[exstudent2]

Subtitle: "Indigenous people are left poor as tech world takes lithium from under their feet"

The article then goes on to say that the companies aren't "taking" anything. They've signed contracts with the government and tribes to rightfully mine lithium. Sure some people want a larger cut of the pie but the companies aren't doing anything unethical and the article is clearly biased from the get go.

[warmblood]

There is a large difference in power and knowledge between these two sides, which is the heart of the ethics argument.

The people living on top of the resources may have legally relinquished their rights to it and the intact land it's buried beneath, but the drafters of those contracts have a lot of room and leverage to act in bad faith in order to exploit them. This can prevent these people from escaping a cycle of subjugation because they are given mere subsistence instead of wealth in return for their resources.

Legality of things like this are often just procedural facades to release mineral extraction companies from accusations that they are doing something wrong, harming someone or, sadly, indirectly enslaving vulnerable people.

[ChuckMcM]

   There is a large difference in power and knowledge
   between these two sides, which is the heart of the
   ethics argument.

This is exactly the point where these conversations break down. The natives negotiated a contract for fixed rates, not proportional rates of payment. The advantage of fixed rates is that you know what you are going to get, the advantage of proportional rates are that you get more if they get more.

Had the Lithium extraction here turned out to be really really hard and the payment to the communities was nearly all of the profit the mining companies were making after extraction, the natives would not complain. But when it is a small fraction of the profit, it is "unfair".

So what is the right answer? Well in one view of the world the correct answer is to build a mining company with the indigenous population so that they can start providing a commodity that the rest of the world wants to buy. That creates a local boost to the economy and employs as many native people as want to be employed.

That seems great until the lithium runs out. Then you end up with a derelict mining town.

[warmblood]

I think people who clap back like this assume the indigenous groups were able to negotiate with full, symmetrical information and legal leverage. The article reflects history in this regard, suggesting that they did not.

[ChuckMcM]

I don't know if you can draw that conclusion from the article. The questions I would look into would be whether or not the agreements were negotiated pre-Tesla or post-Tesla. If they were negotiated pre-Tesla I could see both sides with a very different picture of lithium demand than has emerged in the post-Tesla market place. The other question I would look into was the legal leverage. Generally these contracts are negotiated at the governmental level (which is pretty much all the legal leverage you can get) and while there are cases where the government negotiations might be questioned (like alleged Copper rights in Africa going to China[1]) it isn't clear that there is a ethical lapse in the Lithium case.

Finally of course there is the "So what" aspect of it, I don't think anyone seriously argues that the US or other strong powers simply mow down the sovereignty of countries because they abuse their own citizens. If you want to advocate for a single world government that is another issue entirely.

[1] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Chinas-...

[Analemma_]

Indigenous people have pretty shitty representation in government, and this applies pretty much wherever you go. It's completely possible for them to get screwed even if the government were totally happy with the mining contracts... actually, I'd be astonished if that weren't the case.

[dismantlethesun]

Governments often coordinate the share of natural resources between members of the same nation, and anytime the share isn't 100% going to the people that coincidentally happened to live upon a oil deposit or lithium deposit, then they'll complain that they are being shorted on the deal.

Yet most people question why a natural resource extraction should result in a windfall for 300-1000 people at most, and leave the rest of the nation without any immediate benefit.

We can question why X people get more and Y people get less, but that's really getting into the scope of the politics of a foreign nation which I bet none of us are really capable of discussing.

[neves]

The most common output in Latin America is to benefit a foreign company and a bunch of bribed politicians.

[anigbrowl]

Some contracts are unconscionable. That a contract exists tells you nothing about whether or not it is equitable.

[Avshalom]

contracts make things legal, not ethical.

[mixedCase]

By this line of thought, every transaction where an entity gets a better deal than than the other is unethical.

[ashark]

I can't be the only person (red state-raised American, even!) to have had serious difficulty reconciling Business, as She is Practiced—including exactly what you mention—with the basic ideas of fairness and justice we're all immersed in from birth. The whole thing, top to bottom, makes me feel pretty icky, and it's only that everyone else acts like it's OK that keeps me operating in ordinary society (which is, I'm pretty sure, a substantial moral failing on my part)

[Confusion]

No, by that line of thought things that are legal are not necessarily ethical and vice versa. The weird contrapositive you seem to assume it implies only says something about you, not about the statement you responded to.

