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I'm so tired of this. Here, watch this: I'm the US government with the most powerful military and surveillance network on the planet with multiple deployed flo

I'm so tired of this. Here, watch this: I'm the US government with the most powerful military and surveillance network on the planet with multiple deployed floating cities. You give me a list of every supplier you use and I will recursively go down that list and every employee they have and if you use slaves to harvest materials at any point, I shut down your entire business and burn every shippng crate of stock until you get a supplier that doesn't use slaves. If you lie, I ship the executives to one of numerous black sites under my control. If we're going to do it to innocent people, shipping them to God knows what death camp without due process, I'm not going to sit here and listen anymore about this "we can't do that" nonsense about our supply chain. Woah, crazy, slavery solved. At least have the balls to tell me you want cheap avocados and don't care if child slaves pick them. I'm so God damn tired of all the excuses and smoke and mirrors.

ToucanLoucan 1y ago
Cosigned 100%. The only thing I would say is don't burn the shipping crates. That's just wasteful. Sell the products at 50% off retail to everyone in the US below the poverty line first, then everyone else, and use the funds to pay to improve the working conditions overseas. Our atmosphere doesn't need more waste in it.
nickff 1y ago
Let’s say you buy electrolytic capacitors, and you’re worried that they might have conflict tantalum in them. You call up the manufacturer (likely Samsung), and they tell you that they are unable to verify the origin of the metal. Even if they did tell you who sold them the metal, that’s just a refiner, and there is no way to verify whatever they tell you about the origin. Many conflict metals are laundered through other countries, and I am not sure how you’d detect that. I understand your frustration, but how do you actually verify the origins of these commodities? The professional auditors just blindly trust documentation as far as I can tell.
- Tadpole9181 1y ago
  Then why the fuck are you buying them from there? Get a different supplier. If they can't answer that question, it's because they do use slave labor or just don't care. Neither is acceptable. I'm sorry, are you okay if you asked your boss "hey, we don't have actual slaves in the basement, right?" And they answer "I don't know?" I hope to God you would call the police. But suddenly it's acceptable because a CEO says "maybe, but it saves us 5¢ per unit and they're just brown people in another country"? I'm not going to boohoo for poor little victim companies because they just need slave labor because they're too stupid or greedy to not buy from a company who can't say "no slavery is used in making my product". "Oh no, I want to make shirts, but all the cotton I'm willing to pay for comes from slave plantations." Then don't make shirts. And if you do, that makes you a slaver too. I love how this is where the conversation is these days. This is how far the Overton window has shifted. Slavery is totally acceptable as long as you pretend you don't know. Fix it? Stop slavery? That's just too hard and we may lose profits. "Oh no, poor little us, it's impossible for us to actually care about human rights."
  - nickff 1y ago
    So your solution is that purchasers just need to buy from someone who tells them that the commodity is clean? That is definitely what many do, and what the conflict minerals regulations have encouraged companies to do, but I don’t trust any unverifiable information.
    - Tadpole9181 1y ago
      My point is that these companies know that slavery is being used. Nestlé quite literally admitted to it! If we're going to be a fascist dumpster, why does everyone pretend it's some inherent right that the corporate wigs get all this insulation and that there's simply nothing that can be done against quite literally the worst crimes against humanity that we could possible participate in? The literal bare minimum someone can do is get a written affidavit from their supplier that the chain is clean. I'm a stupid individual man and somehow I can take the extra hours required for damn near every purchase to look up who I'm buying from and where it comes from. Sometimes I even go without! But companies worth quite literally tens of billions can't?

ToucanLoucan 1y ago

Cosigned 100%. The only thing I would say is don't burn the shipping crates. That's just wasteful. Sell the products at 50% off retail to everyone in the US below the poverty line first, then everyone else, and use the funds to pay to improve the working conditions overseas. Our atmosphere doesn't need more waste in it.

nickff 1y ago

Let’s say you buy electrolytic capacitors, and you’re worried that they might have conflict tantalum in them. You call up the manufacturer (likely Samsung), and they tell you that they are unable to verify the origin of the metal. Even if they did tell you who sold them the metal, that’s just a refiner, and there is no way to verify whatever they tell you about the origin. Many conflict metals are laundered through other countries, and I am not sure how you’d detect that. I understand your frustration, but how do you actually verify the origins of these commodities? The professional auditors just blindly trust documentation as far as I can tell.

Tadpole9181 1y ago
Then why the fuck are you buying them from there? Get a different supplier. If they can't answer that question, it's because they do use slave labor or just don't care. Neither is acceptable. I'm sorry, are you okay if you asked your boss "hey, we don't have actual slaves in the basement, right?" And they answer "I don't know?" I hope to God you would call the police. But suddenly it's acceptable because a CEO says "maybe, but it saves us 5¢ per unit and they're just brown people in another country"? I'm not going to boohoo for poor little victim companies because they just need slave labor because they're too stupid or greedy to not buy from a company who can't say "no slavery is used in making my product". "Oh no, I want to make shirts, but all the cotton I'm willing to pay for comes from slave plantations." Then don't make shirts. And if you do, that makes you a slaver too. I love how this is where the conversation is these days. This is how far the Overton window has shifted. Slavery is totally acceptable as long as you pretend you don't know. Fix it? Stop slavery? That's just too hard and we may lose profits. "Oh no, poor little us, it's impossible for us to actually care about human rights."
- nickff 1y ago
  So your solution is that purchasers just need to buy from someone who tells them that the commodity is clean? That is definitely what many do, and what the conflict minerals regulations have encouraged companies to do, but I don’t trust any unverifiable information.
  - Tadpole9181 1y ago
    My point is that these companies know that slavery is being used. Nestlé quite literally admitted to it! If we're going to be a fascist dumpster, why does everyone pretend it's some inherent right that the corporate wigs get all this insulation and that there's simply nothing that can be done against quite literally the worst crimes against humanity that we could possible participate in? The literal bare minimum someone can do is get a written affidavit from their supplier that the chain is clean. I'm a stupid individual man and somehow I can take the extra hours required for damn near every purchase to look up who I'm buying from and where it comes from. Sometimes I even go without! But companies worth quite literally tens of billions can't?