Hacker News Reader

Comment by MrBorough | Hacker News Reader

This is why the imperialists countries like USA, Britain, France etc are going to foment war in countries like Congo where people live like animals and work for peanuts to dig out cobalt:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4764208/Child-miners...

Let's make a million dollars no matter who dies. It aggravates me that I don't see any comments here relating to what is happening in Congo and all the multinationals supported by the all good US/Britain/France etc. Why do you think the arena of war is being shifted to Africa? Are you ready to wake up? Or do you care about what is happening as long as you have a new toy/mobile to play?

View on HN

You are not comparing the harms in this poorly-written Daily Mail article to any alternative.

Fossil fuels have disastrous harms for people, communities, and ecosystems. In order to show that cobalt mining is worth avoiding, you have to show why it is worse than the alternative it helps to replace. In this case, the cobalt (about 15 lbs per car) would replace gasoline consumption. I would be compelled to believe that, per car's worth of material and emissions, the net harms of the gasoline supply chain and exhaust effects on the environment outweigh the net harms of cobalt mining.

If we specifically want to speak about the dirty geopolitics of fossil fuels, that would be a several-days-long conversation. Countries with large oil reserves or where oil is a large contributor to GDP include Venezuela, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Nigeria. The oil economy solidifies autocrats and corrupt systems in these countries.

And Norway

Most of those other places do suck, though.

Pretty sure that if you want a mineral cheap, you'll want there to be peace, not war. Extracting something in the middle of a war zone is super expensive.

If anyone is intentionally fomenting war because of cobalt or oil or whatever, it's because they want that mineral or commodity to be expensive, not cheap.

That would help explain oil interests wanting to foment war in the Middle East. The idea is to /prevent/ the Middle East from cheaply extracting oil, thus increasing the price of oil.

If you don't control the resource, you get no profit from it, so you foment war to gain control of it.

Do you have a more... reputable source than the daily mail?

THE COBALT PIPELINE: Tracing the path from deadly hand-dug mines in Congo to consumers’ phones and laptops.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/c...

I actually don't doubt the Daily Mail about this particular story. Mining abuses in Africa include some of the worst crimes committed by Western civilization (vide: the concept of "Western Civilization" may be outdated), over things some of us in technology would consider essentially valueless today.

Chocolate is almost as serious a concern as cobalt and diamond. The legacy of colonialism created a food and infrastructure vacuum in Africa which is typically filled by mineral extraction and labor exploitation.

I feel exactly the same and am amazed by how readily some people invest their money into and anticipate owning products that are based on slavery and other kinds of suffering as well as the destruction of our planet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com