Hold the corps to account, vote with your wallet, demand that they reinvest profits in education and betterment and development of these geographic areas.
Clothes is a nice and easy one to begin with choosing an alternative for because it's a much more simplistic product with a more easily traced supply chain. Phones, computers and cars are something we'll likely struggle with for a long time.
For anything else, the public will likely need to demand change as I doubt a superior or equal alternative will emerge. With that said, products like the FairPhone are very interesting, though I haven't used one.
Food is something that'll largely hinge on your geographic area and availability of produce that makes sense.
I think his point is that given the context that everything is involved with child labor somehow, pointing out just one particular item isn't very helpful.
More nuances about iphone being a luxury brand and therefore less justifiable and more "disgusting" can be added. But like how you said it above, it doesn't change the fact that the very economy and the comfort we are enjoying partly come from child labor.
I am giving the GP the benefit of the doubt and don't think they are engaging in child labor whataboutism, but I also think they should write in a way that does not invite the qualification of "I think his point is...".
>pointing out just one particular item isn't very helpful
It absolutely is. And pointing out more is even better!
Child labor is somewhat orthogonal to deplorable conditions. Child actors can easily fit the definition.
There’s also an unfortunate cultural bias where people may view for example Amish children skipping school to take in a harvest as perfectly acceptable when kids in developing economies doing the same things are suddenly not.
and listing other child labor profiteers has a point : it illustrates that perhaps we should probably look for and fix the root causes of child labor rather than punishing a single perpetrator.
Anything created under Capitalism is probably morally repulsive on one level or another. I vote to get rid of it entirely, if we can only come up with a better solution.
For now, I personally try to participate as little as possible in it.