Hacker News Reader

The people in Ghana who work on the e-waste must think it's a good thing (good meaning better than their alternatives) else they wouldn't be doing it.

We might not like the thought of them working with e-waste but until we provide them with a better alternative it's not right to remove their best opportunity to earn a living.

View on HN

That's kind of like saying we should keep crime high so demand for policemen stays high...

No it's saying don't be so concerned with local pollution in a place that's so poor that they may starve if you make them live as cleanly as we do.

That's certainly an interesting take. Would you say the same thing about poor people that are earning their living as a result of war or other things that negatively impact the planet as a whole?

People should be allowed to engage in dirty, risky behaviour if it's their own choice. That covers the act of working in e-waste individually, as for any pollution it causes it's up to the authorities in Ghana to deal with that, but it could be that they feel the decrease in poverty of those engaged in e-waste outweighs the problem of pollution. That's for Ghana to decide though not us.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com