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Comment by FussyZeus | Hacker News Reader

> I don't think this makes much sense. The mineral supply chain in that part of the world is ridiculously hard to track.

It's been designed to be hard to track. Just because the infrastructure is a little hit and miss and the people are overall poorer doesn't mean it's impossible to reliably manage supply lines. The problem is corporations from the "West" don't want to know where the stuff is coming from because they know damn well it's sweatshop labor, minors, political prisoners, and who knows what else. That's why it's so fucking cheap.

Google knows my fucking shoe size at this point: if they, or Apple, or Samsung, or any other company wanted to know, they would know. The problem is they don't know because when people ask uncomfortable questions, they just shrug their shoulders and go "well we aren't responsible." Fuck that. They should be responsible.

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> 'infrastructure is a little hit and miss'

Lol. The problem isn't a lack of roads, it's the fact that parts of eastern DRC are still effectively war zones. This isn't tech companies not caring, this is an ongoing war, a government incapable of controlling the country (and hardly the good guys even where they do have control), rebel groups (which have control over minerals and need income) running their own proto-states, long-standing tribal conflicts, militarily powerful neighbors with vested interests in keeping the conflict going and DRC's precious resources flowing over the borders, a widespread Ebola outbreak, and hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing their homes.

Google 'wanting to know' isn't going to solve the chaos in that part of the world that leads to the supply chain tracking problems.

They know enough to get the damn cobalt. They can know more if they want to, or, more likely, not do business with the sort of shady ass organizations who use child labor specifically because they can't get the documentation.

I really don't understand this "that's just the way it is" thinking when it comes to corporations doing shady shit overseas. If I went to my DMV and I said "I need to register this car" and had no proof of purchase, no previous registration, no paperwork from the former owner or dealer, I wouldn't be able to register this car. Yet, somehow, a multiBILLION dollar company can just buy material from warlords or whatever tribe in remote parts of China, and ship MILLIONS OF POUNDS of it out of that region, but nobody can get a fucking receipt? Are you kidding me?

>Yet, somehow, a multiBILLION dollar company can just buy material from warlords or whatever tribe in remote parts of China, and ship MILLIONS OF POUNDS of it out of that region, but nobody can get a fucking receipt?

What normally happens in this process is that the selling country's government official who is tasked with verifying the integrity of the receipt is bribed with a month or more salary to sign the exchange off as legitimate, e.g. the Kimberley Process. There has got to be a solution to this problem but paper trails are notoriously unreliable in scenarios like this one.

Wasn't bribery illegal?

So? Who is going to know or enforce it?

Most bribes are not obvious. More like give money to the charity my brother in law runs. The charity even does some good, but the real purpose is to pay the brother in law a nice salary and pay for family trips to various places the charity operates. (You should be suspicious anytime the family of a politician has any association with a charity - it might be a real charity but often it is a way to hide bribes)

"Speaking assignments" where you pay someone $8 Million to read a prepared speech for an hour is another common way to bribe people.

Not disagreeing with you, but I would be surprised if they're buying it directly from the mine and not from some sort of market/middleman/third party company. I wouldn't hold my breath for extensive receipts and documentation either. The miners pictured in the article don't even have shoes and the "hammers" they're given appear to be two pieces of rebar welded together. I'd be surprised to find much documentation at all.

FTA...

Q: But I'm asking you, is it possible that these companies can claim that you can't prove that they're actually linked to the cobalt?

A: Certainly the supply chain is opaque. It is complex. But the plaintiffs all were injured and killed at mines owned by companies that have been publicly disclosed as sellers of cobalt to our defendants.

So no real connection at all, then. Nice of them to admit it. Why are they suing these unrelated tech companies, then, and not the ones that actually sent the kids to work in the mines—i.e. themselves?

What good do you think a receipt is in that part of the world? Of course they get a certificate of conflict-free production. And if you have a couple bucks in the DRC/Rwanda, you can get one too! Look at diamonds, gold and coltan as useful precedents that show how buyer-side pressure will not improve things unless the buyers choose to stop using the minerals altogether.

> unless the buyers choose to stop using the minerals altogether.

BINGO. That's what you do. If the ass end of Mogadishu can't provide the minerals without using exploitative labor practices, THEN DON'T BUY FROM THE ASS END OF MOGADISHU.

And if that means an iPhone costs $200 more then that's what it fucking means, because no iPhone is worth it's weight in human suffering to have.

This is one of those feel-good solutions that lets us feel superior but doesn't actually help the people suffering. Demand is not going anywhere.

