The Court of Appeals didn't side with the tech giants. They sided with the law as it functions, because there was a flaw in the lawsuit and it could not proceed. The judge even found the plaintiffs had standing to seek damages, which means it wouldn't have been thrown out for that reason. The issue was that the target of the lawsuit was not in a culpable business relationship under the law of the jurisdiction of the court (perhaps I did not phrase that or other things perfectly but I am not a lawyer and the meaning seems clear enough).
https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-appeals-court-dismisses-child-labor-case-against-tech-companies-2024-03-05/But the appeals court said buying cobalt in the global supply chain did not amount to "participation in a venture" under a federal law protecting children and other victims of human trafficking and forced labor.
Circuit Judge Neomi Rao said the plaintiffs had legal standing to seek damages, but did not show the five companies had anything more than a buyer-seller relationship with suppliers, or had power to stop the use of child labor.
She added that many other parties are responsible for labor trafficking, including labor brokers, other cobalt consumers and the DRC government.
Since we are talking about US laws due to a US court decision I'd assume that would be what the point of desired change would be: if you want change there, you can surely try just the same methods as anyone else: electoral, popular pressure, or judicial. By that I mean you could fund a candidate who agrees with you into office and ask them to sponsor a bill, or you could own a major cable news company, or you could invite a supreme court justice onto your yacht which presumably is where the plaintiffs have gone wrong so far, though it would be untimely prior to requesting certiorari (a word not spelled how it sounds, as I have discovered just in time to edit the post) Lacking these crutches otherwise, it would require a simply exhausting amount of hard, uncompensated work. Of course, it would have to actually be a change in the law that could stand up with the rest, or else it's just wasting everyone's time building face to a public sadly unlikely to hold accountable a politician who sponsors a bad bill because clearly it is the naughty judge's fault it was unconstitutional just as in this instance it has been suggested it was the court's fault for dismissing an unlawful claim. If only instead of saying fruitless things that serve no purpose a person could advocate for a more desirable system of regulation of US campaign finance, which in addition to surely being better assumptive of the average person's capabilities would actually be more effective to accomplish something fruitful on this issue of concern that, forgive me for being skeptical, seems more likely to be an artfully chosen route to cast doubt on green energy supply chains in specific rather than the much broader issue of this being far from limited to the green energy supply chain.
Now, let's say that all works and it successfully does all this great stuff and it manages to convince or failing that strongarms big tech who then, against the interest reputed to them, manage to change regulation in the countries in question. When we consider strengths and weaknesses, this presumably would be through the scientific equation of (x+money) where x stands for people willing to take money. This of course has never resulted in unwanted outcomes in leadership ever in human history, but I digress. Now, after all that, how do you convince wealthy countries to pay/loan for the mechanization required to make less workers more efficient so as to not significantly weaken the agricultural and mining sectors in what I can probably assume are export markets heavily dependent upon resource extraction and not accidently make things worse once we succeed in our gambit to strongarm big tech into arranging banana republics for
worker's rights? After all, the goal was to help these young people, not make them angry due to economic reasons driving instability and making them vulnerable to destabilizing forces. Thus one of the attempts being made in a few places is stronger regulation that increases compensation for the worker and heightened safety standards. A crazy idea, that!
Here's a fun tidbit
https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_norm/---declaration/documents/publication/wcms_decl_fs_37_en.pdfThat's from 2002 if I read it correctly. Now that was in the early Bush years. Don't let me fool you into thinking there probably hasn't been some progress made IN GENERAL as that was (until recently?) a fair assumption to make on issues related to extreme poverty worldwide outside of extreme crisis areas so to speak afaik, but that link should illustrate that this is something that long predates green energy plans, lithium batteries, and fossil fuel industry pushed information operations. Other than what I've detailed or forgotten to do so, however, I in general agree with your sentiments.
Author
Topic: Africa thread (Read 7168 times)