And, according to John Oliver, even the chocolate companies that try to only source their product from child labor-free sources, they say they can’t guarantee it. That’s how much and how often children are used on these farms.
After seeing that John Oliver report, I’m never eating chocolate again. All I would be able to do would be to think of those kids.
And yes, I realize that other products I have are made from child labor, but chocolate is a pretty easy one to give up.
If you think chocolate is bad, sugar is worse.
What I’ve learned in the last few years is that every part of modern life has exploitation in it.
There are very few parts that aren’t.
“There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.”
It’s not an air-headed anarchist/socialist slogan. It’s just the truth at scale.
True enough, but there is still more and less ethical consumption. For example buying a refurbished smartphone instead of a brand new iPhone may still indirectly support unethical mining and working conditions, but it is the less evil option.
I just don’t want people thinking they have zero power, so they may as well wallow in iniquity.
My thoughts exactly. The statement is certainly true but I have seen it used as an argument against protest by refusing to support morally bankrupt businesses.
It’s a really good thing to think about your consumer habits but I think it’s also important not to internalize the guilt on an individual basis and get in to this “how do I cleanse myself” mode of existing as a capitalist subject. The power we have is held in opposing capitalism not by accepting the moral conditions it poses to us, but instead rejecting that “original sin” it forces us in to and not taking it personally. Every internalized guilt inherent in being a capitalist subject is similar to being an abused spouse who blames themselves for their partner’s behavior, the partner here are capitalist institutions and private entities who constantly gaslight us they’re just doing whatever they can to be good.
how people fail to grasp the meaning of this expression, beautiful in its simplicity, still amuses me to this day.
Absolutely true. But under what system is there significantly less exploitation? Too many people are selfish, cruel or both.
Naturally, a system that promotes wealth distribution and not one that promotes wealth capture.
This is a situation where the only correct answer is to change direction. Do not set requirements for perfection when even mild improvement is so easily attained.
EDIT: One specific step would be to make worker-owned corporations a requirement. The stock market can stick around for all I care, but the business capital should only ever be controlled by the actual workers. That doesn’t mean companies would have to restructure or fire executives. Delegation of duty is absolutely a thing.
Normal people wouldn’t have to worry at all about such a change. Though maybe if their job was figuring out how to cut meat off the company for profit, they might have to worry…
So conquer the world and force it on it because otherwise how do you control what the Congo does to their children?
How about we start with punishing companies that knowingly integrate shave labor into their supply chains?
That can be done without colonialism, imperialism, or invasion. Much like how the EU is forcing American tech companies to be less shitty.
You want part of this sweet pie? Wash your hands before you sit at the table.
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That’s why “I’m not buying [specific product] again” is worse than ineffective, it’s validating to the illusion of a capitalist subject’s ability to morally absolve themselves of the system that sustains their economic status, or even the notion that it’s important to internalize this guilt and morally absolve yourself from it. This mechanism is internal to capitalism and works in the manner a religious ritual would to cleanse yourself of sin, the civil religion of capitalism addressing the original sin you inherit as a capitalist subject.
Very true. If you’re against the exploitation, it’s a damn good idea to be against the system that actively promotes the exploitation.
It’s also liberating because it means it not about you, and you aren’t obligated to accept this guilt and “original sin” and the absolving rituals as prescribed by the capitalist system. The capitalists want you to feel guilty if it means we aren’t directing our anger at them for forcing this economic arrangement on us. It’s like they are an abusive spouse gaslighting us in to thinking we’re the problem.
That’s a good point. Very akin to christian churches (and almost certainly others, I just have personal experience there) shaming women for things guys may be celebrated for doing.
Hell, some of them literally blame all women for the original sin of eating from the fruit of knowledge… freaking psycho controlling thought patterns, all of 'em.
In other words, eat whatever you want.
Not really. It means there are no easy answers, and they almost certainly do not lay within capitalism. It should in no way imply that there are no better or worse sources. It is only a comment about how capitalism will most certainly give you a negative answer that includes exploitation.
I’m not in control of that, so why should it matter to me? I’ll buy chocolate until the day I die.
Good clarification.
There’s a show about this:
“The Good Place”
Spoiler: everyone ends up in “the bad place” because making ethically sound decisions in an increasingly complex and global economy is nearly impossible.
Spoiler: Except that girl that ended up in the middle place
Sugar trade is so profitable you might just accidentally do slavery.
There’s others sources of sugar that are much less problematic though, like beet and others. There’s not much alternative to cocoa.
Yeah except that the sugar lobby does a lot to artificially keep sugar prices down. The sugar lobby also fights tooth and nail to make sure that sugar sin taxes don’t get passed or if they do, they target all sweeteners.
I mean, artificial sweeteners aren’t so grand either, when factoring in gut biome and odd digestion issues as well. Though I really doubt (read: wouldn’t believe) that is why the sugar lobby tries to include them…
Blows my mind the laborers producing chocolate have never tasted it
Yeah, that was incredible too. I wonder how many other agricultural products are made by people who never had an opportunity to consume them? Are there coffee growers who have never had a cup of coffee?
