Got Gold? Then You’re Supporting Child Labor in Africa!

1. Mattie
   August 11th, 2008 at 2:12 pm

   So what? Pretty much any product you own can somehow be connected to some sort of labor that is considered immoral/unethical/illegal in the States.

   It took several hundred years for our economy to evolve to the one we have. At some point those evolutionary points will happen to growing third world economies. Perhaps they will evolve slightly differently, perhaps not. But expecting other countries to subscribe to our economic standards when it took use centuries to get here is ludicrous. These things take time.

2. bean
   August 11th, 2008 at 2:20 pm

   There is only a finite amount of gold on Earth. Most of what people currently possess was mined an extremely long time ago, and was bought as scrap and remelted. It’s one of the most recycled substances around.

3. luxe
   August 11th, 2008 at 2:47 pm

   Gold? no thanks, I prever a beautiful luxurious Platinum.

4. andrew
   August 11th, 2008 at 3:08 pm

   Besides the small amount of gold in my electronics the most gold I own is probably in the form a wedding band.

   But it’s repurposed, reccyled gold from http://www.brilliantearth.com/ One of the rings I bought also contains conflict free diamonds from Australia.

   full disclosure: I do NOT work for brilliant earth and have no connection to them, I just love the 2 wedding rings I have bought from them.

5. Sofar
   August 11th, 2008 at 3:24 pm

   All the gold I own is over a century old.

6. Agencies NY
   August 11th, 2008 at 3:58 pm

   Their parents must have had some say on what their kids are doing.

   Are they not to blame or can we even judge this society that we know very little about who might see even the impoverished lifestyles of the US as a step up in living standards

7. kevin
   August 11th, 2008 at 5:31 pm

   got clothes? guess where
   got gas? same deal

8. Neatoramawontsendmeapassword
   August 11th, 2008 at 5:56 pm

   Don’t forget chocolate! But nobody wants to talk about that one.

9. Monyet Miskin
   August 11th, 2008 at 9:24 pm

   Yay! let’s blame the 3rd world for not living up to our standards!

10. fg
    August 11th, 2008 at 9:28 pm

    What a naive article.

11. Tweeker
    August 12th, 2008 at 5:33 am

    “Their parents must have had some say on what their kids are doing”

    Eating?
    And no, not necessarily. See also: child soldier.

    You may as well blame Cecil Rhodes, for all that good it will do.

12. iHATEsigningIN-SOiWONT
    August 12th, 2008 at 8:00 am

    dirty diamonds.

    dirty gold.

    dirty clothes.

    dirty oil.

    want it clean? stop complaining that prices are too high here. why are our product so cheap? why does wal mart exist? oh– because we demand cheap-as-dirt prices. if we still had VALUE in the things we purchased as modern luxuries, poor people would not be able to buy the same things as rich people from their neighborhood department stores. it used to be that only rich people could show off their new flat-screen TVs and huge stereo systems. poor people idolized it, had to save their money, and were absolutely PROUD PROUD PROUD of their new toy when they brought it home. now that you can get a f*cking six-pack of TVs from costco, what’s the point?

13. Jason
    August 12th, 2008 at 10:58 am

    I agree with this. No one needs to own gold. Placing so much value on something that is just a metal, it’s so arbitrary. I follow the same vow that Buddhist monks do and do not even touch gold (or silver).

    The same goes for diamonds, which I knew about long before the movie Blood Diamond.

    If anyone is interested, I write more about this in my BLOOD DIAMOND review here:

    http://jasoncollin.org/2007/01/28/blood-diamond-2006-review/

14. Thebes
    August 12th, 2008 at 12:35 pm

    Eat chocolate?
    Guess what, you also support child labor in Africa. Of course the chocolate beans are coated in toxic pesticides which cripple the kiddies fingers too, so its even MORE EVIL than gold.

15. Tim Giachetti
    August 12th, 2008 at 12:44 pm

    Gots me a Diamond grill all up in da houz! Now there is a filthy commodity. Hundreds die a month mining for DeBeers Corp.
    Truth be told if the 5 vaults DeBeers owned were opened for sales, the worth of the Diamond itself would be like to belly button lint, if it weren’t the cost of the human lives lost in the mining of them.

    DeBeers is the KKK of the world.
    Ladies should think about who died in the pursuit of that piece of shit on their engagement ring.

16. glassmusic
    August 12th, 2008 at 3:00 pm

    do you buy shoes? or clothes in general? shop at wal-mart? then chances are, you’re supporting child labor.

    it’s a sad fact but… welcome to the world as we know it.

17. ted
    August 12th, 2008 at 9:31 pm

    I make my own clothes out of dog hair and hemp. I only eat locally-grown vegetables, and I live in a house made out of used popsicle sticks.

18. Kaboom
    August 13th, 2008 at 5:38 am

    What a bullshit article - this is simple subsistence mining! It is a chosen economic activity throughout the lesser-developed areas of the world.

    Stamp out the practice, and you send thousands of families into abject poverty and starvation, unless their family income can be supplemented by some other form of “child labour”.

    The on-site refining techniques using cyanide or (more usually) mercury presents significant health dangers to all participants, and many attempts to educate subsistence miners have had little effect.

    Also, the lack of a “DNA” for gold is also complete bullshit - each local component of even highly refined .995 gold can be identified.

19. Anonymous
    August 13th, 2008 at 7:01 am

    “Their parents must have had some say on what their kids are doing”

    you cant possibly be that ignorant… not everyone in the world has the same luxuries as you do, not everyone has the chance to control their lives

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