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Native people are left poor as tech world takes lithium from under their feet
- exstudent2 10y agoSubtitle: "Indigenous people are left poor as tech world takes lithium from under their feet" The article then goes on to say that the companies aren't "taking" anything. They've signed contracts with the government and tribes to rightfully mine lithium. Sure some people want a larger cut of the pie but the companies aren't doing anything unethical and the article is clearly biased from the get go.
- danharaj 10y agoA contract alone does not make it ethical, especially when virtually every government has a track record of exploiting the natural resources of indigenous peoples without allowing them to negotiate terms for themselves. It might be legal, but a great deal of violence and injustice against indigenous peoples has been legal.
- exstudent2 10y agoThe article states the indigenous people _did_ negotiate for themselves: "Yolanda Cruz, one of the leaders of the village of Catua, said she signed the contract with Minera Exar but now regrets it. At the time, she valued the opportunity to create jobs for her village. But she now worries “we are going to be left with nothing,” she said."
- danharaj 10y agoThat's fair, it's better than the usual business that surrounds resource extraction in indigenous communities. I'll concede that. But I won't concede that "a contract was signed" => "it was ethical". The asymmetry of information, the inadequate accounting of externalities, and the duress of poverty all can make something legal unethical. In any case, I think you're wrong saying that the article is biased. One of the quotes in the article is even a remark that there is a good and bad side to mining. It's not incorrect for the article to say that "Native people are left poor as..." because resource extraction doesn't create lasting wealth. Once the lithium is gone, the communities will still be poor while the West benefits far more from the resource inputs into its industries on a long term scale. It is not hard to construct an argument that resource extraction is fundamentally unethical on grounds like this. Whether or not one agrees with it is another matter. I don't think making this argument is more biased than the presumption that companies negotiating with communities with far fewer resources than them is ethical until proven otherwise because there's plenty of historical evidence that it's rarely the case.
- aantix 10y ago>The asymmetry of information, the inadequate accounting of externalities, and the duress of poverty all can make something legal unethical. Under that criteria, it'd be impossible to do business with any group that has lesser legal funding. Neighborhood organizations, common families, local businesses. All probably have inadequate legal representation when interpreting and signing these agreements.
- dep_b 10y agoOf course when a country needs dollars to pay off crushing external debts selling it's natural resources to foreign companies is a very important thing. They do this everywhere in the country. Most parts of Argentina are dry because the Andes block most of the humidity. Large mines use a lot of water. Indigenous people and farmers (lots of wines grow in deserts, but also olives etc.) no longer get the water they need. This is why we have the IMF. To make financial crack junkies out of countries that are controlling the resources. Thank god there's a republican government now and the ban on lending money has been lifted now they've paid off the vulture funds. What could go wrong?
- Avshalom 10y agocontracts make things legal, not ethical.
- tritenonsense3 10y agoUh, no. How does that work? Does signing a contract saying I don't have First Amendment protections remove it (assuming we're citizens of the US of course)? Contracts are a tool to record arrangements between private parties. They're given leeway in law, but they do not make things "legal". They can even be found to include illegal arrangements, and generally cannot "take away" rights granted by law.
- mixedCase 10y agoBy this line of thought, every transaction where an entity gets a better deal than than the other is unethical.
- xtian 10y agoInteresting line of thought.
- Avshalom 10y agoMaybe, and certainly unethical and unacceptable are not synonymous, but no that is not where the line of thought leads. It only leads to not accepting dotted i's and crossed t's as the final word.
- ashark 10y agoI can't be the only person (red state-raised American, even!) to have had serious difficulty reconciling Business, as She is Practiced—including exactly what you mention—with the basic ideas of fairness and justice we're all immersed in from birth. The whole thing, top to bottom, makes me feel pretty icky, and it's only that everyone else acts like it's OK that keeps me operating in ordinary society (which is, I'm pretty sure, a substantial moral failing on my part)
- Confusion 10y agoNo, by that line of thought things that are legal are not necessarily ethical and vice versa. The weird contrapositive you seem to assume it implies only says something about you, not about the statement you responded to.
- anigbrowl 10y agoSome contracts are unconscionable. That a contract exists tells you nothing about whether or not it is equitable.
- exstudent2 10y agoDid you read the article? The contracts were voluntarily signed and negotiated. No one was coerced.
- ryandrake 10y agoContracts voluntarily signed and negotiated can still be unconscionable or contain unconscionable terms.
