Apple May Be Using Congo Cobalt Mined by Children, Amnesty Says | Hacker News Reader

Apple May Be Using Congo Cobalt Mined by Children, Amnesty Says

bloomberg.com

159 pointsadventured216 comments

People already know that their phones are made using materials excavated in awful conditions, then built in awful conditions by minors in Asia and then sold at ludicrous prices around the world. The consensus seems to be (based on my observation) that no one really cares. We can keep on sharing those links to articles that stimulate the outrage for about 10 minutes, might keep social networks fuzzy for a few days, but in the end, it doesn't change anything.

Sweatshops still exist, kids are still being exploited.

Either people stop buying those goods (and that is NOT happening ever) or start buying green/human-friendly alternatives at 3 times the price for 1/10th of the quality or it will keep on keeping on. It's sad, but it is a reality, as grim as it is.

I don't believe consumer choice is the only agency we have. Can you imagine any others?

As long as these "exploited children" have no BETTER options, the cycle will continue.

Child labor laws in the US put an end to kids losing their childhood, body parts and lives so that they can exploited for a profit.

There is no reason such laws cannot be implemented where they currently aren't.

We also have the ability to stop US based companies from selling products produced by foreign child labor, but we don't.

> There is no reason such laws cannot be implemented where they currently aren't.

In countries like Congo there are probably quite a few.

If they depend on our trade, we have ways to persuade them to change their behavior. It isn't guaranteed, but

> We also have the ability to stop US based companies from selling products produced by foreign child labor

Coltan has been mined in Congo by military operation from neighbouring countries such as Tanzania and Zambia.

But those laws weren't enacted until those child laborers helped push society to a level where it could afford those laws. That's the annoying part of the problem and a very tough one to get around without vast sums of money moving from first world to third world countries specifically to address this issue. Which is politically not exactly a hot topic.

Hmm... people who can afford to send their children to school and can afford to keep them in school don't need laws to do that. And child labor laws do pretty much squat for low income children which drop out, get into gangs or find them selves on the street.

Laws only works when the society can enforce them and it doesn't mean police, social workers and the likes those are supposed to catch outliers not to enact reality. When society can't enforce laws/norms case and point children in low social economic environments laws break down and mean nothing.

Child labor laws might look like they prevent mass scale exploitation of children but in reality they don't, we stopped using child labor for the same reason we stopped using slave labor and it wasn't our morality but rather the simply practical truth that not only we afford to do so but they also in many cases are a liability.

The US industry has no child labor because it has not place for child labor, children can't be professionals most manufacturing is high end the physical labor is mostly automated and cheap "illegal" labor is available for the few tasks that children might still be able to fill (and if you really look into US textile sweatshops and the agriculture industry you'll still find child labor).

If the US had the same industrial landscape as the Congo or any other underdeveloped nation no matter what the so called moral compass of its population would point at, no matter if it would have democracy and all that it would have child labor that's just the reality we live in. We exploit every resource we have in the most efficient way possible, the locomotive and industrial revolutions made slave labor obsolete and the technological revolution made child labor obsolete both of those are fairly closely tied as when you need educated people not only to steer your economy but to drive it on every level they simply aren't compatible.

Congo GDP per capita (PPP) is about $729 which is hundreds of years behind rich western democracies. Hundreds of years ago those same western democracies had child labor. It's not that surprising that they use child labor. It may improve things for western consumers to insist on certain standards and let Congo workers raise their prices to compensate.

Congo won't change, they'll sell you for higher prices and still use child labor as long as the services they provide are suitable to exploit such labor.

Better off spending your money on education programs than on pointless processes which will be circumvented.

They have no better options because we aren't giving them better options.

They get paid $0.25 for a job that an adult would have demanded $1.00 for. Had we banned child labor, the adult would've had the job, the child wouldn't have needed the work as badly (as their parent now has a better job), and we would be paying slightly more over hear.

Let us not pretend that we are doing them some service by exploiting them. (If you really want to say we are helping them by exploiting them, then how about we consider ways these children can make more money with less risk of dismemberment and only needing a weak internet connection and a cheap phone with a camera...)

Faced with 0.1% possiblity to make cash: "Disrupt markets!!1 Work myself to the bone!"

Faced with child-slavery they benefit from: "<shrug> Jeez, I just don't know, guess it's inevitable <shrug>, I'm sure they're better off as slaves... <shrug>"

I can even understand that - real problems are hard. I'd only wish people making overpriced trinkets would stop saying they're changing the world.

Pretty safe to say that no one takes those who say that they're changing the world all that seriously. It's just modern business-speak.

True, but it does make it harder to trust people who are actually changing the world. Not to mention it's annoying. And it messes up with the worldview of people who are not tech-savvy enough to evaluate such claims. Only yesterday I had to explain to someone that the hot startup they just saw getting $shitton in investment actually doesn't make anything particularly useful or insightful. They were genuinely surprised by that.

I don't know, are we going to pay the children directly to not work in cobalt mines, or are we going to prevent them from accessing the 100% opportunity to make cash? It sounds like they have the same attitude as the people you are chastising. Reading this comment, it appears I'm one of them. What's an action you would suggest to improve things?

Stop viewing people that use child laborers as a benevolent force that are keeping children from dying in the streets.

These people buy, sell and take children by force employing tactics such as threats, violence and (gang) rape. They then traumatize, abuse, kill and use force to secure their profit.

Understand that children and families are not weighing the option as "send my kid to a factory or starve". It is "I just got murdered / will be murdered if these people don't take my kid" or "I simply want to sell my child for cash".

Stop making the same-but-different sweeping generalizations! You cannot discredit one hypothesis by changing the Boolean and calling it a proof.

While this child labor could be performed by abducted children, it's also possible that it's performed willingly by children to pay for their school uniforms or supplies, rather than drop out of school. [0].pdf discusses this sort of thing.

[0]: http://www.oeko.de/oekodoc/1294/2011-419-en.pdf (PDF link)

I don’t know you well enough to recommend appropriate actions. Should you could visit nearby activist groups on topics you care about? Subscribe to Model View Culture and read things by David Graeber? If you don't have time, want to participate in Fund Club?

The typical steps: have people mutually educate you (with great respect for their time), team up, act.

A lot of these different topics are ultimately related. So acting on one applies to a web of things.

>I don't know, are we going to pay the children directly to not work in cobalt mines, or are we going to prevent them from accessing the 100% opportunity to make cash?

As I pointed out elsewhere, they can make more money with greater physical safety if we only changed the laws to allow for certain work involving camera phones. I'm pretty sure their clientele would even provide the phones to the children at no cost.

>What's an action you would suggest to improve things?

What about the one I suggested? It isn't perfect, but the children are physically safer and will make more money and get a phone with internet access out of the deal.

Consumers are one in the several actors taking part in this.

Like many other social problems, other actors are governments putting regulations (both in the consuming and the producing ones), organizations pushing information (both cultural and products-related), and I guess others.

Ultimately, changes start from the "lower" level, either in the form of consumer choice, or individuals who turn into organizations, who pushes for regulations/informations/etc.

In real-world, of course, there are other facts.

make SA 8000 certification mandatory in supply chains

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SA8000

or provide tax incentives for such certified companies

I think there is at least one solution that works:

Regulation. But large corporations are generally adverse to government meddling in their business (for reasons that make sense from their point of view). Said corporations usually have some form of investment into the pockets of people drafting those laws and/or have ways to pressure governments into not putting them in place (threats of layoffs, threats of indirect economic disadvantages against similar corporations in other areas of the world).

