When you put it that way, I guess we better hand over thousands every year to Apple for the new iPhone. Wouldn’t want a child slave to be unemployed.
Buy 10,000 disposable vapes every year while you’re at it (if you really care). Maybe a couple cents will trickle down to the children you claim to care about.
If you’re worried about these children losing their wonderful life in the mines, feel free to support them through other means.
Make it your life’s work to spread awareness, bring aid to the affected countries, and support their development - you only enslave yourself by learning to do absolutely nothing against what you see as oppressive.
And getting companies that profit off of these children to support them would likely be fair. Apple, Google, and many others can handle the hit.
Your trolling aside, we all share a personal responsibility to not buy from companies that e.g. utilize cobalt/lithium in their products - slavery/child labor is rampant in those supply chains and Apple et. al are responsible for supporting it.
If there was no demand, these children wouldn’t be forced to work in mines - it’s that simple.
You enslave others by consuming most common products on the shelves. Modern slavery (and child slavery) is more expansive than most know and third-world exploitation is rampant - western supply chains are not immune.
While you support the enslavement of others with your consumption, corporations continue to become more and more powerful.
Our produce and ingredients suck here in the US. It’s all devoid of nutrition and usually gamed to look better than it actually is. Lots of things taste funny to me, and if it’s not flavorless, it tastes like chemicals or metal. There’s simply no regulation or oversight.
When I have food that is grown or produced locally (and ethically) or food that is imported from Europe or even Canada, the difference is stark — I feel like I can actually digest and the flavor is night and day.
If I was there, if I was involved in law enforcement, if I had access to the crime scene and raw footage and evidence, I might be able to speculate. Armchair speculation is insufficient for me.
There are plenty of events that raise legitimate questions and concerns - like suspicious, high profile deaths that are immediately ruled as suicide. Everybody is free to hold their own positions and perspectives as far as I am concerned. Question on, sate your concern and curiosity, you’ll get no arguments against that from me.
Of course, a true conspiracy unfolds because the masses are unaware. The masses are gaslit if they start catching on.
But in the absence of compelling evidence, it’s pointless to wildly speculate about from my perspective.
Thanks for the response, I enjoyed reading it and our sentiment largely aligns.
I’m not making an argument for chemtrails. It’s pointless to speculate about, there is no evidence or smoking gun.
I’m just suggesting that we be kind and empathetic towards individuals that do believe these sorts of things. Is it out of character for the US government? Nah, not really.
Many of these people probably were living in or around 1969. In their lived reality, the US government was doing shit like this. Have things really gotten better?
These are the people voting Trump in, dude, you cant actually be this dense
Of course these individuals share responsibility for potentially voting for him, but we ALL share responsibility for him rising to power.
No, but I do try to make the world a less stupid place when I can
We don’t need to call out stupidity to make it a better place. Expressing yourself with clarity and confidence of thought is infinitely better.
If they’re too stupid to learn basic science then I reeeeally don’t care
You don’t need to care about any of this.
Ok? They’re also very stupid individuals, I don’t care at all what makes them believe the blatantly stupid thing, only that they refuse to accept reality
If somebody you love is frightened (in a general sense), what would you do? Calming them down and helping to see the truth would be one potential path to ease their suffering. What would making fun of them do?
You’re doing an awful lot of defending of people who are choosing to behave the way they do, it’s weird. Gonna file you in with them and call it a day, you don’t seem to be too far from them in the ol’ comprehension skill
Do what you want, I’m not going to apologize for my behavior or take it personally. If my crime is being too empathetic, guess I’m guilty.
The Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee called for using far-right candidates “as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right.” Clinton’s camp insisted that Trump and other extremists should be “elevated” to “leaders of the pack” and media outlets should be told to “take them seriously.”
Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and mainstream media played a pretty big role in Trump’s rise to power. Everybody is responsible for his rise to power, but the facts are facts. They intentionally elevated him.
They’re willingly living in stupidity. If we just let people do that we get people like Trump, so Id rather avoid that
These people don’t have power over others like Trump.
Neither can I, but as I said you’re purposefully ignoring a big part of what’s being discussed: the part where they don’t ever tread back out of delusion. There’s 0 defense for that
You aren’t responsible for other’s beliefs. You are loosely reveling in their suffering, whether you realize it or not. They are very concerned and are likely vulnerable individuals.
