Who Pays
The lives of people in "first world" countries are incredibly and amazingly different from the lives of people in the distant past. The cost of these new improvements in life is a mere dollar amount. It's so incredible.
We don't think about what had to happen for that phone to end up in our pocket.
That shirt on our back.
The bag on our shoulder.
The ring on our hand.
That laptop we use for work.
The salary paid by our employer.
Globalization is not the enemy of nationalism, it is its facilitator and greatest ally. There are so many ugly, dirty features of modern life.
The people who say "look what they're doing to our country, we used to be so great" very readily ignore the fact that, in the old days the dirt was in the backyard.
Children in the UK working and dying in coal mines, slavery in the US (do you think children were exempt?). I don't even want to talk about what "doctors" were doing to women in asylums?
But no, we're civilized, the foreigners are the ones who bring drugs and crime.
Why are they bringing drugs? Who's buying them?
I suppose it must be to sell to each other.
After all, it is so much easier to convince people that our country is good when we do not have to look at the cost.
I mean just look at our sign:
"Time since last child died mining cobalt : infinity"
Tsk tsk that other country, I can't believe they have their children mining cobalt. How uncivilized.
Oh what's that? Yes, that's my new smartphone, thanks for noticing.
We're definitely a more civilized and superior country.
Wait you want those children to come here? So they can live a better life?
Obviously unacceptable, they're not from here.
Yes yes, my grandparents are doing well, they never left Europe, thank you so much for asking.
Outsourcing the dirt doesn't keep our hands clean, it just makes it easier for us to convince ourselves they are. Even when all of our hands have blood on them.
Every politician in every country who doesn't do or say anything to stop a corporation from doing these things is helping them.
Every CEO who acts unaware or is actually unaware of the issues in their supply chain.
Every manager or PR person who keeps them unaware or helps them build a conflicting narrative.
Every scientist or think tank mouthpiece who gets paid to write a study with the conclusions already planned.
You might even be tempted to say every one of us, who buys these products while secretly knowing in the back of our minds that something is wrong.
But you can't walk around naked, and you can't live without a smartphone, you'd get fired if you're not easily contactable and lose access to your bank account.
It's so easy to say those people are all uncivilized, dirty, criminals. It's much harder to look and see that they are just people paying a price for the life you live.