Back to square one for us consumers if we cannot count on elected officials to control the behavior of their biggest manufacturing champions, we either accept that there are children in developing countries working so that we can get fancy toys in conditions that we'd rather not thing about or we stop playing into the game altogether. But then again I am part of that problem and I realize that nothing is that easy and black and white. Those are complicated issues.

In the void, regulation (assuming you talk about the producing countries) simply won't work.

If suddenly, a given country would, say, increase minimum wage and mandate safety conditions, it would increase the risk of losing market share. That's just how it works - only a small fraction of the production/consumption chain gives weight to the sources of the goods.

Of course, that doesn't imply that regulation doesn't work; I'm saying that by itself, it's not going to work.

It needs to happen at the consumer's country. We should have laws banning import of any goods or services from countries that don't have a decent living wage and mandated safety conditions.

Of course the price of goods will increase, and then the rubber will meet the road. Do we care more about our "things", or people half way around the world being *pulled out of squalor?

And when you say "pulled out of squalor," you really mean "put out of a job."

Parecon. Right now the free market idea is there are only two parties, buyer and seller, to set prices. That's totally flawed, and that's why we inject a 3rd party into this process in the form of regulation. But regulation is slow and prone to corruption, and itself rarely accounts for externalities. It's just a guy on a horse asking for his cut, not much different from feudal days.

What's needed is an innovation to inject a more reliable 3rd party to deal with externalities, like Amnesty International would be one of many possible such contra parties.

Or redistribute 99% of the top 1% wealth, and give it to the bottom x% such that suddenly there's only middle class and better. What that does is poor are no longer so poor that they always have to say yes to getting one more dime, they'd have the option to say no to things like digging in a dangerous mine. That doesn't mean digging in a dangerous mine becomes illegal, it means it becomes expensive, maybe $40 an hour instead of 5 cents a day.

Plus more middle class would mean more people who can afford to buy the things that are more expensive due to the $40 an hour cost increase. The benefits of sharing.

>redistribute 99% of the top 1% wealth, and give it to the bottom x% such that suddenly there's only middle class and better.

That is in no way how that works.

well, I care. But what if I don't have choice? simple don't use it?

Go mine some cobalt yourself?

Ask yourself if you really need it. There was a life before cellphones and it did work very well.

But it doesn't work now. Not when everyone started using cellphones.

These arguments from past habits are silly. There was a life before reading and writing too. It also did work very well. But we don't live in that time anymore.

If you care, yes. Just don't use. If no one would use it, companies would be forced to change. As this scandals don't seem to affect them, loosing money would.

So would serious repercussions from the FTC and that doesn't require hoping millions of people who haven't cared at all for decades will suddenly care enough to change where they buy their toys from.

Well you have choice, ever heard of the Fairphone? https://www.fairphone.com/

Market failure calls for regulation. There is a way to prevent such behavior from being acceptable or lawful.

A guy I used to work with classified these as "white man problems". IE, we have the luxury of choice.

Our choices have consistently led an industry to skirt labor and human rights so we can have cheap toys.

It's not market regulation's fault. It's the people.

Market is people. More than that - market is what happens when you let people do whatever. Regulating the market is literally trying to adjust for people's systemic failures.

Adjusting according to the needs of? And why does that needs to happen?

To the needs of people. As determined by the government (which, in democracies, is supposed to follow the will of people). Determining and acting on the will of people is sort of the only job of the government.

Why does that needs to happen? Because otherwise you get Congo. Europe used to be like that, and our forefathers fought their way out of it with their own blood.

Ask yourself - why is it that you buy food and beverages in your local supermarket or restaurant, and you're not worrying it will poison you? Why is that you can safely buy an electrical appliance and connect it to your wall socket without burning the house down? It's not because free market. It's because those segments of the market have been heavily regulated, and those regulations came to counter various shenanigans companies were pulling off.

Markets do not start regulated, they get regulated - and they get regulated because they're too good at their only job - optimizing for profitability. Regulation is there to stop otherwise profitable abuses from happening.

I can see your point and to be honest I kind of agree with you. In unpolluted democracies that's how it should happen. I don't want to sound too negative but, unfortunately, as governments are funded by big corporations, this is what happens nowadays:

http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/17/news/economy/oxfam-wealth

and even with regulations in place. Companies want to grow more and more every year, even despite sometimes the market being saturated. How it that only possible? Cutting costs - Congo is what makes this possible. Congo and our will for buying such products. My point is that only people can change this, by not buying. If we don't buy, only then companies will change - You need to talk their language - You need to get to their pocket - money.

With this I don't mean that the market doesn't need regulations, pretty much the opposite. I'm just saying that most of the times regulation only is not enough.

I agree with you. And you're totally right about how governments are really being on payroll.

"Not buying" isn't a bad solution per se - it would work perfectly well if we could coordinate enough people to change their shopping habits. But it's close to impossible, both because coordination is a Hard Problem, and because the market doesn't offer alternatives. People would have to reduce their quality of life, and it's not something humans generally do out of ideological reasons. There's only so much things one person can care about strongly, and those things seem to be somewhat randomly distributed, ensuring you can't get enough people to strongly care about the same thing.

Regulatory bodies, like markets, follows incentives - those incentives may be different, but the mechanism is the same. One of them is the funding from big corporations you mentioned. Another one, in democracies, is popularity. I think it's easier to convince (almost) everyone to care about some issue enough to change their voting patterns than it is to make them stop buying stuff. Therefore, the regulatory change may be easier to achieve than "vote with your wallet" market change. That still requires a lot of coordinating effort though.

Yes, you're right, it's almost impossible to get enough people to support a certain movement. My concern with "regulation voting" is that regulations may win elections even though they may have few holes (sometimes on purpose). But that's actually the best we can get. Thanks for your comment.

Watch what you say about regulating... if you look closely we are in a community that values unleashed capitalism (that is, money) above almost anything.

That anything being our image as good people.

The reality is that we regulate all industries and trade practices. The market has called for cheap electronics for decades at the price of human rights.

What good person holds an economic principle or their wallet above a child's right to have a childhood, education, their health, lives and to not be unrepresented, exploited, abused or underpaid for their labor?

Well, you and me for starters. And then add almost all of the people that have enough money in their pockets and are not slaved/working 3 different jobs to put food on their table.

We, everyone of us reading this, know the reality, if not just look around and see that lady cleaning floors or that guy in the fast food joint working their asses off for a menial pay.

You could say they are a step above slavery, but hey, no problem, you and me have good jobs and money enough so we can buy anything we want to eat and a shiny gadgets every year.

Ignoring this reality about slaves in those countries and almost slaves in our land is easy, but don't forget that this is a conscious decision.

Ignoring is the default. Noticing is a conscious choice, but a one that will make people stare at you strangely. You're right about first-world slavery though. It's a disaster.

I think that it is not the market but the erosion of purchasing power that push further the need for lower and lower prices.

But if you look at the electronic device we're talking about here, namely iphones, it is an overpriced piece of hardware used as a display of social status which is unrelated to a market call for cheap electronics.

Apple has more than enough margin and power to be able to secure conflict-free minerals for their devices and lead by example, but they don't because there's no regulations asking for it and they'd rather get a tad more profits for a bunch of shareholders instead of caring for other humans (who happen to be in distant countries and black or brown or yellow and poor).

