Starbucks: slave and child labour found at certified coffee farms in Minas Gerais

While I generally agree that C-levels need to be held accountable, I fear that will just lead to paid patsies taking the fall. I think the board of directors should be held accountable.

Owners/ceos need to be held accountable so they actually care what is happening

This. Until someone with real power is actually held accountable for the shit they purposefully or passively allow, nothing will be done about it as long as long as it remains profitable.

everyone forgets

Do we? I will never forget Starbucks uses child slaves. What good does that do?

Starbucks will not have wanted to be using slaves, they only pay the workers 2¢ on the cup anyway. It is a fairly minor expense in the greater scheme of things.

What it is, is an emergent risk in extended labour chains (or "cascades"). Particularly prevalent in harvest work. At some point your supply chain transparency breaks down, how ever many steps of outsourcing deep that might be.

Unsurprisingly the gangmaster not actually paying his workers is likely the lowest bidder, so in the cruellest sense of the "free" market, every company wants to use slave labour. But to a global business with at least some accountability, this is a massive fuck up in oversight.

You could think of it as stochastic slave trading, if you wanted to over-intellectualise it. Certainly oligopsonies generate market pressures that strongly incentivise the emergence of modern slavery and labour abuse in the supply chain.

I'm no corporate shill, but the verification and constant need for reverification must be pretty challenging to enforce.

Let's face it: Even most people who read this thinks, "That sucks, someone should do something about that," then goes back to drinking Starbucks