Plenty of things happen in this world that each respective populace doesn’t consent to.
Seriously, why single them out for going a little crazy? It’s not like I haven’t pointed at somebody and laughed in the past, so no judgement here, but the whole system and world order is nuts and we need something new.
If you are worried about people holding factually incorrect or wrong beliefs, e.g. delusions, then advocate for decentralized media, unbiased news organizations, etc. Help elevate voices that help others to climb out of their delusions and fear.
Why go out of your way to disprove them, laugh at them, or name-call them? You can just empathize with them.
For me, I’d rather address why the government HAS felt it had the right to experiment on us. I can NOT blame these individuals for treading into delusion with our current system being the way it is, especially considering the history.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray
From the page:
Between 1949 and 1969, open-air tests of biological agents were conducted 239 times.
239 open-air tests of biological agents in a 20 year period. Remind me again why people have no reason to be paranoid? This wasn’t that long ago.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States
These aren’t conspiracy theories.
Is there something real behind these people’s paranoia and suspicion? Do our government, military, and our corporations inspire trust?
Can you blame them when the US government has directly experimented on the American populace in past?
e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray
From the page:
Between 1949 and 1969, open-air tests of biological agents were conducted 239 times.
239 open-air tests of biological agents in a 20 year period. Many, many people are still alive from that time period. It’s not that long ago.
Or more broadly, just look at this page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States
Do those pages inspire trust in the government and military? Would you know if you were being experimented on and gaslit?
Corporations engage in similar unethical behavior, like putting ingredients that are known to be toxic or harmful to human health in products we consume or put on our bodies.
Instead of blaming or name-calling people who are paranoid or suspicious, we need a society with a greater focus on human rights — with more regulation and oversight. A society that inspires trust, with the facts, ethics, and independent review to back it up.
Can you please just apologize to those who were offended and promise to be more sensitive moving forward? That’s the sure-fire way to defuse the allegations accusing you of being a transphobe and put everybody at ease.
Refraining to comment further on the topic is smart until you learn more about the dynamics at hand. Transgender individuals face an unprecedented amount of discrimination and vitriol.
If anything, the bourgeoisie are generally polarizing people against each other, particularly pitting people against others who are different or who are in vulnerable positions.
Some people need floaties to stay afloat. Some people need a life jacket. Some people need a solid platform to dip their feet in. Some people fucking melt when they touch water. Whatever accommodation they need or whatever their situation, it’s all perfectly acceptable in my book.
We can help them to thrive without breaking a sweat with our empathy, technology, and ingenuity.
Social skills is another way of saying the abilities required to function in a society. You might as well ask why do you need to learn to swim to get in the pool.
Even if one is uninhibited socially, it’s unrealistic to expect them to be able to function how society often dictates or requires.
Last I checked, this world is pretty cruel, especially to those who are vulnerable.
Why do you need to be forced by society to develop social skills? Why isn’t putting your best forward enough? For various real reasons, some people just aren’t able to meet the standard forced upon them.
Trauma plays a big role in some that have trouble communicating. Instead of blaming people for being “raised by a screen”, practice kindness and compassion. Do your part to make this world more inclusive, accessible, and less traumatizing for all individuals, or don’t - up to you.
If these countries were given the ingredients to be able to develop and there was no outside demand for mined materials, these children wouldn’t be in the mines.
Big if, but less of an “if” if more people are made aware. It’s absolutely sickening how much we rely on lithium considering how it is sourced.
We are collectively enabling modern slavery and child slavery. These corporations prefer to act innocent because they aren’t sending the children themselves into the mines, but they buy the materials they mine regardless (and there’s no way that they don’t know the reality). Many corporations profit off the back of these people and children and they should be required to pay significant reparations.
What is in our power to stop this? We can spread the awareness of our exploitation of third-world countries - including their children, we can develop technologies that don’t rely on rare materials or difficult to mine materials, we can employ automation to mine what we do need in first-world countries, and we can hold the corporations that profit from these supply chains accountable.
There are battery technologies (e.g. sodium-ion) that we could grasp and avoid mining altogether for energy storage. China is proving that sodium-ion batteries are a very promising technology, even in cars, and the sodium can be sourced from seawater or from the byproducts of desalination (the latter which likely needs to be very quickly scaled considering the fresh water crisis).