What's new
Fantasy Football - Footballguys Forums

Welcome to Our Forums. Once you've registered and logged in, you're primed to talk football, among other topics, with the sharpest and most experienced fantasy players on the internet.

Realistic article about sweatshops (1 Viewer)

Maurile Tremblay

Maurile Tremblay

Administrator
Staff member
Where Sweatshops Are a Dream

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: January 14, 2009

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia

Before Barack Obama and his team act on their talk about “labor standards,” I’d like to offer them a tour of the vast garbage dump here in Phnom Penh.

This is a Dante-like vision of hell. It’s a mountain of festering refuse, a half-hour hike across, emitting clouds of smoke from subterranean fires.

The miasma of toxic stink leaves you gasping, breezes batter you with filth, and even the rats look forlorn. Then the smoke parts and you come across a child ambling barefoot, searching for old plastic cups that recyclers will buy for five cents a pound. Many families actually live in shacks on this smoking garbage.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don’t exploit enough.

Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.

“I’d love to get a job in a factory,” said Pim Srey Rath, a 19-year-old woman scavenging for plastic. “At least that work is in the shade. Here is where it’s hot.”

Another woman, Vath Sam Oeun, hopes her 10-year-old boy, scavenging beside her, grows up to get a factory job, partly because she has seen other children run over by garbage trucks. Her boy has never been to a doctor or a dentist, and last bathed when he was 2, so a sweatshop job by comparison would be far more pleasant and less dangerous.

I’m glad that many Americans are repulsed by the idea of importing products made by barely paid, barely legal workers in dangerous factories. Yet sweatshops are only a symptom of poverty, not a cause, and banning them closes off one route out of poverty. At a time of tremendous economic distress and protectionist pressures, there’s a special danger that tighter labor standards will be used as an excuse to curb trade.

When I defend sweatshops, people always ask me: But would you want to work in a sweatshop? No, of course not. But I would want even less to pull a rickshaw. In the hierarchy of jobs in poor countries, sweltering at a sewing machine isn’t the bottom.

My views on sweatshops are shaped by years living in East Asia, watching as living standards soared — including those in my wife’s ancestral village in southern China — because of sweatshop jobs.

Manufacturing is one sector that can provide millions of jobs. Yet sweatshops usually go not to the poorest nations but to better-off countries with more reliable electricity and ports.

I often hear the argument: Labor standards can improve wages and working conditions, without greatly affecting the eventual retail cost of goods. That’s true. But labor standards and “living wages” have a larger impact on production costs that companies are always trying to pare. The result is to push companies to operate more capital-intensive factories in better-off nations like Malaysia, rather than labor-intensive factories in poorer countries like Ghana or Cambodia.

Cambodia has, in fact, pursued an interesting experiment by working with factories to establish decent labor standards and wages. It’s a worthwhile idea, but one result of paying above-market wages is that those in charge of hiring often demand bribes — sometimes a month’s salary — in exchange for a job. In addition, these standards add to production costs, so some factories have closed because of the global economic crisis and the difficulty of competing internationally.

The best way to help people in the poorest countries isn’t to campaign against sweatshops but to promote manufacturing there. One of the best things America could do for Africa would be to strengthen our program to encourage African imports, called AGOA, and nudge Europe to match it.

Among people who work in development, many strongly believe (but few dare say very loudly) that one of the best hopes for the poorest countries would be to build their manufacturing industries. But global campaigns against sweatshops make that less likely.

Look, I know that Americans have a hard time accepting that sweatshops can help people. But take it from 13-year-old Neuo Chanthou, who earns a bit less than $1 a day scavenging in the dump. She’s wearing a “Playboy” shirt and hat that she found amid the filth, and she worries about her sister, who lost part of her hand when a garbage truck ran over her.

“It’s dirty, hot and smelly here,” she said wistfully. “A factory is better.”
Click to expand...
The idea that someone can be made better off by having a job he wants made unavailable to him is unsound, but surprisingly widely held. Especially among people on the left.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
People who are against sweatshops probably have never been to a third world country. If they had then they'd know that these jobs and their pay, while horrific to most of us, are a blessing to the people who rely on them to survive. I agree that there should be minimum level of worker safety required but to complain about the jobs based solely on them making $1 a day is ridiculous.

 
cstu said:
People who are against sweatshops probably have never been to a third world country. If they had then they'd know that these jobs and their pay, while horrific to most of us, are a blessing to the people who rely on them to survive. I agree that there should be minimum level of worker safety required but to complain about the jobs based solely on them making $1 a day is ridiculous.
Click to expand...
Then we all agree.
 
In Praise of Cheap Labor

[...]

And then something changed. Some combination of factors that we still don't fully understand--lower tariff barriers, improved telecommunications, cheaper air transport--reduced the disadvantages of producing in developing countries. (Other things being the same, it is still better to produce in the First World--stories of companies that moved production to Mexico or East Asia, then moved back after experiencing the disadvantages of the Third World environment, are common.) In a substantial number of industries, low wages allowed developing countries to break into world markets. And so countries that had previously made a living selling jute or coffee started producing shirts and sneakers instead.

Workers in those shirt and sneaker factories are, inevitably, paid very little and expected to endure terrible working conditions. I say "inevitably" because their employers are not in business for their (or their workers') health; they pay as little as possible, and that minimum is determined by the other opportunities available to workers. And these are still extremely poor countries, where living on a garbage heap is attractive compared with the alternatives.

And yet, wherever the new export industries have grown, there has been measurable improvement in the lives of ordinary people. Partly this is because a growing industry must offer a somewhat higher wage than workers could get elsewhere in order to get them to move. More importantly, however, the growth of manufacturing--and of the penumbra of other jobs that the new export sector creates--has a ripple effect throughout the economy. The pressure on the land becomes less intense, so rural wages rise; the pool of unemployed urban dwellers always anxious for work shrinks, so factories start to compete with each other for workers, and urban wages also begin to rise. Where the process has gone on long enough--say, in South Korea or Taiwan--average wages start to approach what an American teen-ager can earn at McDonald's. And eventually people are no longer eager to live on garbage dumps. (Smokey Mountain persisted because the Philippines, until recently, did not share in the export-led growth of its neighbors. Jobs that pay better than scavenging are still few and far between.)

