, Western World where we have 3G networks 2 use out buzz gadgets?