Estimate how many slaves work for you based on your possessions and lifestyle.
slaveryfootprint.org
slaveryfootprint.org
Examining this report, it provides nothing more than a list of countries and goods for which forced labor plays a "significant" part, where significant is defined as anything but "an isolated incident of child labor or forced labor" ([2] p.7). There is no quantitative data in this list, which means that, for instance, if you own a T-shirt made of Argentinian cotton, there's no telling whether the probability this cotton was handled by a child laborer is 90% or 0.1%.
Thus it is impossible to estimate any number of "slaves" from such data, and the methodology is complete and utter BS.
For instance, if I buy a diamond ring, I am not responsible for lives taken with weapons that have been bought with diamonds. If I drink Coca-Cola, I am not responsible for some obscure branch of the Coca-Cola Company which seizes the drinking water source of an entire village. If I pay for sex in Norway, that doesn't mean I am responsible for children being forced to sell their bodies in sex trafficing. Except in a few narrow cases where law enforcement gets involved, I never even see these children.
In each of these instances, there are real wrongs commited - but the wrongs are perpetrated by people who are a lot more unscrupulous than me. It is a fallacy to claim that the end user of products of industries where bad things sometimes happen, does something wrong. Everyone has a moral responsibility, but this responsibility doesn't carry over all the way.
Does anyone really think that the Indian microfinance debt collectors who force children into prostitution will suddenly become upstanding citizens if "microfinance" companies are banned? These problems need to be addressed at the source. Moral judgements like the ones implied in this app are a huge fallacy. Things will not get better if demand for strictly unnecessary goods and services suddenly disappears.
There are two complicating factors here: visibility and paucity of influence. You can't see the bad thing happening and you, individually, don't have the power to stop it.
The interaction between visibility and morality is a complicated one, but the fact is that if people in the most affluent nations boycotted diamonds then diamond mining would cease. If people boycotted Coca-Cola and Fiji spring water then villagers would get their water back.
The fact that you can't control these situations also complicates things. You can stop buying Coca Cola but, unless everyone else does to, CC is just going to just keep on stealing resources.
I think that the thing I really dislike about your comment is that you have the audacity to condemn the wrongs committed, but lack the integrity to acknowledge that you play, at least, some very small part in those wrong things happening. Because you do. If you don't buy that diamond ring then that is real $$$ that the diamond miners don't get. The hole created by your boycott has a non-zero probability of shutting down a diamond mine. The fact is that you don't care. I'm not saying you should - I'm just saying you don't. And the people doing these "wrong" things don't care either. Perhaps you could say that you would do differently in their situation, but my guess is that you are REALLY not in their situation and you have no idea what their situation is AT ALL.
I get it. You're in a comfortable position. There's no reason for you to change. You probably don't care enough about people in China, etc. that you're actually going to significantly, or even insignificantly, change your day to help them out. In fact, it's not even clear that you can. This may sound like a criticism, but I really don't care what you do.
The main element missing from your comment is the answer to "what to do?" My guess is that your answer is "Nothing. There are bad people elsewhere, and I'm not to blame, so I do nothing. Let them figure it out." I guess I hope this isn't actually your answer and that you realize that it's a lot more complicated. These people are "unscrupulous" not because they're full of demons, but because globalization exerts pressure and men sacrifice their better intentions when faced with that pressure.
I would argue that the only real way to change is attempting to effect group think. Individual purchase decisions will not do this. Only organized efforts will. Meaning everyone is just as responsible for not doing this, whether they buy the product or not.
Again, if slavery is going on, whether you buy the product involved or not, we are all equally guilty for allowing it to continue. Buying the product is irrelevent.
You claim that "rallying large groups of people is the only way to make a difference," but a large group of people is made up of individuals, and those individuals will participate in that group by altering their day to day purchases.
So to say that it is all about groups and not about any individual decision is a bit of a paradox since without any individual decision, there is no group.
The most important goal is to deeply realize your position and relation to other people - how you act after you realize this is up to you/your emotional makeup/your virtues/etc.
My claim is that because of the complicating factors (visibility and ineffectiveness) inherent in this situation you aren't able to fully understand this relationship.
The other assumption is that the only way to change this is to stop buying a product. The truth is robots are probably better than slaves. That day is coming hopefully!
This is not to say that the sex traffickers themselves will be converted to an upstanding and pious life; rather, many of them would probably switch to another unsavory line of work. However, I would say that it makes more sense to use the change in number of trafficked women as the appropriate metric in considering the effect of a behavior change.
I'm still skeptical to the degree that acts like these will actually lead to large-scale improvements in people's lives - as you're saying, the sex traffickers might find another way to exploit people and the consequences are really hard to quantify. Although some good could come from consumer pressure and boycotting, it's very hard to tell what the net effect would be. The way to get a real impact on the core problems here is to improve the cultural and economic conditions in the countries where exploitation happens.
I guess my argument is that although it is comfortable to believe it, consumers in the West actually have very little power over the wrongs that happen in the name of economic development in developing countries. Having demand for the services of developing economies in the first place is, at least potentially, a very promising source of change.