Vanilla bean is one. A lot of the people who produce it don’t really understand why we want it.
in portugal we produce weed for the foreign markets. a single person can’t plant though, its a crime.
Sounds like an anachronistic law that can be overturned by voting for the right party come next election!
Making chocolate from cacao pods is a lot more complicated than making coffee from raw beans. Because of that, I assume most coffee growers have access to brewed coffee.
It really shouldn’t. Most people working jobs don’t get paid enough to benefit from the services or products they provide.
the heck does “should” mean?
People building Ferraris usually don’t have one in their garage
That’s a silly comparison. Chocolate is ubiquitous in Western society. Ferraris are not.
It’s an hyperbole. You underestimate the luxury of chocolate.
but they’ve probably driven one at least once between birth and death
The organizations fighting child labor in Ghana pretty much focus on getting the kids into school at all. It’s a success story to enable a kid to go to school 5 days and only work on the cocoa farms 1 day a week. Completely eradicating it is impossible as long as families depend on that to make a living.
Chocolate gives me the runs so I avoid it. I figure the diarrhea is from my allergy to child labor. Same thing happened when I ate an iPhone
Are you by any chance a dog?
If they were a dog, I suspect they’d have mentioned periodically vomiting the chocolate up so they could eat it again.
Meanwhile Americans eat beef from slaughter houses in the Midwest that use children as a cleaning service.
And both of those things are terrible.
Both of these problems are capitalism
Child exploitation is not unique to capitalism.
Neither is rent-seeking, but both are much more widespread and severe under capitalism than more egalitarian systems.
capitalism actually encourages both. as they are profitable activities.
Exactly!
Agreed. Point being, any company can exploit children in any country, 1st or 3rd world.
I think the point should be sticks. Pointy sticks, yeah
I remember when that article came out I had a passing thought that it was probably JBS Grand Island. Low and behold… Not fucking surprised.
I worked at a company that did some upgrades for that system and that place is vile. It was hard not to puke in the parking lot some days and I remember walking around the outside of building (left), and seeing all of the spray downs on the way to the freezer.
This is news? We’ve literally seen footage of it. This is common knowledge and something most candy companies take part in and always have
I would never buy products that are the result of child labor. Children have no sense of quality. The products would be sub-standard.
/s
That’s why I’m going to start a competing company that only uses adult slave labour. Were all about attention to detail.
Our products are built by only the most discerning 6 year olds we could source. They know quality they will never have the luxury of experiencing for themselves when they see it (from miles away).
It’s the same with products from China. Chinese slaves just don’t take pride in their work anymore.
Little sticky handed bastards
The truth is, this is true for almost all chocolate.
And nobody actually cares. You’d expect protests whenever something like this comes out? You’d expect people to at least kick up a stink. But, no move on to the next thing. Kinda sad how little outrage there actually is to this shit. Heck, even the general attitude towards this facf from the comments here is “shrugs Well what did you expect”.
It has been an open secret for years. John Oliver did a show on it not long ago.
People become resigned to things they don’t think they can change, especially (but not always) when it doesn’t affect them personally.
Most people here are from the west and have been conditioned their entire life by western media to not think about it.
People understanding how fucked up their country is would mean protests and riots after all, and threaten those in power.
I think many people understand the capitalist economic arrangement they’re in requires externalizing the suffering it causes. A lot of political causes people align with are based around morally absolving this conflict on an individual basis, almost in a ritualistic way, but in a way that doesn’t threaten their position within the system. These are the same causes the system recognizes as the most legitimate as well, it’s a self-reinforcing mechanism to deal with internalized discontent. Just consume the correct products with the right intentions and show that you’ve done this to be momentarily absolved, almost like a religion.
I absolutely detest these incompetent trash journalists pretending like this is JUST a mars problem.
If you’ve ever eaten chocolate or seen chocolate on a shelf a child slave was used to acquire it.
There is not a single large-scale chocolate operation that does not utilize child slavery in the supply chain and pretending like this is ‘only a mars issue’ is fucking disgusting
Source? Especially that it’s slavery and not just the children working on the family farm
John Oliver did a Halloween episode on the cocoa industry, and yea its slavery by a different name. Kids are getting sent to the “family farm” but never see their family again
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/FwHMDjc7qJ8?si=tmT-ryxtXdTdAq0a
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Here’s a wide variety of sources/dates to get you started since this is something that, much like the oil industry and climate change, has been massively lied about in the media in order to prevent any action from forming against the associated companies because that would actually negatively impact them. (Maybe, I personally doubt it since all ‘off brand’ and ‘no name brand’ shit is just name brand with shittier packaging now days, there’s zero competition in this market and zero incentive for these corporations to improve when all they have to do is cause a controversy to offend an active group on twitter to have any serious discourse of their court cases disappear in a jumble of brainless arguments over superficial garbage).