You're also insultingly wrong with your geography.

The 'someone will do it anyway' defense is not morally legitimate. Just because everyone else is doing it, does not make the action ok.

Luke 17:1 Jesus said to his disciples: "Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come."

I'm not interested in sounding morally superior, I'm interested in actually helping people who need help. And if you want to do that, you need to accept that 'stop buying cobalt' is not currently a solution that has any chance of improving the state of things.

How does 'continue buying unethically sourced cobalt' improve the state of things?

Ideally, it is a dual solution of don't buy the unethical kind, and set up an alternate ethical supply chain to the same region so workers can switch to a better work place.

But, if the latter is not possible, one can at least help decrease the market for unethical cobalt by ceasing purchase.

Plus, it is not a matter of seeming morally superior. If one option is morally better than another, it should be chosen, regardless of the consequences.

So, for instance, if Jesus is correct, that it is immoral to be a path of scandal, then one should choose to not be a path of scandal, even if the state of the world otherwise remains unchanged (e.g. unethical cobalt mining continues).

In what situation? In the case of Cobalt it probably doesn't.

In the case of rubber the big companies do provide better jobs for the families they employ than anything else, ensure the family gets modern medical care (as opposed to "witch doctor" care anyone not working for them gets), and the children do go to school and so have the ability to get a better job latter. The companies looks the other way in harvest season then families are taking their kids with them to work, so long as the kids are in school. Child labor for sure, but you can honestly argue that the children are better off despite that.

You can decide if you accept that as better or not, but it is a reasonable argument that child labor isn't always the worst possible.

Sadly I don't think in the case of cobalt the above applies.

Yes, there is no inherent problem with child labor, especially if parents are involved and the companies are committed to ethical treatment of their workers. Many children today perform chores around the house, and in more agriculture societies help on the farm or in the family shop.

This is a discussion about child labor that is resulting in their deaths.

Mandating that companies stop buying cobalt from suppliers who don't document things well is absolutely a legitimate, non-pie-in-the-sky way to effect change.

The idea is that demand for documented cobalt will go up, prices for it will also go up, poorly-documented cobalt producers will have lower demand for their product and their profits will be harmed, the ones capable of fixing their shit so they can sell more-expensive documented cobalt will do so, relieving documented-cobalt supply, and when the dust settles cobalt will be a little more expensive but most of it will be documented.

This is basic policy-building how-to-make-the-world-less-shit using market forces for (old-school) conservatives stuff, and is the backbone of one of the most important & influential strains of political and economic thinking around. It's not remotely radical or unrealistic.

That is not a new idea, even in the DRC and it has been an abject failure. Conflict gold, diamonds and coltan still flow out of DRC despite efforts to not buy undocumented minerals. In highly corrupt and impoverished places, documentation doesn't mean anything. One bribe of a few hundred dollars and your Congolese conflict mineral is now clean, documented Rwandan mineral.

Efforts, but have companies been made to pay a cost for failing to source "ethically", even when they say "well gee we tried and it's just really hard"? Things tend to get more serious when money is on the line, rather than just PR. Doing it right would clearly take verification, not just documentation, which means requiring access for outside inspectors.

You can't prove that a certain mineral came from an unethical production location - that's the core problem I believe. How would you punish a company for using conflict minerals if no one can figure out if given minerals are conflict minerals?

Force them to figure it out or start impounding goods? Impound their goods if you can't, for any reason, gain access to inspect any part of their declared supply chain for occasional surprise inspections to verify it is as they say it is, until such time as they switch to recently-inspected suppliers or gain you access?

I don't really get how this is much harder or less practical for the state or states implementing the law than most laws governing corporate behavior, and particularly laws governing imports. Yes a law would have to be drafted, passed, and enforced. I don't think any part of that's particularly less reasonable or more unlikely than in the case of any similar law.

In short, you punish companies for either using conflict minerals or if you're unable to determine to a reasonable level of satisfaction that they are not using conflict minerals. Likely they'll want to make sure you can determine such, and will pressure their suppliers to make it happen, in the usual ways markets do things (suppliers that make it easy and do it right and develop a reputation for having few fine-inducing screw-ups can charge more, those that fail miserably at it may just go out of business and be replaced by others who aren't terrible at their job, pretty soon everything's a little more expensive but we have a decent idea of what comes from where)

You're asking the wrong question.

The question isn't "have we completely stopped blood diamonds", the question is "have we lowered the demand for blood diamonds".

