Bitcoin Forum

Hey

Let me just start out by saying how our economy grows ? We make something in the industries , we market it , we also export it , it brings benefits for the countrie's economy.

Do you guys know about Mica ?

It is a mineral used everywhere , from the beauty industry to the toothpastes , shampoo's everything . India is a country with the richest mines of Mica , they inturn supply it to other countries.

But why am I wasting your time about all this information?

Well unfortunately the one's mining Mica is are not the industries or some big machines , it is actually kids. From the age of 4-5 they start doing labour and these mines are unregulated , being run by people hiding from the eyes of law , they actually bribe the officers and they run amok doing illegal things .

Unfortunately due to poverty people have no other choice , they don't force their kids to go but to even get a quarter a day means life and death situation for them.

What are the consequences ?
  * Kids start working from such an early age that they have no access to school
  * No education , No good living facilities , they often fall ill due to poor sanitary conditions
  *Sometimes the mines ,they collapse , small kids die and people just hide this to not create a uproar .
  * Some get respiratory diseases and suffer for lifetime.

In their age to play with toys , they work using a shovel much heavier than their weight .

Do we ever take A moment to see if the products we are using are Mica free ? You may never know where it came from . Maybe we all are just unfortunately the cause they have to go and work daily .
We aren't employing them , we are leaving them to die at the cost of cheap products available to us.

I want everyone here to take a moment and think about what we indirectly are doing to their childhood,is this actually worth making the economy sustainable ?
The poor people without education just keep revolving in the cycle of poverty and their kids also happen to have same fate.
This is so unfortunate for them but we can actually make their lives a little better .

* Urging the government to give better wages and opening more jobs for them
*Making sure to not use products containing Mica or at least making sure that they are cruelty free .
*Throwing these bribe taking officials in Jail
*Maybe we could help those poor families not by giving money but by telling them about how they can teach their kids for free in government schools and encouraging them.

Mica is very important economically , it is like the cement of the beauty industry but let's just protect the kids who suffers massively from their side effects.

It's harsh but true.
Actually , maybe we just need to strengthen our economy first, make living conditions far more accessible and hygienic for the poor people who are endlessly revolving in the viscous cycle of death and poverty.
Then if we could provide free internet after offcourse providing proper meal for them and free mobile devices, then only we can dream of a future like that.
Only if they could study first , then maybe Bitcoins can even provide jobs for them but primarily more important is how we get there.

These are the obvious steps to take, on paper. However, when it comes to execution, given the lucrative profit margins for businesses that hire child workers it's simply unfeasible to expect that everyone will comply with regulations, which I'm fairly sure has already been implemented.

Plus, do you really think that just by "urging the government to give better wages" to children, that they're actually going to receive better wages? Govermnents can impose all sorts of minimum wage regulations, enterprise agreements, whatever; but do you really think that employers are going to care, or that a black market for child labour won't simply form?

It's a huge issue that requires structural reforms that I don't see can happen in a short period of time, and certainly not as easily as you may think.

Not only in India, such child slavery is prevailing around the globe. Recently saw similar incident with an African country where children never go to schools. They are always on the gold mines. With what they get they make their living, even if they get good sum of gold they don't know to find a trader and sell it. The intermediate person fix the price for the gold and he gets big selling it. Maybe someday God willing this needs to change and everyone should be fulfilled with their basic life needs.

I completely agree with you about child slavery, it must end at all cost. But when you talk specifically about MICA mining, I may not agree entirely!! Let's look at some facts,

1. India is the 8th highest producer of MICA. China, Russia and even South Korea is way ahead of India.
2. The contribution of MICA mining in GDP is very insignificant and doesn't come in the top 10 list of mined minerals.

Child slavery is a big problem in India's mining industry. But the issue of child slavery comes from sheer poverty and not from Mining a mineral. Our politicians should have addresses this issue long back but they didn't do anything other than filing their own pocket. I am confident that the situation will remain same for another 100 years looking at the current government.

Now talking about the health issues. Marble mining causes more health issues than MICA or any other industry! 90% of marble laborers face respiratory issues due to lack of safety equipments. Do we ban marble mining as well?

Banning a product is not a solution to a problem. Rather we need a strict law to ensure that the manufacturers of beauty products pay a certain percentage of their revenue to the welfare of their labors and to ensure proper facilities to them! The companies making billions from beauty products need to ensure minimum safety equipments at their mines. Even though nothing is going to change overnight, but at least set us up to the right path!

