Why I’m not a free market capitalist

Yet.

More than 20 years ago, journalists discovered that Nestlé, Mars, and Hershey were using child labor to grow cocoa for their chocolate. There was talk of regulation at the time, but the chocolate companies assured the government it wasn’t necessary. 

“‘We don’t need legislation to deal with the problem,’ Susan Smith, then a spokeswoman for the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, told a reporter at the time. ‘We are already acting.’” 

The companies pledged to eradicate the problem by 2005, but didn’t. Then they blew past follow-up deadlines in 2008 and 2010. By 2015, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that 2 million children were still growing cocoa in West Africa where two-thirds of the world’s cocoa supply is harvested, and they were missing school to do it. 

When, in 2019, The Washington Post followed up with Nestlé, Mars, and Hershey—none could guarantee their products weren’t made with child labor.