The benefits of export-led economic growth to the mass of people in the newly industrializing economies are not a matter of conjecture. A country like Indonesia is still so poor that progress can be measured in terms of how much the average person gets to eat; since 1970, per capita intake has risen from less than 2,100 to more than 2,800 calories a day. A shocking one-third of young children are still malnourished--but in 1975, the fraction was more than half. Similar improvements can be seen throughout the Pacific Rim, and even in places like Bangladesh. These improvements have not taken place because well-meaning people in the West have done anything to help--foreign aid, never large, has lately shrunk to virtually nothing. Nor is it the result of the benign policies of national governments, which are as callous and corrupt as ever. It is the indirect and unintended result of the actions of soulless multinationals and rapacious local entrepreneurs, whose only concern was to take advantage of the profit opportunities offered by cheap labor. It is not an edifying spectacle; but no matter how base the motives of those involved, the result has been to move hundreds of millions of people from abject poverty to something still awful but nonetheless significantly better.

Why, then, the outrage of my correspondents? Why does the image of an Indonesian sewing sneakers for 60 cents an hour evoke so much more feeling than the image of another Indonesian earning the equivalent of 30 cents an hour trying to feed his family on a tiny plot of land--or of a Filipino scavenging on a garbage heap?

The main answer, I think, is a sort of fastidiousness. Unlike the starving subsistence farmer, the women and children in the sneaker factory are working at slave wages for our benefit--and this makes us feel unclean. And so there are self-righteous demands for international labor standards: We should not, the opponents of globalization insist, be willing to buy those sneakers and shirts unless the people who make them receive decent wages and work under decent conditions.

This sounds only fair--but is it? Let's think through the consequences.

First of all, even if we could assure the workers in Third World export industries of higher wages and better working conditions, this would do nothing for the peasants, day laborers, scavengers, and so on who make up the bulk of these countries' populations. At best, forcing developing countries to adhere to our labor standards would create a privileged labor aristocracy, leaving the poor majority no better off.

And it might not even do that. The advantages of established First World industries are still formidable. The only reason developing countries have been able to compete with those industries is their ability to offer employers cheap labor. Deny them that ability, and you might well deny them the prospect of continuing industrial growth, even reverse the growth that has been achieved. And since export-oriented growth, for all its injustice, has been a huge boon for the workers in those nations, anything that curtails that growth is very much against their interests. A policy of good jobs in principle, but no jobs in practice, might assuage our consciences, but it is no favor to its alleged beneficiaries.

You may say that the wretched of the earth should not be forced to serve as hewers of wood, drawers of water, and sewers of sneakers for the affluent. But what is the alternative? Should they be helped with foreign aid? Maybe--although the historical record of regions like southern Italy suggests that such aid has a tendency to promote perpetual dependence. Anyway, there isn't the slightest prospect of significant aid materializing. Should their own governments provide more social justice? Of course--but they won't, or at least not because we tell them to. And as long as you have no realistic alternative to industrialization based on low wages, to oppose it means that you are willing to deny desperately poor people the best chance they have of progress for the sake of what amounts to an aesthetic standard--that is, the fact that you don't like the idea of workers being paid a pittance to supply rich Westerners with fashion items.

In short, my correspondents are not entitled to their self-righteousness. They have not thought the matter through. And when the hopes of hundreds of millions are at stake, thinking things through is not just good intellectual practice. It is a moral duty.
Click to expand...
 
I worry more about the US economy with the manufacturing sector approaching 0 jobs.

With this credit crunch and the evaporation of wealth in the western world, I think that there will be increased pressure for durable goods, which if there is no infrastructure in place to produce those goods will pose a large problem for the US. I think we're reaping what we've sown over the last 20-30 years in more ways than one, the above being only a small percentage.

I would have to agree with premise of the articles posted, that no matter my preference on what job constitutes the minimum labor standards, there will be people throughout the world that would be happy to fill a job with lower standards than those.

Nonetheless, the things that these articles does not bring up is human rights and whether or not western companies should pay any attention to human rights. It's quite probable that the majority of western consumers don't care if human rights are being trampled "somewhere else" in the rush for the lowest cost of goods. Maybe that will change in the future, but right now, consumers are voting with their wallets that they don't give a #### if workers in China die due to exposure to harmful chemicals or if workers in Malaysia lose their hands in the factory that makes their t-shirts.

 
The Z Machine said:
I worry more about the US economy with the manufacturing sector approaching 0 jobs.With this credit crunch and the evaporation of wealth in the western world, I think that there will be increased pressure for durable goods, which if there is no infrastructure in place to produce those goods will pose a large problem for the US. I think we're reaping what we've sown over the last 20-30 years in more ways than one, the above being only a small percentage.I would have to agree with premise of the articles posted, that no matter my preference on what job constitutes the minimum labor standards, there will be people throughout the world that would be happy to fill a job with lower standards than those.Nonetheless, the things that these articles does not bring up is human rights and whether or not western companies should pay any attention to human rights. It's quite probable that the majority of western consumers don't care if human rights are being trampled "somewhere else" in the rush for the lowest cost of goods. Maybe that will change in the future, but right now, consumers are voting with their wallets that they don't give a #### if workers in China die due to exposure to harmful chemicals or if workers in Malaysia lose their hands in the factory that makes their t-shirts.
Click to expand...
Actually more than a few of us do give a #### that's why this is an issue.
 
