The Ugly Truth About Apple, China and Jobs

Those are really crummy jobs.

Politicians are all a-dither about the recent New York Times story concerning Apple's production in China, and how Steve Jobs told the Administration those jobs weren't coming back. And about how great Chinese logistics are.

But the jobs we are talking about are really crummy jobs.

Mass production, making stuff over-and-over by hand, is sucky work. Maybe it was good for your great-grandfather, who contrasted it with slaving on a farm trying to bring in a crop. And it was. But compared with any modern job, any job you'd do or want to have your kids doing, it's a crummy, crummy jobs.

Fact is, America's future does not lie with mass production, but with mass customization. It lies with makers who can produce single parts on computers and have them created on 3D printers. It lies in design, in prototyping, in the creation of high-value rather than low-value products.

Do you want  your kids doing grunt work in a factory? Want them living in dorms, on-call 24-7, working 12-hour shifts 7 days a week for a few dollars per day? You want them doing rote work that is so soul-destroying that suicide looks like a great solution?

I didn't think so.

What you want is for your kids to create the robotic factories that eliminate the need for all that hand-work. What you want is for your kids to be designing the software that leads to creation of a Moon base. What you want is for your kids to be in jobs where they can think different, not in jobs where they don't think.

And you know what. Every worker at Foxconn wants that for their kids, too.