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4.42 AVERAGE
4.42 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
sad
medium-paced
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
Did you ever play the McDonald’s Game? Where you try to run McDonald’s, often starting out ethically and then suddenly you eschew your morals for a race to the bottom just to keep running? That’s how I felt reading this book. More than any other book I’ve read recently, this read shows the terrible but real underbelly of capitalism, stripped of any possible attempt to redeem it. It’s capitalism without guardrails, and we are all complicit in it.
Kara paints a devastating picture of the unending exploitation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) from the history of European colonialism with King Leopold and the ivory trade, to today with technology companies scrambling to extract as much cobalt as possible with the least regard to the Congolese people doing so.
Cobalt, as I learned, is a key element in manufacturing lithium ion batteries with rechargeable qualities. The country with the greatest deposits of cobalt is the DRC. Kara paints an irrefutable picture of how tech companies knowingly purchase cobalt from child laborers and those working under absolutely horrendous conditions. And how the Congolese have no choice but to work for these companies as there are no other economic opportunities. It’s a damning read.
This book unfortunately has the distinction of having perhaps the most annoying, self-centered author I have ever read. Good lord, I could care less about how much Kara risked in order to uncover the information he found or how he almost got arrested by a soldier for his reporting. Bruh, I literally give zero shits. If I could excise his outrage and reactions out of this book, it’d be closer to a five star read. Instead, I oscillated between being outraged by the contents of the book and wishing this book was written by literally any other author.
Despite my personal vendetta against the author, this book is a must-read. Everyone needs to know more about how viciously we are stripping away the human dignity of the Congolese just to have another rechargeable device.
challenging
dark
informative
sad
medium-paced
Such an important read for any of us who use anything with a rechargeable battery.
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
A must read for every activist, organizer, and people who believe that there is no freedom for one without freedom for all.
I hate the world that capitalism has built. Capitalism and overconsumption is going to kill everyone. “A child in the Congo dies everyday so that they can plug in their phones” will haunt me forever. The comparison of mining and prostitution, her stating it is both the same since “my body is my marketplace”.
Shinned a good light on the lives of the Congolese miners but I found it a little one dimensional. Maybe because the author is not from the Congo?
dark
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challenging
dark
emotional
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medium-paced
This is one of those things I take for granted. I knew cobalt was a rare metal, used in a ton of electronics, but that’s about it. I didn’t realize it had to be dug up by hand from open pits and tunnels, full of dust and chemicals, by actual people.
The reality of child labor is brutal, but these conditions are a nightmare for anyone working in them. Even if we solved the issue of children being exploited, adults would still be forced to work in appalling, life-threatening conditions. And, as always, big companies hide behind empty corporate speak to avoid taking responsibility.
I learned a lot, and I’m not sure what to do with that knowledge yet, but I guess starting by talking about it is step one.
dark
informative
sad
medium-paced