I’m sure most of us have seen those anti-drug commercials that explain that, if you buy illegal drugs, you’re supporting cartels that, among other things, murder innocent people. If you buy pot or heroin or coke, you’re partly responsible for those deaths. So don’t buy any.
Recently, however, I saw a news headline (and I don’t remember where, or I’d link to the article) that indicated that some cocoa is harvested by enslaved children, many of whom die every year in that production.
I’m not interested in starting a Great Debate. My question is this: what other products (like dime bags or chocolate bars) are produced, at least in part, by people who kill or enslave innocent victims in the process?
I’m not looking at industries that suffer a certain number of casualties every year among workers who know what they’re getting into. I know, for example, that until the 20th century, most major construction projects ended up getting a fair number of workers killed. But they knew the risks of the job and chose to do it anyway; I’m interested in people who are bystanders to the industries that get caught in the crossfire.
Tantalum capacitors are becoming more and more popular in the design of high-volume consumer-grade electronics like PC motherboards and cell phones, because they’re heat-resistant and tiny, making for convenient surface-mount manufacturing.
Tantalum capacitors are made from a mineral called coltan, which is mostly mined in Africa. It has been alleged that the skyrocketing price of coltan has created new slave-labor markets in Africa, and is fueling unrest and war there.
what about diamonds? while i can’t say anything about the actual mining and production of them, the feuds about who controls the trade are fueling civil wars in africa, IIRC.