[HN Gopher] Child labor in chocolate industry: 'It is worse than...
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Child labor in chocolate industry: 'It is worse than you may
realize'
Author : gardenfelder
Score : 46 points
Date : 2023-10-30 18:13 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| gardenfelder wrote:
| "For Halloween, the Last Week Tonight host delves into the long-
| lived child labor practices in the world's chocolate supply"
| tivert wrote:
| This is a late-night talk show recap, not an actual news article.
|
| John Oliver might state some true facts, but his show is really
| about creating a weird mixture of outrage and humorous quips for
| entertainment. He wouldn't be doing is job if truth and accuracy
| weren't sacrificed for that goal.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| The delta between the goals of journalism and comedy deserve
| scrutiny, but they do not, by definition, necessitate that
| comedy lies. Of course, it sounds like you are making a more
| direct criticism of this specific show - I'm not sure what
| "weird mixture of outrage and humorous quips for entertainment"
| means in this context. It sounds like you're just describing a
| normal comedic news show in deceptively harsh terms. Truth and
| comedy can be a valuable mix, despite (because of?) truth being
| frequently dark. Should people not be outraged by child labor
| in chocolate production, or are you saying that his specific
| reporting is _so far from the truth_ that the truth is actually
| not even outrage-worthy? It 's unclear.
| themagician wrote:
| It cherry picks what to talk about based on what's funny and
| literally creates outrage where there otherwise would not be,
| for entertainment. People enjoy being outraged at this stuff.
|
| There are more slaves today than at any other time. Child
| labor is on the rise. It's not unique to chocolate at all.
| Chocolate, sulfur, bananas, cobalt, rubber, etc.. Modern
| capitalism requires a healthy base of slaves to mine, refine,
| and harvest base resources.
|
| It's not that it isn't true. It's just not news in any
| significant way. This is just how things are. We all know
| that this is how things are, but we pretend like it's not so
| we can enjoy the feeling of being outraged. I know I do. John
| Oliver is great.
| timeon wrote:
| > It's not unique to chocolate at all.
|
| Same is mentioned in the show.
|
| > This is just how things are We all know that this is how
| things are, but we pretend like it's not so we can enjoy
| the feeling of being outraged.
|
| Not sure what your point is. Is the 'outrage' bigger
| problem than the way that things actually are?
| hoten wrote:
| This is mentioned by John. Are there specific instances of
| misrepresentation in the episode you can point to?
|
| "We all know..."
|
| That's just not true. Besides being funny, this show
| presents a general audience with topics they won't be
| familiar with. I think one can expect some chocolate
| consumers to modify their buying habits after watching this
| infotainment.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| >We all know that this is how things are, but we pretend
| like it's not so we can enjoy the feeling of being outraged
|
| This seems both factually wrong (the first part) and kind
| of an unnecessarily hostile oversimplification of people's
| emotions/motivations. It's also another example of the
| _very common fallacy_ that we should patently not be
| outraged by things that we already know, or are common, for
| which there are essentially infinite counter-examples in
| the realm of human behaviors that are common and known, yet
| still outrage-worthy and shocking every time (e.g. child
| abuse). Just because we can 't solve every problem
| instantly doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to express our
| thoughts and feelings about them - that's part of a healthy
| society.
|
| Outrage only for outrage's sake surely is a thing, but it's
| also an easy thing to use as a label in dismissing things
| one doesn't like for other reasons.
| strangattractor wrote:
| You also have to put things in context. If %50 of the
| people on earth where slaves 2000 years ago means 100
| million slaves. 150 million slaves today would be %2 so
| there are more free people alive today than ever. (I made
| those numbers up BTW)
|
| It is also the case that Outage Attracts Viewers (OAV).
| Social Media is built on this principle and it seems
| hypocritical that these shows attract viewers on a
| similar model.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Because something is bad everywhere you shouldn't do
| anything to improve it...
|
| I've always heard that the best way to eat a whale is a
| bite at a time, not trying to shove the entire damned thing
| in ones mouth.
| strangattractor wrote:
| As much as I like John Stewart and John Oliver I have to
| admit both shows tend to leave me feeling a bit helpless in
| the end despite the comedy. I have stopped watching them. So
| yes it makes me feel kind of weird.
|
| The fact is no matter how much I know about child labor (put
| you impending disaster here) involved in chocolate, soccer
| balls, shoes etc there is very little I can do about it
| besides not buy that stuff. Yes I do want to know about it
| but it does not have to be part of my entertainment diet.
| Keeping my own child from getting into that situation is the
| best I can hope for and I worry about being able to do that
| sometimes.
|
| Watching Jimmy Kimmel skewer Trump is priceless however:)
| Clubber wrote:
| I saw it too. Are these kids children of the people who own the
| farms? I didn't remember seeing anything to refute that. If so,
| barring their kids to work on the farm would be detrimental to
| the family farmer and would benefit bigger farms that can
| afford to hire more external labor.
