The connection between modern slavery and ecological disaster

http://blog.longreads.com/2016/03/08/your-phone-was-made-by-slaves-a-primer-on-the-secret-economy/

by duracell999 • 10 years ago

240 171 10 years ago

blog.longreads.com

scoofy7• 10 years ago

"Slavery in granite quarries is a family affair enforced by a tricky scheme based on debt. When a poor family comes looking for work, the quarry bosses are ready to help with an “advance” on wages to help the family settle in. The rice and beans they eat, the scrap stones they use to build a hut on the side of the quarry, the hammers and crowbars they need to do their work, all of it is provided by the boss and added to the family’s debt. Just when the family feels they may have finally found some security, they are being locked into hereditary slavery. This debt bondage is illegal, but illiterate workers don’t know this, and the bosses are keen to play on their sense of obligation, not alert them to the scam that’s sucking them under."

This is very much not slavery. It's terrible, it's fraud, and it's arguably some form of servitude, but it's not slavery. Calling it slavery is an insult to people who are owned and chained.

Edit: much, much later at the very end of the article there is a more in depth accounting of what's happening. It seems to be mostly fraud tied with corruption, but there are accounts of straight servitude and some of the men say they were not able to leave. If this testimony is accurate, i'd say it's slavery.

danharaj4• 10 years ago

What's the material difference between being forced to work to pay off an unpayable debt and being forced to work because of a legal fiction of ownership of another human being?

There isn't one. This article is about slavery as a real, physical condition, not a legal condition.

gdsimoes• 10 years ago

You are absolutely right.

scoofy7• 10 years ago

You can leave. You can get up and walk away and deal with the law, and possibly go to jail. In this case, it'll 'free' them because they are being defrauded according to the author. A slave cannot leave. A slave will not be jailed, a slave will be returned to their master and forced to work again.

It's fucked up, but it's not slavery.

deelowe• 10 years ago

The difference is that a slave is the legal property of the owner to do as he or she pleases (including destruction of said property, if they deem it necessary). That's a pretty critical difference.

Things can still be characterized as being pretty messed up without resorting to misrepresentation.

mturmon2• 10 years ago

You have been down voted, but I think your point is a good one. To rephrase what you said, the actual, on-the-ground difference between chattel slavery (say, as practiced in the American South) vs. this kind of open-ended debt bondage, which is apparently being winked at by the state and by society at large, may be small.

throwaway_231• 10 years ago

forced to work because of a legal fiction of ownership of another human being

The same can be said of any piece of paper that assigns ownership to a piece of land, or anything else on this earth.

talles• 10 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#Bonded_labor

wmeredith• 10 years ago

Isn't this the classic company store scam?

Swizec• 10 years ago

One of the best ads I've seen on this topic is a picture of big rubber gloves near the SF Ferry Building. Under the gloves it says "Could these be shackles? Ask your janitor."

I thought it was powerful. My girlfriend who grew up here didn't get it.

Faux slavery of this kind is very widespread. Very.

id• 10 years ago

I searched for it and this is part of a campaign from a workgroup called "No Traffick Ahead":

http://www.notraffickahead.com/campaigns/

Powerful indeed.

tdaltonc• 10 years ago

Chattel slavery is the most sever and inhuman form of slavery, but it's not the only one.

maxerickson• 10 years ago

Indeed. This discussion would work better if it had started with some defined terms and people stuck to them.

I think if humans could handle it, matching concepts with made up words would even be useful (rather than each side insisting that a word with a lot of baggage be attached to this or that concept).

kafkaesq3• 10 years ago

There is a technical legal distinction between the status of these people those referred to as "slaves" during the colonial era.

But at the end of the day (and from the point of view of those directly affected), it's a fairly picayune one. And to deny, from the safety of the comfortable and protected position where we sit, that it isn't basically the modern, moral equivalent of slavery is to dodge the key issue at hand, and seems quite callous to the suffering of those affected.

hitekker• 10 years ago

If I could give ten upvotes to this comment, I would.

To be a slave is to be the formal or informal property of another. It is to be considered subhuman, and all the dark implications that go with that status.

Pretending that the lowest pits of wage-slavery, as described in this article, does not qualify as slavery is the mark of the cruel and misshapen.

coldtea• 10 years ago

This is very much not slavery. It's terrible, it's fraud, and it's arguably indentured servitude, but it's not slavery. Calling it slavery is an insult to people who are owned and chained.