The more unrest there is in those mineral rich countries, the cheaper the minerals will be and the juicier the profit for shareholders.

Well, it's the same when there's a terrorist attack that kills 30 people but wait... the victims don't share our skin tone and also it is in country which name we'll forget in a week.

If it doesn't affect us directly or our money, we don't give a crap... except for keeping a nice social facade sharing the outrage as you said.

In a historic/anthropologic way maybe a big part of human progress is based on dehumanizing people and exploting them or the resources they have. Seems like as a society all is well if it affects "them" and not "us".

I visited Pakistan right after the terrorist attack on a school where hundreds were shot.[1]

After that, I stopped caring about the much smaller scale terrorists attacks. Paris and Lebanon were fairly big ones, but there are so many happening so regularly, I don't really care about events directly anymore, and Save my anger for past foreign interference of countries, destabilising them and turning them into terrorist breeding grounds. I think I'm quite numb now. 200000 people died because of the Syrian civil war for goodness sakes. I'm angry at the countries who would interfere to provide air strikes. Angry at the countries who supply the Rebels. Without this foreign interference Assad could have crushed the rebellion and the country would be in a more stable situation today. Why are we supporting the side that will divide the population along sectarian lines, against a government who has a track record of ruling for all religions? Yes he's a dictator, but so will be whoever comes into power next. Now we have a pseudo state of terrorists. What a joke.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Peshawar_school_massacr...

> Why are we supporting the side that will divide the population along sectarian lines

It's always the same: to expand the military influence. "Wars good," as long as the "dictators" aren't on "our side." But it they are they aren't called the dictators but "our guarantors of peace in the region." The apparent map of the US military bases in the region from 2010 says it all:

http://mycatbirdseat.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Iran-enc...

Peace and the well-being of people there aren't the real goals.

>Without this foreign interference Assad could have crushed the rebellion and the country would be in a more stable situation today. Why are we supporting the side that will divide the population along sectarian lines, against a government who has a track record of ruling for all religions?

Most of this isn't actually true.

- Assad wouldn't probably have crushed the rebellion in any way after part of the army deserted.

- Assad did voluntarily release some Jihadists in order to exarcerbate the sectarian aspect of the conflict

I don't buy your claims. US made plans to make / support "the rebellion" and also the "sectarian aspect" since at least 2006, all acceptable as long as Assad is subverted, as documented by the Wikileak of the US ambassador brief:

https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06DAMASCUS5399_a.html

(It's not an accident that Assange is where he is for so long.)

Looking at the map from my other post here, it's also obvious why.

Your sources?

I don't have any different sources. I read them differently.

You read "the US made plans to make/support relebellion and the sectarian aspect". I read "the Syran regime already has these vulnerabilities that could get exploited"

Probably because I don't believe in an all-powerful US.

>PLAY ON SUNNI FEARS OF IRANIAN INFLUENCE: There are fears in Syria that the Iranians are active in both Shia proselytizing and conversion of, mostly poor, Sunnis. Though often exaggerated, such fears reflect an element of the Sunni community in Syria that is increasingly upset by and focused on the spread of Iranian influence in their country through activities ranging from mosque construction to business.

> There is also tremendous fear in the Alawite community about retribution if the Sunni majority ever regains power.

> DIVISIONS IN THE MILITARY-SECURITY SERVICES: Bashar constantly guards against challenges from those with ties inside the military and security services.

> THE ECONOMY: Perpetually under-performing, the Syrian economy creates jobs for less than 50 percent of the country,s university graduates. Oil accounts for 70 percent of exports and 30 percent of government revenue, but production is in steady decline. By 2010 Syria is expected to become a net importer of oil. Few experts believe the SARG is capable of managing successfully the expected economic dislocations.

> I read "the Syran regime already has these vulnerabilities that could get exploited"

By the US (interested in removing Assad because of military supremacy), Saudis and Turkey ("our best allies," Sunnis to overcome "wrong believing" Assad). As planned since 2006.

The "rebellion" was mostly a Sunni extremist (as in, radicalized by the Saudi paid preachers) rebellion in the Sunni majority places, supported by the players above. Turkey was also strongly radicalized in the last few decades, also a lot of oil money. The US had also the "democracy" babble like that in Libya (supporting Al-Qaeda!) or Egypt ("but Muslim Brotherhood are our guys", we "really don't understand" why they turned Islamic, we don't read what they write, they told us it's democracy what they want). And the Iraq war was also to "bring democracy." It's hard to close the eyes so much.

If I understand, you have no sources for your initial claim:

> Assad did voluntarily release some Jihadists in order to exarcerbate the sectarian aspect of the conflict

That goal would be more than counterproductive. The "rebels" are almost in Damascus, threatening him. That he did some prisoner exchange or tried to appease the protest, I can imagine.

If people stop buying goods produced by poor kids then more kids would die from starvation.

Can you cite the mass starvations that existed before sweatshops and militia groups profited from child labor?

Here's a great list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines

Or perhaps you'd like to observe how much populations have managed to grow after industrialization and modern economics: http://blog.dssresearch.com/?p=229

Child mortality is another fun one to look at it: http://ourworldindata.org/data/population-growth-vital-stati...

Traditional rural agrarian life is about as close as you can get to the Hobbesian state of nature. It's nasty, poor, brutish, and short. You pump out as many kids as you can in hopes that some will survive until they can work on the farm. (And make no mistake: child labor is essential to farm life.)

There's a reason that people pursue jobs in factories and migrate to urban areas. It might be terrible living conditions, but its still better than dying in your village. The only reason Western sensibilities condemn the former but eulogize the latter is because we feel "icky" that urban dwellers are benefiting us while starving farmers at least die without making anyone richer.

That is naive short term thinking. If children are not doing child labor, they have the opportunity to get education which in turn can improve the economic conditions of their country so that child labor won't be the only option anymore. It's a cycle that needs to be broken.

Or they can help their parents fix agriculture, develop local businesses, etc. The way I see it, those factories employing child labour are their primary tether to the global economy, which is bleeding them dry. Disconnected, they wouldn't have to compete with the rest of the world, and local economy would adjust. After all, at the level their local economy is, it's not dollars that matter, but man hours - and every country has the same amount per capita of those.

Yes and no. There does seem to be indication that ending child labor, without changing anything else, does lead to an immediate worsening of the situation for some children. But, this is in no way a justification for child exploitation and it also doesn't speak to the long term benefits of ending child labor.

If kids do not have enough food to eat, then the alternative to hard labor is death from starvation, not education.

I'd like a source for the difference in price between electronic goods manufactured in the 1st world and in some sweatshop half-way around the world. Would it really be 3x more expensive?

The Mac Pro would be a good case study since more of that was manufactured and assembled in the USA than (most?) other machines.

I have to say picking up one of Apple's newer computers and flipping it over to see Designed in California - Made in USA made me smile.

Not that anything is wrong with products made elsewhere, far from it - just there's something to be said for investing in manufacturing at home.

The Raspberry Pi might be a better example, as that still needs to sell for $30.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/tag/made-in-the-uk/

http://www.sonypencoed.co.uk/sony-manufacturing/ (closer to the Mac price range, the factory also makes Sony's best cameras).

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-much-would-donald-trump...

(Warning: big masthead photo of Donald)

> Doing some back-of-the-envelope math, Wiens said that consumers could pay around $50 more for an iPhone that was assembled in the US versus one that was assembled in China.

Which phones are made by children? Sources?

