Friday, July 25, 2008

The Demand Chain

This article at TowardFreedom.com has started a little stir in the recycled news business with such creative titles as "Playstation 2 component incites African war."

The gist of the scenario is that the metal Coltan, mined in the DRC, has been the booty of many a looter, military oppressor, and western profiteer. I'll be the first to admit my own ignorance both about the mining practices and the politics of the DRC. I call attention to it here because of the implication in the Toward Freedom article and even more bluntly in the re-run versions that SONY is culpable for the human rights violations associated with Coltan by way of causing an increased demand for the metal.

SONY is, at worst, several steps away from the abuses that have taken place, but the core accusation, as I see it, is that creating extremely high demand (that is, offering a very high price) for the metal was an immoral act because it lured evidently multiple bad guys to plunder and abuse.

So, the question is, does the moral responsibility stop with those who, for instance, forcefully took control of a Coltan mine and then put children at risk by forcing them to work the mine? Or does it extend to those who bought the Coltan from them? If it extends, does it extend further to those who refined the metal and sold it as tantalum? To those who used the tantalum as a component of their capacitors and then sold the capacitors to SONY? Is SONY to blame? Are the consumers who buy the SONY products? If any moral responsibility passes up the "demand chain", what exactly is the medium of the transgression? Money? Profit? Desire?