5 ms·

It’s not abundant, just more kids working to dig it up.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
_0w8t 4y ago
Please do not bring kids. It is irrelevant here and can be even factually wrong. In a poor country kinds are forced to do all kind of dangerous work. If not for cobalt they can be sent to fields and be subject for all chemicals used in modern agriculture. Or work in a sweatshop or in a factory with zero regulations about safety. The fact that they mine cobalt tells that this way more money can be earned than through other dangerous work. I.e. the problem is that the country is poor. Fix that and kids will spent time in schools, not in mines.
- darth_avocado 4y ago
  > Please do not bring kids Ohh I absolutely have to. You just justified modern day child slavery. Here’s a radical idea about fixing the poverty: pay them wages that help them uplift from poverty for mining the cobalt. But that’s never happening because you and I will not pay 10k for an iPhone or a million for a Tesla, and that ultimately is where the exploitation starts.
  - nlitened 4y ago
    I don’t understand your point, is it some kind of sarcasm? You say that to stop child slavery, you would need to pay 10k for an iPhone, but you personally don’t want to pay that much, hence the slavery should continue to support your consumption habits. Why are you bringing up child slavery then if you personally justify it?
  - pokepim 4y ago
    [dead]
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > will not pay 10k for an iPhone or a million for a Tesla Australia is a massive cobalt, copper and nickel miner [1]. They do it profitably without kids. The cost of transporting ore out of the DRC probably dwarfs any labor savings from using kids. Child labor in sub-Saharan African mines is a solvable problem. But it’s not a question of paying more, but engaging in a regional development effort with tinges of nation building of the sort Western voters are fatigued with. (I see no interest in the problem from China.) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_Australia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_Australia
    - ObviousHumanGPT 4y ago
      Yeah, half of the Kimberley is Ni-Cu sulfides. We've got hundreds of billions of tonnes of the stuff. Stick a shovel anywhere. With the exception of the Mount Gunson Copper Mine in South Australia, Australia has traditionally dumped cobalt back into the hole as it hasn't been economically viable to separate. At $50k per tonne "tailings" suddenly becomes "valuable resource".
- foepys 4y ago
  Why not demand that there are no children working in the mines before buying the cobalt? Better throw good ecological standards and worker protections in there, too. A supply chain is not a black box nobody can look into, even if quite a lot of corporations want you to believe that.
  - _0w8t 4y ago
    Because why not to demand that all safety regulations including a ban on child labor are followed in agriculture, manufacturing before buying agricultural or manufacturing products from poor countries? Child labor there are just as terrible, yet most people do not care while reacting strongly on pictures of children mining cobalt. The pictures may well be produced by those who wants to put bad image on electrical cars, not because they cared about children. The proper solution is to have a careful regulation that heavily tax products from countries with lower safety standards. But this is hard as that makes a lot of things more expensive.
    - monocasa 4y ago
      Ideally we'd ban both, but mining is way worse for children. Even in the global north, it's common for it to be legal for your children to be allowed to work on your farm. I struggle to think of a situation there where your children are mining at an economically viable scale that doesn't result in the state taking your children away for abuse.
- aylmao 4y ago
  This is a bad excuse to not feel bad supporting industries that make heavy use of child labour. I'll break some things down: > "Please do not bring kids. It is irrelevant here and can be even factually wrong." We should absolutely bring up the kids, since this article talks about the scaling of an industry where the kids play a role in its cheapness. It's very much relevant to the conversation of the price of cobalt. > "If not for cobalt they can be sent to fields and be subject for all chemicals used in modern agriculture. Or work in a sweatshop or in a factory with zero regulations about safety." Mining cobalt is much more dangerous than agriculture; even "modern agriculture". Sweatshops come in all