>3 times the price for 1/10th of the quality

A slightly increased cost of raw materials would not have that impact, whatever you mean by that.

Apple stakeholders commenting on this story should disclose that, also. Lots of weird irrationality going on in these comments.

I think it's a good idea to buy from companies who make an effort to change things and are transparent about it.[0] Do you know any other manufacturer providing as much information?

[0] https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple_Prog...

Also iphones are already around the "3 times the price" mark so it would be around the same price or cheaper to have a fair phone and we have one coincidentally named fairphone at a 600$ price tag.

To clarify what I meant by those outlandish figures that have no real ground in reality (I made them ridiculously big to make that obvious):

If phone manufacturers were to insure that the materials have no "human or environmental cost" attached to them, the price would have to increase significantly (unless I'm missing some key aspects of the manufacturing process). I am not sure consumers are ready to play their part and make up for that price increase. See fair-trade/organic food, which have not yet achieved the kind of scale that would drive the costs down. If you know for a fact that changing the process in a more humane/responsible/sustainable way doesn't have to mean dramatically increased end prices, please do share, it'd be good news for me.

This is called wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

Currently consumers in the Western world are doing it at the cost of child/third world labor. Apple's surely got some margin to cover some of it but why shouldn't prices go up to reflect it? Companies don't have a right to succeed. If the consumer won't play their part then Apple will have to adjust their devices and software to get to a price point consumers will pay. The yearly device model of business is incredibly wasteful and maybe it should go away.

Technically I'm an Apple share holder (very small part of highly diversified retirement portfolio which is probably nothing next to the people you are talking about), but hopefully from my other comments on this link you can see I do not approve of exploiting children for personal gain and personally find it hard to comprehend how many are willing to wrap up the exploitation as being for the children's benefit.

I don't know where you get this idea that everybody are aware of this. And I do not understand how not doing anything could change something.

IMHO the only way we can have change is by doing something and the first step is raising awareness. It does work, for example foxconn has accelerated its move towards replacing employees by robots under public pressure.

Machinism which made child labor a work force competing with full grown men has been around for more than 150 years, the next step is replacing child operating machines by robotic machines.

>It does work, for example foxconn has accelerated its move towards replacing employees by robots under public pressure.

I'm sure the nearby villages, where there is very little otherwise accessible employment, are glad that they were replaced by robots.

The point was that raising awareness public pressure works to obtain change.

But on the issue of the advancement of machinism, the men who got replaced by child paid 1/5th their wage in the 1850's were not happy, those who became unemployment statistics when their jobs were moved to Asia are not exactly bouncy balls of joy.

But the fact is Foxconn was planning to replace human by robots because it is cheaper, almost every big industries has plans or is already moving to replace humans robots wherever possible.

Fact is low level jobs are going extinct all around the world, it is only a matter of time. Fact is the richest are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Fact is universal income "experiments" start showing up around the world, is it a coincidence or another facet of the radical change of the disappearance of employment for the poor ?

The widening inequality gap is only within rich countries. The gap between rich and poor countries is shrinking and has been for at least decades.

Absolutely true. Perhaps we are not showing the videos and links to the right generation. From time to time I would show my kids what it takes to get that iPhone. The one covered in blings and awaiting its almost-annual upgrade...as grim as it gets.

>People already know that their phones are made using materials excavated in awful conditions, then built in awful conditions by minors in Asia and then sold at ludicrous prices around the world. The consensus seems to be (based on my observation) that no one really cares.

Yep.

When I benefit from child abuse, it isn't a big deal. When someone else benefits from child abuse, then it is a horrible travesty. All the focus on the horrors of child exploitation of certain forms by those who benefit from child exploitation of other forms leaves a lot to be thought about.

How do people already know that? Is there a link you could provide?

Obligatory Paul Krugman link: http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/smokey.html "In Praise of Cheap Labor"

I was just scanning the thread for a voice of dissent. Thank you for providing that.

Ironically, Krugman himself is an Apple fanboy:

http://libertymcg.com/2012/09/20/krugman-the-iphone-why-the-...

No hypocrisy here.

What hypocrisy do you see?

Krugman clearly defends the idea of globalization and seems to have his purchasing habits reflected in that.

Of course, it doesn't surprise me that you failed to actually read the article and instead stuck to your auto-snark response.

   it doesn't surprise me that you failed to
   actually read the article

Gee, I quoted it twice. Am I psychic now?

Ah yes, the classic canard. Throwing people onto the ocean and then selling them floater rings is mich better than not selling them floater rings, right?

Arguing theory, divorced from the reality of how exploitation happens in practice, is intellectually bankrupt.

I don't think you read the article, or if you did, did not grasp the point of it, because you're not arguing with anything Krugman wrote.

> The consensus seems to be (based on my observation) that no one really cares.

I think it's more complex than that because most people realize that this phenomenon is not restricted to phones, so singling them out doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

It's suddenly not such a simple problem when you expand your view beyond a hot product like a smartphone and realize that a vast variety of products used in the US and other first-world countries are produced under exactly the same conditions. You can't blame a single product anymore, you can't blame a single company, and there's no simple action you can take to avoid contributing to the problem without being granted some sort of omniscience over the details of the global supply chain.

People are overwhelmed by the incredible complexity of the problem and are stalled into inactivity as a result.

> so singling them out doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Because when we're quibbling over how many pennies can be allocated to workers from the 3-for-$5 packs of underwear, that's one conversation. When it's "your phone/status symbol that costs $1000 and has an 80-90% margin on manufacturing costs" the contention that it is somehow impossible to pay adults a decent amount is obvious in its obscenity.

You spend a lot more than I do.

I'm sure you had some point, rathrer than a veiled personal attack; feel free to make it any time you want to sit at the adults' table.

I'm not sure people do know these things. Apple claims otherwise and at least some people probably believe them.

http://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/

From the article: "Apple didn’t directly answer its questions about purchasing components containing cobalt processed by the main Chinese supplier. ... Apple, based in Cupertino, California, declined to comment further when contacted by Bloomberg News Monday."

Right, I mean worker conditions more generally. There have been previous accusations of bad working conditions and I don't think most people know whether or not they have been resolved.

Just like with slavery in the south-Asian seafood-for-pet-foods and textile manufacturing industries, major Western corporations try to hide their supply-chain evils behind their local suppliers.

The only way I see this stopping is for those corporations to know their supply chain all the way to origins, and the only way I see that happening is consumer pressure, not local governmental enforcement.

Seems like that's relying on the corporations to police this and then blaming the cops for not catching every violation.

I know it's "the buck stops here" and all, but it might be a bit unfair to expect perfection when it comes to figuring out what their suppliers' supplier's suppliers are actively trying to hide from them.

Of course, inadequately funding the investigators or telling them not to try too hard would also be a bad thing - if someone can show that's what they're doing.

> People already know that their phones are made using materials excavated in awful conditions

Do they? If the level of inquiry most consumers put into the materials and production methods used to manufacture / extract / havest their everyday purchases are any indication, I'd venture to guess that only a very small percentage of folks think about what goes in their digital device.

I have to ask though... would any of these people have better lives, young or old, than they would have without mining these materials? If they are kidnapped and forced into slave labor, that is not good, but if they work of their own accord and live better for it, then who am I to decide what their opportunities are.

This. You aren't doing anybody any favors throwing them out of paid work in a society without a safety net.

You might be doing favours for the workers in the other country, also without a safety net, but without child labour.