- wav-part 10y agoNo, its the Court Systems perogative to pick which contract to enforce. You can outlaw a contract based on feels/facts but the enforcement of valid contract must remain objective.
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoYou are confusing "legally bulletproof" with "morally correct".
- wav-part 10y agoHow/Where?
- anigbrowl 10y agoDid I mention coercion? I mentioned unconscionability, which is a different legal concept. You ought to look it up, but it's basically tricking someone into signing a terrible deal so as to gain contractual leverage over them. The terribleness of the deal can often be obscured using deceptive accounting methods. Just because it was voluntary doesn't mean it was equitable; if the mining company is doing great and the people whose land is being mined are not doing similarly well, then clearly something about the deal is asymmetrical.
- jxramos 10y agoI don't imagine indigenous people have very much plans for Lithium too. I think the characterization of taking probably keeps alive that colonial bent on such things.
- wavefunction 10y agoIndigenous people usually subsist off their environments, which are disrupted and potentially destroyed by extractive industries. It takes a certain sort of person to screw the indigenous out of not only their traditions and culture by destroying their source of food and other supplies, and then turn around and say they don't deserve to profit off that destruction because they're simple and provincial.
- dismantlethesun 10y agoThey get some profit. Whether or not that's "enough" is up to the eye of the beholder. Are the benefits of living in Argentina society, bolstered by shared oil revenue, good enough for the people who born in the Andean salt flats region? That's a political question, not a moral one. Additionally, I don't like how this is being framed. Titling this as happening to 'indigenous peoples' instead of "Citizens of Argentina" and talking about the destruction of culture, as opposed to 'evolution' or 'melding with multicultural society'. Or people 'subsisting' instead of merely being poor. "Provincial" instead of 'uneducated'. It slants the whole conversation in a direction I think is utterly unfair.
- Avshalom 10y ago>>That's a political question, not a moral one. Pretty sure it's both.
- Analemma_ 10y agoIndigenous people have pretty shitty representation in government, and this applies pretty much wherever you go. It's completely possible for them to get screwed even if the government were totally happy with the mining contracts... actually, I'd be astonished if that weren't the case.
- dismantlethesun 10y agoGovernments often coordinate the share of natural resources between members of the same nation, and anytime the share isn't 100% going to the people that coincidentally happened to live upon a oil deposit or lithium deposit, then they'll complain that they are being shorted on the deal. Yet most people question why a natural resource extraction should result in a windfall for 300-1000 people at most, and leave the rest of the nation without any immediate benefit. We can question why X people get more and Y people get less, but that's really getting into the scope of the politics of a foreign nation which I bet none of us are really capable of discussing.
- neves 10y agoThe most common output in Latin America is to benefit a foreign company and a bunch of bribed politicians.
- warmblood 10y agoThere is a large difference in power and knowledge between these two sides, which is the heart of the ethics argument. The people living on top of the resources may have legally relinquished their rights to it and the intact land it's buried beneath, but the drafters of those contracts have a lot of room and leverage to act in bad faith in order to exploit them. This can prevent these people from escaping a cycle of subjugation because they are given mere subsistence instead of wealth in return for their resources. Legality of things like this are often just procedural facades to release mineral extraction companies from accusations that they are doing something wrong, harming someone or, sadly, indirectly enslaving vulnerable people.
- ChuckMcM 10y agoThere is a large difference in power and knowledge between these two sides, which is the heart of the ethics argument. This is exactly the point where these conversations break down. The natives negotiated a contract for fixed rates, not proportional rates of payment. The advantage of fixed rates is that you know what you are going to get, the advantage of proportional rates are that you get more if they get more. Had the Lithium extraction here turned out to be really really hard and the payment to the communities was nearly all of the profit the mining companies were making after extraction, the natives would not complain. But when it is a small fraction of the profit, it is "unfair". So what is the right answer? Well in one view of the world the correct answer is to build a mining company with the indigenous population so that they can start providing a commodity that the rest of the world wants to buy. That creates a local boost to the economy and employs as many native people as want to be employed. That seems great until the lithium runs out. Then you end up with a derelict mining town.
- warmblood 10y agoI think people who clap back like this assume the indigenous groups were able to negotiate with full, symmetrical information and legal leverage. The article reflects history in this regard, suggesting that they did not.
