Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

It baffles me that "poor people being mistreated by large corporations" is such a non-story for American media, while "poor people being mistreated by large corporations that make EVs or iPhones" is such a recurring theme, to the extent that it seems it's the iPhones or the EVs that are the issue, rather than the mistreatment.

The optimistic take is that the author is trying to motivate the people who already care about "saving the planet" to also care about exploited workers, though I would have hoped for more constructive suggestions on how to help if that was the case.

The pessimistic take is that this is just a long form essay version of a YouTube thumbnail with a shocked face on it, randomly pressing emotional buttons to attract attention and using any random psychological lever that seems to work.

If this article interested you, I'd recommend the 2011 documentary, Empire of Dust about Chinese engineers working to build roads in the Congo for their mines in this area. Fascinating look at the human side of this from both the Chinese and Congolese perspective:

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2148945/

> Lao Yang and Eddy both work for a company called CREC (Chinese Railway Engineering Company). They have just set up camp near the remote mining town of Kolwezi in the Katanga province of the RDC. The goal of the company i..

I suppose the thing with EVs and iPhones is that the contrast is right there, you can draw a pretty solid line between extremely poor and unfortunate people extracting raw materials and extremely wealthy using the finished product. It's also a link that, I think, a lot of people still aren't quite aware of. There's not a Blood Diamond for cobalt, as far as I know.

Yes, and many of the target readers are emotionally connected in that they are customers who use the finished product.

A lot, more than you think, of poor people in poor countries also own smartphones whose manufacture is facilitated by Coltan extraction.

So, to you, if you are wealthy, you see it as extreme, but in reality the extreme does not exist for a very large proportion of the population.

The hand wringing about batteries blows my mind, it's like everybody forgot about Shell Nigeria. Anyone should be able to see that this has nothing to do with technology or rare earth metals, it's simply a pattern of exploitation.

The areas in the DRC where these precious metals are mined were already fraught with violence. Artisanal mining draws local militias who in turn prey upon the farmers/miners living in the region. I agree the media seems to be targeting companies associated with "digital minerals" but it could be due to the absolute level of suffering that is found in the area. Or, more likely, "slave children" mining for phones resonates with viewers more than "slave children" sewing your T-shirts. I mean, hearing about the exploitation of children in the textile industry is not that exciting anymore. Or, chocolate... Or....

Reply on news.ycombinator.com