And the government of Congo might see exports drop, and decide they need to enforce child labour laws to regain them.

-> And the government of Congo might see exports drop, and decide they need to enforce child labour laws to regain them.

I think this is a significant leap. I think it's much more likely that that child labour would be shifted to other, darker parts of the economy much more readily than a dysfunctional government in a borderline rentier-state changes or enforces it's laws.

In corporate social responsibility classes you learn that you are not supposed to shut down a sweat shop, but slowly solve it through better working conditions, higher wages, etc.

> People already know...

No, they don't.

I think they do, but it's too easy to disconnect one's own behavior from its indirect consequences with diffusion of responsibility. Same goes for issues like immigration, or heck, even warfare -- it's one thing to push a button and have ten people blown to pieces somewhere far away because someone told you so, it's another thing to go out there and kill ten people with your bare hands.

Grim indeed.

We do care. I get really annoyed at this argument.

We cared so much about the welfare of our fellow man, that we passed laws ensuring that companies needed to run safe, healthy, ethical and environmentally friendly environments.

We did this despite the prospect of higher costs, because we cared.

Companies then moved their manufacturing (and mining!) to other countries, where they could continue to abuse the people and their environment in peace to ensure bigger profits for themselves.

Somehow this is now our fault again.

Tracking and maintaining a record of every single company whose goods we should avoid is HARD, and most of us already have too many things we need to do.

We have consistently indicated that we want our government to help us ensure that the goods we consume are produced ethically, safely and in an environmentally friendly way.

The problem is that there is no will at the government level to do this.

"We" didn't care. A few influential people did.

"We" don't need so many phones and tablets, replaced every year. Our parents got by without.

"A few influential people did."

yup, that was us.

Sorry, I am not sure what point you are making with the second line.

Why is the title here only "Apple", when the article's title is "Tech Giants" and it mentions Apple, Samsung and Microsoft?

As you can see from the URL, the original title was the more click-baity one that ended up on HN.

Sensationalism and attention seeking is why.

And the subjunctive mode indicated by "may" usually evaluates to "is not" in new articles.

There's some "law" associated with that sensationalism news article observation, but I don't know its name offhand.

Betteridge's Law of Headlines states (roughly) that "headlines in the form of a question can usually be answered with 'no'".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

Thanks!

Keep in mind it's "usually", not "always". Some people take that law to mean "always", especially here on hackernews.

I have seen many articles change their titles after they are initially published. Maybe it is from companies or readers pushing back when they feel the headline is unfair.

Could be, but it's more likely that they're changing the titles as a result of A/B testing.

Maybe because Apple is the one named company that refused to comment.

"(Samsung) SDI, told Amnesty it doesn’t do direct business with the major Chinese suppliers mentioned in the report and that they aren’t in its supply chain."

We've seen this before. Apple's silence in the past is because 1) they are doing their due diligence in fact gathering and 2) if change is necessary, coming up with a plan to do so.

Meaning you'll hear nothing from them until they have planned, prepared and can respond in detail.

(Supporting Reference: http://www.macworld.com/article/1159548/apple_crisis_managem...)

  they are doing their due diligence

They are claiming that they try to do their due diligence -- not the same thing.

I'm waiting for the headline: Amnesty International uses Machines Made with Cobalt Mined by Children

Because Tim Cook is a fundamentally decent human being and might possibly do something about it?

From the actual report [1]:

"The 16 multinational companies covered in the report are Ahong, Apple, BYD, Daimler, Dell, HP, Huawei, Inventec, Lenovo, LG, Microsoft, Samsung, Sony, Vodafone, Volkswagen and ZTE. Company responses are available in the report annex."

"The largest [purchaser of Congolese-sourced cobalt] is Huayou Cobalt’s Congolese subsidiary CDM.

"Huayou Cobalt [then] supplies cobalt to three lithium-ion battery component manufacturers[:] Ningbo Shanshan and Tianjin Bamo from China[;] and L&F Materials from South Korea.

"[The] 16 multinational consumer brands listed [are] direct or indirect customers of the three battery component manufacturers."

(edit: Note I've rearranged the paragraphs from the original report.)

[1] "This is what we die for: Human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo power the global trade in cobalt." http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/this-is-what-we-d...

From the article: "mobile-phone and laptop makers such as Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co."

I'll up vote stories like this when they have the right title. Not one designed for clickbait. Apple goes further than most companies to inspect its supply chain and improve working conditions. So it grates to see Apple singled out for criticism here.

Yep. At least in this instance it's a safe clickbait. It won't change people's minds and won't affect the stock price, which is awful and tells a lot about what investors really care about. The titles only subtracts some more dignity to the publication and unfortunately to the no-profit organization that's sponsoring its important findings by using Apple as an easy proxy for the industry.

Well.. you wouldn't admit you already knew that your products where manufactured in such conditions, would you? There's a whole market idea and brand image to protect... "Let's just play the blame game and make the guilt vanish somewhere else."

To admit to oneself that the brand and the feelings that the brand makes is wrong actually causes actual psychological harm. It is more logical to defend any attacks.

Further, for Apple, most HN/Startup types have the whole suite of Apple products, hardware and software. They have invested tens of thousands of dollars, each, over the years in this brand. To admit to oneself that they made the wrong choice and wasted all that money causes actual bad psychological hurt.

Further, for Apple users that have invested thousands of days, each, over the years in using the products and software. To admit to oneself that they made the wrong choice and wasted all time causes actual bad psychological hurt.

Far easier, and logical and less harmful it is to defend your substantial investment.

I can see your point. Haven't thought about that actually.

Apple deserves to be singled out, because they specifically promote themselves as being friendly to humanity, so actions like this are hypocritical, in addition to being immoral. Also, as the largest company, they are able to lead by example.

Samsung is larger than Apple, Microsoft, and Google combined.

define "larger". it's certainly not by market cap.

If Samsung sell more phones, we could assume they use more cobalt, so have more influence on its production.

That turns this issue into a critique of Apple's brand. The problem isn't that there are children mining cobalt, the problem is that Apple, specifically, is using it.

"mobile-phone and laptop makers such as Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. May Be Using Congo Cobalt Mined by Children, Amnesty Says"

is too long a title for Hacker News.

Apple is the one named company that refused to comment.

"(Samsung) SDI, told Amnesty it doesn’t do direct business with the major Chinese suppliers mentioned in the report and that they aren’t in its supply chain."

Our electronics are composed of so many modular elements that no single company can produce them all entirely. Not even Samsung. It must be very difficult to track down all suppliers on the chain and control and monitor them. All while still making a profit (even for Apple).

So I expect the usual behavior here from Apple: Remain silent, listen to accusations first, prepare a good reply and take necessary actions. Quite exemplary in my opinion.

There's already been a statement from them, although it doesn't say much more than if they remained silent:

> “Underage labour is never tolerated in our supply chain and we are proud to have led the industry in pioneering new safeguards. We are currently evaluating dozens of different materials, including cobalt, in order to identify labour and environmental risks as well as opportunities for Apple to bring about effective, scalable and sustainable change.”

That mostly sounds like your typical marketing statement to me though, which is of course the best available move in their situation.

Sourcing every component for a manufacturing company's supply chain in a responsible way is hard. Especially because tracking these components is made hard by shady providers who know or - for those higher in the chain - suspect that the components they provide are produced/extracted by children and/or exploited workers. But it's basically a "don't ask don't tell" situation where investigating what happens further down the chain can only cost you money or stir up shit, so as long as consumers don't complain there's no business incentive to do that.