NCCommish said:
The Z Machine said:
I worry more about the US economy with the manufacturing sector approaching 0 jobs.With this credit crunch and the evaporation of wealth in the western world, I think that there will be increased pressure for durable goods, which if there is no infrastructure in place to produce those goods will pose a large problem for the US. I think we're reaping what we've sown over the last 20-30 years in more ways than one, the above being only a small percentage.I would have to agree with premise of the articles posted, that no matter my preference on what job constitutes the minimum labor standards, there will be people throughout the world that would be happy to fill a job with lower standards than those.Nonetheless, the things that these articles does not bring up is human rights and whether or not western companies should pay any attention to human rights. It's quite probable that the majority of western consumers don't care if human rights are being trampled "somewhere else" in the rush for the lowest cost of goods. Maybe that will change in the future, but right now, consumers are voting with their wallets that they don't give a #### if workers in China die due to exposure to harmful chemicals or if workers in Malaysia lose their hands in the factory that makes their t-shirts.
Click to expand...
Actually more than a few of us do give a #### that's why this is an issue.
Click to expand...
Absolutely, people tend to underestimate the conscious of western consumers in these issues. But it has been show several times that it is difficult for western companies to get away with this behavior due to enough people giving a ####.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Maurile Tremblay said:
Where Sweatshops Are a Dream

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: January 14, 2009

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia

Before Barack Obama and his team act on their talk about “labor standards,” I’d like to offer them a tour of the vast garbage dump here in Phnom Penh.

This is a Dante-like vision of hell. It’s a mountain of festering refuse, a half-hour hike across, emitting clouds of smoke from subterranean fires.

The miasma of toxic stink leaves you gasping, breezes batter you with filth, and even the rats look forlorn. Then the smoke parts and you come across a child ambling barefoot, searching for old plastic cups that recyclers will buy for five cents a pound. Many families actually live in shacks on this smoking garbage.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don’t exploit enough.

Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.

“I’d love to get a job in a factory,” said Pim Srey Rath, a 19-year-old woman scavenging for plastic. “At least that work is in the shade. Here is where it’s hot.”

Another woman, Vath Sam Oeun, hopes her 10-year-old boy, scavenging beside her, grows up to get a factory job, partly because she has seen other children run over by garbage trucks. Her boy has never been to a doctor or a dentist, and last bathed when he was 2, so a sweatshop job by comparison would be far more pleasant and less dangerous.

I’m glad that many Americans are repulsed by the idea of importing products made by barely paid, barely legal workers in dangerous factories. Yet sweatshops are only a symptom of poverty, not a cause, and banning them closes off one route out of poverty. At a time of tremendous economic distress and protectionist pressures, there’s a special danger that tighter labor standards will be used as an excuse to curb trade.

When I defend sweatshops, people always ask me: But would you want to work in a sweatshop? No, of course not. But I would want even less to pull a rickshaw. In the hierarchy of jobs in poor countries, sweltering at a sewing machine isn’t the bottom.

My views on sweatshops are shaped by years living in East Asia, watching as living standards soared — including those in my wife’s ancestral village in southern China — because of sweatshop jobs.

Manufacturing is one sector that can provide millions of jobs. Yet sweatshops usually go not to the poorest nations but to better-off countries with more reliable electricity and ports.

I often hear the argument: Labor standards can improve wages and working conditions, without greatly affecting the eventual retail cost of goods. That’s true. But labor standards and “living wages” have a larger impact on production costs that companies are always trying to pare. The result is to push companies to operate more capital-intensive factories in better-off nations like Malaysia, rather than labor-intensive factories in poorer countries like Ghana or Cambodia.

Cambodia has, in fact, pursued an interesting experiment by working with factories to establish decent labor standards and wages. It’s a worthwhile idea, but one result of paying above-market wages is that those in charge of hiring often demand bribes — sometimes a month’s salary — in exchange for a job. In addition, these standards add to production costs, so some factories have closed because of the global economic crisis and the difficulty of competing internationally.

The best way to help people in the poorest countries isn’t to campaign against sweatshops but to promote manufacturing there. One of the best things America could do for Africa would be to strengthen our program to encourage African imports, called AGOA, and nudge Europe to match it.

Among people who work in development, many strongly believe (but few dare say very loudly) that one of the best hopes for the poorest countries would be to build their manufacturing industries. But global campaigns against sweatshops make that less likely.

Look, I know that Americans have a hard time accepting that sweatshops can help people. But take it from 13-year-old Neuo Chanthou, who earns a bit less than $1 a day scavenging in the dump. She’s wearing a “Playboy” shirt and hat that she found amid the filth, and she worries about her sister, who lost part of her hand when a garbage truck ran over her.

“It’s dirty, hot and smelly here,” she said wistfully. “A factory is better.”
Click to expand...
The idea that someone can be made better off by having a job he wants made unavailable to him is unsound, but surprisingly widely held. Especially among people on the left.
Click to expand...
The best thing would be to drop some of the ridiculous agricultural subsidies.
 
Abashail said:
Maurile Tremblay said:
Where Sweatshops Are a Dream

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: January 14, 2009

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia

Before Barack Obama and his team act on their talk about “labor standards,” I’d like to offer them a tour of the vast garbage dump here in Phnom Penh.

This is a Dante-like vision of hell. It’s a mountain of festering refuse, a half-hour hike across, emitting clouds of smoke from subterranean fires.

The miasma of toxic stink leaves you gasping, breezes batter you with filth, and even the rats look forlorn. Then the smoke parts and you come across a child ambling barefoot, searching for old plastic cups that recyclers will buy for five cents a pound. Many families actually live in shacks on this smoking garbage.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don’t exploit enough.

Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.

“I’d love to get a job in a factory,” said Pim Srey Rath, a 19-year-old woman scavenging for plastic. “At least that work is in the shade. Here is where it’s hot.”

Another woman, Vath Sam Oeun, hopes her 10-year-old boy, scavenging beside her, grows up to get a factory job, partly because she has seen other children run over by garbage trucks. Her boy has never been to a doctor or a dentist, and last bathed when he was 2, so a sweatshop job by comparison would be far more pleasant and less dangerous.

I’m glad that many Americans are repulsed by the idea of importing products made by barely paid, barely legal workers in dangerous factories. Yet sweatshops are only a symptom of poverty, not a cause, and banning them closes off one route out of poverty. At a time of tremendous economic distress and protectionist pressures, there’s a special danger that tighter labor standards will be used as an excuse to curb trade.

When I defend sweatshops, people always ask me: But would you want to work in a sweatshop? No, of course not. But I would want even less to pull a rickshaw. In the hierarchy of jobs in poor countries, sweltering at a sewing machine isn’t the bottom.

