Today, in my purely masochistic Thomas Friedman reading ritual, I followed a link to a long (and well written) article called "Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class," that I recommend to you because of the truth that it quietly reveals:

Outsourcing is less about finding skills that don't exist in America anymore than it is about finding depravities that are no longer tolerated by Americans.  Oh, yes, the many Apple executives and industry observers quoted in the article do make some claims about the vast number of engineers available for work in China, but what Apple's executive really love is the "flexibility" of the factories that they can employ in China and other low wage markets dominated by companies like Foxconn.

"A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day."

The workers live in dorms.  They can be woken up and sent to the line at any time by management.  They make, the article later reveals, an average $17 a day.  They also recreate on their factory campuses, smoking and drinking tea in Foxconn sanctioned (or owned, it isn't clear) tea houses.

If these workers were food animals in the U.S. they wouldn't qualify as certified organic.  They certainly aren't free range.  It's hard to tell if these people are free at all.  When does somebody working a 12 hour shift, six days a week, living with co-workers and at the beck and call of their managers even while sleeping, find time for personal pursuits.  The answer, of course, is that they don't and U.S. outsourcer would probably file "personal pursuits" under "first world problems" and dismiss the issue entirely.

Does the U.S. lack qualified engineers for much of what it needs?  Undoubtedly.  But it seems a different question than what American-based companies are really asking.  Americans who pursue costly and difficult to obtain engineering degrees do not envision themselves putting those skills to work in small component manufacturing operations.  They do not think the reward for their efforts will be corporate communal living where their employer's "central kitchen cooks an average of three tons of pork and 13 tons of rice a day."

It's not so much qualified engineers that these companies are hungry for so much as it is cheap technology workers who lack better options.  The claim that America lacks the talent would hold a lot more water if U.S. companies were outsourcing to China for design and concept.  That could well happen some day.  There's nothing so special about "American creativity," that can't be matched by a well educated person anywhere in the world who hasn't been herded into a dormitory and forced to eat at the company store.

“They could hire 3,000 people overnight,” said Jennifer Rigoni, who was Apple’s worldwide supply demand manager until 2010, but declined to discuss specifics of her work. “What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?”

Indeed.  Is it laziness that motivates the American worker to want to spend a reasonable time of the day in toil, a reasonable time in uninterrupted sleep, a reasonable time on personal pursuits and a reasonable time with their loved ones?  Or is it dignity?

Apple doesn't want to do business where thousands of people can't be mobilized in the middle of the night with nothing but a cup of tea, a biscuit and marching orders.  But Apple relies on the U.S. government, its diplomatic apparatus and its military, to make it possible for it to trade internationally, to protect its intellectual property and to ensure that it is not on its own in a world of dictators and rogue states.  The American people pay for that.

Last time I wrote about this, some people got mad at me for suggesting that American firms, who desperately want access to American consumers and who depend on America's military power to be able to operate internationally in the first place could be banned from manufacturing in markets where workers are allowed to be treated like animals by companies like Foxconn.  In any event, propping up China's oppressive government by sending money their way doesn't make any sense from a human rights perspective.  But, if you don't like just outright banning, how about this:

You go manufacture in this manner, it's your right.  But you're on your own.  The U.S. Navy will not help if your shipments are ripped off by pirates.  The State Department will not intervene if the Chinese manufacturer you hire steals your designs and undercuts you with cheap knock-offs.  If you want to do business in a post human rights world, learn to take care of yourself.  That would teach some lessons real fast.