Is your chocolate harvested by child slaves?

[iago]

You should not be eating chocolate. It's fatening. There's child slaves who are skinny as tooth picks out there, you know?

You're right, people eat way too much chocolate. The reason is because it's dangerously cheap. We came right back around. :)

I don't think price is necesarilly the reason somebody would buy chocolate. That giridelli chocolate or whatever is fairly expensive - so why do people love it? Because it tastes good. People are going to buy chocolate because they want to eat it, regardless of price... ofcourse, until the price becomes so high that people start to look for alternatives. Even chocolare that isn't made by chinese gold farmer children slaves isn't too expensive. But then again people could just really like chocolate.

There are three levels, really: too cheap, medium, and too expensive.

Paying 50 cents for a chocolate bar, I'd say, is too cheap. Whenever you can buy stuff with pocket change that requires that much labour to create, it's too cheap. A couple dollars, or even five dollars, for plain (non-premium) chocolate is probably medium. At that price, it's possible for the workers to be paid fairly, and it isn't all that expensive.

But you just need one to come around for extra cheap, and everybody buys that without regard to how it's produced. That's the Tragedy of the Commons. :)

[warz]

No, that's what a company like Hersheys, or whatever, can do because they make so much chocolate anyways. Their solid chocolate bars are like 1/4th of a an inch thick. Probably takes little to no man-power to make - entirely robotic factory produced, I'd guess. I didn't read the article you link though so i dont know what brands are using the slave minions. We're also talking like... labor. Labor as in a worker is pouring easily measured ingredients into the machines, and then boxing the final products. Around here that's like a job that a high school drop out would persue, unless youre just a diehard herheys fan. So, being paid a poorly for that is somehting you'd halfway expect going into the job, anyways. I'm not going to expect 80k a year mixing milk and chocolate.

[iago]

Obviously, you didn't read the article. :P

All the big companies do it.

And by slave labour, it means that they have children *harvesting* the beans from farms in Ivory Coast (and other poor countries in Africa/South America). The children are taken from their homes when very young, forced to work 80+ hours weeks in the field, beaten regularly, etc. If they fall down they're kicked and beaten till they get back up, if they try to escape, they're beaten more, and when they're too old or unable to work enough to cover the cost of barely keeping them alive, they're disposed of.

You really should read the article, it's an eye opener. :)

[rabbit]

Maybe you think that $5 is reasonable, but that's almost an hour's pay for me.  I wouldn't spend that for a chocolate bar.  I'll take mine for $0.80, thank you.

[iago]

Well, you're making $5/hour for the same reason -- people aren't willing to pay more for stuff, so you get paid the minimum they can. If people paid more, you'd GET paid more. Crazy economy talk!

The slavery thing is just taking it to the extreme! :)

[deadly7]

If people paid more, you'd GET paid more.

And the price of everything would increase as well.

[Camel]

No, that's what a company like Hersheys, or whatever, can do because they make so much chocolate anyways.

They harvest by hand.

Well, you're making $5/hour for the same reason -- people aren't willing to pay more for stuff, so you get paid the minimum they can. If people paid more, you'd GET paid more.

You're just describing inflation. Newby is not a child/slave laborer whose income is disproportionately small.