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This is one of those feel-good solutions that lets us feel superior but doesn't actually help the people suffering. Demand is not going anywhere.

You're also insultingly wrong with your geography.

yters 2378 days ago

The 'someone will do it anyway' defense is not morally legitimate. Just because everyone else is doing it, does not make the action ok.

Luke 17:1 Jesus said to his disciples: "Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come."

I'm not interested in sounding morally superior, I'm interested in actually helping people who need help. And if you want to do that, you need to accept that 'stop buying cobalt' is not currently a solution that has any chance of improving the state of things.

yters 2378 days ago

How does 'continue buying unethically sourced cobalt' improve the state of things?

Ideally, it is a dual solution of don't buy the unethical kind, and set up an alternate ethical supply chain to the same region so workers can switch to a better work place.

But, if the latter is not possible, one can at least help decrease the market for unethical cobalt by ceasing purchase.

Plus, it is not a matter of seeming morally superior. If one option is morally better than another, it should be chosen, regardless of the consequences.

So, for instance, if Jesus is correct, that it is immoral to be a path of scandal, then one should choose to not be a path of scandal, even if the state of the world otherwise remains unchanged (e.g. unethical cobalt mining continues).

bluGill 2378 days ago

In what situation? In the case of Cobalt it probably doesn't.

In the case of rubber the big companies do provide better jobs for the families they employ than anything else, ensure the family gets modern medical care (as opposed to "witch doctor" care anyone not working for them gets), and the children do go to school and so have the ability to get a better job latter. The companies looks the other way in harvest season then families are taking their kids with them to work, so long as the kids are in school. Child labor for sure, but you can honestly argue that the children are better off despite that.

You can decide if you accept that as better or not, but it is a reasonable argument that child labor isn't always the worst possible.

Sadly I don't think in the case of cobalt the above applies.

yters 2378 days ago

Yes, there is no inherent problem with child labor, especially if parents are involved and the companies are committed to ethical treatment of their workers. Many children today perform chores around the house, and in more agriculture societies help on the farm or in the family shop.

This is a discussion about child labor that is resulting in their deaths.

shantly 2378 days ago

Mandating that companies stop buying cobalt from suppliers who don't document things well is absolutely a legitimate, non-pie-in-the-sky way to effect change.

The idea is that demand for documented cobalt will go up, prices for it will also go up, poorly-documented cobalt producers will have lower demand for their product and their profits will be harmed, the ones capable of fixing their shit so they can sell more-expensive documented cobalt will do so, relieving documented-cobalt supply, and when the dust settles cobalt will be a little more expensive but most of it will be documented.

This is basic policy-building how-to-make-the-world-less-shit using market forces for (old-school) conservatives stuff, and is the backbone of one of the most important & influential strains of political and economic thinking around. It's not remotely radical or unrealistic.

That is not a new idea, even in the DRC and it has been an abject failure. Conflict gold, diamonds and coltan still flow out of DRC despite efforts to not buy undocumented minerals. In highly corrupt and impoverished places, documentation doesn't mean anything. One bribe of a few hundred dollars and your Congolese conflict mineral is now clean, documented Rwandan mineral.

shantly 2378 days ago

Efforts, but have companies been made to pay a cost for failing to source "ethically", even when they say "well gee we tried and it's just really hard"? Things tend to get more serious when money is on the line, rather than just PR. Doing it right would clearly take verification, not just documentation, which means requiring access for outside inspectors.

You're asking the wrong question.

The question isn't "have we completely stopped blood diamonds", the question is "have we lowered the demand for blood diamonds".

If the answer is yes, then the strategy is legitimate and worked. We may have more work to do, but the argument that we must wait for perfect before attempting to make improvements is asinine.

ticmasta 2378 days ago

I appreciate your measured and informative responses that are not pure opinion but everyone else in the thread is adding nothing but gut-impulse emotional opinions. Cut your losses.

> This is one of those feel-good solutions that lets us feel superior but doesn't actually help the people suffering.

So because we can't fix their situation for them, we're allowed to actively make it worse? This is such a nonsense point of view. Exploitative industry is not like regular industry. This is not a rising tide that lifts all boats, this is enriching one or two psychopathic monsters at the expense of their entire region, and possibly financing even more in other regions.

The West does not need to go in and "fix" every developing nation, but at the same time, saying "well if we didn't sell them scrapheap ships or buy the minerals their children mine, they'd starve" is a complete abdication of responsibility for the role the demand for those minerals plays in their situation. They mine them because they can sell them, that's the whole point. If you remove the entities buying them, then there's no reason to mine them.

It's just unrealistic. Here's a challenge - cut cobalt out of your life. I'll bet you can't.

Until you can do that, offering 'stop buying' as a solution is a waste of time.

jacquesm 2378 days ago

I don't think people even realize where Cobalt is used. But they'd notice in a hurry if the supply was somehow interrupted.

> It's just unrealistic. Here's a challenge - cut cobalt out of your life. I'll bet you can't.

"Realistic" is determined entirely by the values of the overarching system. The fate of the people at the long tail of the supply lines isn't valued. That's the single, solitary reason that this shit is still happening. Change that, and the system will adapt. The mines will get better, or they will be replaced with other mines that do it properly.

Stop settling for what your corporate overlords tell you is doable. We can do anything as a species if we choose to, good or bad. Our history shows it. Industry has every reason to tell you it's impossible because they don't want to spend the money to insure supply lines are ethically handled.

If we can mine coal in the United States without children and with relative safety, they can mine Cobalt in the same damn way. Cobalt doesn't by virtue of being cobalt need to be pried from the Earth by children.

> If we can mine coal in the United States without children and with relative safety, they can mine Cobalt in the same damn way. Cobalt doesn't by virtue of being cobalt need to be pried from the Earth by children.

oh you didn't know? The blood of the children is what christens the cobalt such that it works in computers...

/sarcasm

How would you suggest we start? Real, concrete steps please.

You add regulation to businesses based in the US and that sell in the US specifying, explicitly, that they cannot use resources mined via exploitative practices. And then when businesses do anyway, because they will, you confiscate profits tied to products that were made that way. Repeat until they get the damn point.

seriously. How the fuck are people's moral compass so off? I understand reality is reality, but there are some things that should not be, and for slightly cheaper electronics of all things?

fuck that.

bryan_w 2378 days ago

I mean, you typed that message using something that probably has cobalt inside of it or used cobalt in it's manufacturing.

So... why is your moral compass so off?

jessaustin 2378 days ago

We're told that governments help us solve collective action problems. If it's hard for a single electronics manufacturer to wean itself from conflict cobalt, the government could help them by forcing all electronics manufacturers to cease purchase of conflict cobalt.

Of course, that isn't the real purpose of governments or any other illegitimate authorities, so I won't hold my breath.

oh please, I reject that argument outright.

This is about stopping the exploitation of children. While you're trying to squabble over whether or not some random internet person is using a keyboard with cobalt in it, children are being forced down into these mines and risking their lives.

Get your priorities straight.

https://i.imgur.com/4KZe4UO.png