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57522186 https://cocoarunners.com/chocopedia/the-dark-history-of-chocolate-slavery/ https://foodispower.org/human-labor-slavery/slavery-chocolate/ https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/12/mars-nestle-and-hershey-to-face-landmark-child-slavery-lawsuit-in-us
Additionally an honors thesis with all the associated references inside: https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=honorscollege_ehc
There’s only extremely small farms that are not run by slavery and that chocolate does not make it to north american or european markets, regardless of what the stickers say.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-nestle-in-child-slavery-case.html https://www.courthousenews.com/candy-giants-sued-over-failure-to-end-child-labor-on-chocolate-plantations-in-ghana/
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-416_i4dj.pdf https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/2022/06/28/backed-by-big-law-hershey-nestle-dodge-second-child-slavery-case/
The sugar industry and all related industries are industries of death, they only profit by stealing tax incentives after bribing politicians and using slavery, they don’t need or want to make money they’re just in it for the mergers and acquisitions which can suppress competition, hide losses, and increase their own power over the markets they work in, at the expense of everyone’s health (with the amount of sugar in food these days) and at the expense of peoples freedom.
Here’s an investigation by cbs that was released yesterday which has child slaves (as young as five years old) active as late as last week: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/candy-company-uses-cocoa-harvested-by-child-labor-cbs-news-investigation/ar-AA1kKztT
And here’s basically the same findings from 20 years ago https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cocoa-and-slavery/ which, of course, all the associated companies said they ‘fixed the problem with our third party suppliers that were using slavery without telling us’ and then they get off by buying the judge.
Slavery never stopped we just exported it to get people to stop bitching.
Fair trade chocolate exists of course
Tony’s Chocolonely whenever possible
Fair trade is quite a fallable system too unfortunately. And the honest answer is it isn’t truly known what chocolate has slavery involved for just regular child labor but it is fairly safe to assume most at least are likely to involve it, even fair trade and other similar certifications
Yea apparently the farms know in advance about the inspections and move the kids somewhere else during inspection and they’re back the next day.
Why is it so fucking hard for company executives to just be a decent human being? Damn.
Because Capitalism rewards greed and exploitative behaviour. Only natural for those kinds of people to rise to the top under this system.
If you want change, join/organize protests, unions, and Socialist movements.
It is not only in benefit of those people, but also of the countries they live in, and that’s why capitalism rewards exploitative behavior.
And why is it so hard to prosecute them when they’re not?
They make the rules.
Organize/join protests and unions if you don’t like it. It’s the only to make the ruling class do something in a class based society.
Why is it so fucking hard for company executives to just be a decent human being?
The ‘piss you off’ hard truth?
Because we enable it. We protect it. We allow it.
We enshrine their rights in corporation laws to do the things they want to do, put profits above people.
They are not policed, instead they are rewarded by paying those people who would police them not to do so.
As a society, we allow this to happen.
So then, what kind of people would gravitate to running a corporation, under those conditions? Potential unlimited power, with potential no oversight?
Fuck, I’m pissed just writing this.
B-but publicly owned regulated companies is Socialism
I always suspected this stuff was actually made on earth.
Snickers…
No Milky Way! What a Twix!
It’s too much, yeah?
Flakey science.
Wunderbarring at all these puns.
With their price increases over the years - all the while shrinking and worsening the product - I’m reaaaallly wondering where that money’s ending up. Because they sure as shit aren’t paying their workers enough either.
I have 3 guesses, but I only need 1.
It it a jackal?! It’s a jackal, isn’t it?
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/40-child-labor-farms
Youths 12 and 13 years of age may work outside of school hours in non-hazardous jobs on farms that also employ >their parent(s) or with written parental consent.
Youths under 12 years of age may work outside of school hours in non-hazardous jobs with parental consent, but >only on farms where none of the employees are subject to the minimum wage requirements of the FLSA.
Local youths 10 and 11 may hand harvest short-season crops outside school hours for no more than 8 weeks >between June 1 and October 15 if their employers have obtained special waivers from the Secretary of Labor.
That is USA federal labor laws for agriculture and children. What the fuck is the USA on about now ? Something something child labor ?
That law basically means that family farms can pay children to do some chores on the farm. Factory farms don’t get to skirt minimum wage laws.
My grandfather owns a small sheep farm in Pennsylvania, which is why I know this. Generally I don’t think it’s a problem to have children doing chores for money, just have to be sure those chores are safe. A 10 year old would never be in with the animals for example, but would be a great help for collecting firewood or putting water out in another pasture or what have you.
Imo this isn’t really comparable to other child labor and it’s most often done by a kid that wants a new video game or what have you.
There are states in the US with children working in butcheries.
It might be well and good for you, but for US law, “child labor” is absolutely NOT a solved problem.
Especially with Republicans wanting less regulation around the child labor.
But the laws in Ghana aren’t meaningfully different either. Most children work on family cocoa farms. It’s just that they often can’t afford to limit the kid’s tasks to the basics.
But the laws in Ghana aren’t meaningfully different either. Most children work on family cocoa farms. It’s just that they often can’t afford to limit the kid’s tasks to the basics.
Family owned restaurants use it often enough so that they can get a little labor out of their kids and don’t have to pay for after-school activities.
I guess it’s get another good reason for fertility and birth rate to plummet. Maybe those unborn are finally being given a choice.
They are still operating in Russia as well.
I have this list bookmarked on my phone, it only relates to vegan chocolate though. Cannot vouch for it’s accuracy / methodology.