Obviously Apple is not the only company involved in this, but contrarily to their claim they don't lead the industry at all on this matter. If we had to elect a leader I'd argue it would rather be Intel, see this entry from a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10874850

What I don't inderstand about this outrage is, will the Apple declining go buy from this supplier actually change these children lives for the better or not?

This child labour happens not because of particular supplier, but because of economic situation in the whole country. If Apple switches from Congo mines to cobalt from more developed places, won't it just make Congo even more pure? Right now, these children work in mines because they need to survive; but if the mines close, doesn't it mean that these children will just loose the means to survive an end up being hungry instead?

(Please notice: I'm not making statements, I only ask questions. I don't know enough about this to assume anything.)

You're looking at things only in terms of purely economic transactions. The reality is that plenty of kids "working" in dangerous mines are not there because they made some rational choice to accept the risk in exchange for enough money to buy food[1] but because of threats of physical violence. To put it another way they are slaves.

[1] why would we even expect children to have the capability to make those kinds of decisions rationally anyway?

Yes, these children are integrated into a system where we benefit from their child slavery. And our economic theology keeps many of us from seeing the situation simply. ("They're better off as child slaves! They should probably thank us!")

Are you suggesting that "seeing the situation simply" is a good thing?

Oh yes. Like people here echo Rich Hickey's or Dijkstra's words on Simple Made Easy. (Rather than trap themselves in hairball codebases, gradually unable to move forward.)

Like people who reject the complexity of epicycles, that desperate theological attempt to preserve Earth at the center of the solar system. (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Cassini_...)

People will tie themselves in complex masochistic knots, to justify the absurd conclusions of their religious beliefs ("the invisible hand!"). As we see here in this discussion of child fucking slavery.

Do you have any proof that children are slaves there (as opposing to working out of need)?

Here's a huge report about the activities of the people you are wanting to buy minerals from: https://www.globalwitness.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/repor...

"In the course of plundering these minerals, rebel groups and the Congolese army have used forced labour (often in extremely harsh and dangerous conditions), carried out systematic extortion and imposed illegal “taxes” on the civilian population. They have also used violence and intimidation against civilians who attempt to resist working for them or handing over the minerals they produce."

Are you aware of the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo? There has been a civil war going on for 20 years. Control of mineral resources is an important source of funding for both sides in the conflict. Buying minerals from the Congo means dealing with violent armed militias who have been engaged in an appalling decades long war. You may as well be arguing about the morality of buying oil from ISIS on the basis that their drills are being operated by civilians who need the pay to survive. Current US foreign policy is to blow those people to bits, not buy oil from them to preserve their "jobs".

You seem to be under the assumption that buying minerals from the Congo means the miners actually got paid. This is by no means certain at all. Some of it is just extorted from civilians at roadblocks as a "tax". Buying those minerals hasn't helped the miners at all, it has just further funded the militias/armies that are terrorising the civilian population (murder, rape, extortion, kidnapping).

Here's the real problem: " Congo’s 2002 Mining Code stipulates that ... mining can only take place in designated zones by registered miners. The failure of the government to assign sufficient areas has led to an increase in illegal mining at unauthorized sites, Amnesty said."

The real problem is that there's a brutal civil war. The idea that the origin of the problem is government overregulation is laughable.

It's government inefficiency, not over-regulation. Regulation is essential to preventing abusive labour practices, but when the regulators are not efficient enough to provide licences to good guys who want follow the rules, bad guys who don't give a damn about the rules will take over. Unless Amnesty International is misinformed, this is at least one of the main reasons for this problem.

Being a slave is awful. But dying of hunger seems worse.

So, what do you think will happen to child slaves when their owner suddenly finds that he no longer has any use for them and they no longer earn their food and lodging?

What will they eat? Where will they live?

It's really not that simple at all. Please read this report: https://www.globalwitness.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/repor...

Buying minerals from the wrong people in the DRC doesn't mean you buy from people who benevolently employ children to save them from starvation. It means you buy from the people that set up roadblocks and extort minerals from civilians in exchange for nothing (other than not shooting them). It means buying minerals from organisations that are gang raping women and kidnapping children. Buying from those people further funds their operations, making the situation for civilians worse.

The report makes recommendations, including a section "to companies and traders purchasing, handling or trading in minerals originating from eastern drc or neighbouring countries":

>Exercise stringent due diligence regarding their mineral supplies: find out exactly where the minerals were produced (not only the broad geographical area, but the precise location and mine), by whom they were produced and under what conditions (including use of forced labour, child labour, health and safety and other labour conditions).

>Refuse to buy minerals if the above information is not available or if there are indications that the minerals have passed through the hands of any of the warring parties, benefited them in other ways, or otherwise involved human rights abuses.

>Be able to demonstrate, with credible written evidence, the exact origin of their mineral supplies, the routes they have taken and the identity of those involved in the chain of custody, including intermediaries or third parties who have handled them.

>Do not accept oral or vague assurances from suppliers as to the origin of minerals and the identity of their own suppliers. Carry out spot checks to verify the sources and the accuracy of suppliers’ assurances. Require these measures in all circumstances, including in cases where minerals originate from areas which may be remote or difficult to access.

>Commission and publish regular independent third-party audits of their supply chain.

>Federations and associations of comptoirs and other trade bodies: adopt an explicit policy not to buy or handle minerals which benefit any of the warring parties in eastern DRC. Require their members to carry out the above due diligence steps systematically and to demonstrate precisely where all their supplies come from. Set up mechanisms for independently monitoring and checking whether their members are complying with these requirements.

This explains a lot and makes a lot of sense, thanks.

What happened in the past to former slaves when they were freed?

They integrated back into society as well as they could.

What past, what societies?

The USA for example?

Almost all of there rare-earth mining operations are run with deplorable labor conditions. A working certification scheme would raise prices all across. That income could be used to pay adults a fair wage. With which they can feed their children.

Meanwhile, the children have the time to go to school. Improved education has an effect on the local economy after less than 10 years.

This sounds like a great, correct solution.

But as far as I understand, typically it doesn't go this way: companies that are accused of using (directly or indirectly) child labour just move their supply chain elsewhere, and former child workers are left unemployed, unpaid and unfed. Or am I mistaken about how it usually goes?

IANAE, but the end result you mention seems implausible. Do people really don't have anything else to do than to slave their lives away for the West? Again, IANAE, but it feels like if those companies moved elsewhere, people would be free to improve their conditions locally. They'd have to focus on the basics - growing food, treating water, building infrastructure - but they wouldn't go hungry. Disconnected from the global market, prices should adjust to a sensible level. It seems to me that places like DRC are too weak to participate in the global economy - and some level of isolation would be helpful at this point. They could use it to grow and stabilize - something that's now prevented because the tether to global economy is bleeding them dry (both figuratively and literally).

I think Apple has a reasonable approach: if a child is discovered working where they shouldn't be the supplier is required to: pay for the kid's education, continue paying kid's salary during education, offer a job after graduation. If they don't do this, the supplier's contract is terminated.

