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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

#111

Post by ReptileMan »

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.

Another point of view - road to hell is paved with good intentions. Policies pushed by idealists often hurt the people they are supposed to help. Even policies pushed by cynics often have unforeseen second order effects that bite the people in the ass. People writing here don't share the risk of any solution going downhill with the people actually in Ghana.

A pressure on the big companies to clean up their supply chain of child labor (noble effort) - do you know which segments of Ghana laborer will be hurt and how. If you don't know (or at least have very good guesstimate) - then be prepared to be surprised unpleasantly from some of the results.

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

#112

Post by beebeepka »

lapphi wrote: post #99
colechristensen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you likening child labor to the public education system? That is absolutely preposterous and I’m not sorry if you’re offended.

Not OP but I'd rather work than attend school.

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

#113

Post by appplication »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #96

Tony’s Chocolate entire business is about ending slave sourced chocolate [1] and IMO tastes the best I think they are most likely going to go out of business because CR showed they had the highest lead content [2] It’s always something [1] https://tonyschocolonely.com/uk/en/why-we-still-wont-say-wer... [2] https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-...

Wow I had no idea. How is it that we can have such high levels of heavy metals in such common food items? Is there no government monitoring?

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

#114

Post by beebeepka »

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.

[flagged]

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

#116

Post by bouncycastle »

beebeepka wrote: post #114
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.

[flagged]

Explain? Devices are everyone these days and child obesity rates are climbing higher.

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

#117

Post by AndrewKemendo »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #94
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it has, indeed, been tried

Where? In former communist countries the workers didn't have any power after the seizing of the means of production, as now they were ruled by brutal dictatorships with powerful militaries who'd send you to the gulag for $REASON. Hardly the envisioned "seizing the means of production" and more like "being seized for production".

Well said! Rarely do you see the description of Soviet state demand production vs anarchist syndicalism as concise and precise as this.

The idea of self governance in semi autonomous groups has been derided as primitive so thoroughly that the mere concept evokes fear and disgust

Truly we have centuries to undo these tropes of domination and competition as the only way to organize society

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

#118

Post by KPGv2 »

chrisco255 wrote: post #107
KPGv2 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. You can literally read the history of China since the 1990s and witness this exact phenomenon! Child labor goes down, wages go up, adult employment goes up, poverty goes down...

No, it's the other way around: wages go up, then child labor goes down. Also, China is not a great example as it had a One Child policy for most of the last 50 years. In Ghana, for example, there is an average of 4 children per woman.

That's a good point about the OCP. I hadn't considered that.

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

#119

Post by KPGv2 »

appplication wrote: post #113
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #96

Tony’s Chocolate entire business is about ending slave sourced chocolate [1] and IMO tastes the best I think they are most likely going to go out of business because CR showed they had the highest lead content [2] It’s always something [1] https://tonyschocolonely.com/uk/en/why-we-still-wont-say-wer... [2] https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-...

Wow I had no idea. How is it that we can have such high levels of heavy metals in such common food items? Is there no government monitoring?

>Is there no government monitoring?

There is, but it depends on how the food is classified whether it falls under the purview of the heavily funded or the poorly funded regulatory bodies.

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

#120

Post by bell-cot »

KPGv2 wrote: post #104
bell-cot wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If (as the article states) the total value of the cocoa that Murina's entire family managed to harvest, in an entire year, was $115 - that sounds like destitute, desperate poverty to me. If actually living in such circumstances, ~all humans put their kids to work, and lie as needed to survive. And if the "child labor certification" inspectors you send are anything resembling decent human beings, then they will send b…

So if child labor was banned, it is your contention that chocolatiers would just shutter their doors because they can't find labor anymore? You can't conceive of the possibility that they'd hire adults at a higher wage? Or raise prices for consumers in the developed world? You're basically saying it's OK for American companies to hire undocumented workers because the alternative is everyone starves.

> ...they'd hire adults at a higher wage..."

> "...American companies to hire undocumented..."

Please re-read at least the first paragraph of the article. There is no "hire". There is no "wage". The child labor is on subsistence farms. In Ghana.

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