forms, some incredibly dangerous, very physically demanding and potentially toxic, like cobalt mining. I wouldn't say they're worse though. Saying so is not being too familiar with how terrible cobalt mining can be [1][2]. It's worth noting though; one can't defend a terrible children's right abuse by claiming that "if they weren't being abused this way they'd be abused another". We don't know that, and it very much doesn't make it ok. > "I.e. the problem is that the country is poor. Fix that and kids will spent time in schools, not in mines." Yes, The DRC needs capital to develop and support its population. It's worth understanding the problem with a little more depth, since it's complex. The DRC has about half of the reserves of one of an incredibly important resource [3]. That's a very significant amount of latent capital. It also has a chokehold on the market, accounting for about 70% of the world's cobalt production [4]. That's power. One can't just say that The DRC "is poor"; it is being "kept poor" by internal conflict largely enabled and stirred by outsiders (I quickly found some examples from a few years back but there's way more: [5][6]). It's also victim to an international community that says and does nothing about this, because the international community benefits a lot from the poverty in The DRC. That's why we should talk about the children. For years African analysts have noted that the USA cares about "liberating" countries human rights abuses in some parts of the world, yet is very confortable with tyrannical dictators in others [7]. I don't know how much the West would hurt its own economic interests based on public outcry, but we should absolutely acknowledge the fact this is not ok, and Western (in the very least) indifference plays a role in it. [1]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/a394gp/smartphones-child-labor-cobalt-mines-africa-congo-amnesty-international https://www.vice.com/en/article/a394gp/smartphones-child-lab... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/commentisfree/2019/dec/16/i-saw-the-unbearable-grief-inflicted-on-families-by-cobalt-mining-i-pray-for-change https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/commentisfree... [3]: https://www.kitco.com/news/2022-02-17/The-world-s-largest-cobalt-reserves-by-country-in-2021.html https://www.kitco.com/news/2022-02-17/The-world-s-largest-co... [4]: https://investingnews.com/where-is-cobalt-mined/ https://investingnews.com/where-is-cobalt-mined/ [5]: https://youtu.be/tEOmI5bc3HU?t=68 https://youtu.be/tEOmI5bc3HU?t=68 [6]: https://youtu.be/ptdVHo481eI?t=148 https://youtu.be/ptdVHo481eI?t=148 [7]: https://youtu.be/ptdVHo481eI?t=609 https://youtu.be/ptdVHo481eI?t=609
hypertele-Xii 4y ago
40% of Congo's population is below 15 years old. How are they supposed to run an economy without kids working?
- phyphy 4y ago
  So economy is now a justification of slavery?
  - darth_avocado 4y ago
    That’s the way it always is isn’t it? Justifying bad things to make ourselves feel better than to try and fix it.
    - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
      I haven't personally done any bad things to the children on Congo. Have you? I always make ethical purchase decisions within the limits of my budget (e.g. Fair Trade and other certifications). Short of literally devoting my entire life to charity, that's me fixing it.
  - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
    So what happens to these millions of kids when you declare it illegal to pay them? Are you going to feed them and build schools? That's what the economy is doing, in exchange for cobalt. How much money have you personally donated to the children of Congo?
    - darth_avocado 4y ago
      “If they weren’t slaves they would die of hunger” is a wrong way to look at the situation. A better way to talk about it would be “hey they are mining minerals that rest of the world literally depends on, why are we not paying them enough so that they can uplift themselves from poverty?”
      - 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Please do not bring kids. It is irrelevant here and can be even factually wrong. In a poor country kinds are forced to do all kind of dangerous work. If not for cobalt they can be sent to fields and be subject for all chemicals used in modern agriculture. Or work in a sweatshop or in a factory with zero regulations about safety. The fact that they mine cobalt tells that this way more money can be earned than through other dangerous work. I.e. the problem is that the country is poor. Fix that and kids will spent time in schools, not in mines.