My views on sweatshops are shaped by years living in East Asia, watching as living standards soared — including those in my wife’s ancestral village in southern China — because of sweatshop jobs.

Manufacturing is one sector that can provide millions of jobs. Yet sweatshops usually go not to the poorest nations but to better-off countries with more reliable electricity and ports.

I often hear the argument: Labor standards can improve wages and working conditions, without greatly affecting the eventual retail cost of goods. That’s true. But labor standards and “living wages” have a larger impact on production costs that companies are always trying to pare. The result is to push companies to operate more capital-intensive factories in better-off nations like Malaysia, rather than labor-intensive factories in poorer countries like Ghana or Cambodia.

Cambodia has, in fact, pursued an interesting experiment by working with factories to establish decent labor standards and wages. It’s a worthwhile idea, but one result of paying above-market wages is that those in charge of hiring often demand bribes — sometimes a month’s salary — in exchange for a job. In addition, these standards add to production costs, so some factories have closed because of the global economic crisis and the difficulty of competing internationally.

The best way to help people in the poorest countries isn’t to campaign against sweatshops but to promote manufacturing there. One of the best things America could do for Africa would be to strengthen our program to encourage African imports, called AGOA, and nudge Europe to match it.

Among people who work in development, many strongly believe (but few dare say very loudly) that one of the best hopes for the poorest countries would be to build their manufacturing industries. But global campaigns against sweatshops make that less likely.

Look, I know that Americans have a hard time accepting that sweatshops can help people. But take it from 13-year-old Neuo Chanthou, who earns a bit less than $1 a day scavenging in the dump. She’s wearing a “Playboy” shirt and hat that she found amid the filth, and she worries about her sister, who lost part of her hand when a garbage truck ran over her.

“It’s dirty, hot and smelly here,” she said wistfully. “A factory is better.”
Click to expand...
The idea that someone can be made better off by having a job he wants made unavailable to him is unsound, but surprisingly widely held. Especially among people on the left.
Click to expand...
The best thing would be to drop some of the ridiculous agricultural subsidies.
Click to expand...
Agreed, having AGOA with agricultural subsidies is really contradictory.
 
I like how the worker in Malaysia is thrown out of a decent job and into the gutter, so that the worker in Vietnam can work twice the hours while chained to his machine.

 
Abashail said:
Maurile Tremblay said:
Where Sweatshops Are a Dream

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: January 14, 2009

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia

Before Barack Obama and his team act on their talk about "labor standards," I'd like to offer them a tour of the vast garbage dump here in Phnom Penh.

This is a Dante-like vision of hell. It's a mountain of festering refuse, a half-hour hike across, emitting clouds of smoke from subterranean fires.

The miasma of toxic stink leaves you gasping, breezes batter you with filth, and even the rats look forlorn. Then the smoke parts and you come across a child ambling barefoot, searching for old plastic cups that recyclers will buy for five cents a pound. Many families actually live in shacks on this smoking garbage.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don't exploit enough.

Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.

"I'd love to get a job in a factory," said Pim Srey Rath, a 19-year-old woman scavenging for plastic. "At least that work is in the shade. Here is where it's hot."

Another woman, Vath Sam Oeun, hopes her 10-year-old boy, scavenging beside her, grows up to get a factory job, partly because she has seen other children run over by garbage trucks. Her boy has never been to a doctor or a dentist, and last bathed when he was 2, so a sweatshop job by comparison would be far more pleasant and less dangerous.

I'm glad that many Americans are repulsed by the idea of importing products made by barely paid, barely legal workers in dangerous factories. Yet sweatshops are only a symptom of poverty, not a cause, and banning them closes off one route out of poverty. At a time of tremendous economic distress and protectionist pressures, there's a special danger that tighter labor standards will be used as an excuse to curb trade.

When I defend sweatshops, people always ask me: But would you want to work in a sweatshop? No, of course not. But I would want even less to pull a rickshaw. In the hierarchy of jobs in poor countries, sweltering at a sewing machine isn't the bottom.

My views on sweatshops are shaped by years living in East Asia, watching as living standards soared — including those in my wife's ancestral village in southern China — because of sweatshop jobs.

Manufacturing is one sector that can provide millions of jobs. Yet sweatshops usually go not to the poorest nations but to better-off countries with more reliable electricity and ports.

I often hear the argument: Labor standards can improve wages and working conditions, without greatly affecting the eventual retail cost of goods. That's true. But labor standards and "living wages" have a larger impact on production costs that companies are always trying to pare. The result is to push companies to operate more capital-intensive factories in better-off nations like Malaysia, rather than labor-intensive factories in poorer countries like Ghana or Cambodia.

Cambodia has, in fact, pursued an interesting experiment by working with factories to establish decent labor standards and wages. It's a worthwhile idea, but one result of paying above-market wages is that those in charge of hiring often demand bribes — sometimes a month's salary — in exchange for a job. In addition, these standards add to production costs, so some factories have closed because of the global economic crisis and the difficulty of competing internationally.

The best way to help people in the poorest countries isn't to campaign against sweatshops but to promote manufacturing there. One of the best things America could do for Africa would be to strengthen our program to encourage African imports, called AGOA, and nudge Europe to match it.

Among people who work in development, many strongly believe (but few dare say very loudly) that one of the best hopes for the poorest countries would be to build their manufacturing industries. But global campaigns against sweatshops make that less likely.

Look, I know that Americans have a hard time accepting that sweatshops can help people. But take it from 13-year-old Neuo Chanthou, who earns a bit less than $1 a day scavenging in the dump. She's wearing a "Playboy" shirt and hat that she found amid the filth, and she worries about her sister, who lost part of her hand when a garbage truck ran over her.

"It's dirty, hot and smelly here," she said wistfully. "A factory is better."
Click to expand...
The idea that someone can be made better off by having a job he wants made unavailable to him is unsound, but surprisingly widely held. Especially among people on the left.
Click to expand...
The best thing would be to drop some of the ridiculous agricultural subsidies.
Click to expand...
I support this.
 