If banning MICA can bring the solution to the child slavery, we need to ban Coffee products and Diamonds first! Do some research and you will understand why I am saying this!!

The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 prohibits the employment of children below the age of 14 years in India. Source :
https://www.ilo.org/newdelhi/areasofwork/child-labour/legal-framework/WCMS_486746/lang--en/index.htm

So, if these mines are employing 4 to 5 year old children to do these jobs, they are breaking the law and you should highlight this issue and embarrass the Indian government on social media platforms. Blame the Indian government for not taking action against these practices.

B.t.w, how is this a Bitcoin related topic?

Many consumers pretend to care but they end up just buying the cheapest product they can get.  Capitalism's only goal is profit and morals are left behind.  I wish the world was so fixated on money being everything in life and cared more about helping others and not exploiting. 

Do you think any steps taken by government will actually create difference? Few bunch of government representatives won't change anything until everyone below who are actually executing these steps become clean. We can't expect government to deliver unless we on our own don't stop corruption.


First thing child labor till the age of 14 is banned in India. So when government can't even restrict such mining fields to recruit children, do you think government can make sure everyone get paid the minimum wage!
 

How can we forgo a required material which carries such an importance in the economy?


And who will track whether officials are taking bribes? Some kind of inspectors appointed by government right? And what if these officials further bribe those inspectors? This is vicious circle, we can't expect government to improve something until we improve ourselves.

What your country needs is a president that has a political will that won't accept bribe from the cronies of those who manages these mines. Mining results to destroying your resources like the mountains, I think the government can absolutely take more money from these mining companies but can still pay regular adults to work for them. India is a rich country, when you look at its culture its way older than Christ. If only the government can follow what China did,  India can prosper way better with its strategic location.

This is the world we created and product of what they become. That's very sad fact but you have money because others don't have, somehow we both can't have money, one of us must be out of it. There is nothing we can do to change it, that's sad but truth, some people make huge money by their work while they are still poor, we need to give them education but governments prefer uneducated people because such people are easier to control and manage as you wish. Also have you thought about it? Almost everyone knows that condition but does anyone care? Sadly no and 1-2 people can't change the world.

Unfortunately Child Labor is legal in several countries and its a move that a lot of governments has done for their family to earn a living. Not only mica is the only thing the children are harvesting from there are several others as well and one of the biggest industries taking advantage of it are the chocolate producers a lot of African countries goes up to 40% of their workforce being kids under 18 years old being hired by international giants, its their way of cutting the cost down. I know its unethical that you are robbing these kids future but nothing has been done to solve it.

I can't blame them for that. I'm a consumer myself and look to buy that what's cheap and decent of quality. We all are out to shop at places where we can get the most bang for our buck.

I'm sure many do care about the environment and other things related, but not enough to justify buying goods that are more durable and generally more expensive. It's just the way people are.

You mean not so fixated on money, right? Our lives revolve around it, whether we like it or not, so we do prioritize money over most other things. Without it our life would suck. It's the center of everything.

I'm glad that there are wealthy individuals who do utilize a part of their wealth to finance cancer research, mental illness charities, etc. We all can do it, regardless of how small your donations are. I do it too and it feels good.

I have no idea what this has anything to do with crypto currency though. I mean the OP in his message didn't even tried to tie it with bitcoin or any other currency, he just talked about a sad fact that people are bad and they use little kids to make more profits and they take advantage of poor families in order to make even more profits instead of hiring regular adults to mine mica.

Now, that could be very bad and I understand that we should find a way to stop it but how do you propose we do it with crypto currency somehow? Should we create a mica free crypto somehow?

All cryptos are mica-free, they have nothing to do with it. Do you suggest we open a charity and donate to it so we can help families who send their kids to mica mines and make them take those kids back and pay their money ourselves so kids can go to school? I don't understand how this ties to crypto at all, totally irrelevant.

Sad and something should be done but irrelevant.

We cannot tell it unless it has been proven. If we talk about risk, it is an action taken inspite of uncertainty. In life sometimes we need to take a risk in order for us to grow. How can we test our strength if its just a word? We can't deny that crypto world is risky, well at first. If only people can adapt it, gradually it will go to what as we assume.

In most cases, I see that crypto-duty is positively affected by the financial condition of many people, but how it affects the economy suggest very difficult. In any case, there will be no practical evidence, then the conversation is practically not what.

This is the problem of a corrupt country/government that need to have a quick resolution before it gets worse. Only your people will and can fix the problem of your own country, i don't if someone from your country turned a blind eye on this or they keep informing the people on what was happening with those kids at a very young age.

