4 ms·

You realize your smartphone almost certainly has metals mined or processed by children in dangerous and unhealthy work environments ?

by ig1 13y ago

mistercow 13y ago
Yikes, and also probably your computer, and possibly your car. And I was having such a nice morning. Now I feel like I need to work out how much money I need to give to an effective charity or something to offset the bad that I'm doing when I buy my next phone or computer.
- derefr 13y ago
  Keep in mind that as long as you're driving the economy (by production or consumption), you're enabling whatever pre-existing incentive-structures the economy supports. $5 of vegan bread gives the grocery store five more dollars, which it will then use to pay that loss-leader butchery that brings in the saturday shoppers, etc. Putting $1.50 in a vending machine to buy a Nestle-competitor's product, results in the vending machine company renewing Nestle's contract either way (because they're the draw), that competitor paying Nestle $0.40 for pre-processed milk-chocolate product, and Nestle spending $0.40 more not to market their products to you (they assume you a lost cause), but rather to your children directly. ...Or, in micro-econ terms, if you pay me $5 for vegan bread, I'll spend that $5 on several kit-kats (I am, after all, craving them now), and put some away to save up for a new phone. You've effectively multiplied the harm you're doing! It's the same general argument as "a portion of every tax dollar goes to killing brown people", but escaping the economy entirely is actually harder than plain-old tax evasion. Basically, voting with your wallet only sways sole proprietors; anything larger may be externally capitalist, but is internally more socialist/syndicalist, driven by long-term contracts, quotas, "consumer confidence" ratings, futures, government certifications, and insurance-risk-purchases more than hard revenue. All that is opaque to you as a consumer, so there's really no way to influence any entrenched player by purposefully tugging on money-strings. They've purchased entire portfolios to hedge against precisely that effect!
  - mistercow 13y ago
    Those are good points, but I disagree that individuals cannot influence entrenched players by changing their purchasing decisions. Here's how it can happen: 1. A large chunk of people buy the Fairphone. Let's pretend it's 500,000. 2. Samsung notices this. Of course they don't care about that tiny amount of competition, but they do care about competing with Apple. 3. Samsung commissions a study. They find that of the respondents, 0.5% answer "yes" to "Have you bought, or do you plan to buy a Fairphone or other specialty phone which uses conflict-free materials". When asked "If not, which of the following reasons describes why?", 25% answer "I don't want to take a chance with an unknown manufacturer." 4. From this, they conclude that they can expect to sell roughly 20 million additional phones if they (and they alone among major manufacturers) if they switch to conflict-free materials. That is NSFPMS/HB = 20 million, where NS = non-Samsung marketshare ~= 75% FF = Fairphone sales = 500,000 MS = % who would buy a mainstream conflict-free phone = 25% HB = % who have already bought/will buy a Fairphone = 0.5% 5. Every other major manufacturer does the same calculation, and suddenly conflict-free materials are a standard feature. Now obviously this is an oversimplification. The numbers are made up, Samsung would also add in some uncertainty about customers doing what they say they will do, I haven't taken into account the cost difference for the materials, those survey questions are atrociously designed, etc. But you get the point.
RobAley 13y ago
Yes. Next time I upgrade, I've got my eye on fairphone.com, for what it's worth. Not quite sure what that argument has to do with my preposition though. I had no such illusions about my phone manufacturer (Samsung). Google set out on a different path ("Do No Evil"), but turns out they're not much different to Samsung et. al. now, and that was my argument. Many still see them as working in a different way, but they don't.
- pauloya 13y ago
  The argument is that there were previous "hook-up"s between Google and vile companies before Nestle, namely Samsung.
  - RobAley 13y ago
    Those associations, while not by any means ideal, are somewhat necessary. As inferred by the argument it's hard to find ethical phone companies at that scale. There is absolutely no need (at least technologically) for this link up. Its purely brand marketing, and they picked the wrong brand.
oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
And that's certainly bad, but Nestle have carried out about 10 other known immoral practises in their history, including the use of child slave labour, so they pretty much 'win' that one hands down.
- RobAley 13y ago
  Its the infant formula marketing one for me that still trumps them all. Knowingly allowing babies to die is pretty much a sure way to get to the top of my "that's a company I don't like" list.

