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How is this unusual? We all know Qatar's FIFA 2020 accommodations are built on the backs of slaves; we all know that rarely a mobile phone sees a battery that

How is this unusual? We all know Qatar's FIFA 2020 accommodations are built on the backs of slaves; we all know that rarely a mobile phone sees a battery that is not won from the toil and sweat of slaves. We all knowingly do business, directly, or indirectly with slave owners and child labor pimps. Every electronics manufacturer knows well that it's cobalt comes from child slavery.

aspaceman 6y ago
It's unusual because Apple makes a lot of comments about equality, prosperity and equality of opportunity. Especially in the context of recent BLM activism, their activities in these areas look especially hypocritical. It also makes their activism look hypocritical by their willingness to commit business with people doing slavery. You're totally right about cobalt. About every other company being the same. But that just makes it hypocritical for them too. While not unusual, it's still reprehensible. No matter how you try and justify it imo.
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  Let me then phrase it thus: this article puts it as if this be some revelation. Everyone would know that Apple surely deals with companies it knows use slavery and child labor, because Apple produces batteries and there's no other way. It is as if one præsent it as a revelation that Apple consumes fossil fuels, despite claiming to be environmentally aware.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    Do all battery producing companies use child Labour? I highly doubt it. Apple might have had a hard time moving away, but they're Apple - they create billionaires within their supply chain. Foxconn wouldn't be so without Apple, and in turn a ton of Chinese suppliers wouldn't be so without Foxconn. Yet Apple decided to play the same game as the rest of the mobile phone market, instead of using its heft to make sure suppliers adhered to its high standards.
    - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
      It is practically impossible to find cobalt, an essential ingredient for most consumer electronics, without it being mined by child labor and slavery. About 50% of the world's cobalt is estimated to be mined by slaves, and it is not easily possible to know which is which.
      - fakedang 6y ago
        Cobalt is a few steps removed from the mobile assembly stage. This was Apple knowing fully well about parts made by child labour that were directly being assembled into MacBooks. There simply is no excuse, whichever way you want to spin it and claim whataboutisms.
        Blikkentrekker 6y ago
        How would that differ from knowing full well that the cobalt assembled into it is mined from slavery?
        fakedang 6y ago
        Apple has direct control over being able to switch between parts suppliers - its an executive decision taken by Apple management. On the other hand, Apple can only instruct its manufacturer to not buy Cobalt from places exploiting child labor, even if they try as much to monitor their supply chain, since Cobalt is bought and sold on the open market.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
bergstromm466 6y ago
> How is this unusual? > We all know Qatar's FIFA 2020 accommodations are built on the backs of slaves; we all know that rarely a mobile phone sees a battery that is not won from the toil and sweat of slaves. > We all knowingly do business, directly, or indirectly with slave owners and child labor pimps. > Every electronics manufacturer knows well that it's cobalt comes from child slavery. What seems interesting to me is: what are the leverage points that capitalist firms have, here, that make it easy for them to control the working class and attempt to get away with child labor? Where does the power they have over us reside? 1) I believe it's the alienation created by mean-of-exchange currency. While we use money in our day to day lives to buy goods and services, capitalist firms use complex software called Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, that closely tracks the actual scarcity of all material resources used in their production processes. 2) Capitalist firms' use of trade secrets and patents (trade secrets often consist of vital negative research that lays out for us to see what has already been tried) to lock up our shared inheritance: the scientific commons, which unlocks inventions and tools that bring joy to many people's lives (who doesn't like the latest laptop computers or smartphones, or [insert technology of choice]). Unfortunately, the end goal, as Peter Thiel gave away, is always to achieve a monopoly position - which results in massive power imbalances, extreme labor exploitation and widespread environmental destruction. Exactly the kind of power imbalance we can see today between the bourgeois class in the global north, and the humans in the global south who face incredible poverty. So, what is the most promising path or future that I see forwards? 1) a) An exciting and novel distributed application framework, called holochain, allows for fully distributed apps that use peer validation, like Bittorrent's DHT, and are thus version controlled self-healing networks that can be used for all sorts of networked social applications. b) Valueflo.ws and hREA (both led by Mikorizal, with early co-development with Sensorica), builds on holochain's novelty, and allows an underused accounting method, called Resources Events Agents (REA) accounting, to flip today's dominant ERP system on it's head, and instead allows for a radically participative system, which they call a Network Resource Planning (NRP) system. [1] 2) The knock on effect of (1) is that it could makes today's alienating means-of-exchange money redundant. This could in turn allow us to see today's scarce capitalist appropriated knowledge for what it is: an artificially constrained intellectual commons. In other words: since digital information has a zero marginal cost reproduction, any limits to copying are contrived and are there to keep privileged people in, and working class people out. By using a Network Resource Planning system to make visible all the material flows in a community/village/city, we can democratically decide what we use these resources for - instead of relying on corporate central planning behind closed doors [2]. We can then be free to use a decentralized/distributed Github system (e.g. Git-SSB or Radicle.xyz) to turn the intellectual property system inside out. To have it be a system for building all of society open source/free, completely out in the open and transparent, and celebrating new contributions; and not for giving out state-sanctioned monopolies (the so-called Intellectual Property systems). Bottom line: humans copying each other is not theft. Our systems makes it seem so, yet it allows the capitalist elite to do exactly that by receiving privileged access to all the knowledge that has been privatized by capitalist firms [3]. Our current systems have us literally throw away functional components, because as a whole the products are single use black-box proprietary tools, that take away our freedom to continually grow. Imagine if everything was modular? Could we become a solarpunk, DIY, modular and low-energy-tech, society? A society where we share information freely, and where we can radically change our fate in regards to climate change. [1] http://mikorizal.org/futures.html http://mikorizal.org/futures.html [2] https://jacobinmag.com/2019/03/economic-planning-walmart-democracy-socialism https://jacobinmag.com/2019/03/economic-planning-walmart-dem... [3] https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamj...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

