Well, I agree with you on 4 our of 5 points.
Region locking is not going to go away, the reason for it is a little deeper than you give it credit for, a lot of it has to do with trade polices and practices. One of the big reasons for it when it comes to physical media is that corporations tend to price their products based on what the target region can afford, and what the market conditions are like there, and they do this more often than many people might think. Normally we hear a lot of QQ from limited markets like Australia or Europe talking about how they wind up paying more for things, but the flip side is that you see a lot of product being sold in Asian markets, and places south of the border (usually further south than Mexico) where they are competing with knockoffs created by the same sweatshops they employ. Not to mention the issue of taxes and tariffs collected by various nations as things cross the border that can influence prices (leading to lower prices per unit where things are more generous) and similar things. Indeed the whole point of "duty" stations which you even see coming out of Canada is to equalize prices due to regional differences.
The idea here being that especially if you buy in bulk a lot of money can be made by buying items up in countries and regions where the price is cheap, and then re-selling them in other markets. Things like DVDs and the like are popular targets for this, and things like region locking are attempts to deal with it. If you've ever been to some of the larger flea markets (like the one outside of Giants Stadium in New York... or at least that is where I remember) you see tons of this stuff with shady characters selling van loads of consumer products that actually ARE the real thing in many cases, for below retail.
This also plays a role in human smuggling as well, as the cost of a person coming into the US illegally with a "Coyote" or on some "smuggling" ship is in part dictated by how much money could be made using that same space simply shipping this kind of cargo around, albeit with a much greater risk since there are people involved.
Bringing rum in from the islands under the radar is a big business still, as are consumer electronics, and just about anything else you can think of. Organized crime gets heavily involved in this as well, since with a bit of effort in following the trends there is reliable amount of money to be made, and for the most part the authorities don't care about enforcement when it comes to consumer products and entertainment media.
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As far as dealing with the problems inherent in conflict minerals and borderline slave labor goes, that isn't going to happen unless people like me become the dominant voice within society. Simply put left wingers who can't get by without taking every opportunity to make slams on right wing conspiracy theorists, and members of the new generation that follow a similar idealogy, simply cannot get it done.
At the end of the day this is one of those problems where there actually is no overwhelming good or evil involved. Indeed the plight we're seeing is largely judged by how far below our standard of living these people are, some guy who is miserable working as a clerk, can look at some dude in a third world mineral mine and go "wow, he has it really bad" and feel guilty.
For the most part the places where this is going on have very little other than the resources they are harvesting, and it's not like there are a lot of other jobs or things most of these people can do. It's also typically a high threat environment where the governments transition power frequently, and the rebel faction of the week is no better than the guys they are fighting against. The people themselves are also generally violent and uneducated, and one of the reasons such hardcore methods are used in discipline is because that's literally what that environment requires. What's more the jobs, despite those conditions (which are expected) are in such high demand that there is little value placed on the worker and nobody cares if one is injured, including other working class people, who generally speaking tend to be ecstatic because it means a job (even a hellish one) has just opened up.
The point is that the second and third world is a mess of problem upon problem upon problem, you can't really come in and say "we're going to resolve the worker issues" without basically resolving everything else wrong with the society as well, starting with the fact that there might not even be a society as we tend to understand the term. In the USA for example if someone mentions "The Civil War" we know it refers to our one major civil war involving the North and South, in most of these countries they are likely to be confused you like like "WHICH Civil War, there have been so many? Give me a time frame, you mean this week?".
In some places like Africa the problem might even be further compounded by overpopulation and there simply not being enough food and clean water. Increasing infrastructure with outside help usually goes nowhere in the long run as it's usually wrecked in a power transition, and educating the people so they can help each other usually just means that the educated become the new warlords, except more savvy ones capable of exploiting UN policies and the like.
The point being it's not the kind of thing where you can just go in and talk about change and meetings of the minds, and offer charity and material support, and see things turn out for the better. If it was that easy, these problems wouldn't still be going on.
As far as people like me solving the problem, well that usually comes down to my usual maxim of "being a bastard works" which pretty much in this case means you have to acknowledge these problems are the result of a poison that simply goes too deep. To avoid rambling about specifics nobody cares about or trying to "sell" the point , at the end of the day the bottom line is that these entire "nations" need to be wrecked, involving the deaths of millions on all sides, so they can start over again.
Of course at the same time, there is also the big question of what we get for doing this other than to kill a whole heck of a lot of people, except a truly massive bill, and at least a temporary loss of the same materials we want since nobody will be mining them, unless of course we just want to flat out take an age of conquest "we're better than you, so this is now ours" attitude and seize the mines and such.
When it comes to slave labour in factories, we benefit more directly if we do it right by flat our removing the knockoffs and completion, but when it comes to "conflict minerals" you just cannot resolve the problem without being even more "evil" than the people your criticizing at least temporarily, since it's about more than the workers, or even any given regime or government. You need to not only knock it all over, but kill the roots too, and start all over, and while someone like me might be willing to do that, again, the bottom line is what would we hope to actually achieve?
