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Comment by SQueeeeeL | Hacker News Reader

I feel like this is essentially trying to sue capitalism. Of course most raw materials people get is essentially sourced from exploitation. That's just the result of buying for the cheapest cost.

People don't like seeing how the sausage gets made, like the John Oliver segment on children making clothes, if they shut this down it will just pop up again with another company...

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Your argument is exactly what industrialists said about child labour in Britain in the early industrial revolution.

This would be less cheap and more convincing if you gave a specific example or two of how it is exactly what they said.

>if they shut this down it will just pop up again with another company...

You can't just pop up a new mine like you could a textile factory.

I’m not endorsing the original comment, but the mines that employ child labor aren’t generally big mechanized operations. They’re what are called “artisanal mines”: holes in the ground where people chip out rocks with hand tools. So you kinda can just pop one up.

Then perhaps the big tech and battery makers are even more culpable for this child exploitation...if its as easy as just digging a hole and chipping out rocks, they could be a little more selective in their suppliers.

I think you're misunderstanding the challenge. Big tech and battery makers don't buy ore straight out of the mine; as you say, they buy from suppliers, who are typically always willing to certify they don't use child labor. Of course that's often a lie. The question is how you, as a purchaser for Google or whatever, can actually catch the lie.

>Big tech and battery makers don't buy ore straight out of the mine; as you say, they buy from suppliers, who are typically always willing to certify they don't use child labor.

Again that points towards not just culpability (knowledge they are facilitating child exploitation and labor), but willing to go so far as to have their suppliers provide certifications they know are "often" fake.

>The question is how you, as a purchaser for Google or whatever, can actually catch the lie.

Plenty of other similar mining industries that exploited child labor have managed to put systems in place to minimize and weed out such practices. If De Beers diamond company can improve...certainly the big data tech companies can do better than requiring certs they know are often fake.

I don't agree with the premise. It's my understanding that the diamond industry is not any better than the cobalt industry about child labor.

You can't just set up a new artisanal cobalt mine wherever labor is cheapest because cobalt deposits don't exist everywhere. The DRC has the largest cobalt reserves in the world. Australia is in second place. Australia won't use child labor or artisanal mining if buyers have to switch to Australian cobalt from Congolese cobalt.

Global cobalt reserves by country:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/264930/global-cobalt-res...

If legal precedents start getting made that you have to stop using a vendor once it's exposed that they're using unethical labor practices like this, perhaps even with punitive damages for not doing due diligence yourself, it gets harder and harder every time.

I'm no fan of unenforceable laws that just push problems further out of sight, but I don't think that's the case here.

If those premises are true, it seems like the only choices available are to accept just about any level of brutality and exploitation as inevitable, or to oppose capitalism.

Correct. That's basically the argument Smith makes in Wealth of Nations.

Most capitalists fear public relations and won't use child or slave labor anywhere in their supply chain if they can help it. When the customer might boycott you for something you stand to lose far more than gain by doing it anyway.

This assumes perfect information for the consumer. Most capitalist wouldn't advertise they use child labor even if they did. Sweep it under the rug, and focus on the marketing budget instead. Then many consumers are apathetic to a lot of things, they may not care enough that some children they never knew died. Relying on the invisible hand to affect social change often results in invisible results, because the results don't actually exist.

In the case of child/slave labor the topic is sensitive enough that it isn't worth sweeping under the rug because the risk is too great. If you do "sweep it under the rug" a large part of your efforts is ensuring the children working for you have a better life than those not (education and medical care) which costs a lot of money. That is you assume you will be caught and try to present yourself in the best light anyway.

The risk is too great? What risk exactly? The risk of becoming a trillion dollar company? Does every iPhone, Galaxy Android device or new laptop have a sticker on them that says "Product may have used child labor at some point in supply chain" in big bold letters? Will these companies triumphantly announce how their product now results in only 1 child death per year instead of 2 at some big keynote product launch event? No. Maybe they'll investigate after being called out and put it in some report that barely any consumers care to read.

If you sampled 100 smartphone users on the street about cobalt procurement practices, would they be surprised by what they hear? If you tracked those 100 people, how many would change their behavior(i.e. give up their smartphone) after hearing about it?

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