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Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt

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Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt

#261

Post by monknomo »

yters wrote: post #234
monknomo wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where would the justice derive from in a government that was set up for the purposes of extracting resources in one area and transferring the resulting resources and wealth to a different area?

Justice as in peace is brought to the local population and they are kept from murdering and stealing from each other. Whether they get to keep their local resources or not I think is a secondary concern to whether they have a peaceful society.

Very Hobbesian. I think you'll find actual implementations of the systems you propose don't really discourage murder or theft; those don't concern the bottom line. I'll point to the Belgian Congo as a relevant example in this space

Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt

#262

Post by yibg »

richmarr wrote: post #78
morcheeba wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These tech companies aren't direct buyers any more than you or me. Ore is sold to smelting companies, who sell ingots to sheet metal companies, who sell it to electronics component manufacturers, who sell it to contract manufacturers, who sell it to the giants. And that's the legal supply chain - add in some shell companies, forged documents, and resellers and it gets more complicated.

> These tech companies aren't direct buyers any more than you or me Well, they're (a) further up the supply chain that we are, and (b) have the resources to understand and influence their supply chain. You can be pedantic about the word "direct" if you like but I don't think that's useful.

But why draw the line there? If we are making the whole chain liable then why not make the phone case manufacturers and app development shops liable too? They are only one hop down the chain and have the resources too.

Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt

#263

Post by yibg »

SkyBelow wrote: post #134
yibg wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why stop at the direct buyer then? Why not make the end consumer liable too? Make them care, you make the buyers of that cobalt start caring even more right? Heck why don’t we just extend liability down to the end of the chain for everything?

I agree. When a child is harmed to make a product, everyone involved in creating that incentive should be held responsible. Doing so will strongly change society to stop such harms of children.

This seems backwards. Why not tackle this at the source instead of all the leaves that can potentially trace to this? If we go after all the leaves this will pretty soon involve everyone. Eg what about the app developer that profits off the iphone? What about the property owner that gets rent from the app developer for his office space? This can go on forever.

Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt

#264

Post by yibg »

sharpneli wrote: post #260
celticmusic wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're getting lost in the example and losing the idea. The idea is this: You forcibly change the demand to change the behavior of the producer. And there are plenty of examples of us doing this as a society (successfully).

In the successful cases it is easy for the demand to recognize what they are getting. Employer just has to demand passport and they can avoid hiring illegals. Just looking at the person is enough. Same with child porn. Same with anything else where we have curbed demand side. How would you say Microsoft is able to recognize where the cobalt came from? I can’t really see any way here that would not be a de facto ban f…

Plus in most cases they are not using it directly themselves. They are several hops away in the chain, using a part that may contain the wrong type of cobalt.

Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt

#265

Post by afarrell »

bilbo0s wrote: post #111
afarrell wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the producers of that cobalt will just find someone else in Shenzhen to sell to. This problem should be tackled, but it is worth thinking about likely unintended consequences of whatever power structures you set up to tackle it. I hear the Belgians have some experience ending slavery in parts of Africa.

It was easier for Belgium to end slavery in the Congo, as they were the ones who started the slavery in the Congo. The US is in a bit of a different position. Rwandan warlords are not nice people, and are generally tolerated by a Rwandan government which is itself corrupt. They want to go over the border and kill, maim, steal minerals, and enslave, then what can you do if you don't want to risk direct confrontation w…

Belgium didn't start slavery in the Congo, it introduced a much wider-scale and more horrifying[1] form of it. But Belgium was originally "given" to King Leopold with the justification that he pledged to end[2] the slave trade that already existed there.

Something that surprised me: Disney centered their 2016 film The Legend of Tarzan in this context.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_S... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo%E2%80%93Arab_War

Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt

#266

Post by dls2016 »

homonculus1 wrote: post #243
dls2016 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, there’s no such thing as ethical consumption.

What is the point of this slogan? Are we all supposed to feel guilty for not reverting to disconnected hunter-gatherer tribes? It's not an insightful ethical standard, and I reject it.

Like a sibling of my original comment, human morality is optimized for small tribes. In my opinion the point of the slogan is to instill some anarchy into the listener... some weariness of top-heavy hierarchies. In my experience, it seems that the existence of a top-heavy hierarchy is necessary for, and too often sufficient to ensure, widespread exploitation. It's relatively easy for one desperate person to rob their neighbor. But a hierarchy will allow you to convince normal people to participate in the robbing of everyone two towns over, or in protecting a powerful studio executive, or dehumanizing detainees, or...

Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt

#267

Post by Klinky »

bluGill wrote: post #214
Klinky wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes perfect information for the consumer. Most capitalist wouldn't advertise they use child labor even if they did. Sweep it under the rug, and focus on the marketing budget instead. Then many consumers are apathetic to a lot of things, they may not care enough that some children they never knew died. Relying on the invisible hand to affect social change often results in invisible results, because the result…

In the case of child/slave labor the topic is sensitive enough that it isn't worth sweeping under the rug because the risk is too great. If you do "sweep it under the rug" a large part of your efforts is ensuring the children working for you have a better life than those not (education and medical care) which costs a lot of money. That is you assume you will be caught and try to present yourself in the best light any…

The risk is too great? What risk exactly? The risk of becoming a trillion dollar company? Does every iPhone, Galaxy Android device or new laptop have a sticker on them that says "Product may have used child labor at some point in supply chain" in big bold letters? Will these companies triumphantly announce how their product now results in only 1 child death per year instead of 2 at some big keynote product launch event? No. Maybe they'll investigate after being called out and put it in some report that barely any consumers care to read.

If you sampled 100 smartphone users on the street about cobalt procurement practices, would they be surprised by what they hear? If you tracked those 100 people, how many would change their behavior(i.e. give up their smartphone) after hearing about it?

Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt

#269

Post by bjornjaja »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #105
bjornjaja wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im sure the lawyers thought of that angle, but the mining company currently doesn’t do anything to effect change so they probably won’t unless their customers (tech companies) demand a change. It really is unfortunate. The mining company should build out proper infrastructure but I’m guessing they just delegate to (corrupt) locals. This is no different than all the global environmental issues we’re facing with large…

But I mean, you see what’s wrong here right? The lawyers thought about it from the angle of who’s actually responsible , but realized that suing that company probably wouldn’t accomplish much lasting change. So they made up reasons to also sue popular tech companies, in hopes that embarrassing them will help serve the lawyers’ goals. That’s not how the process is supposed to work.

Absolutely, but when the process itself doesn’t work, then what? Gotta take a different approach and apply pressure somehow.

Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt

#270

Post by JulianMorrison »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #226
solidasparagus wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good example. The person who actually ended slavery in the US, Abraham Lincoln, didn't support abolition until the military advantages of emancipation became obvious enough that he could sell it to the people. For a long time he supported some slavery improvements, but specifically did not support abolition - which very much helped his political career and put him in position to emancipate.

We might also note that what Lincoln did -- the Emancipation Proclamation -- abolished slavery only in areas that were not subject to the Union, making it questionable as an act of governance. Slaves in Union territory were emancipated by the 13th amendment three years later.

And slavery in prison continues to this day because of a neat little exemption in that 13th amendment.
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