Following the controversy surrounding the apparent suicide of a Foxconn employee-Foxconn being the Chinese company that manufactures the iPod-after losing an Apple prototype, business thinker Umair Haque wonders aloud: How much more would it cost to build a "good" iPod (in contrast to "evil"-that's his taxonomy) under better labor conditions? Based on his back-of-the-napkin estimates, about 23 percent more.He's making a number of assumptions-including that the United States even has fair labor practices. But the real cost question isn't about dollars, it's about costs to communities and society. "If goods cost what they should, we would consume what we could authentically afford, instead of overconsuming what we couldn't. If their prices reflected real human costs, perhaps yesterday's unsustainably large macro imbalances wouldn't have built up in the first place. And that, from an economic point of view, would be good for everyone."So how about it: Would you pay more for an ethically-made iPod?Photo (cc) by Flickr user akoray.
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