I dunno, this is kinda a :P for me. This article is pretty right on.

The term "sweatshop" is so loaded. It's normally bandied about by western liberals who are so far removed from anything close to the meaning of the word that it becomes somewhat meaningless.

If we see the "sweatshops" moving to Africa, controlled by offices in China (or the US), I think we can safely say we've progressed in this world.

 
snitwitch said:
I dunno, this is kinda a :P for me. This article is pretty right on.The term "sweatshop" is so loaded. It's normally bandied about by western liberals who are so far removed from anything close to the meaning of the word that it becomes somewhat meaningless.If we see the "sweatshops" moving to Africa, controlled by offices in China (or the US), I think we can safely say we've progressed in this world.
Click to expand...
Thats exactly what will happen when the Asians get tired of getting screwed and want real money. Just like is already happening in India.
 
NCCommish said:
snitwitch said:
I dunno, this is kinda a :P for me. This article is pretty right on.The term "sweatshop" is so loaded. It's normally bandied about by western liberals who are so far removed from anything close to the meaning of the word that it becomes somewhat meaningless.If we see the "sweatshops" moving to Africa, controlled by offices in China (or the US), I think we can safely say we've progressed in this world.
Click to expand...
Thats exactly what will happen when the Asians get tired of getting screwed and want real money. Just like is already happening in India.
Click to expand...
What do you think enabled India to get to the point where the people can do more than just be a cheap source of labor? The third world countries that have succeeded in the global marketplace are the ones that allowed free trade and encouraged foreign investment (in most cases this means low cost manufacturing).
 
AAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!

I hate this. I hate seeing that a lifetime of activism is worth ####, because there's no competing against the power of the media.

And just how many of you who are wondering aloud "how many of the pie in the sky liberals have actually been to the third world," have actually, yourself, been to the third world? How many of you have spent time in one of these ####hole factories you're so anxious to promote in the name of humanity? How many of you have spent considerable time trying to understand how these people came to be living on garbage dumps to begin with, so that now, instead of a dignified life, they must choose between living on refuse versus living in slavery? Some of us have done all of this, and we don't ##### about it just for the sake of #####ing.

Big Western financial institutions, under the auspices of IMF or World Bank, have bought the governments of virtually every third world country on the globe. They went to (or installed at gunpoint) corrupt governments and then sold them a bill of goods, promising them first world standards of living in exchange for promises to pay back unfathomable loans at crippling interest.

When they inevitably couldn't pay, the Western powers went in under the farce that masquerades as international law and paved over functional, local subsistence economies. They set up industries where they were guaranteed infinite labour at practically zero cost, and recouped their "losses" by proxy (and many times over) through the industries they set up in the wake of their financial destruction.

With the local economy destroyed, the people are now doomed to either live on the detritus of the city full of slave workers, or to become slave workers themselves. The only ones who thrive are those installed by the West, who have sold out their countrymen at the behest of the West, or the westerners themselves who are living there to oversee the whole ugly premise. Traditional ways of living like farming, fishing, and crafts have been eradicated by (1) an insatiable demand for sweatshop labour, (2) agricultural subsidies that guarantee no local farmer can make a living, and (3) well-armed governments propped up by the West at the same time the West publicly denounces them at home for P.R. reasons.

With no alternatives for survival left, whole populations have been forced into ####ty lives, and Americans and Euros can pontificate smugly about how much better their lives in corporate slavery are than they would be if the factories closed. And here's the sickest part. Because of how we've crippled them, they're right! It's true because we've systematically eradicated any hope they had of choosing better, simpler lives for themselves. All that's left is slavery, or slow, uncomfortable living death. Well, that, or GIVING THEM THEIR ####ING LIVES BACK.

The whole ####house is built upon the bogus economics of the West. At its heart, the science of economics is very real. People must produce tangible goods through sweat and back breaking labour. And there is only so much reward to go around. But we in the west don't want to work for our share of the production. We'd much rather let everyone else do the labour, AND reap not just our fair share of the reward, but hundreds of times our fair share.

We console ourselves with titles like lawyer, manager, consultant, IT pro, and financier. But all the while, we produce nothing tangible. We've enabled ourselves with an economy that allows us to sit on our ###, hold meetings, or surf the web, while we pretend to be economically valid. And we can do it because, ultimately, we have the guns. We can ship the horrors of economic blight and inequity overseas where the few Western people with consciences can't see them, and thus we can all pretend they don't really exist, and that our way is not only fair, but "the best way in the world." We claim we're legit because of a bogus corruption of the idea of supply and demand. "I provide a service people will pay for!" But this is only true because we have a surplus of capital we've stolen from the people who honestly laboured for it.

If America got what it earned, it would starve.

Screw it. It's not worth arguing this point in this country. The POV that capitalism honestly works, that we ought to be held up as an example of what a country can be, that we don't exist the way we exist ONLY through the constant use of force around the world...it's so drilled into us from birth that only those who go digging for the truth ever wake up to the fact that our way of life is, in many ways, despicable.

I'm going to be sick. ### #### the people who are smart enough to think, but don't give enough of a #### to bother.