Actually trivializing it because it doesn't meet some ideal of what slavery should be is the actual insult to people who have to live through that hell life.

And the people indeed are or have been "owned and chained" would have no problem with calling such an injustice slavery too. That would be actually petty of them...

Not to mention that historically and globally there have been many forms and traditions of slavery and servitude -- including similar debt schemes, used even back in ancient Greece and Rome.

scoofy7• 10 years ago

This is exactly why i'm so infuriated with clickbaity titles. I'm not trivializing what is happening at all. It's the author who has a perfectly good article to write, about horrific, illegal, dangerous, and downright immoral business practices throughout a major supply chain, and then he has to go and say that it's something it's not to get a few more clicks.

DanBC• 10 years ago

Anyone working to reduce indentured servitude calls it modern slavery.

So I can believe alll those workers in many multinational agencies who all call this modern slavery, or I can believe you.

patsplat• 10 years ago

And if such debts were sold between quarry bosses? What would you call that?

api2• 10 years ago

Our financial system?

beat14• 10 years ago

Many years ago, I was arrested for something annoying and dumb. I was separated from the group (several friends) and questioned before we were formally arrested, getting a coerced confession from me. In court, the confession was thrown out - the police argued that I was not under arrest at the time, but when the judge asked if I was free to go, the police had to say no. That meant I was under arrest, whether or not I was cuffed, whether or not they had read me my rights.

It's not slavery because it's legally called slavery. It's slavery because those people are not in any way free to leave.

nl2• 10 years ago

Yes(ish)

This is Debt Slavery (or Debt Bondage)[1], and you are correct that it is a different thing to chattel slavery. However, it is still considered slavery. In particular, it is outlawed under international law under the "Convention on the Abolition of Slavery"[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_Convention_on_th...

runn1ng• 10 years ago

One common solution to this problem is "close your eyes and pretend it doesn't happen".

It's very effective.

g4z• 10 years ago

it also has a long and proven track record of success

kafkaesq3• 10 years ago

Sometimes I wonder how much, if anything, has really changed since this fellow ruled the day:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_II_of_Belgium

Other than that machinery for exploitation has been geographically dispersed and greatly optimized, such that these days, our slaves don't drop like flies quite so often, but instead are kept around in a state of minimal sustenance -- so that their skills can be most efficiently extracted without all the, you know, rotting corpses, piles of severed limbs & ensuing bad PR.

moondowner• 10 years ago

For those interested in Leopold's rule: "The crime of the Congo" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle https://archive.org/details/crimeofcongo00doyliala

garysieling3• 10 years ago

"King Leopold's Ghost" is also very good

tsunamifury5• 10 years ago

Ethical supply chains will become a badge of honor in the future for the upper class who can afford it... but the masses consuming the majority of the products driving the price down to slave-labor proportions will require a cultural change.

There is something deep in human nature that sees something it wants and narrows our thoughts to just getting that item. Maybe its a holdover from our Hunter/Gatherer instincts. But we seem to be using it to hack our minds to ignore the damage we do to our fellow humans in the process of acquiring.

We may need to aspouse minimalist ideology at a mass scale (something I see in fellow Gen Yers.)

delecti• 10 years ago

Ethical supply chains will become a badge of honor in the future for the upper class who can afford it

The same society whose middle and lower classes are demanding ever lower prices at the cost of inhumane treatment of workers is the same society which produces the upper class you hold that hope for. I think you must be living in a different world than I am, because the upper class I'm familiar with is just as happy as everyone else to have their goods produced by the not-quite-but-almost-slave labor described in the article.

I agree that this will require a cultural change, but at all levels. The upper class isn't going to jump on that any sooner than the rest of us without a major shift.

tsunamifury5• 10 years ago

The badge of honor is, of course, meant pharisaically.

The upper class I'm familiar with consumes products by people like Brunello Cucinelli who goes to great lengths to verify the ethical sourcing of his products. They eat localvorically, and in general buy ulta-high end goods that they research a bit before purchasing (because they are finicky about many aspects). This new hobby is a ultra-status conversation piece that can be traded at parties. You should be able to name the region your boat deck's teak came from, and then drop that the hunting rifle you just had hand crafted has a recovered Lebanese cedar stock that came from an old chest of drawers.

timje1• 10 years ago

Around half of all eggs laid in the UK come from free range hens (1) - I believe this increasing proportion is partly due to a sticker requirement to mark eggs with 'Eggs from caged hens'.