And for your question: it's not worth risking the lives of those innocent children just to work because they have no food to eat, it's their parents' job to give them food while they were growing. To strengthening your economy, you need a good leader that will stop all of those hidden and illegal businesses.

Unfortunately people got to eat and in many countries kids have to work to augment whatever small income their parents have. I remember one company just outright stopped using mica and switched to an artificial alternative (I believe it was LUSH cosmetics) but even that don't solve anything.

If everyone switched to synthetic then all these kids now don't have money and would be even hungrier. IMHO the solution is to regulate these mines to allow the kids to work in a safer environment as natural mica is slowly phased out and the communities reliant on it are switched to a different industry.

It's easier said than done. In most cases a 'bad' leader makes place for one that's just as bad or even worse. At first they present themselves as the people's leader, but when they have what they got, the people suddenly don't mean anything anymore. Self enrichment, that's what they care about and it's so easy to participate in when the rest of the government is already used to these practices.

Also don't forget that the largest corporations within their countries are usually in it as well, and these corporations are where the money is at the end of the day.  :-\

If no one will going to stand about it then their country will be in bloody chaos for the rest of their lives. Since they were in a shithole already, the people should have to choose which leader is ready to fight for them, a patriotic leader that is ready to face those bigger corporations just to shut them down if needed.

I know it's hard to find a leader like that but it is worth it if they ever find one and i've seen some country leader who does act like that just for the sake of the people on their country.

To strengthen an economy, it should start with the leaders and they should stop corruption and focus on improving the status of their countrymen. Now it's easy to say than done and all we can do is to hope that the leaders of our nation's will hear what is needed for their constitutes.

First, let's not get blinded by the false Bitcoin can solve everything argument.

Child labour took a long time to fix in developed nations... all forms of slavery as well, and they're actually not fully fixed in many countries, just repurposed and repackaged to look better. Indentured servitude in India, that's the step that needs to be addressed first, among many other preceding steps. Education, awareness. Political will.

And along with that starting point, to ask, before we look at worthwhile risks, are we really strengthening the economy? Or merely lining the pockets of certain segments of society?

We want to made some changes in our economy then it will not in a single person and it needs the community to build the economy more powerful in cryptocurrency field it will be very difficult and hard to make it possible but once it is possible then prepare field is the most strongest ever.

Bitcoin could offer a helping hand in making elections more fair because of its immutable and transparent nature. I am however afraid that these characteristics of Bitcoin are too much of a worry for them.

I'm of believe that you can't possibly stop corruption entirely, but what you can do is reduce corruption where possible. If we work towards that we can actually book some progress.

It would be great to see people pool their efforts on a large scale and demand changes as described above, but I'm afraid that in shaky countries the fear of repercussions from the side of the government makes people refrain from doing it.

Being a low income earner does not stop any one from using cryptocurrency, I think you are basically looking at cryptocurrency from the aspect of investment and you feel low income earners will not be able to make investment, but cryptocurrency is actually more important than just investment, cryptocurrency has smaller units that can make it every easy for anyone to make payment with no matter how low their income is.

The only barrier I just saw here which the op made mentioned of is that we have lots of people that lacks proper education, and these people keeps giving birth to children also without giving the proper education, and so long this continues, it will be impossible for the technology of cryptocurrency to be globally used.

I think showing an example would have worked a lot better than just explaining in text form, I know you wanted to also be able to explain while talking so all in all that would require you to write stuff down and memorize it but maybe a video could be a lot better.

Try to show them stuff like crypto kitties for example, or try to show them eosbet, or any token that is precisely for just one dapp or utilization however it is and find a video on youtube for it. When people watch stuff they understand it a lot better because they are literally seeing an example of how it works and if you want to take it a bit further (if the friend is wanting it too of course, don't bother them too much with it :D.) then you can actually do an example, most of these require only a few cents or at worst couple bucks and actually doing it together would teach them even better.

This is also been experienced in countries in Africa where kids are put under torture to dig for diamonds leading many to develop a dark mind and giving way for rebel groups what breaks my heart is the level of little children carrying sophisticated fire arms all in the name of surviving or fighting for freedom.
Natural resources are a blessing buy any natural resources that brings and unbalanced situation to the citizens bringing about death or harm can also be regarded as a curse

You all rightly said, but you need to take into account that the minerals owned by the state are practically owned by state officials and the government, not the people.  Even if we assume that a poor and hungry country can have good financial success in the future due to a cryptocurrency market, then first of all people should become educated.  And those countries where children run with weapons are very far from a civilized process.

