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Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana: CBS News investigation

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Re: Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana: CBS News investigation

#81

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #69
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> should ideally stop showing such fake interest in these things Perfect is the enemy of good [1]. We don't have to completely solve a problem to make discussing it worthwhile. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good

Sure we can keep discussing it and feeling good about ourselves.

> we can keep discussing it and feeling good about ourselves

Contemplating the exploitation of children makes you feel good about yourself? To the extent anyone is virtue signalling, it's the comment arguing we should throw this under the rug because everyone isn't sufficiently morally invested.

Re: Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana: CBS News investigation

#82

Post by gruez »

abracadaniel wrote: post #46
mopsi wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe and the US, it wasn't too long ago either when families could only afford to send some of their children to school. Others had to work from a very early age to support the family. If you ban child labor without offering anything to supplement the lost income, then you're just harming them more. I think it would be better to frame the issue as why so little of the profit made from their work reaches them. It…

If you ban child labor the jobs don't go away. The process still requires the same amount of labor. So, employment will increase, and with the higher labor demand, so will wages. Either way, the product is profitable and in high demand so the same or more money will be spent producing it. Child labor is one of the reasons why so little of the profit from their work reaches them. They're subsidizing the industry by sa…

>If you ban child labor the jobs don't go away. The process still requires the same amount of labor. So, employment will increase, and with the higher labor demand, so will wages.

Sounds good, until you realize that doesn't do much for the starving family with kids to feed. Even though there might be some knock on effect to increase the adults' earnings, there's no way that it'll match the lost income from the kids not working.

Re: Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana: CBS News investigation

#83

Post by [deleted] »

throwboatyface wrote: post #66
goldenshale wrote: post #56

Wait, you mean kids in developing countries work in order to help their families survive poverty. Oh my word, we should stop buying chocolate. Or wait, then nobody is making any money. Seriously, haven't we learned from the "Chinese sweatshop" hysteria throughout the 2000s that if people want to work they are often digging themselves out of a whole rather than being forced into one?

What if we, I don't know, did something to fix the poverty?

[deleted]

Re: Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana: CBS News investigation

#84

Post by abeppu »

gruez wrote: post #71
abeppu wrote: post #52

This article is about Mars. But in 2021, Nestle and Cargill were involved in a Supreme Court case, where it was decided that the Alien Torts act could not used to bring suit by plaintiff who allege they were child slaves, trafficked from Mali to the Ivory Coast, forced to work, beaten, threatened, and not paid. The legal argument was not "we don't have child slave labor in our supply chain, even in areas where we are…

>My belief now is that most cocoa from the large, cheap sources is not produced with ethical labor. Your comment unhelpfully frames the issue as a dichotomy between "100% ethical labor" and "everything else", where "everything else" could mean anywhere between 0.01% unethical labor to 100% unethical labor. As a chocolate maker that's inevitably going to have unethical labor in the supply chain, the best legal strateg…

Sure, there's a spectrum. Maybe you think union busting or the tipped minimum wage are also ethical concerns. But forced labor with trafficked children has to be at one end of the spectrum that has to fall into any definition of unethical labor. And yeah I think even a little child slavery is a problem.

Re: Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana: CBS News investigation

#85

Post by woodruffw »

archsurface wrote: post #75

It's a phase that countries go through eg Britain's chimney sweeps.

Britain left the "chimney sweep" phase, in part, by extracting extraordinary amounts of value from its colonial holdings.

Ghana was formed out of the remnants of four separate British colonies.

Re: Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana: CBS News investigation

#86

Post by [deleted] »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #59
abracadaniel wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ban child labor the jobs don't go away. The process still requires the same amount of labor. So, employment will increase, and with the higher labor demand, so will wages. Either way, the product is profitable and in high demand so the same or more money will be spent producing it. Child labor is one of the reasons why so little of the profit from their work reaches them. They're subsidizing the industry by sa…

Yes thank you good lord. IDK if it's the ritual contrarianism or what but HN consensus is extremely tolerant of or even flat out pro- child labor. Unreal.

[deleted]

Re: Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana: CBS News investigation

#87

Post by bouncycastle »

31337Logic wrote: post #63
bouncycastle wrote: post #37

All I see these days is kids watching mindless youtube/tik-tok videos all day. Perhaps sending them to a farm for some movement might actually be good for them & give them a sense of accomplishment. Seize their phones before they go.

Younger me would have laughed (or even wanted to insult you) over this comment. Older me just gave you an upvote for it. I think you're on to something.

Thanks! Looks like I got downvoted to hell anyways, now at -2. But that's OK, I've got points to burn on challenging views ;-)

Re: Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana: CBS News investigation

#89

Post by insanitybit »

colechristensen wrote: post #55
janice1999 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me a bleeding heart but child labor is an 'actual' problem. You can keep destructing societal issues until you reinvent the universe from scratch. It may be difficult to solve global poverty but it's not a lot to ask extremely profitable companies to enforce the supply chain checks they've committed to.

From the ages from about 5 to 18 American children are forced to do office work for 7 hours a day five days a week in conditions that approximate a minimum security prison followed by often several hours of more work to do at home. Is the only reason you think that isn't "child labor" because no one is directly paying them for their work or that the work is "good for them"? Plenty of kids would argue picking fruit wa…

> Is the only reason you think that isn't "child labor" because no one is directly paying them for their work or that the work is "good for them"?

Yes, these are very significant differences. Children are also given time off with holidays, time to play, etc.

School disgusts me, personally, but it's not even close to child labor.

Re: Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana: CBS News investigation

#90

Post by archsurface »

woodruffw wrote: post #85
archsurface wrote: post #75

It's a phase that countries go through eg Britain's chimney sweeps.

Britain left the "chimney sweep" phase, in part, by extracting extraordinary amounts of value from its colonial holdings. Ghana was formed out of the remnants of four separate British colonies.

"in part".
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