These workers have no other way to earn money. I am not saying Foxconn is an angel, but it is the only option these workers have. The other options are to work in agriculture, or educate/train themselves in some other trade/profession. We know how difficult agriculture is. Re-training takes time, effort and money, and I am not sure if the workers can afford any of the three.
It would be wonderful if all the shitty/boring/junk/monotonous work is left to robots. But that has to happen gradually. While we improve robots technology, we should also solve the problem of finding enough work for the workforce that the robots will replace. These two needs to go hand in hand. Otherwise we'll have some serious trouble in our hands. We are at 7 billion people today, and we are on track for 9 billion in the next few decades. How are we going to keep this many people busy?
I notice that lack of ways to earn money affects already some western countries for a decade or two.
Some people (especially young ones not yet placed inside hierarchies that are excuses to give money to the older ones) have trouble with earning basic levels of income.
There are few solutions to that discovered so far.
US for example builds prisons. Hires some young people as guards and puts lots of others inside. It's easily done by penalizing almost harmless activity popular among poor youth. Then uses this as excuse to provide for both groups.
Northern European countries give their young lots of education. It's nice because some of those young people might eventually learn to do something actually economically useful like building robots, electronics or software. All this education also gives government great excuse for providing for those students and their families (having a child while young is encouraged there).
I'm not sure what kind of excuse will china make up to provide for their youth but I hope it won't be something horrible.
These workers have no other way to earn money. I am not saying Foxconn is an angel, but it is the only option these workers have. The other options are to work in agriculture, or educate/train themselves in some other trade/profession. We know how difficult agriculture is. Re-training takes time, effort and money, and I am not sure if the workers can afford any of the three.
It would be wonderful if all the shitty/boring/junk/monotonous work is left to robots. But that has to happen gradually. While we improve robots technology, we should also solve the problem of finding enough work for the workforce that the robots will replace. These two needs to go hand in hand. Otherwise we'll have some serious trouble in our hands. We are at 7 billion people today, and we are on track for 9 billion in the next few decades. How are we going to keep this many people busy?