I think his point is that given the context that everything is involved with child labor somehow, pointing out just one particular item isn't very helpful.
More nuances about iphone being a luxury brand and therefore less justifiable and more "disgusting" can be added. But like how you said it above, it doesn't change the fact that the very economy and the comfort we are enjoying partly come from child labor.
I am giving the GP the benefit of the doubt and don't think they are engaging in child labor whataboutism, but I also think they should write in a way that does not invite the qualification of "I think his point is...".
>pointing out just one particular item isn't very helpful
It absolutely is. And pointing out more is even better!
Child labor is somewhat orthogonal to deplorable conditions. Child actors can easily fit the definition.
There’s also an unfortunate cultural bias where people may view for example Amish children skipping school to take in a harvest as perfectly acceptable when kids in developing economies doing the same things are suddenly not.
Child labor existed long before capitalism. If anything the correlation goes in the other direction with capitalism reducing child labor over time due to it’s dependence on an educated workforce.
Hardly, feudalism runs into span of control issues. Its rise and fall around the world coincides with a specific mix of agricultural practice and at most light industry.
Thus not all economic systems are compatible with an educated workforce which means they aren’t orthogonal.
While your first statement is true, I'm not sure it follows that there's a reverse correlation.
In fact, I think (having actually changed my response a couple of times while thinking it through) that unless you go back far enough that you're talking about genuine subsistence agriculture, the reasons for child labor are very similar in both cases: The wealthy and powerful take so much of the output of the laborers that without children working as well, there wouldn't be enough money to put food on the table. (Or simply enough food to put on the table.)
We produce enough, as a society, to provide for everyone. Feeding the world in 2023 is a distribution problem. Children are put to work not because it's necessary, but because the few at the top have taken, and continue to gatekeep, so much from the rest of us that too many families don't have a choice.
That's not really different between 2023 and 1023, from where I sit.
There’s still a massive carveout in US child labor law for farming. In 2023 Families making well into six figures are using young teens not because they can’t afford to pay someone, but for more practical reason and the view it’s useful training. For related reasons family businesses also have more flexibility. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/child-labor
What has changed is not just the levels of automation involved, but also the percentage of people working as farmers. A Doctor, Lawyer, Programmer, etc simply can’t leverage their kids nearly as effectively.
The proximate reason can be "because we've always done it this way," or "because it's easy", but I'm not sure that changes the root cause.
Ultimately, it comes down to "this is something that could be done better by a trained adult, but we don't have the same access to trained adults that we do to children, in part because of the massive economic inequalities our society experiences today."
No, the proximate cause is earths rotation and thus plants are vastly less flexible than factories.
I need someone for to do a seasonal jobs for a few weeks and then nothing until next year is fine if it’s a niche job like say selling Christmas trees. However, when every farm for thousands of miles all needs that same labor for those same short window you get a massive labor shortage. Worse modern farming is mechanized so you can simply put people picked off the streets behind the wheels of 100’s of thousands of dollar pieces of equipment.
There’s a similar exception in US immigration for migrant foreign workers to pick fruits and vegetables, but again the minimum threshold for competence in other types of farm labor is higher.
Yes, and they often work under deplorable conditions. Psychological/emotional abuse is still abuse (not to mention the forced dieting, the rampant molestation/rape, and other very physical abuses).
But that highlights what makes child labor more worthy of scrutiny. Adult actors face those same conditions, and it's unacceptable that they do, but at least they have the mental maturity to cope with them and the social/legal autonomy to do something about them. Child actors lack any of that; they end up scarred for life over a career they had little choice in pursuing.
Anything created under Capitalism is probably morally repulsive on one level or another. I vote to get rid of it entirely, if we can only come up with a better solution.
For now, I personally try to participate as little as possible in it.
and listing other child labor profiteers has a point : it illustrates that perhaps we should probably look for and fix the root causes of child labor rather than punishing a single perpetrator.
Hold the corps to account, vote with your wallet, demand that they reinvest profits in education and betterment and development of these geographic areas.
Clothes is a nice and easy one to begin with choosing an alternative for because it's a much more simplistic product with a more easily traced supply chain. Phones, computers and cars are something we'll likely struggle with for a long time.
For anything else, the public will likely need to demand change as I doubt a superior or equal alternative will emerge. With that said, products like the FairPhone are very interesting, though I haven't used one.
Food is something that'll largely hinge on your geographic area and availability of produce that makes sense.
It's common knowledge for a lot of people, but there's new people reaching a state where they have compassion for others every day, that's a positive thing, thus we need to make this information available to them to understand what's wrong with the world.
Amnesty International report from 2017. Apple is the top rated consumer electronics company (page 78 for all the companies together, 94 focuses on consumer electronics):
For those moaning about the title, the use of iPhone as an icon of uncaring capitalism is not the takeaway here.