 
Scotch Rocks said:
AAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!I hate this. I hate seeing that a lifetime of activism is worth ####, because there's no competing against the power of the media.And just how many of you who are wondering aloud "how many of the pie in the sky liberals have actually been to the third world," have actually, yourself, been to the third world? How many of you have spent time in one of these ####hole factories you're so anxious to promote in the name of humanity? How many of you have spent considerable time trying to understand how these people came to be living on garbage dumps to begin with, so that now, instead of a dignified life, they must choose between living on refuse versus living in slavery? Some of us have done all of this, and we don't ##### about it just for the sake of #####ing. Big Western financial institutions, under the auspices of IMF or World Bank, have bought the governments of virtually every third world country on the globe. They went to (or installed at gunpoint) corrupt governments and then sold them a bill of goods, promising them first world standards of living in exchange for promises to pay back unfathomable loans at crippling interest.When they inevitably couldn't pay, the Western powers went in under the farce that masquerades as international law and paved over functional, local subsistence economies. They set up industries where they were guaranteed infinite labour at practically zero cost, and recouped their "losses" by proxy (and many times over) through the industries they set up in the wake of their financial destruction.With the local economy destroyed, the people are now doomed to either live on the detritus of the city full of slave workers, or to become slave workers themselves. The only ones who thrive are those installed by the West, who have sold out their countrymen at the behest of the West, or the westerners themselves who are living there to oversee the whole ugly premise. Traditional ways of living like farming, fishing, and crafts have been eradicated by (1) an insatiable demand for sweatshop labour, (2) agricultural subsidies that guarantee no local farmer can make a living, and (3) well-armed governments propped up by the West at the same time the West publicly denounces them at home for P.R. reasons.With no alternatives for survival left, whole populations have been forced into ####ty lives, and Americans and Euros can pontificate smugly about how much better their lives in corporate slavery are than they would be if the factories closed. And here's the sickest part. Because of how we've crippled them, they're right! It's true because we've systematically eradicated any hope they had of choosing better, simpler lives for themselves. All that's left is slavery, or slow, uncomfortable living death. Well, that, or GIVING THEM THEIR ####ING LIVES BACK.The whole ####house is built upon the bogus economics of the West. At its heart, the science of economics is very real. People must produce tangible goods through sweat and back breaking labour. And there is only so much reward to go around. But we in the west don't want to work for our share of the production. We'd much rather let everyone else do the labour, AND reap not just our fair share of the reward, but hundreds of times our fair share.We console ourselves with titles like lawyer, manager, consultant, IT pro, and financier. But all the while, we produce nothing tangible. We've enabled ourselves with an economy that allows us to sit on our ###, hold meetings, or surf the web, while we pretend to be economically valid. And we can do it because, ultimately, we have the guns. We can ship the horrors of economic blight and inequity overseas where the few Western people with consciences can't see them, and thus we can all pretend they don't really exist, and that our way is not only fair, but "the best way in the world." We claim we're legit because of a bogus corruption of the idea of supply and demand. "I provide a service people will pay for!" But this is only true because we have a surplus of capital we've stolen from the people who honestly laboured for it.If America got what it earned, it would starve.Screw it. It's not worth arguing this point in this country. The POV that capitalism honestly works, that we ought to be held up as an example of what a country can be, that we don't exist the way we exist ONLY through the constant use of force around the world...it's so drilled into us from birth that only those who go digging for the truth ever wake up to the fact that our way of life is, in many ways, despicable.I'm going to be sick. ### #### the people who are smart enough to think, but don't give enough of a #### to bother.
Click to expand...
I see.
 
This is really a great article.

Sweatshops

EconSoc held a debate between a couple of economists and a couple of philosophers on the merits of sweatshops. My opening salvo is copied below, though the actual delivery truncated things somewhat. Enjoy!

Sweatshops and the Nirvana Fallacy.

I’m a big Simpsons fan. A few seasons ago, Lisa complained about how mean Bart was to her and wished he could be nicer and not wreck her stuff and stick up for her at school. She then shook her head and sighed that she might as well wish for a pony while she’s at it. In other words, wishing her brother to be nicer can’t make it so.

I think everyone here would prefer a world in which everyone is richer, where all kids have opportunities at least as good as those that kids here in New Zealand have, where nobody has to work more than an 8 hour day to make a living. So when we look out into the world and see places where folks no less morally worthy than ourselves work under worse conditions than us for less rewards, we recoil. And we want to make things better. It’s laudable that we care about others: Adam Smith, as much moral philosopher as economist, called it the sympathetic principle. We imagine ourselves in the position of the other and we make assessments on that basis. But we make a mistake when we imagine ourselves in the place of a sweatshop worker in Southeast Asia or Central America and imagine that, but for the existence of oppressive sweatshops, these folks could enjoy a standard of living like ours. We’re comparing their conditions with our relevant alternatives, and reasonably finding them wanting from that standard, when we ought instead to be comparing their conditions to their relevant alternatives. Comparing their conditions with our relevant alternatives, well, we might as well be wishing for ponies. Or, as economist Harold Demsetz put it, we’re committing the Nirvana Fallacy.

Harold Demsetz warned in a beautiful piece of economic writing back in 1969 against what he called Nirvana Theorizing. He said there that we can’t say markets fail just because they deliver outcomes that we don’t like; rather, we have to compare the outcomes of markets to real-world achievable alternatives. We can’t just assume Nirvana on the other side of the scale. And, most of the arguments against sweatshops effectively assume Nirvana on the other side: if only we were to ban sweatshops or, more realistically, impose bans on the import of products produced by sweatshop labour, the employees would suddenly be freed to pursue fulfilling careers or to go and get that Bachelor’s in Cultural Studies that they’ve always wanted. Their kids would be in great schools provided by their governments instead of working in the factory with their parents. And they’d all have ponies. It’s only the evil sweatshops that are keeping them from achieving their dreams. If only it were that easy. For proper comparative institutional analysis, we really have to look at how working in a sweatshop compares with what else these workers could be doing.

Now, we could take a strong aprioristic argument and say that the very fact that workers in these countries choose working in the factories means that factory work has to be better than their next best alternative as they judge it. And, barring cases of prison-labour in China, we’d be right in doing so. Some folks could raise arguments about parents forcing their kids into that kind of work, but they’d have to be making the assumption that parents in these countries don’t care much about their kids and are choosing options that make the parents better off and the kids worse off: it’s more than a little paternalistic of us to think that we care more about other peoples’ kids than those people do themselves. But some folks could make that argument about child labour in sweatshops.