I wonder what effect there would be on the electronics industry if all iPhones in the EU had to be sold with a prominent sticker 'Produced with slave labour' ? I honestly think that regulations can nudge the behaviour and expectations of 'the masses' through this kind of labelling.

(1) http://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/farm/layinghens/far...

lucisferre• 10 years ago

I can just imagine how much having to mark phones "made by slaves" in a non removable way would impact sales.

tsunamifury5• 10 years ago

I agree! I the US we have focused more on branding the positive aspects (local, organic) and socially stigmatizing the negative (e.g. labeling smoking). But as I mention above, that ends up making a class distinction more than real change.

dorfsmay• 10 years ago

The problem is that "free range" is easy to define.

Which criteria should we label for that are meaningful in other countries across the world?

Made by workers:

Receiving Minimum wage (which one)?

Receiving Free healthcare?

Working a maximum of 8 hours / day?

Over the age of 16? 18?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it, but defining what is acceptable is not easy. Don't forget that in most western countries no access to free healthcare would be defined as unacceptable. Also in some poor countries 14 year old "kids" have fought against anti-child labour laws because they were the only provider for their family and there is no help from the government regardless of your condition.

Chathamization2• 10 years ago

The point the article seems to be making, though, is that pretty much everything is made with slave labor. Phones, computers, tabletops, tombstones, shrimp, fish, steel, sugar - everything. So you'd be slapping the "Produced with slave labor" label on everything, which probably wouldn't change behavior.

kbenson• 10 years ago

That makes sense to me. If we accept that the market isn't perfect, and that all participants do not have perfect information (or even as a corollary market participants will not always recall or connect known information to the transaction they are considering), then increasing awareness of market information allows the market to perform better. In this case, people want free range eggs for whatever reason (there could be many, but I'm sure we can all think of the obvious ones), and making them aware of that helps them make that decision.

specialist• 10 years ago

'Produced with slave labour'

Love it.

Daylighting externalities is key to changing behavior. Enough of us vote with our dollars to move the needle.

I stopped eating chocolate (cold turkey) when I first learned about the plantations using slave labor, children, etc.

I resumed buying chocolate when I learned about the Fair Trade program.

http://fairtradeusa.org/products-partners/cocoa

jdietrich• 10 years ago

The Prop 65 problem[1].

It's impossible to prove that the entire supply chain for any electronic device is 100% free of exploitative labour conditions. Metals are fundamentally untraceable and a modern device contains components from hundreds or even thousands of suppliers, sub-contractors and second sources. All it takes is one manager twenty steps down in the supply chain to lose a piece of paper and your chain of custody is broken for a sizeable batch of devices.

In practice, every electronic device would be required to carry such a warning label simply as a precaution, rendering it meaningless.

[1] http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65/background/p65plain.html

superuser2• 10 years ago

What smartphones do you imagine aren't produced with slave labor? Is there even a phone on the market with no Foxconn parts?

For this to work, there has to be an ethical alternative available (if at slightly higher cost).

jqm3• 10 years ago

I trust regulatory policy much more than badges of honor. I always laugh when I see "fair trade coffee". Is it really fair trade? Do most people care about it? Would the socially conscious hipster just as easily drink non-fair trade coffee if the budget got tight or they thought no one was looking?

You can't depend on people to do the right thing. That's why we have laws. International labor laws will hopefully one day become a thing. In the meantime we have trade agreements. We shouldn't allow import of slave produced goods to western societies. IMHOP.

djrogers• 10 years ago

I trust regulatory policy

The same regulatory policy regularly subverted by small bribes in the article?

galfarragem• 10 years ago

The copy is also very important. If you use the negative form: 'unfair trade coffee' the impact is much stronger.

cname• 10 years ago

the socially conscious hipster

Maybe we'd make more progress if we stopped denigrating people for trying to do what they can. It may not be enough, but at least some people are trying to do _something_. But when you put people down this way, it makes them less likely to do anything, because no one wants to be labeled as vacuous and superficial (AKA "hipster").

chestnut-tree• 10 years ago

"I always laugh when I see "fair trade coffee". Is it really fair trade? Do most people care about it?"

