The fact that things are that way currently, is not an argument that things should be that way. It's worth discussing what in the current system necessitates that children work or starve, and whether that's fixable.
That's been true for virtually all of human history. It was true even in the 20th century in agricultural parts of America.
> Why can't adults be paid a sufficient wage to avoid starvation, or why can't our society provide for these children without requiring them to work?
Those people don't live in our society, they live in some other society that doesn't generate the kind of surplus required to enable children not to have to work.
The "other" less equal children from another society, clearly not connected to our own.
As described in the article, companies that control supply chains can squeeze suppliers so that all the surplus accumulates in wealthier countries, instead of with the suppliers. That is not an inevitability, it is a choice made by “our society”.
My point was against the sense of inevitability in the parent reply. We can imagine and enact a more equitable distribution. We don’t even need to mess around with socialism for decades to do it
while you may have a point that in the current state, companies won't willingly reduce their profits to do that, and maybe the only way to get them to make this change right now would be force them and create a massive bureaucracy to make it happen, this is not the only way this can be addressed.
for one, our governments could support african countries in charging more for the product. this could be done through trade agreements that are more supportive and less exploitative as they currently are.
say for example the price of raw cocoa may have to triple to ensure that the producers at the end get double of what they are getting now. (i think that was what was needed to bring the income to minimum living standards)
how much governance is needed to make that happen? once the trade agreements are fixed, it should mostly be spot checking the market prices to make sure the money ends up in the right places. that can't be that hard.
Oh the magical things that could happen if we all only had “the will to do it.” I can’t think of a more naively destructive idea.
And what shall the people of these countries do while they wait for their white saviors to develop the “will to do it?”
public opinion on this topic continues to improve. the problem is not a lack of will in the individuals but a lack of awareness. and that is slowly changing, thanks to presentations like this one among others.
you see, just like you ridicule the belief that people can change and we can fix things, i could say:
ah, well, it is all hopeless. we will never be able to change the attitude of enough people for this to be ever successful. let's just give up. corporations will never change, and they will continue to exploit the world for their personal gain for the forseeable future.
HOW IS THAT ANY LESS DESTRUCTIVE?
nobody said anything about waiting. especially not for a savior. we all need to act. every one of us. to start holding corporations to account, and demand that they change their business practices.
that will does not come from nowhere. it comes from individual action.
i am talking to people almost every day to tell them what i am doing to improve lives of people in poverty, and what they could be doing as well.
you are free to choose to laugh at us, or you know, you could be doing something yourself as well.
the more of us become active, the sooner we can achieve a lasting change.
this is not an issue of white saviors rescuing africa. this is an issue of us colonialists cleaning up the mess that we created and are responsible for. that's why i am talking about change of trade agreements. we need to reign in our corporations and get them to stop their exploitative practices and we need to implement trade agreements that ensure that the resources we take out of africa are paid at a fair price. then it is up to african countries themselves to figure out how to invest that income to the benefit of their own people.
Because of capitalism, not wealth redistribution from white saviors.
> this is not an issue of white saviors rescuing africa. this is an issue of us colonialists cleaning up the mess that we created and are responsible for.
You won’t do that, and anyone who waits around for that to happen or wasted energy or political capital engaging with that is a moron. A dangerous moron. For example, Britain will not give India back a cent of the trillions it stole from them, nor will the Muslim empires who came before them. The only non-idiotic course of action for a country like India is to try and get rich on the same course of development Britain pursued. Not sitting around with their hand out.
It occurred to me the other day that if my home country of Bangladesh had pursued capitalism from the outset, instead of fucking around for decades with socialism, my family might still be together in Bangladesh instead of scattered around a bunch of white people’s countries. What happened before doesn’t matter. What matters is economic development, as fast as possible. The prospect of white saviorism meaningfully fixing anything is so remote—because the sacrifice that would be required in their part is so massive—that even talking about it is destructive in distracting from the urgency of economic development.
absolutely, yes!
but economic development also needs fair payment. and that is currently not happening.
fair trade is not wealth distribution.
do you think fast economic development is possible if we continue to exploit those countries?
Yes, and it has already happened in many places. In 1950, the GDP per capita of South Korea and Taiwan were under $900, not much more than the $600 of Pakistan. Those East Asian countries rapidly industrialized and became rich. Nobody wasted time talking about fairness. Pakistan fucked around with socialism and other leftist garbage and doomed its people to decades more of poverty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_on_the_Han_River
"The growth has been attributed to the hard work of the labor force. External factors include the enormous economic and technical assistance provided by foreign countries, particularly Japan (see: Treaty on Basic Relations Between Japan and the Republic of Korea) and the United States, access to Western and Japanese markets, and the acquisition of foreign currency by Korean migrant workers in the early stages of economic growth."
other east asian countries look similar. foreign investments and international trade play a large role in a countries economic development.
that doesn't look like continued exploitation that was and still is happening in africa.
sure, the countries need to do their part to develop on their own. but we can also contribute by actually trading fairly with them.
Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, all received extensive economic development support from the US from 1940's-1970's, which helped a lot with that rapid industrialization.
i am not talking about making up for past sins. i am talking about stopping the exploitative trading that still happens today.
it's not the only problem in this world, nor is it only white people who are causing problems, but it happens to be the problem that we are discussing here.
You're right, but capitalist ethics says that surplus must go to the owners and investors, not poor kids in Africa.
I think you are right in that it is worth discussing, but you must come at it from an honest standpoint. You can not pretend like this is some kind of aberration—it is the backbone of our capitalist society. You can not fix a systemic issue with small changes. A quarter of humans on this planet live in abject poverty. We accept this kind of inequality because "everyone is equal" is something we aspire to one day believe—currently we do not.