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- kafkaesq 10y agobut the companies aren't doing anything unethical I think you may be confusing "illegal" with "unethical".
- apsec112 10y agoThe Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics strikes again. "The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it. In particular, if you interact with a problem and benefit from it, you are a complete monster." https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth... I'm sure the newspapers, though, are totally fair, neutral observers who have no reason at all to have grudges against tech companies: https://www.baekdal.com/blog/what-killed-the-newspapers-google-or-facebook-or/ https://www.baekdal.com/blog/what-killed-the-newspapers-goog...
- jxramos 10y agoWow, I'm totally digging that interpretation in a shock of recognition for what it articulates; characterizes a great deal.
- ianai 10y agoThis is really close to the saying that "you should never argue with an idiot because to an outsider no one will know which is which"
- karyon 10y agocould you elaborate? i don't quite understand your comment but want to understand it. do you mean your citation regarding the copenhagen interpretation to be applied to us consumers, the mining companies, or the newspaper? and how does your second comment relate to that? genuinely interested.
- CountSessine 10y agoThe mining companies, by getting involved, are being blamed for pre-existing poverty among the Atacamas. They are contributing, but they are not contributing enough.
- tritenonsense3 10y ago
- btdiehr 10y agoI find it sad that some people don't believe 'Native People' are able to make their own decisions such as agreeing to having lithium mined on their territories. Extremely patronizing - stereotyping large swaths of people as incompetent, for what purpose? To push a political narrative.
- notahacker 10y agoThe article cites two 'native people' involved in the decision making process who both believe they weren't sufficiently well informed to have decided correctly, as well as noting that many weren't involved in the consultation process and weren't happy. Is it more patronising to consider they might not have been sufficiently well-informed of resource extraction economics or environmental impact, or to overlook their opinion of the process entirely in pushing a counter narrative?
- tritenonsense3 10y agoMaybe you should read the article? Claims are being made that more lithium is being extracted than originally negotiated. Communities weren't being paid. Negotiations weren't in the open, where all the local tribes even knew what was up. How is that claiming "Native People" aren't capable of making decisions around having mining in the first place? It's after the fact complaints about the contracts not being adhered to or now in the future needing to be renegotiated in the open. The tone on HN is surprising. Given all the shady stuff perpetrated by business folks that we read about here all day, the tone is "well they did it to themselves." full stop. This is western civilization siding with its own way of life first, when it knows it is flawed.
- mrgoldenbrown 10y agoI find it sad that you are concern trolling here. It is not patronizing to recognize the huge information asymmetry between a multinational mining corporation and a representative from an indigenous community. In addition to the information asymmetry there is a huge power difference, both of which result in negotiations that aren't always fair.
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- sharemywin 10y agoJust looked up typical mining royalties and found this: The CMR royalty is based on a company’s annual profits from mining. It is typical of Canadian mineral royalties, which are mainly profit based, and all of which have some specific peculiarities, often related to embedded incentives. In the case of the CMR, its main characteristics are: ̇ a stepped ladder of royalty rate – ̇ no royalty on the first $10,000 of annual profits; ̇ 5% of annual net profit between $10,000 and $5 million; ̇ escalating in 1% increments per $5 million of net profit, to maximum 14% (for net profit above $45 million); ̇ subject to an overall maximum rate on all net profit of 13% (for profit above $220 million);
- Avshalom 10y agoAh yes percent of net profits, "monkey points".
- sharemywin 10y agostill a lot better than the 3% mentioned in the article.
- noam87 10y ago> Exar plans to start constructing a $400 million lithium-brine plant here next year. Eventually reaching [...] about $250 million annually, at today’s prices. > By the time the plant is running, Exar will have paid about $250,000 to the indigenous groups. And after that, the six communities would share a total of about $178,000 each year. > Many indigenous residents were unaware of the contracts, learning about them from Post reporters who were able to review the documents at the provincial mining office. How much of the problem boils down to education and information asymmetry? -- (e.g fracking here in NA.) -- Terrible contracts signed by small under-educated communities who only later find out they're getting screwed. I wonder are there organizations that help small communities understand their own bargaining power and long-term impact when structuring such deals?
- sjwright 10y agoAccording to the numbers in the article, the lithium in one Tesla equals about 17,000 smartphones. I mean it's pretty obvious when you think about it, but I hadn't stopped to think about it until now.
- kahrkunne 10y agoWell, you know, they do choose to sell those land rights that cheap...