You realize your smartphone almost certainly has metals mined or processed by children in dangerous and unhealthy work environments ?

by ig1 13y ago

You realize your smartphone almost certainly has metals mined or processed by children in dangerous and unhealthy work environments ?

mistercow 13y ago

Yikes, and also probably your computer, and possibly your car. And I was having such a nice morning. Now I feel like I need to work out how much money I need to give to an effective charity or something to offset the bad that I'm doing when I buy my next phone or computer.

derefr 13y ago
Keep in mind that as long as you're driving the economy (by production or consumption), you're enabling whatever pre-existing incentive-structures the economy supports. $5 of vegan bread gives the grocery store five more dollars, which it will then use to pay that loss-leader butchery that brings in the saturday shoppers, etc. Putting $1.50 in a vending machine to buy a Nestle-competitor's product, results in the vending machine company renewing Nestle's contract either way (because they're the draw), that competitor paying Nestle $0.40 for pre-processed milk-chocolate product, and Nestle spending $0.40 more not to market their products to you (they assume you a lost cause), but rather to your children directly. ...Or, in micro-econ terms, if you pay me $5 for vegan bread, I'll spend that $5 on several kit-kats (I am, after all, craving them now), and put some away to save up for a new phone. You've effectively multiplied the harm you're doing! It's the same general argument as "a portion of every tax dollar goes to killing brown people", but escaping the economy entirely is actually harder than plain-old tax evasion. Basically, voting with your wallet only sways sole proprietors; anything larger may be externally capitalist, but is internally more socialist/syndicalist, driven by long-term contracts, quotas, "consumer confidence" ratings, futures, government certifications, and insurance-risk-purchases more than hard revenue. All that is opaque to you as a consumer, so there's really no way to influence any entrenched player by purposefully tugging on money-strings. They've purchased entire portfolios to hedge against precisely that effect!
- mistercow 13y ago
  Those are good points, but I disagree that individuals cannot influence entrenched players by changing their purchasing decisions. Here's how it can happen: 1. A large chunk of people buy the Fairphone. Let's pretend it's 500,000. 2. Samsung notices this. Of course they don't care about that tiny amount of competition, but they do care about competing with Apple. 3. Samsung commissions a study. They find that of the respondents, 0.5% answer "yes" to "Have you bought, or do you plan to buy a Fairphone or other specialty phone which uses conflict-free materials". When asked "If not, which of the following reasons describes why?", 25% answer "I don't want to take a chance with an unknown manufacturer." 4. From this, they conclude that they can expect to sell roughly 20 million additional phones if they (and they alone among major manufacturers) if they switch to conflict-free materials. That is NSFPMS/HB = 20 million, where NS = non-Samsung marketshare ~= 75% FF = Fairphone sales = 500,000 MS = % who would buy a mainstream conflict-free phone = 25% HB = % who have already bought/will buy a Fairphone = 0.5% 5. Every other major manufacturer does the same calculation, and suddenly conflict-free materials are a standard feature. Now obviously this is an oversimplification. The numbers are made up, Samsung would also add in some uncertainty about customers doing what they say they will do, I haven't taken into account the cost difference for the materials, those survey questions are atrociously designed, etc. But you get the point.

RobAley 13y ago

Yes. Next time I upgrade, I've got my eye on fairphone.com, for what it's worth. Not quite sure what that argument has to do with my preposition though. I had no such illusions about my phone manufacturer (Samsung). Google set out on a different path ("Do No Evil"), but turns out they're not much different to Samsung et. al. now, and that was my argument. Many still see them as working in a different way, but they don't.

pauloya 13y ago
The argument is that there were previous "hook-up"s between Google and vile companies before Nestle, namely Samsung.
- RobAley 13y ago
  Those associations, while not by any means ideal, are somewhat necessary. As inferred by the argument it's hard to find ethical phone companies at that scale. There is absolutely no need (at least technologically) for this link up. Its purely brand marketing, and they picked the wrong brand.

oneeyedpigeon 13y ago

And that's certainly bad, but Nestle have carried out about 10 other known immoral practises in their history, including the use of child slave labour, so they pretty much 'win' that one hands down.

RobAley 13y ago
Its the infant formula marketing one for me that still trumps them all. Knowingly allowing babies to die is pretty much a sure way to get to the top of my "that's a company I don't like" list.