darth_avocado 4y ago
> Please do not bring kids Ohh I absolutely have to. You just justified modern day child slavery. Here’s a radical idea about fixing the poverty: pay them wages that help them uplift from poverty for mining the cobalt. But that’s never happening because you and I will not pay 10k for an iPhone or a million for a Tesla, and that ultimately is where the exploitation starts.
- nlitened 4y ago
  I don’t understand your point, is it some kind of sarcasm? You say that to stop child slavery, you would need to pay 10k for an iPhone, but you personally don’t want to pay that much, hence the slavery should continue to support your consumption habits. Why are you bringing up child slavery then if you personally justify it?
- pokepim 4y ago
  [dead]
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > will not pay 10k for an iPhone or a million for a Tesla Australia is a massive cobalt, copper and nickel miner [1]. They do it profitably without kids. The cost of transporting ore out of the DRC probably dwarfs any labor savings from using kids. Child labor in sub-Saharan African mines is a solvable problem. But it’s not a question of paying more, but engaging in a regional development effort with tinges of nation building of the sort Western voters are fatigued with. (I see no interest in the problem from China.) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_Australia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_Australia
  - ObviousHumanGPT 4y ago
    Yeah, half of the Kimberley is Ni-Cu sulfides. We've got hundreds of billions of tonnes of the stuff. Stick a shovel anywhere. With the exception of the Mount Gunson Copper Mine in South Australia, Australia has traditionally dumped cobalt back into the hole as it hasn't been economically viable to separate. At $50k per tonne "tailings" suddenly becomes "valuable resource".
foepys 4y ago
Why not demand that there are no children working in the mines before buying the cobalt? Better throw good ecological standards and worker protections in there, too. A supply chain is not a black box nobody can look into, even if quite a lot of corporations want you to believe that.
- _0w8t 4y ago
  Because why not to demand that all safety regulations including a ban on child labor are followed in agriculture, manufacturing before buying agricultural or manufacturing products from poor countries? Child labor there are just as terrible, yet most people do not care while reacting strongly on pictures of children mining cobalt. The pictures may well be produced by those who wants to put bad image on electrical cars, not because they cared about children. The proper solution is to have a careful regulation that heavily tax products from countries with lower safety standards. But this is hard as that makes a lot of things more expensive.
  - monocasa 4y ago
    Ideally we'd ban both, but mining is way worse for children. Even in the global north, it's common for it to be legal for your children to be allowed to work on your farm. I struggle to think of a situation there where your children are mining at an economically viable scale that doesn't result in the state taking your children away for abuse.
aylmao 4y ago
This is a bad excuse to not feel bad supporting industries that make heavy use of child labour. I'll break some things down: > "Please do not bring kids. It is irrelevant here and can be even factually wrong." We should absolutely bring up the kids, since this article talks about the scaling of an industry where the kids play a role in its cheapness. It's very much relevant to the conversation of the price of cobalt. > "If not for cobalt they can be sent to fields and be subject for all chemicals used in modern agriculture. Or work in a sweatshop or in a factory with zero regulations about safety." Mining cobalt is much more dangerous than agriculture; even "modern agriculture". Sweatshops come in all forms, some incredibly dangerous, very physically demanding and potentially toxic, like cobalt mining. I wouldn't say they're worse though. Saying so is not being too familiar with how terrible cobalt mining can be [1][2]. It's worth noting though; one can't defend a terrible children's right abuse by claiming that "if they weren't being abused this way they'd be abused another". We don't know that, and it very much doesn't make it ok. > "I.e. the problem is that the country is poor. Fix that and kids will spent time in schools, not in mines." Yes, The DRC needs capital to develop and support its population. It's worth understanding the problem with a little more depth, since it's complex. The DRC has about half of the reserves of one of an incredibly important resource [3]. That's a very significant amount of latent capital. It also has a chokehold on the market, accounting for about 70% of the world's cobalt production [4]. That's power. One can't just say that The DRC "is poor"; it is being "kept poor" by internal conflict largely enabled and stirred by outsiders (I quickly found some examples from a few years back but there's way more: [5][6]). It's also victim to an international community that says and does nothing about this, because the international community benefits a lot from the poverty in The DRC. That's why we should talk about the children. For years African analysts have noted that the USA cares about "liberating" countries human rights abuses in some parts of the world, yet is very confortable with tyrannical dictators in others [7]. I don't know how much the West would hurt its own economic interests based on public outcry, but we should absolutely acknowledge the fact this is not ok, and Western (in the very least) indifference plays a role in it. [1]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/a394gp/smartphones-child-labor-cobalt-mines-africa-congo-amnesty-international https://www.vice.com/en/article/a394gp/smartphones-child-lab... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/commentisfree/2019/dec/16/i-saw-the-unbearable-grief-inflicted-on-families-by-cobalt-mining-i-pray-for-change https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/commentisfree... [3]: https://www.kitco.com/news/2022-02-17/The-world-s-largest-cobalt-reserves-by-country-in-2021.html https://www.kitco.com/news/2022-02-17/The-world-s-largest-co... [4]: https://investingnews.com/where-is-cobalt-mined/ https://investingnews.com/where-is-cobalt-mined/ [5]: https://youtu.be/tEOmI5bc3HU?t=68 https://youtu.be/tEOmI5bc3HU?t=68 [6]: https://youtu.be/ptdVHo481eI?t=148 https://youtu.be/ptdVHo481eI?t=148 [7]: https://youtu.be/ptdVHo481eI?t=609 https://youtu.be/ptdVHo481eI?t=609

hypertele-Xii 4y ago

40% of Congo's population is below 15 years old. How are they supposed to run an economy without kids working?

phyphy 4y ago
So economy is now a justification of slavery?
- darth_avocado 4y ago
  That’s the way it always is isn’t it? Justifying bad things to make ourselves feel better than to try and fix it.
  - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
    I haven't personally done any bad things to the children on Congo. Have you? I always make ethical purchase decisions within the limits of my budget (e.g. Fair Trade and other certifications). Short of literally devoting my entire life to charity, that's me fixing it.
- hypertele-Xii 4y ago
  So what happens to these millions of kids when you declare it illegal to pay them? Are you going to feed them and build schools? That's what the economy is doing, in exchange for cobalt. How much money have you personally donated to the children of Congo?
  - darth_avocado 4y ago
    “If they weren’t slaves they would die of hunger” is a wrong way to look at the situation. A better way to talk about it would be “hey they are mining minerals that rest of the world literally depends on, why are we not paying them enough so that they can uplift themselves from poverty?”
    - 4y ago