Well, that is not only happening in India. It also happens in my country, but not the Mica case, this one is something different. There are lots of children who also suffer in my country because the government never pays attention tor the poor citizens that they governing.

Sometimes when I’m traveling I see some parents with their children in a dump area picking up waste products that they can sell to refineries just for money to feed themselves. This is very bad, cause I know that it can affect those children, especially their health. The government are meant to be providing jobs for the people, but they never do, all they are interested is in their own selfish needs and that’s all and nothing else.

If we talk about high technologies and the risks involved in introducing cryptocurrency into the State Economic System, then there is really a very big risk and I'm not sure that in poorly developed countries this approach will be right.  First of all, before talking about cryptocurrency and blockchain for underdeveloped countries, it is necessary not only to increase some social guarantees of citizens, but first of all to increase the level of education of people.

I am not sure from which country you are coming since the world leaders in production of Mica are India, China, Belgium and Brazil, if you are from India or Brazil you can make changes in the government during the election period if the elected government is not taking care of them. Belgium does not have a situation like that but in China i am not sure how you are going to make changes to a communist government.

It is impossible to know whether the Mica produced are coming from good manufacturers or not and if you plan to abort the use of Mica you are willingly planning to torture poor people who are making a living working hard to have food on their table  :P.

If that was so easy then your country would have being so prosperous by now :P .

Education is the most important thing in the world and if the government is not helping in carving a good future generation, then it will be hard to sustain in a competitive world. The future of any country is their younger generation.

I really understand that the future of any country is a young generation.  But in order to enable the young generation to realize themselves, this opportunity should be provided by the government and a professional government.  First of all, you need to give a good education, so that young minds help the poor economy of their country.  Here's where to start.

Damn this is very bad when realizing how deep this may impact in common innocent people… this is really something that their government needs to look into and also figure out how to solve the issue. You know, sometimes, things like these are being caused by bad government.

Most of the politicians you will see these days are just interested making lots of money the opportunity they are given and not interested in serving the country in any way. That's why they keep on stealing from the country and they don't even mind whether people are suffering or not, all they care about is their pocket. And when things get tight like this, people has no other option than to do whatever possible to survive. Some of them then go into illegal business.

It is clear that very strong professionals will deal with cryptocurrency issues if the country and its government decide to use cryptocurrency.  Nevertheless, we all know about the instability of the cryptocurrency market and the dangers that await cryptocurrency users.  In my opinion, the Government can use cryptocurrency only for certain purposes, but completely switch to cryptocurrency, replacing Fiat, this is wrong.  It seems to me that the state economy is very important and any risks are unacceptable.

Given the fact that, for example, the price of Bitcoin over the past year fell from $ 20,000 to $ 2,500, what could happen to a country that begins to fully use Bitcoin and replace its national currency with cryptocurrency?  This situation is very complicated and it seems to me that this issue will be more serious when the cryptocurrency market is more stable and the cryptocurrency stabilizes in price.

I think the main focus of all politics and governments is the fact that they care about the voters and not the young people contrary to popular belief.

They are not becoming presidents or gaining political power thanks to 10 year olds but they should aim at them because they are the ones their country will be based on in the future, so they make laws and do their politics based on the 60 years olds because they know they will show up and even the generation that became 18-30 is not gonna vote as much as the 60+ year old crowd which makes them realize that retirement plans are more important than education if you want votes. Risk of not getting any votes and building a country for the people who are 0-30 right now actually worth a lot for economy because that is the future and politicians should start doing that but the moment they do that they are losing votes.

But this is not why crypto is all about,cryptocurrency is for payments and what you are pointing is another area of living.yeah it’s not ethical to use a 4-5 years old kids to labor about this  Mica(but honestly it’s my first time to hear about this)
Many countries has this same issues like the nickel industries,and even the diamonds mining.the truth is mining industries have all of this kind of doings but this is what world must b,there should be someone to suffer for others to privilege.and we cannot change this overnight ,this needs time and bitcoin and cryptocurrency is just the start of that changes

The price hasn't gone below $3000 on any of the more reputable exchanges. You either made a typo or looked at an illiquid exchange chart.

I don't believe that Bitcoin will replace national currencies. It might become a supplement to Gold, but then in digital form. Governments holding large bags of something incentivizes them to support that something so that their bags don't suffer too much. They have an excellent form of money they print out of thin air that they can use for that specific purpose.

