[richmarr]

Information, and control.

All of the products I can buy may or may not contain this unthetical cobalt. I don't know which, and my personal buying choice doesn't effect anything.

What are you proposing, that everyone with a smartphone or a computer be sued? How will that work?

[mbostleman]

What are you proposing, that if your vendor is sued you don't pay for it?

[shantly]

Vendors that don't get sued can compete better in the market and survive longer, and their prices won't go up (except maybe a little as rents if they have few competitors and those have been forced to raise their prices because they've lost a lot of lawsuits), right?

[EDIT] I'd don't really give a fuck about DVs but I'd love if some of the people DVing my comments on this thread would explain how I've misunderstood orthodox "right"-wing approaches to market-based regulation and commons management, since I don't think I'm claiming anything particularly radical here—quite small-c conservative, actually—and would like to know whether and how I'm missing the mark on it.

[nybble41]

> All of the products I can buy may or may not contain this unthetical cobalt. I don't know which, and my personal buying choice doesn't effect anything.

All of the stock these corporations can buy may or may not contain this unethically-sourced cobalt. They don't know which, and their corporate buying choices don't affect anything.

Judging from these comments, the bar seems to be set at "if you can't prove the product doesn't contain unethically-sourced materials, don't buy it". That standard would apply equally well to end users. Of course you can't simply trust that your suppliers aren't lying to you, or that their suppliers aren't lying to them, so you have to be personally involved in auditing the entire process from mining to final production and delivery.

Or we could just be reasonable and agree that it's sufficient to avoid knowing or reckless involvement with unethical suppliers, and hold those who actually endanger their workers or lie about the sources of the materials they're selling responsible for their own crimes.