Interesting, I didn't know this! Relevant link/quote:

Underage labor is never tolerated in our supply chain. If we find it, we put a stop to it. And suppliers found violating our zero tolerance policy are put on probation. Our Underage Labor Remediation Program requires that any supplier found hiring underage workers fund the worker’s safe return home. Suppliers also have to fully finance the worker’s education at a school chosen by the worker and his or her family, continue to pay the worker’s wages, and offer the worker a job when he or she reaches the legal age. Of more than 1.6 million workers covered in 633 audits in 2014, 16 cases of underage labor were discovered at six facilities — and all were successfully remediated. This means that underage labor now accounts for 0.001 percent of the total work population audited in our supply chain. Although this number is low, even one case of underage labor is unacceptable. So we won’t stop until it’s eliminated from our supply chain entirely.

https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/labor-and-huma...

Can you provide some evidence of sanctions already applied, please?

Why are you asking some random people on an internet forum? Why not phone up Apple and ask the source?

It was just out of curiosity really and because these random people are defending Apple. I don't recall buying anything from Apple so far... So why would I contact them in first place regarding their manufacturing process?

Perhaps you can help me with that.

And having sanctions in place doesn't mean they get to be applied. Like I read before, they may just exist in order to make people more comfortable with their goods. I would really like to see an example.

You could just read the case study right under that quote on the linked page (the one titled "Case Study Impact in action: Ran’s story").

There are case studies on that page.

Does it work only for their direct partners or "transitively"?I don't believe that Apple can monitor every company involved.

I haven't thought that topic thoroughly either, but right now, this does strike me like a fully general counterargument that can be used to justify any atrocity - "hey, they're having it better now!".

In case it's not widely known, take this as an opportunity to look at the FairPhone http://www.fairphone.com/ that seeks to address exactly this problem.

For those who want to know a bit more about FairPhone and specifically how they address cobalt mining. They have a pretty good video and a blogpost about the sourcing of cobalt. Blogpost: https://www.fairphone.com/2013/03/14/a-fair-price-for-cobalt... Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWVFXesVScA

Full disclosure: I once worked on a part of FairPhone's webshop.

I like this answer, because it starts proposing a solution (and executing on it). Though I'm not entirely clear what the Fairphone solution is, as the blog post & video seem to be at the fact finding stage. I assume it was through deploying extra on-site inspectors, setting up a union & paying more for the cobalt?

The other issue is that Fairphone has produced 60,000 phones, but Apple has made 700 Million. Can the Fairphone solution scale 10,000x? How does the co-ordination of inspections & unions change if you increase it by 10,000?

Reading the comments here, I'm surprised at how broadly the terrible situation in the Congo is being generalized. This is not one immorally-sourced component among many, it's a massive outlier: A rare element with its richest mineral source in one of the poorest, most chaotic and war-torn nations on the planet.

It's correspondingly an incredibly hard problem to solve. At an extreme, Apple probably has the cash to buy its own mines for cobalt but how can they ensure that their suppliers use it exclusively? It's a fungible commodity, after all.

If anyone has any ideas that don't revolve around armed 'humanitarian' intervention in the DRC, I'd love to hear them.

Also, I'd be interested to hear what problem #2 is if this one could be eliminated. My suspicion is that its degree of horribleness would be a significant drop-off.

Apple, Samsung, etc. are incredibly wealthy companies, making massive purchase orders. They are capable of impacting entire industries. They must ensure they have clean and ethical supply chains with no excuses. They could also force their competitors to do the same shifting focus away from the patent crap.

Instead of vilifying the corporate interest involved this needs to be resolved by trade restrictions at the national level.

Why is it that we only seek to shame the companies who buy goods produced in these countries but never our politicians who don't do anything to get the country involved to improve? Trade sanctions, freezing assets, and more, can get a country's leadership to act appropriately.

My pet theory is that we all implicitly know politicians won't do it. I'm yet to see a sanction that was actually about human rights, and not about some political or economical goal. The world leaders seem to care about human rights violations even less than the evil megacorps.

You'd punish a whole country for the actions of a rebel warlord that the government is actually fighting ?

The most ironic thing here is that the current CEO of Apple is the guy who was so focused on the bottom line at Apple while Jobs was the running company, he forced many of the suppliers to guarantee certain production goals at insanely low labor rates to maximize profits.

If you want someone to demonize, you don't have to look very far.

Misleading title. Actual title is "Tech Giants Accused by Amnesty of Using Cobalt Dug by Children", and companies named are Apple, Samsung, Microsoft and SDI, because they buy from one dodgy Chinese cobalt company.

Apple, as other companies of such huge size with extremely complex supply chain, don't go too deep to inspect what their contractors do. They turn a blind eye, because it's all down to the matter if you can come up with an excuse and remain clean: "we don't know and physically can't check what all our sub-sub-contractors do, but we will no longer deal with them until they fix it" etc. Unless we have laws that hold all involved parties accountable, such practice will prevail.

In my opinion Apple seems to be going to reasonable lengths to keep its supply chain clean. I think you underestimate the challenge of making sure that suppliers 2, 3 or 4 levels apart from you play by the rules. I work at a small company that uses, among other things, fabrics in their supply chain and even at the second level it's very hard to confirm simple specifications that are much less interesting or scandalous than the topic at hand. I wouldn't want to imagine how difficult it is to do the same thing when it comes to scandals and issues that the supplier of your supplier 3 levels deep actually really, really wants to hide.

I agree that it's a very hard problem and the change of the whole industry is required to fix it. But I believe, with enough resources and will it would be possible. The problem is, that nobody actually cares -- it's all about PR now only. For example, let's take food industry where regulations are enforced on all levels and restaurant, after poisoning their clients, can't simply say: "Sorry, we didn't mean that, we had no idea these mushrooms came from Chernobyl, but rest assured we won't deal with this supplier again".

And we happily buy their products absorbing their marketing message: "you are a creative and nice person that does good for the world (using our products, that is)".

And when faced with the reality that Apple is a money making machine and is only worried about doing a bad thing if it dirties its public image detracting from their marketing message our cognitive dissonance starts screeching.

So we, buyers of their products, are good people because they say their products are for good people, right?

Look at the thread and find the comments that say "they will remove the contractors, apologize and so they will return to being a good company, they are the best!".

Samsung sure is worst in their practices but at least they don't coat their public image with a hippy-happy-creative good natured coat. They are a ruthless asian electronics conglomerate behaving as such.

Not only do we believe the brand message, but we invest ourselves wholly in the brand. To go against the brand actually hurts ourselves. To say "I made a mistake investing thousands of days and dollars on this" hurts. Thus, it's often much easier to defend your investment by defending the brand, attacking the attackers and expressing "it's the way of the world" and "that's life, it needs inequality" whilst remaining nice and creative.

Defence of investment, a basic human psychological drive.

There's an interesting 2010 documentary "Blood in the Mobile" about the issue of conflict minerals from Congo in mobile phone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_in_the_Mobile

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1763194/

do we really need new devices every year/month?

I keep dropping my phone, so for me, yes.

Just buy a damn 3310!

Oh man, my Nokia 8910 (the one with the titanium casing) was damn near indestructible. I'd dropped it more times than I can count (once off a 2nd story in a nightclub into a dance floor where it was promptly trampled), backed over it accidentally because it fell out of my pocket as I got into the car and left it in my pocket and washed it 3 times (it stayed on the whole time). The 4th washing was the one that finally killed it.

We played football in the classroom with my Sony Ericsson K700i when I was in high school. I still have holes in my wall because I kept throwing it every time some game annoyed me.

My charger died, so I disassembled it and put the wires directly on the battery. Finally, I accidentally crossed the wires and the phone died after burning for like 2-3 minutes.