Some people do care. Enough for an ever-growing range of products that are part of the Fairtrade scheme.

In the UK, the Fairtrade logo is almost universally recognised by consumers because you can find fair trade products in just about every supermarket (obviously the number of products varies by supermarket, but even discount Supermarkets like Lidl and Aldi stock a few items).

One major supermarket in the UK (Sainsbury's) sources all it's bananas under the fair trade scheme.

Fair trade has its critics and perhaps the scheme fails at times to live up to its ideals, but it's still a scheme worthy of support. And I'm glad it's going strong (at least in the UK - I think other countries have their own versions).

Here's an excellent blog post from the Fairtrade foundation on some common misconceptions about fair trade

http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/en/media-centre/blog/2015/july/d...

Laaw• 10 years ago

I wonder why it is we assume it's even possible to successfully maximize happiness on a global scale.

Has there ever been a time in human history where slavery wasn't the fundamental backbone of a prosperous society?

framp• 10 years ago

Robots and automation?

zepto• 10 years ago

Was here ever a time in human history when the horse wasn't the fastest way to travel?

Chlorus3• 10 years ago

I'll bite: What happens to the poor when the inhumane supply chain that has sustained them (albeit poorly) goes away?

Also, a googler complaining about slave-labor prices is rich with irony.

astazangasta2• 10 years ago

Are you seriously suggesting that a humane system of production is impossible? The status quo or oblivion' is a terrible false dichotomy.

tsunamifury5• 10 years ago

What happens everywhere, they go find something else to do. And the odds of that being ethically better go up as fewer at the top order from unethical suppliers.

Current failings of our world are not excuses not to improve it, or to be better people.

On another note, a personal attack is not appreciated here, regardless of where I work. Your comment history is rich with these types of things. We are happy to have you here, but please think about contributing more constructively.

beat14• 10 years ago

The inhumane supply chain is feeding them because it won't allow them to feed themselves. Humans fed themselves for many thousands of years before the modern mechanisms of oppression were introduced. Remove the oppression, and they'll go right back to it.

ommunist6• 10 years ago

Technically, robots are slaves. But is that wrong? Phones production is made by robots snd only assisted by humans.

dudul3• 10 years ago

Robot actually means "slave" in Czech language.

stonogo• 10 years ago

No it doesn't. That's "otrok". "Robot" is derived from the Polish for "chore".

ommunist6• 10 years ago

No. Thy the term itself was invented by Czech author Chapek, it has no that meaning.

thaumasiotes• 10 years ago

And hey, the english word "slave" comes from the ethnic group that gave us the Czechs, but I don't think that says much about modern Czechs or modern slaves.

beat14• 10 years ago

Robots are not slaves, because they are not living beings, and do not possess consciousness or free will.

It's not that complicated.

ommunist6• 10 years ago

Ehm... Slaves do not possess free will. That is why they are slaves.

ommunist6• 10 years ago

If robots are programmed to create other robots and are programmed to avoid harm and attune to find resources - they are conscious and have free will. Define consciousness and free will.

tkinom• 10 years ago

Replace "advance on wages" with $200+K of educational loan in US Higher Ed system.

Or Replace "advance on wages" with "Free Higher Ed system" EU but 50%-70% tax for life.

Are we all slaves, one way or the others? :-)

Minus a few 1% who become the masters with luck, family connections or intelligent.

moistgorilla• 10 years ago

No, we aren't all slaves despite how many edgy kids like to think. We can choose our job or not to work. We can decide not to pay our debts. I guarantee you if these people chose to run away or not pay they would be beaten.

diyseguy• 10 years ago

You can't really choose not to work though. Ask anyone to honestly answer if they would work if they didn't have to and the answer is obvious: No one wants to work, not really. In America there are basically two choices for the majority: work or suicide

doctorcroc• 10 years ago

| Are we all slaves, one way or the others? :-)

Absolutely not. Our lives of relative luxury don't even come close to the misery experienced by bonded laborers.

At the end of the day - you go home to your laptop, heated apartment and fresh food (and can get legal protection for bankruptcy/loss of wealth).

