
The connection between modern slavery and ecological disaster - duracell999
http://blog.longreads.com/2016/03/08/your-phone-was-made-by-slaves-a-primer-on-the-secret-economy/
======
narrator
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbD76cWdBHc&list=PLDD34C9812...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbD76cWdBHc&list=PLDD34C9812AF2DB09)

~~~
api
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
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II)

~~~
boxy310
It's the largest single armed conflict since World War II, and yet it has less
visibility than the Korean War (2,859,574 casualties [1]), Vietnam War
(1,450,000 casualties [2]), or the Iraq War (654,965 casualties [3]). It's
even worse known that the deaths through famines induced during the Cultural
Revolution in China (400,000, rough estimate [4]).

[1] [http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/28/world/asia/korean-war-fast-
fac...](http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/28/world/asia/korean-war-fast-facts/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties)

[3]
[http://web.mit.edu/CIS/pdf/Human_Cost_of_War.pdf](http://web.mit.edu/CIS/pdf/Human_Cost_of_War.pdf)

[4]
[https://books.google.com/books?id=YpV7vbvclfgC&pg=PA354#v=on...](https://books.google.com/books?id=YpV7vbvclfgC&pg=PA354#v=onepage&q&f=false)

~~~
vacri
It has less visibility than those because there were no western nations (and
hence western media) involved with boots on the ground. Or planes in the air,
for that matter. The other thing is that the bulk of deaths were knock-on
deaths from things like famine and disease rather than military violence.

However, it is still a good indication of just how little attention we pay to
Africa here in the west, that people in general don't even know that it
existed.

~~~
tim333
Also when British Empire and similar were in Africa stopping the wars and the
like it was considered racist so now the done thing is to leave the Africans
to it.

~~~
vacri
'stopping the wars' wasn't considered the racist part. 'taking all their stuff
and not giving much back' was.

And for the Congo in particular, their experience under Belgian (well, Leopold
II) rule was so horrific that other colonial powers exerted pressure on
Leopold to give it up. The death toll in the Congo at that time was about the
same as for the recent Second Congo War (plus the war's aftermath). Given the
population of the day, it's estimated that the Belgian rule in the Congo
halved the population, whereas the recent war 'only' claimed a bit less than
10%. The Belgian rule also left a lot of people maimed without hands, since
there were bounties on hands, and the payors weren't too fussy about where
they came from. Leopold II is one of history's lesser-known evil kingpins.
After Leopold was forced to hand it over for management elsewhere, it became a
more regular colonial story of exploitation for little in return.

In short, for Congo in particular, the modern day is better than it's
experience in colonial times, even with the recent war.

------
tsunamifury
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.)

~~~
timje1
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...](http://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/farm/layinghens/farming)

~~~
dorfsmay
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.

~~~
mistercow
"Free range" actually isn't so easily defined, and most "free range" eggs,
come from hens living in conditions that most reasonable people would still
consider absolutely appalling.

~~~
codyb
Yea, now I aim for pasture raised which is essentially the gold standard here
in the USA and implies the hens lived primarily outdoors and ate what they
wanted.

Lots of time "free range" is the same as caged, just... without the cages. The
hens are too fat to go anywhere anyways.

------
scoofy
>"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._

~~~
danharaj
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.

~~~
scoofy
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.

~~~
jjoonathan
The right to choose is only ever as good as your BATNA, it does not confer
power in and of itself. Also, are you sure they're aware of their ability to
leave without government-enforced intervention?

~~~
scoofy
It's not an issue of whether they are aware or not. By the author's own
admission, they are only staying because of their own sense of duty, that the
debt is illegal, that they are being defrauded.

It's one thing to say, workers are being shorted, cheated, etc, but if your
headline is "your iphone is being built by slaves" then you should be
referring to, at least, people who are being held against their will. Not
simply people who are confused about the law and are working for free because
of this confusion.

~~~
SerLava
So you're saying they are confused about their legal rights? As in, they are
threatened with violent arrest, imprisonment, loss of their children, and
torturous prison conditions. You don't see the powerful coercion to perform
bonded labor here?

Never mind that the slavemongers are generally incredibly abusive on their own
because their victims believe they will have no recourse from the government.

It's slavery.

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

~~~
garysieling
"King Leopold's Ghost" is also very good

------
tim333
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.

~~~
kafkaesq
_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.

~~~
tim333
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...

------
namenotrequired
Obligatory mention of Fairphone:
[http://fairphone.com/](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).

------
twoodfin
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](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10930445)

------
schiffern
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](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
> "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.

~~~
tim333
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.

------
runn1ng
One common solution to this problem is "close your eyes and pretend it doesn't
happen".

It's very effective.

~~~
g4z
it also has a long and proven track record of success

------
theworstshill
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.

------
golergka
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.

------
ommunist
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.

------
dang
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](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
TheGRS
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.

------
tkinom
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
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
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

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

~~~
dudul
Robot actually means "slave" in Czech language.

~~~
thaumasiotes
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.

~~~
schoen
Amazingly, also cognate with "ciao" (via Italian "schiavo").

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ciao#Etymology_3](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ciao#Etymology_3)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciao#Etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciao#Etymology)

------
JoshCole
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.