aspaceman 6y ago

It's unusual because Apple makes a lot of comments about equality, prosperity and equality of opportunity. Especially in the context of recent BLM activism, their activities in these areas look especially hypocritical. It also makes their activism look hypocritical by their willingness to commit business with people doing slavery. You're totally right about cobalt. About every other company being the same. But that just makes it hypocritical for them too. While not unusual, it's still reprehensible. No matter how you try and justify it imo.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago
Let me then phrase it thus: this article puts it as if this be some revelation. Everyone would know that Apple surely deals with companies it knows use slavery and child labor, because Apple produces batteries and there's no other way. It is as if one præsent it as a revelation that Apple consumes fossil fuels, despite claiming to be environmentally aware.
- fakedang 6y ago
  Do all battery producing companies use child Labour? I highly doubt it. Apple might have had a hard time moving away, but they're Apple - they create billionaires within their supply chain. Foxconn wouldn't be so without Apple, and in turn a ton of Chinese suppliers wouldn't be so without Foxconn. Yet Apple decided to play the same game as the rest of the mobile phone market, instead of using its heft to make sure suppliers adhered to its high standards.
  - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
    It is practically impossible to find cobalt, an essential ingredient for most consumer electronics, without it being mined by child labor and slavery. About 50% of the world's cobalt is estimated to be mined by slaves, and it is not easily possible to know which is which.
    - fakedang 6y ago
      Cobalt is a few steps removed from the mobile assembly stage. This was Apple knowing fully well about parts made by child labour that were directly being assembled into MacBooks. There simply is no excuse, whichever way you want to spin it and claim whataboutisms.
      - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
        How would that differ from knowing full well that the cobalt assembled into it is mined from slavery?
        fakedang 6y ago
        Apple has direct control over being able to switch between parts suppliers - its an executive decision taken by Apple management. On the other hand, Apple can only instruct its manufacturer to not buy Cobalt from places exploiting child labor, even if they try as much to monitor their supply chain, since Cobalt is bought and sold on the open market.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

bergstromm466 6y ago

> How is this unusual? > We all know Qatar's FIFA 2020 accommodations are built on the backs of slaves; we all know that rarely a mobile phone sees a battery that is not won from the toil and sweat of slaves. > We all knowingly do business, directly, or indirectly with slave owners and child labor pimps. > Every electronics manufacturer knows well that it's cobalt comes from child slavery. What seems interesting to me is: what are the leverage points that capitalist firms have, here, that make it easy for them to control the working class and attempt to get away with child labor? Where does the power they have over us reside? 1) I believe it's the alienation created by mean-of-exchange currency. While we use money in our day to day lives to buy goods and services, capitalist firms use complex software called Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, that closely tracks the actual scarcity of all material resources used in their production processes. 2) Capitalist firms' use of trade secrets and patents (trade secrets often consist of vital negative research that lays out for us to see what has already been tried) to lock up our shared inheritance: the scientific commons, which unlocks inventions and tools that bring joy to many people's lives (who doesn't like the latest laptop computers or smartphones, or [insert technology of choice]). Unfortunately, the end goal, as Peter Thiel gave away, is always to achieve a monopoly position - which results in massive power imbalances, extreme labor exploitation and widespread environmental destruction. Exactly the kind of power imbalance we can see today between the bourgeois class in the global north, and the humans in the global south who face incredible poverty. So, what is the most promising path or future that I see forwards? 1) a) An exciting and novel distributed application framework, called holochain, allows for fully distributed apps that use peer validation, like Bittorrent's DHT, and are thus version controlled self-healing networks that can be used for all sorts of networked social applications. b) Valueflo.ws and hREA (both led by Mikorizal, with early co-development with Sensorica), builds on holochain's novelty, and allows an underused accounting method, called Resources Events Agents (REA) accounting, to flip today's dominant ERP system on it's head, and instead allows for a radically participative system, which they call a Network Resource Planning (NRP) system. [1] 2) The knock on effect of (1) is that it could makes today's alienating means-of-exchange money redundant. This could in turn allow us to see today's scarce capitalist appropriated knowledge for what it is: an artificially constrained intellectual commons. In other words: since digital information has a zero marginal cost reproduction, any limits to copying are contrived and are there to keep privileged people in, and working class people out. By using a Network Resource Planning system to make visible all the material flows in a community/village/city, we can democratically decide what we use these resources for - instead of relying on corporate central planning behind closed doors [2]. We can then be free to use a decentralized/distributed Github system (e.g. Git-SSB or Radicle.xyz) to turn the intellectual property system inside out. To have it be a system for building all of society open source/free, completely out in the open and transparent, and celebrating new contributions; and not for giving out state-sanctioned monopolies (the so-called Intellectual Property systems). Bottom line: humans copying each other is not theft. Our systems makes it seem so, yet it allows the capitalist elite to do exactly that by receiving privileged access to all the knowledge that has been privatized by capitalist firms [3]. Our current systems have us literally throw away functional components, because as a whole the products are single use black-box proprietary tools, that take away our freedom to continually grow. Imagine if everything was modular? Could we become a solarpunk, DIY, modular and low-energy-tech, society? A society where we share information freely, and where we can radically change our fate in regards to climate change. [1] http://mikorizal.org/futures.html http://mikorizal.org/futures.html [2] https://jacobinmag.com/2019/03/economic-planning-walmart-democracy-socialism https://jacobinmag.com/2019/03/economic-planning-walmart-dem... [3] https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamj...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]