[Avshalom]

Maybe, and certainly unethical and unacceptable are not synonymous, but no that is not where the line of thought leads. It only leads to not accepting dotted i's and crossed t's as the final word.

[xtian]

Interesting line of thought.

[danharaj]

A contract alone does not make it ethical, especially when virtually every government has a track record of exploiting the natural resources of indigenous peoples without allowing them to negotiate terms for themselves. It might be legal, but a great deal of violence and injustice against indigenous peoples has been legal.

[dep_b]

Of course when a country needs dollars to pay off crushing external debts selling it's natural resources to foreign companies is a very important thing.

They do this everywhere in the country. Most parts of Argentina are dry because the Andes block most of the humidity. Large mines use a lot of water. Indigenous people and farmers (lots of wines grow in deserts, but also olives etc.) no longer get the water they need.

This is why we have the IMF. To make financial crack junkies out of countries that are controlling the resources. Thank god there's a republican government now and the ban on lending money has been lifted now they've paid off the vulture funds.

What could go wrong?

[exstudent2]

The article states the indigenous people _did_ negotiate for themselves:

"Yolanda Cruz, one of the leaders of the village of Catua, said she signed the contract with Minera Exar but now regrets it. At the time, she valued the opportunity to create jobs for her village. But she now worries “we are going to be left with nothing,” she said."

[danharaj]

That's fair, it's better than the usual business that surrounds resource extraction in indigenous communities. I'll concede that. But I won't concede that "a contract was signed" => "it was ethical". The asymmetry of information, the inadequate accounting of externalities, and the duress of poverty all can make something legal unethical.

In any case, I think you're wrong saying that the article is biased. One of the quotes in the article is even a remark that there is a good and bad side to mining. It's not incorrect for the article to say that "Native people are left poor as..." because resource extraction doesn't create lasting wealth. Once the lithium is gone, the communities will still be poor while the West benefits far more from the resource inputs into its industries on a long term scale.

It is not hard to construct an argument that resource extraction is fundamentally unethical on grounds like this. Whether or not one agrees with it is another matter. I don't think making this argument is more biased than the presumption that companies negotiating with communities with far fewer resources than them is ethical until proven otherwise because there's plenty of historical evidence that it's rarely the case.

[aantix]

>The asymmetry of information, the inadequate accounting of externalities, and the duress of poverty all can make something legal unethical.

Under that criteria, it'd be impossible to do business with any group that has lesser legal funding. Neighborhood organizations, common families, local businesses. All probably have inadequate legal representation when interpreting and signing these agreements.

[danharaj]

It would only be impossible if business had to be strictly ethical. It doesn't have to be, as evidenced by how much business is done.

[adrienne]

No, it would only be impossible to do business ethically under those circumstances. Which, in fact, it is.

[jxramos]

I don't imagine indigenous people have very much plans for Lithium too. I think the characterization of taking probably keeps alive that colonial bent on such things.

[wavefunction]

Indigenous people usually subsist off their environments, which are disrupted and potentially destroyed by extractive industries.

It takes a certain sort of person to screw the indigenous out of not only their traditions and culture by destroying their source of food and other supplies, and then turn around and say they don't deserve to profit off that destruction because they're simple and provincial.

[dismantlethesun]

They get some profit. Whether or not that's "enough" is up to the eye of the beholder.

Are the benefits of living in Argentina society, bolstered by shared oil revenue, good enough for the people who born in the Andean salt flats region? That's a political question, not a moral one.

Additionally, I don't like how this is being framed.

Titling this as happening to 'indigenous peoples' instead of "Citizens of Argentina" and talking about the destruction of culture, as opposed to 'evolution' or 'melding with multicultural society'. Or people 'subsisting' instead of merely being poor. "Provincial" instead of 'uneducated'.

It slants the whole conversation in a direction I think is utterly unfair.

[Avshalom]

>>That's a political question, not a moral one.

Pretty sure it's both.

[kafkaesq]

but the companies aren't doing anything unethical

I think you may be confusing "illegal" with "unethical".