Instead of relying on the aprioristic argument, let’s look at some actual evidence. What are the relevant alternatives for folks choosing to work in sweatshops? Well, some economists have actually done that. Steve Hickson will be talking about a few such studies in a few minutes; I’ll highlight a few others. Benjamin Powell was a classmate of mine in grad school. He’s recently finished some research looking at standards of living associated with sweatshop work. Powell looked through the US media for reporting on exploitative sweatshop labour. He found 43 cases mentioned. He took the wage rates reported in those very articles and compared them to the average national income per worker in the countries where the factories are located: In 9 of the 11 countries, average reported sweatshop wages – the wages reported in the stories complaining about the sweatshops -- matched or bettered national average wages for a 70 hour work week. In countries like Cambodia, Haiti, Nicaragua and Honduras, “sweatshop” wages were more than double the country’s average income. Powell then compared average wages in the apparel industry with average national wages and again found that workers earning the average wage earn more than the average national income at even a 40 hour work week for 8 of 10 countries where he could find data: 9 of 10 on a 50 hour week and 10 on 10 for a 70 hour week. Recall that in countries like Bangladesh, about 80% of the population lives on less than $2 per day.

So, while the wages paid in sweatshops are pretty poor by our standards, they’re very good by comparison to other alternative employment that folks in those countries could get. But what about other working conditions? 70 hours a week sounds like a lot: surely the workers would be happier working only 40 hours per week. Nicolas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn received a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting on China. They report in the New York Times Magazine on sweatshops in China. They there find folks very happy to be working 10 hour days, and finding it a plus that the factory that they work at allows them to work seven days.

The others we talked to all seemed to regard it as a plus that the factory allowed them to work long hours. Indeed, some had sought out this factory precisely because it offered them the chance to work more.

In one case, western pressure to reduce work hours resulted in riots and protest at the company: people wanted to earn more money to improve their kids’ lives and were furious at being denied the opportunity. Many of the kids currently employed in sweatshops would otherwise be employed in agriculture, working on small farms with high risk of malarial exposure and even worse working conditions than those found in the factories. For others, the relevant alternative is even worse than the farm: I’ll come to that shortly.Some folks argue that they don’t want to ban sweatshop imports, they just want to mandate that imported products be allowed only if the sweatshops live up to certain labour conditions. But requiring higher standards raises the total costs of labour in third world countries: some factories will employ fewer people, and others will shut down. It’s no surprise that the most vocal advocates of high labour standard imposition are western labour unions who don’t really care about poor people abroad but instead just want to price the competition out of business. A few workers who get to keep their jobs will be made better off by these regulations, but the folks who are currently working in the sweatshops are already the winners. The losers are the folks who never get a chance to work in a sweatshop.

More recently, Kristof’s been reporting on the conditions in a garbage dump in Phnom Penh. What’s that got to do with sweatshops? Well, you probably didn’t know it, but lots of people live and work in garbage dumps in third world countries, scavenging through the trash looking for scraps of metal or old plastic cups that they can sell to recyclers. It’s terrible work. Writes Kristof this January in the New York Times:

Another woman, Vath Sam Oeun, hopes her 10-year-old boy, scavenging beside her, grows up to get a factory job, partly because she has seen other children run over by garbage trucks. Her boy has never been to a doctor or a dentist, and last bathed when he was 2, so a sweatshop job by comparison would be far more pleasant and less dangerous.

I’m glad that many Americans are repulsed by the idea of importing products made by barely paid, barely legal workers in dangerous factories. Yet sweatshops are only a symptom of poverty, not a cause, and banning them closes off one route out of poverty. At a time of tremendous economic distress and protectionist pressures, there’s a special danger that tighter labor standards will be used as an excuse to curb trade.

When I defend sweatshops, people always ask me: But would you want to work in a sweatshop? No, of course not. But I would want even less to pull a rickshaw. In the hierarchy of jobs in poor countries, sweltering at a sewing machine isn’t the bottom.

Kids are born, live, and die in the garbage dumps, and know no life except walking barefoot through rubbish looking for scraps. For these folks, work in a sweatshop is a dream. However bad conditions in the factories sound to us, when we compare them to our comfy offices, they’re almost infinitely better than self-employment in the garbage dumps. And, the garbage dump is the relevant alternative for a lot of folks. For others, it’s worse. Radley Balko reports on some of the costs of anti-sweatshop protests. One German company bowed to popular pressure and laid off 50,000 child garment workers in Bangladesh. Some of you would have cheered on hearing it. But when Oxfam followed up, they found that thousands had turned to prostitution, crime, or starved to death. In 1995, anti-sweatshop protesters led Nike, Reebok and others to close down soccer-ball and other garment manufacturing plants in Pakistan; mean family income dropped considerably; University of Colorado economist Keith Maskus found that many of the child labourers were later found begging or getting bought and sold in international prostitution rings. What happens when we talk about legislation banning the import of goods produced using child labour? Let’s look at the 1997 UNICEF report that details the effects of the Harkin Bill.
The Harkin Bill, which was introduced into the US Congress in 1992 with the laudable aim of prohibiting the import of products made by children under 15, is a case in point. As of September 1996, the Bill had yet to find its way onto the statute books. But the mere threat of such a measure panicked the garment industry of Bangladesh, 60 per cent of whose products — some $900 million in value — were exported to the US in 1994.8 Child workers, most of them girls, were summarily dismissed from the garment factories. A study sponsored by international organizations took the unusual step of tracing some of these children to see what happened to them after their dismissal. Some were found working in more hazardous situations, in unsafe workshops where they were paid less, or in prostitution.

We imagine that if we could only ban sweatshops, we’d be putting kids into school. We’re deluding ourselves. Every little bit of smug satisfaction you get by working to ban sweatshop imports, or by turning your nose up at products produced in those factories, comes at a cost: the marginal employee in a sweatshop is sent back to his next best alternative. UNICEF reports that only a tiny minority of child labourers work in the export sector: most hawk goods on the streets, engage in local production, or work at rag picking. Conditions in the export factories are better. If you’ve been working to ban imported products produced by child labour or in sweatshops, you are buying warm fuzzy feelings at the cost of pushing some of the world’s most vulnerable children into even worse conditions: the garbage dump, begging, child prostitution and starvation. It’s no good to complain that that isn’t what you wanted: you’re just wishing for ponies. It’s no good to complain that foreign governments should be ensuring that every child is in school: they can’t afford it, and the most we can do is contribute to charities that subsidize local education in third world countries. It’s no good to complain that foreign countries should crack down on child prostitution: of course they should, but they haven’t the resources. The best we can do is assist charities that work to get kids off the streets. If you care about poor children in the poorest part of the world, don’t work to make their lives worse. Work for the charities that are out there trying to help these kids, like Canodia – they’re an organization that runs orphanages for kids rescued from the garbage dumps. If you’re working in the anti-sweatshop movement, consider such donations as an offset for the likely effects of your activism, because the likely effects of your efforts is to push kids into the garbage dumps, or worse.It’s easy to imagine perfect worlds where there aren’t any sweatshops. But getting rid of sweatshops in the world we have makes the families that work there worse off. At minimum, we should do no harm. Working to ban sweatshops does harm. Stop it.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Here's my theory about why liberals are often the ones boycotting goods produced by sweatshops.

