A sad commentary...

[Nightshade]

Why do some people place such value on things that are little more than a passing fad?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -iPad.html

A kid was taken advantage of and may now die because of his lust for a stupid toy.

[Tunnelcat]

I got to thinking about this TB. We're all guilty of wanting or buying something made with essentially underpaid, abused or slave labor, or wanting something we can't afford. Some things are addicting and cause that desire. I feel guilty when I eat chocolate now, because a lot of the beans that the major U.S. chocolate producers use comes from the Ivory Coast, where the cocoa farmers use child slave labor.

http://www1.american.edu/ted/chocolate-slave.htm

http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.c ... y-to-find/

Since I'm addicted to chocolate and I desire it more than most foods, like most women , I've been actively looking for products that don't use cocoa beans from countries that use child slaves. It's hard to find, but it IS out there to find and buy and it's called Fair Trade Chocolate. It's more expensive, but I just eat less of it to compensate. I buy what I can afford.

Now what we need is Fair Trade Electronic products. Those may cost us more, but at least it might pay some worker enough so that said worker can have a snowball's chance in hell of buying said product that he or she makes.

[Ferno]

why?

well it's pretty simple, really.

in our minds, we can dismiss these items as 'fads', 'useless', etc.

but in the mind of a kid, they want something that's 'cool' and they do anything to get it. beg for it from their parents, buy it from a pawn shop, and in this case, sell a kidney.

[Tunnelcat]

Well, something good may have come out of this guy's suffering.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology- ... 27813.html