The ECB this year in a tweet (https://twitter.com/ecb/status/1105494215381913601) said;

Governments could issue their USDT like token on Bitcoin and use that as money, but you still have to deal with a very slow and non scalable underlying network.

I think there is really no risk involved, after all you can always have a double method system for a long time until people start to fully to bitcoin. For example, if a country wants to improve their economy they could potentially start to accept bitcoin for the resources they are selling, which means they would have bitcoin in their reserves instead of dollars or any other currency when they are making money.

This would allow them to leverage their profits against the dollar, normally dollar may gain value against that countries money and everything could get more expensive but if they are getting bitcoin then they could profit from bitcoin going up higher than dollar, so they would recover the difference. Its just very minimal risk and would definitely create a safe space.

It will serve better as alternative to fiat currency and then could also serve as reserve too but would never replace the fiat or completely replace the present currency for now, but in future when technology becomes wide and we have no illiterates any longer in any part of the world, then fiat could then be replaced with cryptocurrency, and when fiat is replaced, its worth will no longer be measured in fiat but in the quantity of the currency itself, and maybe all these gold are what will start getting being measured in fiat, and the bitcoin itself will later serve as store of value in  future because the number of people holding this coin is really going and the more they accumulate these coin, the more it reduces its supply in the market which makes it expensive and stable.

Makes little sense. They can already do that with gold derivatives so what's the point of using something like Bitcoin? Bitcoin is too speculative and I don't even want my government to be that reckless.

Central banks have been buying gold like there is no tomorrow, especially when it comes to Russia, India and China. The rally in the gold price has done them well knowing that they own hundreds of billions of this metal.

Bitcoin hasn't really been battle tested yet. People here (me included) just assume it will go to the moon, but what if it doesn't? Bitcoin needs decades more of growth to show what it is made of.

I think considering our economy is already fragile all around the world I don't see how bad it could be. First of all when you are moving from one system to another system it will always be a trouble for a while, even right now when we are dealing with bitcoin plenty of people lost a ton of money while others made some money which means when we are trying to shape our new economic system there would be a lot of bad stuff going on as well as good stuff and maybe bad stuff would outweight for a while but if we wait and be patient I am sure it will be much better in the future.

Hence, I think it definitely worth it and that risk we are taking will have some sort of punishment for a while however eventually the world will adopt and everything will go back to a better future.

People shouldn’t be allowed to be doing things like that, that’s the work of the government. Such things are dangerous to the health of those children that are involved in it, so their government really need to find a way to solve these problems, but they wouldn’t do that. It’s the same that happens in my country, there are children getting involved in things that they shouldn’t be involved into because they are from a very poor family that is looking for way to feed themselves.

Lots of children can’t afford to go to school because they can’t pay the school fees. Since feeding is very important  they have no other choice than to be doing all these dirty works to get money for feeding. Some of them I see picking stuffs from dirt so that they can sell to manufacturing companies and get paid. From there they do contact diseases, and the government doesn’t care about these children. It’s really bad.

Money is so hot, many will get tempted into it that is why a lot of people become greedy and corruptions seems to start. Mostly, it happen with the government and it never helps us to improve but just to make them rich only. Such risk won't be contributing good in general but it only build another drama and misunderstanding. The government system must be change in order to stop this corruption, otherwise, it still remain forever.

People never get satisfied with what they are making even if they are is millions they would go for trillions that is why poor being poor and rich getting more richer.The corruption can be restricted by the good leader or dictators to be honest where the punishment will be brutal so officers will get afraid of doing anything against the law.In democracy the corruption will keep increases.

what are you trying to say that mica is risky but beneficial because it can provide amazing benefits and can possibly strengthen one economy ?  if it is then my answer will be yes  . not just on mica but people should face the risk so that they can learn or earn   . without risk people and their economy wont developed or improve  .  risk is already there by the time that we were born and live but the difficulty level of risk only varies depending on what activity that we do  .

If anyone thinks corruption is just in one country you are dead wrong, everywhere in the world corruption is the biggest problem but also there is not much you can do about it unless you really go after it with all your force and risk your life for it. That is right if you want to end it than you have to put your life in the line there. Doesn't matter what position you are in politics if you want to end corruption some people will try to end your life.

It is way too much money that is involved in this and when you are trying to end it there would be a lot of people who will not make easy money and they bribe you to shut up but its not a brine you can easily decline, you take it and be the bad guy or at least accomplice but if you decline it they will try to kill you so somebody else that will take the bribe takes your place.