Don't compare that to the suffering of the truly poor. I get your philosophical point, but it has no place here.

dang2• 10 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11246628 and marked it off-topic.

dang2• 10 years ago

We replaced the baity title with the part of the subtitle that seems representative of the article. If someone can suggest a better (more accurate and neutral) title, we can change it again.

Submitters: the HN guidelines ask you not to use the original title when it is misleading or linkbait.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

TheGRS• 10 years ago

This isn't so much an article as it is an excerpt from a book that is linked at the bottom. If you are looking for a pithy expose on the link between slavery, iPhones and environmentalism, you won't find it here, but the book does seem like a good read on the subjects it brings up.

twoodfin• 10 years ago

I won't cut and paste my comment[1] from the last time the cobalt-from-the-Congo issue made the front page, but I do want to repeat that I think it's a mistake to generalize from a single horrible situation.

Imagine we found a rich vein of cobalt ore in Tim Cook's backyard: The Congo would still be in an unimaginably terrible state, but at least that part of our phones would be humanely supplied. What's next on the list? My guess is that it would be substantially less upsetting, and probably much easier to address.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10930445

namenotrequired• 10 years ago

Obligatory mention of Fairphone: http://fairphone.com/ who try to get rid of slavery in as much of their supply chain as possible (and detail exactly how far they get there transparently in their blog).

tim3334• 10 years ago

Well, your phone probably wasn't actually built by slaves. However it probably uses the element tantalum some of which come from ore mined in Congo and some of that is probably mined by slaves.

The reason slavery goes on there is armed thugs from neighbouring counties (Rwanda and Zaire) have invaded and are forcing the locals to hand over the ore which is not a good thing. Though the solution is not to feel guilty about using phones, it's to kick the thugs out.

kafkaesq3• 10 years ago

The reason slavery goes on there is armed thugs from neighbouring counties (Rwanda and Zaire) have invaded and are forcing the locals to hand over the ore which is not a good thing.

I disagree with you, there.

The reason slavery goes on there is because we choose to permit it. It may be a passive choice, rooted in (willful) ignorance for some, or a sense of powerlessness ("I can't help those people, what do my own decisions matter?") for others. But if we really wanted to, we could just stop buying (at least discretionary) products which, by this point, everyone knows to be sourced from conflict zones, and human suffering that are inseparable from them.

tim3334• 10 years ago

Well, it goes on because no one stops it. The obvious people to stop it would be the government of the country but they are not very effective. Failing that maybe some international body could help, the UN perhaps. I've also got a start up idea along those lines...

Joeboy2• 10 years ago

neighbouring counties (Rwanda and Zaire)

I don't claim much knowledge of the area, but I'm confused that you're saying Zaire borders Congo, when in fact Zaire became the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1997.

narrator• 10 years ago

The Congo probably has the most depressing history of any country on earth. First their was the horrific Belgian colonization. Then, more recently, the Congo war in the late 90s was the most violent conflict since World War II with an estimated 2.7 Million to 5.4 Million dead [1] and hardly anybody knows about it. It's even referred to as Africa's World War. There was one documentary about it: Kisangani Diary[2]. It's about the bleakest film I've ever seen.

The war came about after the dictator Mobutu died and the chaos and aftermath of the Rwanda genocide spilled over the border. All the surrounding countries saw enormous natural resource wealth to be claimed and started funding and equipping their own proxy militias to seize power. The whole thing was a huge chaotic mess that destroyed what little infrastructure there was in the country.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbD76cWdBHc&list=PLDD34C9812...

api2• 10 years ago

I've never even heard of this, and I definitely pay attention to the news. This is basically WWIII in terms of overall combined casualties and... I'm just speechless... I have never even heard of it. Absolutely incredible.

100timesthis• 10 years ago

I'm not saying that it isn't a tragedy but it's an order of magnitude less than WWII[1], or am I missing something?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II

garysieling3• 10 years ago

If you're interested in history, "The State of Africa" is a really readable history of African countries from post-WWII to the present(or close). From that book I found out about a lot of events I'd never heard about, including a more detailed discussion of what this article talks about.

beat14• 10 years ago

Back in college, I had two Congolese friends... one a fellow CS student, the other a professor who taught an intro course in African history and literature that I'd taken. They would hang out together because they were the only Congolese in town, and I'd sit with them sometimes, chatting about school and weather and pretty girls walking by an anything but politics.

