Somehow we can get draconian international agreements on copyright enforcement that the biggest corporations and countries have to bow down to but when it comes to things like child labor or climate change our hands are magically tied.
We have laws on those areas. They are both stricter and more harshly enforced.
Unfortunately it’s lucrative enough for companies to exploit loop holes by utilising subcontractors, paying the fines and so on.
The real issue is the proof, but it’s nothing new. When the banana industry first took off a “magical” amount of small banana farmers disappeared or sold their lands to militant groups in South America, these groups then sold the land to companies like Chiquita.
Chiquita tried to buy the land the normal way first, when that didn’t work they then made I known that they were buying the land in circles that could “get” the land. Chiquita never actually hired anyone to do the dirty work though.
Every piece of hardware I own is made immorally, yours is probably too, exactly because of companies using these methods of having other parties do the dirty work, but because they have more money than governments it’s impossible to come after them in a legal manner, at least without making some radically different legislation.
Maybe we should do that, but it probably wouldn’t be healthy for democracy.
Disagree. We have an almost Gilbert&Sullivan level comic opera where we theater consequences.
Some headline catching big fine that gets quietly reduced to insignificance. Some giant parading announcement of a commitment to zero carbon and no meaningful action taken after the cameras leave.
It's pure political theater.
After we landed once on a plane, air marshalls came on before anybody could leave and escorted a passenger off. What happened? He smoked a cigarette. That's actual consequences.
Nobody arrested Exxon or BP executives for their gross negligence in their extremely avoidable ecosystem destroying oil spills. They didn't suffer any personal consequences. There was no tribunal for lying about climate change through propaganda campaigns since the 1980s
The FBI never showed up at Phil Knights house on charges of child labor or call in to question the very peculiar legal acrobatics of subcontractor shell games Nike uses to create liability distance.
It'd be like if the guy smoking on the plane had one friend light it and another hold the cigarette as he puffed it and we were like "Well I guess that's too complicated for the law to handle so it's no longer a crime! Carry on!"
The notion that nations do not have international agreements that bind countries much more tightly with more rigorously enforced penalties on child labour or climate change than copyright infringement is flat out laughable.
If child labour exploitation was enforced as loosely as copyright infringement most of the world's children would be in workhouses.