The exploitation and ravaging of people and environments enabled by PR-friendly phrase-fiddling ("oh we only use virtuous suppliers") is.
Yes, it's classic clickbait, but more power to it if it brings eyes that would have otherwise passed by. Butthurt iPhone and smug Android owners alike will be snared in the trap, the brand is just the bait.
I had my own side hustles as a child. I preferred computer related work instead of manual labor. Since I was good at what I did no one cared about my age.
In exchange for extremely dangerous working conditions that can and usually do irreparable damage for life. It's hardly a "win" for a kid to grow up doing this for money, and have horrible health issues after the age of 30, making their remaining life miserable.
I think it depends on where in the supply chain kids are participating. If the work is dangerous (ex. mining), they should be banned but if there is a learning experience with little risk of long term negative consequences, it should be available for the interested.
I enjoyed the computer work and newspaper route I had as a child and wouldve probably jumped at the opportunity to assemble digital devices.
The benefits and detriments the children get by working are not equal to those they could get if they were able to get an education and have free time to play, instead.
"This is beneficial enough that some people choose it" and "this is a genuine good thing for those people, compared to the other options" are not equivalent.
> Foxconn ships poor people from rural areas to mega factories
They don't have to ship them, the poor people from rural areas come looking for better jobs in the mega factories. Nothing wrong with that.
> take their identity documents, and essentially holds them hostage.
This is a huge deal which many Chinese companies used to practice even just 10 years ago. I don't think it is very common now, the government did crack down on it, to stop making it a norm business practice.
That was 2014. Things aren't perfect now, but better than back then.
> It's good to raise awareness but it's not recent news. [...]
> Child labor in the… [...]
Have you read the article?
To me –pardon my subjectivity and don't take this as a personal attack please – this sounds like it can can be paraphrased with "I don't care".
The article paints a pretty strong picture not only of child labor and slavery but also of the environmental devastation and violence around the harvesting of raw materials in all these countries.
It also mentions electric vehicles, which have batteries that make iPhone batteries seem like a drop in the ocean in size comparison, and are celebrated as green progress.
> How should the typical westerner deal with these facts?
Maybe not buy unneeded batteries and advocate for honest regulation and a stop to reckless growth based on slave labour and environmental destruction?
Maybe stop pretending that capitalism would represent liberty and freedom, when it is built on destruction, unsustainability and slave labor?
For some reason, people can read such an article and claim that they know anything about reasonable environmental policy a couple of hours later, minutes even.
Sorry for the rant, but it makes me sick to follow debate about these topics.
Writing this from a device containing the same minerals that the article is about, duh.
> Hold the corps to account, vote with your wallet, demand that they reinvest profits in education and betterment and development of these geographic areas.
This is a poltical issue on a global scale. As long as it is allowed to reap profit from exploitation, outsource slave labor and environmental destruction and call this "free market", nothing will change.
I welcome everyone who reduces his/her participation in the global exploitation of poverty and the environment, but without political action it is all smoke and mirrors.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadFashion and footwear industry: https://labs.theguardian.com/unicef-child-labour/
Shrimp processing: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/dec/14/s...
Mining: https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangk...
And everything else: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-o...
More nuances about iphone being a luxury brand and therefore less justifiable and more "disgusting" can be added. But like how you said it above, it doesn't change the fact that the very economy and the comfort we are enjoying partly come from child labor.
>pointing out just one particular item isn't very helpful
It absolutely is. And pointing out more is even better!
I don’t see how.
If I point out your PC, car, house, office, etc are all likely built in some small way from child labor you’re going to do what exactly?
There’s plenty of documentation for many egregious cases, but when you look at the full supply chain for anything it quickly starts to look like the global economy as a whole. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-o...
There’s also an unfortunate cultural bias where people may view for example Amish children skipping school to take in a harvest as perfectly acceptable when kids in developing economies doing the same things are suddenly not.
Child labor is a symptom. Unchecked hypercapitalism is a disease.
Dependence on an educated workforce is orthogonal to the economic system. Rather it's a corollary of scientific and technological advancement.
Thus not all economic systems are compatible with an educated workforce which means they aren’t orthogonal.
In fact, I think (having actually changed my response a couple of times while thinking it through) that unless you go back far enough that you're talking about genuine subsistence agriculture, the reasons for child labor are very similar in both cases: The wealthy and powerful take so much of the output of the laborers that without children working as well, there wouldn't be enough money to put food on the table. (Or simply enough food to put on the table.)
We produce enough, as a society, to provide for everyone. Feeding the world in 2023 is a distribution problem. Children are put to work not because it's necessary, but because the few at the top have taken, and continue to gatekeep, so much from the rest of us that too many families don't have a choice.
That's not really different between 2023 and 1023, from where I sit.
What has changed is not just the levels of automation involved, but also the percentage of people working as farmers. A Doctor, Lawyer, Programmer, etc simply can’t leverage their kids nearly as effectively.