If the answer is yes, then the strategy is legitimate and worked. We may have more work to do, but the argument that we must wait for perfect before attempting to make improvements is asinine.

I appreciate your measured and informative responses that are not pure opinion but everyone else in the thread is adding nothing but gut-impulse emotional opinions. Cut your losses.

> This is one of those feel-good solutions that lets us feel superior but doesn't actually help the people suffering.

So because we can't fix their situation for them, we're allowed to actively make it worse? This is such a nonsense point of view. Exploitative industry is not like regular industry. This is not a rising tide that lifts all boats, this is enriching one or two psychopathic monsters at the expense of their entire region, and possibly financing even more in other regions.

The West does not need to go in and "fix" every developing nation, but at the same time, saying "well if we didn't sell them scrapheap ships or buy the minerals their children mine, they'd starve" is a complete abdication of responsibility for the role the demand for those minerals plays in their situation. They mine them because they can sell them, that's the whole point. If you remove the entities buying them, then there's no reason to mine them.

It's just unrealistic. Here's a challenge - cut cobalt out of your life. I'll bet you can't.

Until you can do that, offering 'stop buying' as a solution is a waste of time.

I don't think people even realize where Cobalt is used. But they'd notice in a hurry if the supply was somehow interrupted.

> It's just unrealistic. Here's a challenge - cut cobalt out of your life. I'll bet you can't.

"Realistic" is determined entirely by the values of the overarching system. The fate of the people at the long tail of the supply lines isn't valued. That's the single, solitary reason that this shit is still happening. Change that, and the system will adapt. The mines will get better, or they will be replaced with other mines that do it properly.

Stop settling for what your corporate overlords tell you is doable. We can do anything as a species if we choose to, good or bad. Our history shows it. Industry has every reason to tell you it's impossible because they don't want to spend the money to insure supply lines are ethically handled.

If we can mine coal in the United States without children and with relative safety, they can mine Cobalt in the same damn way. Cobalt doesn't by virtue of being cobalt need to be pried from the Earth by children.

> If we can mine coal in the United States without children and with relative safety, they can mine Cobalt in the same damn way. Cobalt doesn't by virtue of being cobalt need to be pried from the Earth by children.

oh you didn't know? The blood of the children is what christens the cobalt such that it works in computers...

/sarcasm

How would you suggest we start? Real, concrete steps please.

You add regulation to businesses based in the US and that sell in the US specifying, explicitly, that they cannot use resources mined via exploitative practices. And then when businesses do anyway, because they will, you confiscate profits tied to products that were made that way. Repeat until they get the damn point.

seriously. How the fuck are people's moral compass so off? I understand reality is reality, but there are some things that should not be, and for slightly cheaper electronics of all things?

fuck that.

I mean, you typed that message using something that probably has cobalt inside of it or used cobalt in it's manufacturing.

So... why is your moral compass so off?

We're told that governments help us solve collective action problems. If it's hard for a single electronics manufacturer to wean itself from conflict cobalt, the government could help them by forcing all electronics manufacturers to cease purchase of conflict cobalt.

Of course, that isn't the real purpose of governments or any other illegitimate authorities, so I won't hold my breath.

oh please, I reject that argument outright.

This is about stopping the exploitation of children. While you're trying to squabble over whether or not some random internet person is using a keyboard with cobalt in it, children are being forced down into these mines and risking their lives.

Get your priorities straight.

https://i.imgur.com/4KZe4UO.png

>They can know more if they want to

Sure they could. They would basically need to set up a modern version of the East India Trading Company, build themselves a mercenary army, and go in there and set up a proxy government that adheres to whatever regulatory policies they want to define.

We called that "colonialism" the last time around though, and most of the countries it happened to were not fans.

The problem with colonialism is exploitation of the people, not the setting up of a just government. I'm in favor of Western countries coming in and setting up a just government, even if there is a profit motive involved. It at least is much better than a constant war torn and corrupt environment.

Where would the justice derive from in a government that was set up for the purposes of extracting resources in one area and transferring the resulting resources and wealth to a different area?

Justice as in peace is brought to the local population and they are kept from murdering and stealing from each other. Whether they get to keep their local resources or not I think is a secondary concern to whether they have a peaceful society.

Very Hobbesian. I think you'll find actual implementations of the systems you propose don't really discourage murder or theft; those don't concern the bottom line. I'll point to the Belgian Congo as a relevant example in this space

I've heard that some previous colonies have done quite well after the colonizers left, when the colonialism was combine with Christian missionary activity.

