Curiosity 13: Chocolate

This week's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver showcases chocolate—specifically, exploitation by the handful of mega-companies that produce chocolate, and that massively shortchange the 5–6 million growers (60 percent of whom are in the Ivory Coast and Ghana) who provide the basic ingredient, cacao, that the corporations—Hershey, Mondelez, Cadbury, Nestlé, Mars, and a dozen or so more—rely on for their product. Could not survive without, in fact. His focus is child labor, but writ large, it's the megabillionaires exploiting people with no voice and no power, who live in poverty and hope for something better in life, through hard work, at whatever age. Education and literacy aren't even in most of their dreams.

Oliver also talks about organizations that are trying to combat the exploitation, through inspections and oversight or, in the case of one group, Tony's Chocolonely, a Dutch chocolate maker, by paying well over the "market price"—or maybe, an actual living wage.

David recalled that when we threw his 70th birthday bash in September, our nephew Aaron came with a gift of a Chocolonely chocolate bar. Now we know what that means. And now I'll tell you—and not just via a link, but by the very words on Tony's website. Because this is important.

Tony's mission is all chocolate 100% free from exploitation. That's an excellent goal. It can be expanded to so many industries. The US Department of Labor "list of goods produced by child labor or forced labor" includes, in the agricultural sector, sugarcane, cotton, coffee, tobacco, cattle, rice, and fish. In the manufacturing sector, bricks, garments, textiles, footwear, carpets, and fireworks. And in the extractive industries, gold, coal, and diamonds. But there are so many more—including chocolate, or rather, cacao.

I get so sick of the "market economy" (capitalism) and the more-more-more mindset at the expense of the people who actually do the work. I am not optimistic that humans will ever get it right. But it's heartening to see little pockets of humanity at least trying.