The professor's family was highly placed in the Mobutu government. He had enjoyed a childhood of education at the best private boarding schools and colleges in Belgium and England. My fellow CS student? He had been labeled a communist, and fled the country with his wife and children. He somehow managed to make his way to the US and enroll in college.

Still, they were genuinely friends, and great company to be with.

lossolo• 10 years ago

The war came about after the dictator Mobutu died and the chaos and aftermath

We learned so much from this, just look at Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria...

nl2• 10 years ago

First their was the horrific Belgian colonization

This is one of the worst things ever, and recent enough to be photo-documented. They cut the hands and feet off children if their parents didn't gather enough rubber.

http://shop.antislavery.org/category/Images-Historical-Belgi...

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=congo+slavery&tbm=isch

https://discoveringbelgium.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/congo...

theworstshill• 10 years ago

Lots of discussion but no simple solutions. If somebody really wanted to help, there is an elegant way to correct this problem - airdrop AK47s and ammunition and let democracy take its course. Something similar to what the brits did over France in WW2 with small crude pistols.

schiffern• 10 years ago

This is the fundamental problem with the "but we can't price externalities because growth solves poverty" argument. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11228262

Many times what appears to be growth is really just inefficient forms of wealth transfer where we're seeing only one side, causing more poverty than it solves.

The word "externalities" don't mean that no one pays. It means that powerless third parties pay (who are unable to consent) -- poor children and the elderly breathing diesel fumes because their family can't afford to live far from the dump, or the indigenous people displaced/exterminated to raise cattle in slashed-and-burned rainforests, or the slave laborer, or our grandchildren who will have to deal with the effects of climate change and species extinction. Externalities aren't on a ledger somewhere, but it makes them no less real.

Environmental protection is actually just humanity's enlightened self-interest, a fact the human/"environment" distinction serves only to mask.

frotak• 10 years ago

"It’s hard to understand this much chaos, but imagine a city where the police and government have simply run away and five or six mafia gangs are running everything, each based in a different neighborhood. The thugs have total control and can do whatever they please, so just crossing from one part of town to another means paying a tax or risking attack or even enslavement. It’s a kind of feudalism, but these feudal lords have no sense of responsibility toward the people on their turf and there is no overlord king to keep order. For the thugs the townspeople are more like stolen cattle; there’s no investment beyond the effort of capture and little reason to keep them alive. Now imagine that when the government sends in the National Guard to confront the mafia, the Guard just carves out its own territory, settles in, and becomes another mafia. That’s the Eastern Congo."

I genuinely don't understand this.

Inasmuch as while the history of humankind seems to be one rife with violent domination of one group of people by another there is usually some overriding order enforced. Or if not an overarching order then at the very least some general mindfulness to a larger picture.

Even when comparing to organized crime in the States...there are rules and a set of "laws" that are generally followed. Not exactly and not without violation, but there is a group enforcement of a base set of standards that provides the stability required to find growth and development.

But in so much of Africa is seems that there is nothing but senseless savagery and violence.

The wealthier nations absolutely feed it...but if I'm recalling my history of the continent correctly there was plenty of violence and savagery long before the first European colonists invaded and exploited the indigenous peoples.

tim3334• 10 years ago

It was pretty much the human condition until the invention of laws, writing and so on. Europe used to be pretty bad a few centuries back. Progress is just taking a little longer to reach central Africa but it probably will with the spread of the internet.

golergka• 10 years ago

Correlation between slavery and lack of care for environment laws is obviously correlated — but why does the author link them together as if one happens when and only when there is another? They just have the same cause (willingness to break the law/ethics for profits) and I assume that there's a LOT of businessmen acting outside of the law in terms of ecology who are not slavers.

JoshCole• 10 years ago

For anyone who happens to actually be doing this or something like this, that is keeping back wages to enforce slavery, its worth noting that the rust of your wealth will burn like fire against you. Torture and torment await you without repentance and turning to Jesus Christ. For everyone pleading the cause of the poor and needy: God delights in you're doing that - expect reward.

ommunist6• 10 years ago

The author probably does not know that 97% of rare metals necessary to produce phones is controlled by China, and China export quotas. And Chinese workers are by no means slaves. They are proud members of their society and enjoy benefits of it.

The connection between modern slavery and ecological disaster

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