In more ancient history, while the Spaniards did many horrible things to natives, they also put a stop to even greater horrors, such as the mass human sacrifice at that time.

Even further back, Roman colonization was exploitative, but did also bring peace to the different regions they colonized.

So, colonization can bring about a better social structure. Given that people are often driven by selfish gain, getting something out of enacting a just social structure seems to be the best way forward.

False dichotomy. Or Strawman. Both apply.

I don't think that it is.

If you look at what the PRC is doing to establish footholds and reliable supply chains, it bears a strong resemblance to those old trading companies. The US does various "counter-terrorism" operations in different countries, essentially borrowing African military units.

The only reason "they know your shoe size" is because you carry around a $1000 phone that tracks your every move and spend all your disposable income through their platforms.

The same cannot be said for the poor Cobalt miners, so no they can't just will that info into existence simply because they "want to know"

This is not some arcane magic here. This is making companies responsible for the vetting of their suppliers. Do you know how hard it would be for Apple to check out a mining operation? A plane trip and a few days of a couple people's time. That's fucking it. That is NOTHING to a company like Apple, it would barely be a rounding error in their budget.

And if the mine is in the midst of a warzone and you can't be sure if they aren't using prisoners or children? Then find a different goddamn mine.

You should do a little more research. The problem that we've been trying to solve for over three decades is not easily solvable with your naive ideas - do you really think we haven't tried your ideas? The problem is that there are mines that pass all inspections that then sell minerals produced elsewhere. Given the chaos in that part of the world, it is not realistic to prevent this from happening because there is not a way, last I checked, to differentiate between the minerals produced using ethical methods and minerals produced using conflict methods. Finding a different mine does not mean you have impacted the original mine.

Unless you have a way to prevent demand for these minerals, there is not a known, effective solution to these problems.

There's a historical story that's relevant here. In the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, the contract for steel cable was let to someone whose reputation was such that the engineer insisted that all of the output tested for quality, and none of the bad cable was to be let installed on the bridge. Yet almost all of the bad cable made it onto the bridge, because the contractor did a good job of figuring out how to frustrate all of the compliance and inspection procedures for the cable.

That's the hard part of supply chain vetting: trying to ensure that your contractor isn't trying to pull the wool over your eyes. If you think "a plane trip and a few days of a couple people's time" is going to be sufficient to actually ensure that you're getting responsible cobalt, well, I have a bridge for you.

>Do you know how hard it would be for Apple to check out a mining operation? A plane trip and a few days of a couple people's time.

No. Not at all. It takes more than that to vet suppliers in a place as developed as China. If you think that's all it takes in an ACTIVE WAR ZONE you're delusional.

His point is that, if it's too hard to vet, then you shouldn't be buying at all. No proof of no exploitation should be treated as proof of exploitation.

I agree. Err on the side of caution. If it "can't be done", it'll be figured out soon enough when trade is completely cut off.

>I agree. Err on the side of caution. If it "can't be done", it'll be figured out soon enough when trade is completely cut off.

No. It took thousands of years of civilizational development to even create the state capacity to do this sort of regulation in the developed world. It doesn't just magically happen through some invisible hand nonsense. Governance requires concerted effort by a sovereign government. The only way it gets done is by forcing stability and creating a government, which is a responsibility I don't think you want to put in the hands of FAANG and Samsung.

I think it's a bit harder than that. But Apple is already doing it (or claims to be doing it). The latest Supplier Responsibility report claims that 100% of their Cobalt supplies is audited: https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_2... And Apple claims to regularly remove suppliers for violations.

Up until a few years ago, Cobalt was specifically called out as being a problematic resource, with incomplete audits and widespread violations. Now, Apple claims to have this under control. Either Apple is lying or misguided, or the initiators of the lawsuit are.

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if the initiators of the lawsuit were wrong. It seems that Apple often gets lumped in with other tech companies' labor and supply practices, regardless of whether their specific policies are actually more strict than common industry practice (cf Mike Daisey's "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs")

Disclaimer: I work for Apple, but don't shop for their Cobalt, so I have no firsthand knowledge of the actual situation.

You seem to know the answer but are you currently in Africa doing anything? Do you sit there and post from a computer/phone/ use these companies services? Magic is all you’re speaking. Social media virtue signaling while you are not solving the problem. Arguing just to argue. If it was so simple as just hop on a plane and/or just don’t buy from there then the companies worth billions would have already done that.

Why do you need to be in Africa to start changing US law and regulations?

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