There isn't a complex consumer good that does not have at least one part of it that somehow was produced in circumstances that are abhorrent. This is something that is a societal - and even a global - issue, not one limited to specific brands, though there are brands that are more directly involved in these horrors.

And we all consist of sizeable chunk of carbon released from industrial age pollution, when slavery was an ordinary thing. So - how should I pay Amnesty International, or Greenpeace for acknowledging that my internal chemistry uses immoral carbon atoms?

How far removed from the purchasing chain is someone/organization deemed "morally clean"?

worldwide enforced minimal labor and environmental standards is the only way to go. And like with war crimes and crimes against humanity such standards should be enforceable by any nation anywhere in the world.

Sigh. Why are people even surprised? This won't change and can't change until we stop yelling "think of the children!" and only demanding for the suppliers to do a better job.

Yes some suppliers might be able to do a better job but many cases they also simply can't it's just the nature of doing business with under-developed countries.

Similar processes like the Kimberly process that was supposed to stop the trade in conflict diamonds have utterly failed and this is an industry that is built around artificial scarcity which just was dying for an excuse to further limit the production of diamonds to jack up the price.

There is very little any supplier can do to actually address this problem, this isn't some large scale mining operation that uses children this is for the most part unofficial mining. Unofficial mining (AKA the official past time of small scale African warlords) is pretty much a bunch of people taking over abandoned mining sites, dump sites for mining waste, sites that were deemed to be uneconomical to develop or just being down stream from the actual mine.

While it's true that these sites are often taken over by some gang of former child soldiers and their master (we all liked Beasts of No Nation) more often than not these days unofficial mining is conducted by communities, villages, and individuals who do not hold any one at gun point.

These unofficial mining operations do not produce any substantial amount of note (individually, however there could be 1000's of small scale mining operations vs only a handful of large scale official ones which means that anywhere between 10-50% of a given product might be mined unofficially) but they do produce enough to say feed a village (or to buy the wanna be warlord a BMW from the 80's even diamonds are sold for not even cents on the dollar, every 1$ in uncut stones that ends up in the hands of the miner is inflated to 1000 to 10000 by the time it ends up at tiffany's).

Those unofficial mining operations are getting mixed with what the big actual mining operation produce and end up in the supply chain, this can happen at so many points that there is no way to enforce any process which will guarantee that the supply is clean of conflict, child labor or any other social decree.

Even if you take out the child labor part which while horrid is by far not the worse part that can happen to a child in Africa, the conditions in the official mining operations for registered adult miners are also appalling and so far beyond what most of us could even imagine human beings being able to withstand on a daily basis.

So instead of yelling that we should vote with our wallets until those supply chains will be clean we need to realize that they will never be clean as long as you are dealing with a region such as the Congo. Instead of making another pointless process which will just going to be circumvented at all levels while jacking up the price for the end consumer (which every one in the supply chain, especially as it gets closer to the source will just pocket the difference). Companies should put the money that consumers would end up paying into programs that might actually work and not into the endless pit of bribes that any certification process would turn out to be when facing the unmovable object which is reality.

Apple can switch a supplier and it will, but it won't find a clean one as no such supplier exists even if they'll find the most expensive one with the best intentions. Because the local population which runs these operations will always have the upper hand and as long as the conditions exist that make it more likely for children to end up digging up rare earths for your smartphone or diamonds for your tennis bracelet this won't change.

I hope the day would come where a company like Apple could be brave enough to come out and say look we can't buy Cobalt which wasn't mined by kids, but we made a calculation that if we could it would be 17% more expensive so we are jacking our own prices by 17% and transferring the difference to X Y and Z in hopes that in 20 years we could buy Cobalt which was not only not mined by children but also mined by miners with life expectancy which is longer than our yearly product cycle.

But as long as people would keep on yelling boycott this and boycott that it will never happen and the only thing Apple can do is to continue to play the pass the hot potato game with it's suppliers (which will continue to restructure and change names to be put back into that list) and maybe have Tim Cook do an apologetic we are the world cover...

Nope. It's me and you who actually give money for gadgets manufactured on far-east, exploiting the hell out of ppl.

Devils advocate:

Schooling is expensive and not every country can afford it. Before schooling, children used to work year round as soon as they were able. In fact big families were primarily for the labor. Isn't this better than families being poor and dying from starvation? This is part of the growing pains of being a developing country.

Apple is evil to the core (pun pun pun)

Phones must be a 100% recyclable so that we can reuse their materials or earth will become a giant wastedump.

Think different?

No, exploit the same.

You really don't think this is a sin of omission? The abuse is happening multiple suppliers away from the companies in question. And Apple, Microsoft, and Samsung are reportedly implicated. I'm not pessimistic enough to think they are conspiring to keep Congolese children abused.

None of this excuses it, and now that is brought to light I expect at the very least that these particular vendors are dropped. But comments like yours seem either intentionally inflammatory or very naive.

It's just that Apple (unlike Microsoft and Samsung) brands itself as a company with human values so obviously people are paying more attention to this aspect for Apple. But yes, I agree indeed.

brands itself as a company with human values

How so? (never got that impression, but I'm also a fervent ad/commercial skipper)

Anyway I really doubt any of the electronic devices any of us have is completely clean (wrt this topic). Not sure if such a thing even exist. At least with clothing or so you can get alternatives if you want.

Apple do go to (what seems to me, your mileage may vary) reasonable lengths to produce supplier chain responsibility reports and manage such accordingly. Which I guess is the "branding" mentioned above but I'd also guess the intended (snarky) meaning was "empty branding" rather than "branding by doing" which seems to be the case.

[edit: minor tweak for clarification]

Of course is intentionally inflammatory, for the sake of discussion at least :)

The problem (as mentioned in other comment) is that Apple positions itself as the company that does thing different, the company for the creative people that "cares".

And even if I don't hate Apple per se, I like these moments where the wind blows open the courtain, just for a moment, and we can get a peek of the insides of the machinery of our capitalist system.

It is the same that happened with the Snowden leaks, we all suspected it but the reality was worse than expected.

But hey, I earn my bread developing mobile apps and change phone every year so I'm guilty as charged. But in some twisted way I love to see the way we ignore how things work in the reality when it causes us some disconfort.

It's the same in all industries.

Look at airlines. People aren't willing to spend $x to have actual legroom. Everyone only every buys the lowest cost.

Or clothing.

And modern supply chains are so complex thats its impossible to ensure that 100% of the time policies are complied with.

And are the people in these places better off with that job, then without? (i honestly don't know, but surely this is a factor)

> And modern supply chains are so complex thats its impossible to ensure that 100% of the time policies are complied with.

That might be true but it's still only an excuse at the end of the day.

True,

But even if you want to do the right thing the complexity makes it hard to maintain accountability. You audit your supplier, and they have sub suppliers and sub sub suppliers and sub sub sub suppliers. How far down the rabbit hole can you go?

You're the second person I've seen post this about airlines in the past two days (I believe the first was on Reddit). I have thought about it and don't actually believe it's 100% true. People buy what's cheap at the time they need the ticket. The problem is price variability/gaming by the airlines. You can very easily see >100% variability in the price of the same ticket from one day to the next, and it has nothing to do with objective variables. It's pure price manipulation, just like everything else airlines do (baggage, food, boarding order, upgrades, elite lounges, free drinks, point bonuses).

I'm not sure what airlines are like in America, but in general (where I am) people only look at price and then complain about it.

See http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/12/chea...

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