| hoten wrote:
| There's a clip in the show of a young female teenager who
| wants to go to school but has instead been separated from her
| family and forced to work on her (I believe) uncles farm.
|
| You're probably asking about the general trend but this is an
| example of the show refuting that these kids are just the
| farmers children. The call with the nestle exec also mentions
| this objection.
| watwut wrote:
| The real question ia whether it is detrimental to the
| children themselves.
|
| Everyone and his brother goes "you should not have children
| when you can't afford them" when people who fell into poverty
| need assistance or when someone can not provide own room to
| each kid or have trouble to pay for something. Guess what,
| having kids so that you have cheap labor for otherwise
| ineffective business is even worst.
|
| It is different when they help an hour a day after school or
| during weekends etc. But, that us not what we are talking
| about here.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| They literally interviewed a girl who was sent to a coco farm
| "to take care of the kids" when she was 12 or something. She
| has taken care of zero kids and instead has been chopping
| coco since then. Hasn't been home either.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Then why is it the bigger farms that keep pushing for more
| child labor?
| gowld wrote:
| Yes, it would be determinal to inefficient child abusers and
| benefit efficient value-creators. That's good.
| watwut wrote:
| Yes and no. I am increasingly coming to the opinion that no, if
| you use comedy to spred lies, then it is exactly what you are
| doing. The comedy part is then just cowardly shield to make it
| hard to argue against your claims while making it more likely
| your lies spread.
|
| And that goes for Carlin and all the other comedians too.
| gowld wrote:
| Can you provide examples of untruths and inaccuracies?
|
| And, bad as those are, do they outweight the truths that would
| otherwise be ignored? Perfect is the enemy of good.
| jws wrote:
| I recommend https://www.grenadachocolate.com (though I haven't
| had one since hurricane Ivan) Some folks ideally named for making
| an organic chocolate company (Green, Brown, and Browne) decided
| that the cocoa farmers of Grenada would be better off if they
| also made chocolate there. The climate makes it a bit of
| challenge, and small batch is hard to begin with, but they make a
| great bar that I always feel is more like cocoa made into a food
| than a product containing cocoa.
|
| It's a small company with poor global distribution because, well,
| it's a big planet and there are only so many chocolate bars. But
| if you look at the web site, and find "view, retail outlets" and
| then click on "Country" to reverse search, US is now visible for
| some reason and San Francisco has a lot of outlets and they are
| near the top of the results. New York also seems to have a lot of
| outlets. I'm 500 miles from the nearest outlet.
|
| But, if you want more money to go to people closer to the dirt in
| the production chain, these are your guys.
| lgreiv wrote:
| Since trying it on a dev conference in Amsterdam, I am severely
| hooked on Tony's Chocolonely, which usually rates quite high in
| labor protection reviews [1] and has started to introduce
| traceability for the supply chains of its various ingredients. It
| also tastes unbelievably good.
|
| [1] https://www.chocolatescorecard.com/
| Rodeoclash wrote:
| I'm actually quite happy to pay a bit more for Tony's chocolate
| because then I'll wind up enjoying it more and eating less of
| it.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| This video of a plantation worker at an Ivory Coast cocoa farm,
| trying chocolate for his first time is eye-opening:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70jsvEhU9Wo
|
| It's easy to forget how good we have it sometimes
| kvakerok wrote:
| So, I don't want to rain on your parades, guys, but what if child
| labor is the only alternative to extreme poverty or starvation
| for people in those countries?
|
| As someone who immigrated from a country like that into 1st world
| I'm kind of torn about this. On one hand child labor is bad, on
| the other hand, starvation is worse. So now we block these kids
| from being able to make a living for themselves, or effectively
| force them to lie about their age.
| object-a wrote:
| My question back would be: why _is_ child labor the only
| alternative to extreme poverty or starvation? Why can't adults
| be paid a sufficient wage to avoid starvation, or why can't our
| society provide for these children without requiring them to
| work?
|
| The fact that things are that way currently, is not an argument
| that things should be that way. It's worth discussing what in
| the current system necessitates that children work or starve,
| and whether that's fixable.
| Teever wrote:
| To add to your question, I would like to ask: Why is child
| labour the only alternative to extreme poverty and starvation
| in a world where we have excess calories?
| Rodeoclash wrote:
| Well, of course whoever is buying the chocolate doesn't want
| the workforce to die, so they're going to give them the
| absolute minimum to keep productivity at a particular level.
| Basically one step above slavery in the sense that you can
| either choose to to work and live at a subsistence level or
| die.
|
| But instead of doing this, couldn't Cargill make a bit less
| profit to bring the standard of living up for the people
| farming?
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(page generated 2023-10-30 23:01 UTC)