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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

#131

Post by randomdata »

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]

> Do you work with kids?

The comment implies that the kids don't work. They may not even be legally able to if he lives in the region of the world where the typical HN user does.

If the kids don't work, it is impossible for him to work with them.

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

#132

Post by [deleted] »

PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #53
User23 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Child labor is still not uncommon in agricultural communities in the USA. I believe the federal law is age 12 and up for farm work. And de facto if not de jure there is no age limit on children working their own family’s farm. Granted one might call that chores rather than labor. And the minimum age to babysit is as low as 8 based on a quick search.

lets not weaken the term 'child labor' in that manner. There's a world of difference between growing up on a farm and 'child labor'. What you're doing is the equivalent of calling someone a pedophile for sleeping with a 17 y/o. It may or may not be appropriate but it sure as shit isn't the same as sleeping with a 10 y/o so lets use different words for them.

[deleted]

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

#133

Post by beebeepka »

randomdata wrote: post #131
beebeepka wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Do you work with kids? The comment implies that the kids don't work. They may not even be legally able to if he lives in the region of the world where the typical HN user does. If the kids don't work, it is impossible for him to work with them.

Following this brilliant logic, almost everyone involved in education does not work with kids because "it is impossible".

I know exactly what OP meant and it was just grandpa talk. Grumpy sweeping generalisations are pretty common with certain demographics.

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

#135

Post by randomdata »

beebeepka wrote: post #133
randomdata wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you work with kids? The comment implies that the kids don't work. They may not even be legally able to if he lives in the region of the world where the typical HN user does. If the kids don't work, it is impossible for him to work with them.

Following this brilliant logic, almost everyone involved in education does not work with kids because "it is impossible". I know exactly what OP meant and it was just grandpa talk. Grumpy sweeping generalisations are pretty common with certain demographics.

Even watching mindless TikTok videos technically takes some mental and physical effort, if minimal. In that respect, the kids are indeed working. And educators are able to work with children in that sense. But that is not the context setup here.

The OP implies productive work. The work children put in around education is not productive. It can enable future work to be more productive, perhaps, but it is not productive work in the moment. It is consumptive. In that sense, educators work for the kids, they do not work with the kids.

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

#136

Post by randomdata »

bell-cot wrote: post #3

> Munira, 15, is one of those children. [...] Last year, her family harvested only one bag of decent-quality cocoa. A 140-pound bag of the product fetches only about $115. Sounds like "child labor" is downstream of the actual problem.

Wikipedia suggests that a typical person can harvest 175 pounds of cocoa in one day. Costs are an unknown here, but grossing $115 for less than a day of work is more than many in the USA can achieve.

It's not clear that there is a problem. It seems the family just has a once-a-year afternoon hobby and a privileged busybody with no sense of reality got arbitrarily upset that harvest took place on a school day.

There may be some kind of problem, but the article is missing all of the details we would need to determine that. All we get is: "There is a problem! But I'm not really going to tell you what it is beyond some meaningless fluff. Instead, here is a story about a family who likes to spend time together. But know that they spent that time during school hours, so you should be outraged!"

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

#137

Post by randomdata »

otikik wrote: post #67
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…

I am sorry you had such a horrible experience at school. I’m not denying that what you say can happen, but for contrast, my 7yo son enjoys his school greatly and even misses it during holidays.

Is there something to suggest that school was a horrible experience for him? My only takeaway is that it is work that is pushed upon children, which is undeniably true.

In a similar vein to your anecdote, and pertinent the larger topic, I greatly enjoyed harvest when I was 7 and always missed it when it was over. That's why I became a farmer in adulthood – and I still feel the same way about it. Work (even paid work) doesn't mean unenjoyable.

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

#138

Post by randomdata »

insanitybit wrote: post #89
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…

> 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.

> Children are also given time off with holidays, time to play, etc.

Is that not also the case for the kids in the article harvesting cocoa? According to the article, they harvested a total of 140 pounds of cocoa for the year. According to Wikipedia, a typical worker can harvest around 150-175 pounds of cocoa in one day.

Even if they are horribly inefficient compared to a typical worker, perhaps in large part because they are having fun and playing at the same time, we're still only talking a handful of days of work each year. You can only drag out the harvest for so long. What do they do the rest of the time?

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

#139

Post by Broken_Hippo »

aga98mtl wrote: post #100
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow, you think that a child is digging themselves out of a hole and that working instead of schooling is not them being forced into one?

Is there even schooling available in those areas? People in rich countries fail to appreciate how bad the situation is in truly poor countries.

the story literally spoke of children that longed for school, but poverty keeps them from it.

So yes, there is schooling.

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

#140

Post by giraffe_lady »

ReptileMan wrote: post #111
giraffe_lady wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cha…

This isn't a novel point of view this is the point of view repeated over and over on HN every time this comes up, including today. I have considered it and I still think we should not have child labor!
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