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Comment by VeejayRampay | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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 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, 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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

>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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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/

> 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.

>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.

Which phones are made by children? Sources?

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.

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

Grim indeed.

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.

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