this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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You only enslave yourself by learning to do absolutely nothing against what you see as oppressive.
You enslave others by consuming most common products on the shelves. Modern slavery (and child slavery) is more expansive than most know and third-world exploitation is rampant - western supply chains are not immune.
While you support the enslavement of others with your consumption, corporations continue to become more and more powerful.
You speak so right, that's why I only buy Apple. I prefer to buy the slaves and free them with my money instead of cheaping on it and forcing the heavy hand of corporate whip.
We have to be responsible.
Your trolling aside, we all share a personal responsibility to not buy from companies that e.g. utilize cobalt/lithium in their products - slavery/child labor is rampant in those supply chains and Apple et. al are responsible for supporting it.
If there was no demand, these children wouldn't be forced to work in mines - it's that simple.
setting aside the difficulty of quantifying demand, this is still an unprovable statement. you can't prove a counterfactual.
If these countries were given the ingredients to be able to develop and there was no outside demand for mined materials, these children wouldn't be in the mines.
Big if, but less of an "if" if more people are made aware. It's absolutely sickening how much we rely on lithium considering how it is sourced.
We are collectively enabling modern slavery and child slavery. These corporations prefer to act innocent because they aren't sending the children themselves into the mines, but they buy the materials they mine regardless (and there's no way that they don't know the reality). Many corporations profit off the back of these people and children and they should be required to pay significant reparations.
What is in our power to stop this? We can spread the awareness of our exploitation of third-world countries - including their children, we can develop technologies that don't rely on rare materials or difficult to mine materials, we can employ automation to mine what we do need in first-world countries, and we can hold the corporations that profit from these supply chains accountable.
There are battery technologies (e.g. sodium-ion) that we could grasp and avoid mining altogether for energy storage. China is proving that sodium-ion batteries are a very promising technology, even in cars, and the sodium can be sourced from seawater or from the byproducts of desalination (the latter which likely needs to be very quickly scaled considering the fresh water crisis).
Well if we don't buy it they lose their jobs and means to sustain themselves in that deserted hellhole. These companies are sometimes providing the only work they can do and stay employed. Once they move out it's over for them
If you're worried about these children losing their wonderful life in the mines, feel free to support them through other means.
Make it your life's work to spread awareness, bring aid to the affected countries, and support their development - you only enslave yourself by learning to do absolutely nothing against what you see as oppressive.
And getting companies that profit off of these children to support them would likely be fair. Apple, Google, and many others can handle the hit.
Let's not buy their products and see the 3rd world underpaid workforce get fired and die out of hunger. That will solve all the world problems
That was your solution. Exceedingly bright in a true internet way
When you put it that way, I guess we better hand over thousands every year to Apple for the new iPhone. Wouldn't want a child slave to be unemployed.
Buy 10,000 disposable vapes every year while you're at it (if you really care). Maybe a couple cents will trickle down to the children you claim to care about.
You jest but it is actually how it works. If you stop buying they will die.