And yes, I agree that will not be the case for everybody.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinvestment_from_South_Africa]
I think it's probably fair to say that most people on HN are aware that these kinds of problems exist(thus I agree with all points); but I certainly know many people who couldn't imagine that opening a bottle of happiness means that someone in a far away village is suffering for it.
It's true that these problems need to be handled at the source, likewise that consumers changing their habits won't be enough to enact change because the criminals who perpetrate these crimes will simply change tactics. While I said in another comment that the site could use lots of work, I think it's great in terms of shedding light on the topic of human slavery / trafficking to those who are simply unaware. The one drawback is that it can potentially induce guilt among those same people, and it's difficult to get people to change their minds about something they simply aren't exposed to all that often.
However, products should have to give full disclosure about harm caused. If I buy something that is made using child labour; it is deceptive and fraudulent not to disclose that.
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http://slaveryfootprint.org/about/#methodology
They appear to count "N slaves working for you" if they predict N slaves were involved in the production of anything you have, not the number you keep continuously employed.
Suppose 10 slaves work on an assembly line for a year and produce 100,000 soccer balls used by 100,000 people. In that case, these 100,000 people each have 10 slaves working for them.
On the other hand, suppose you had 100 slaves handcrafting 100,000 soccer balls. In that case, each of these 100,000 people has only 1 slave working for them.
This methodology seems to penalize inefficient manufacturing processes less than more efficient ones, even if the more efficient ones result in less slavery.
Yeah, anything nice we have or use is thanks to people with crappy jobs... but there are people lining up out the door for those jobs, as they offer a better life than subsistence farming or scavenging garbage and living in a favela. And the places where those jobs don't exist are even worse off.
Not to excuse the creation of inhuman living and working conditions. But better to work for appropriate conditions, than broad-brush everyone a slaveowner.
(http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang--en/inde...)
I don't want to minimize the issue, but there is room for some realistic perspective, somewhere between indifference and equating consumers with slaveowners.
The link says there are at least 12.3m forced laborers.
If every American had 10 'slaves' that would be 3.1b slaves.
This was a pretty eye-opening story about an unfortunate Chinese deliveryman a few months ago
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/nyregion/22victim.html?pag...
Note: This is an honest question. I also come from a place where skilled-workers make around $4 or $5/day. I think in many cases, $4/day is better than 0.
The fact is that globalization fixes countries as "slave countries." It's very easy to control people by giving them a locally beneficial option. Which sounds better to you:
Make $1/day working 16 hours per day - spend the rest of your time sleeping/taking care of yourself/family.
Making $0/day refusing to work - spend your day working on building up your community in creative ways, but suffer much higher probability of personal/family death.
The option that 99.9% of people will take is #1. However, real change can't occur if everyone takes #1, so we have stasis.
I mean, look at all the creative endeavours the good people of Somalia ventured upon release from the hands of the Evil Government and Lobbies.
You are a perfect example of a person that would pave his road to hell with good intentions. All due to failure to see humans as we really are, and our time and again honoured tradition of refusing to do what "should" be done.
If the options that exists are $1/day vs. privation vs. criminality vs. selling sex services, most people would choose a $1/day.
It matters just as much how often the items are replaced (once a year? once every 20 years? once in a lifetime?) and whether they're acquired new or used. In a materially rich society it's possible to buy almost all goods except food, medicine, and energy in the second-hand market. And, with a few tools, the life of many consumer goods can be greatly prolonged.
Some of the most politically and socially conscious (and most slave-labor averse) people I know are low-income old people who remember the Great Depression, live with packed closets, and spend their days repairing hand-me-downs and broken machines. They aren't, obviously, the target market of the slaveryfootprint app, but some of their consumption strategies might mentioned in future versions. There might be future questions along the lines of, "How many broken computers have your repaired in the past five years?" Or, "How many worn and outmoded garments have you mended and re-sewn into something more stylish?"
Some numbers:
- consume less: my consumption seems to require about one "slave" (in the site's sense) per EUR 1000/USD 1500. (Being a fairly frugal vegetarian may help here. Or not.)
- Fair Trade: http://www.slavefreechocolate.org/ suggests that 100g of cocoa (say one good bar of chocolate) requires about one child-slave-day;
- no diamonds: this is surprisingly hard to pin down. Searching the internet suggests that the cost in lives lost in wars is much greater than the cost in lives lost in slavery.
Day in and day out they shuffle into their meaningless jobs, selling shoes or flipping burgers. 8 hours a day 5 days a week for 40 years. They rack up a life time of debt in the first few years of adulthood and struggle to stay on top of it for the rest of their lives.
I'd much rather live within my means and enjoy life instead. I want to build interesting stuff, fun games, follow my dreams...
Is that the point of the website?
very nice work from them btw.
Apparently I contribute to lots of slavery (60) because I have lots of ball point pens and electronics.... doesn't make a ton of sense.
Main takeaway for me: either "everyone" is a liar or only saintly people took the survey.
This would change dramatically if you're calculating for multiple people in a household, or you're just not a barebones bachelor like me.