Politics never does kill what doesn’t work, does it?
Global Witness is telling us all that the things put in place to make sure that coltan (columbo-tantalite, a source of tantalum for mobile phone capacitors) does not come from slave driven mines aren’t working:
Leading global brands including Amazon, Ericsson and Sony are “likely” to have sourced minerals linked to a militia accused of widespread sexual violence, summary executions and torture, a new investigation claims.
The companies allegedly but unknowingly, acquired coltan smuggled from mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that are occupied by the M23 militia, which has committed myriad atrocities in eastern DRC.
We agree, slave driven mines are a bad thing. It’s just that this problem was brought up before and a solution imposed. We disagreed with the solution imposed at the time as well, while Global Witness, Global Justice Now and the like all argued, vociferously, for that solution to be imposed.
A result of the Blood in the Mobile campaign - and similar - was a provision in Dodd Frank. Whereby every listed company - listed on a US exchange - must declare whether it was using conflict minerals or not. Consumer pressure upon those who declared either yes, or we don’t know, would be such that said usage would stop. As a part of this mechanism every such listed company must write to each of it suppliers and ask them, are you using etc? Who must then ask all the way down their own supply chains in order to be able to answer correctly. This chain of letters would then solve the problem.
That was the claim at least. The SEC stated that this process would cost $4 billion in its first year alone. The varied campaigning groupuscules insisted this was all worth it as slave driven mines, bad things, see? As above, we agree, slave driven mines, bad things.
The thing is, as is now being pointed out, this system does not work. Well, that’s OK in one sense, many things humans try do not work. What matters is what happens next. We’d suggest that spending all that money on the round robin of letters - that does not work - should be stopped. Thereby saving all that money being spent on the round robin of letters that do not work. Possibly to be spent on something that does work - we once suggested, not entirely facetiously, a division of US Marines to sort out that militia once and for all. We do, after all, want to solve this problem, right?
But that’s not how politics works, is it? In normal life something that’s an abject failure stops being done. In politics abject failure just carries on to the impoverishment of everyone - costs imposed that achieve nothing.
The looted minerals come from a vast site known as Rubaya, situated in DRC’s North Kivu province, and which holds about 15% of the world’s coltan.
An alternative solution would be to licence that site to a proper capitalist mining company who would then extract using bulldozers and 250 tonne trucks rather than the current slave plus shovel.
But our particular observation today is that politics is a really bad way to run things. Because when the political solution - here, writing letters - fails no one does ever say “Well, let’s stop doing that then” do they? Even when billions would be saved by doing so. Pffft for political solutions then.
Tim Worstall