There will always be uncertainty about the supply chain. That's the nature of the mineral trade AFAIK.
...said the people opposing abolitionism.
Reality: to achieve moral progress, sometimes you need to eat an economic recession. Suck it up, buttercup.
I disagree with this. You shouldn't fail to emancipate some slaves just because you can't emancipate them all.
Not entirely true.
There are tools like SiliconExpert which track "conflict mineral issues" in the supply chain. This tool or others like it are used by the tech giants to screen their supply chain for this as well as other more mundane problems. It's a standard part of compliance engineering (https://www.siliconexpert.com/conflict-minerals-compliance-d...).
If a component/material gets flagged in a tool like that, it certainly is fair-game to go after a manufacturer & supplier for knowingly profiting at the expense of human rights. The penalties should be severe.
Yes, there's some uncertainty. But once exploitation becomes known, it's not THAT hard to trace it and stop at least the largest supply-chain users from using it without consequence.
> "the lengthy nature of its supply chain – as well as the nature of the refining process – makes it “difficult to track and trace these materials”. Apple illustrates this challenge by noting that its supply chain runs through “family-run mines, brokers, smelters, refiners, and commodity exchanges – before reaching a component or subcomponent manufacturer”"[1]
From Apple's 2018 conflict minerals report - "Apple has not, to date, been able to determine whether the reported incidents were connected to specific 3TG included in Apple’s products. The challenges with tracking specific mineral quantities through the supply chain continue to prevent the traceability of any specific mineral shipment through the entire manufacturing process."[2]
[1] https://hrbdf.org/case_studies/conflict-minerals/conflict_mi...
[2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/0001193125190...
Also, if I agree with something, then it's free speech and therefore not grandstanding.
If you buy the logic behind the "resource curse", then reducing trade in such morally questionable resources could indirectly improve the state of the world.