Ultimately, it comes down to "this is something that could be done better by a trained adult, but we don't have the same access to trained adults that we do to children, in part because of the massive economic inequalities our society experiences today."
I need someone for to do a seasonal jobs for a few weeks and then nothing until next year is fine if it’s a niche job like say selling Christmas trees. However, when every farm for thousands of miles all needs that same labor for those same short window you get a massive labor shortage. Worse modern farming is mechanized so you can simply put people picked off the streets behind the wheels of 100’s of thousands of dollar pieces of equipment.
There’s a similar exception in US immigration for migrant foreign workers to pick fruits and vegetables, but again the minimum threshold for competence in other types of farm labor is higher.
Yes, and they often work under deplorable conditions. Psychological/emotional abuse is still abuse (not to mention the forced dieting, the rampant molestation/rape, and other very physical abuses).
But that highlights what makes child labor more worthy of scrutiny. Adult actors face those same conditions, and it's unacceptable that they do, but at least they have the mental maturity to cope with them and the social/legal autonomy to do something about them. Child actors lack any of that; they end up scarred for life over a career they had little choice in pursuing.
Often isn’t always. Those abuses aren’t some inherent requirement for child acting to exist.
For now, I personally try to participate as little as possible in it.
that's mighty presumptuous.
and listing other child labor profiteers has a point : it illustrates that perhaps we should probably look for and fix the root causes of child labor rather than punishing a single perpetrator.
For anything else, the public will likely need to demand change as I doubt a superior or equal alternative will emerge. With that said, products like the FairPhone are very interesting, though I haven't used one.
Food is something that'll largely hinge on your geographic area and availability of produce that makes sense.
https://fortune.com/2017/03/03/apple-cobalt-child-labor/
So no, they don’t care that Apple changed suppliers for Cobalt to avoid this very issue.
Also the recent news that Apple is aggressively pursuing 100% recycled Cobalt.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/AFR627...
The exploitation and ravaging of people and environments enabled by PR-friendly phrase-fiddling ("oh we only use virtuous suppliers") is.
Yes, it's classic clickbait, but more power to it if it brings eyes that would have otherwise passed by. Butthurt iPhone and smug Android owners alike will be snared in the trap, the brand is just the bait.
It has us, now read and consider.
In exchange for extremely dangerous working conditions that can and usually do irreparable damage for life. It's hardly a "win" for a kid to grow up doing this for money, and have horrible health issues after the age of 30, making their remaining life miserable.
I think it depends on where in the supply chain kids are participating. If the work is dangerous (ex. mining), they should be banned but if there is a learning experience with little risk of long term negative consequences, it should be available for the interested.
I enjoyed the computer work and newspaper route I had as a child and wouldve probably jumped at the opportunity to assemble digital devices.
"This is beneficial enough that some people choose it" and "this is a genuine good thing for those people, compared to the other options" are not equivalent.
- Foxconn ships poor people from rural areas to mega factories, take their identity documents, and essentially holds them hostage.
- Up the supply chain, small-scale miners of rare earth minerals risk their lives and die everyday.
- Consumer cognitive dissonance allows billions of people to eat hamburgers without considering the impact of their choices.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/business-30540538
They don't have to ship them, the poor people from rural areas come looking for better jobs in the mega factories. Nothing wrong with that.
> take their identity documents, and essentially holds them hostage.
This is a huge deal which many Chinese companies used to practice even just 10 years ago. I don't think it is very common now, the government did crack down on it, to stop making it a norm business practice.
That was 2014. Things aren't perfect now, but better than back then.
> Child labor in the… [...]
Have you read the article?
To me –pardon my subjectivity and don't take this as a personal attack please – this sounds like it can can be paraphrased with "I don't care".
The article paints a pretty strong picture not only of child labor and slavery but also of the environmental devastation and violence around the harvesting of raw materials in all these countries.
It also mentions electric vehicles, which have batteries that make iPhone batteries seem like a drop in the ocean in size comparison, and are celebrated as green progress.
> How should the typical westerner deal with these facts?
Maybe not buy unneeded batteries and advocate for honest regulation and a stop to reckless growth based on slave labour and environmental destruction?
Maybe stop pretending that capitalism would represent liberty and freedom, when it is built on destruction, unsustainability and slave labor?
For some reason, people can read such an article and claim that they know anything about reasonable environmental policy a couple of hours later, minutes even.
Sorry for the rant, but it makes me sick to follow debate about these topics.
Writing this from a device containing the same minerals that the article is about, duh.
> Hold the corps to account, vote with your wallet, demand that they reinvest profits in education and betterment and development of these geographic areas.
This is a poltical issue on a global scale. As long as it is allowed to reap profit from exploitation, outsource slave labor and environmental destruction and call this "free market", nothing will change.
I welcome everyone who reduces his/her participation in the global exploitation of poverty and the environment, but without political action it is all smoke and mirrors.