Normally, liberals try to be the champions of the poor.

In the U.S., the major party that most liberals identify with is the Democrats. That's because Democrats, more than Republicans, tend to champion liberal ideals. And I think there's a tendency for political homerism -- liberals are more apt to accept Democratic positions just because they come from Democrats (while conservatives are more apt to accept Republican positions just because they come from Republicans.)

But the Democrats don't always champion liberal ideals. Sometimes -- like Republicans -- they just cater to special interests. That's not a criticism of Democrats; it's just the reality of how our political system works. If you want to have a chance to get elected, you need campaign contributions, and to get campaign contributions, you have to cater to special interests. It's the American way.

Republicans and Democrats do not sell their special interest politicking as special interest politicking -- they sell it as what's good for the country as a whole. We need the farm bill not because Archer Daniels Midland gives politicians lots of money, but because we need to stabilize corn prices for the good of the country. We need to bail out Wall Street firms not because those companies give politicians lots of money, but to prevent the financial collapse of the entire nation. And so on.

Liberals and conservatives alike can get suckered by that kind of rhetoric when it comes from the Democrats or Republicans, respectively, since they are a sympathetic source.

I think that's what has happened, generally, on the issue of sweatshops.

American labor unions are strongly opposed to imported goods made in sweatshops. They're cheaper competition, and eliminating the competition benefits unions. Labor unions also tend to give a lot of money to the Democratic party, and thus Democratic politicians often take up positions favored by labor unions -- selling it not as what's best for labor unions, but as what's best for the world. A lot of liberals are sympathetic to such messages when they come from Democratic politicians. Democratic politicians smear sweatshops on behalf of labor unions, and a lot of liberals therefore oppose imported goods made in sweatshops. Because, without giving any credence to empirical evidence (or widely accepted economic theory), boycotting sweatshops is good for the world.

A true liberal, though -- in my estimation -- should look past special-interest-driven political rhetoric and look at what's really good for the world. And that involves studying the world -- the real world -- and taking stock of what consequences different policies have had on actual people who are actually affected by them.

When it comes to sweatshops, I don't think the evidence is ambiguous. I think it's pretty clear that boycotting sweatshops has sharply negative effects -- including starvation and sometimes death -- on the poorest people in the world. That's something true liberals should oppose even if labor unions don't like it.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Maurile Tremblay said:
This is really a great article.

Sweatshops

EconSoc held a debate between a couple of economists and a couple of philosophers on the merits of sweatshops. My opening salvo is copied below, though the actual delivery truncated things somewhat. Enjoy!

.....

It’s easy to imagine perfect worlds where there aren’t any sweatshops. But getting rid of sweatshops in the world we have makes the families that work there worse off. At minimum, we should do no harm. Working to ban sweatshops does harm. Stop it.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Great posting
 
Maurile Tremblay said:
A true liberal, though -- in my estimation -- should look past special-interest-driven political rhetoric and look at what's really good for the world. And that involves studying the world -- the real world -- and taking stock of what consequences different policies have had on actual people who are actually affected by them.
Click to expand...
I agree.
 
Thomas Sowell

"Low-Wage Costa Ricans Make Baseballs for Millionaires."That was the headline on one of those New York Times "news" stories that continued its recent tradition of disguised editorials. The headline said it all but the story ran on and on anyway, with details and quotes that added nothing to the familiar story that Third World workers don't earn nearly as much money as most Americans, even when they work for rich American companies.Perhaps the best refutation of the implied message of this "news" story also appeared in the New York Times, in a frankly labeled op-ed piece by the paper's own Nicholas D. Kristof. Writing from Cambodia, Kristof reported: "Here in Cambodia factory jobs are in such demand that workers usually have to bribe a factory insider with a month's salary just to get hired."The workers in Cambodia receive even lower wages than those in Costa Rica. But the difference is that the report from Cambodia spelled out what the local workers' alternatives were and how anxious they are to get the jobs denounced by intellectuals and politicians in affluent countries."Nhep Chanda averages 75 cents a day for her efforts. For her, the idea of being exploited in a garment factory -- working only six days a week, inside instead of in the broiling sun, for up to $2 a day -- is a dream."By and large, multinational companies pay about double the local wages in Third World countries. As for "exploitation," the vast majority of American investment overseas goes to high-wage countries, not low-wage countries.Why are these international capitalists passing up supposedly golden opportunities for exploitation? Because they understand economics better than most intellectuals and politicians, who are content to score cheap points, without worrying about the logic or the consequences.If outsiders succeed in pressuring or forcing multinational companies to pay higher wages, that will make it more economical for those companies to relocate many of their operations to more affluent countries, where the higher productivity of the workers there will cover the higher wage rates.Net result: Third World workers will be worse off for having lost better jobs than most of them can find locally. Meanwhile, Western intellectuals and politicians will be congratulating themselves for having ended exploitation. At the heart of all this is a confusion between the vagaries of fate and the sins of man. All of us wish that workers in Costa Rica and Cambodia, not to mention other poor countries, were able to earn higher pay and live better lives. But wishing will not make it so and causing them to lose their jobs will not help.It is tragic that people in some societies simply have not had the same opportunities to develop more valuable skills and that those societies have not had economic and political systems that promote economic progress comparable to that in most Western countries.Low pay is one symptom of that fact -- and changing the symptom will not change the underlying problem, which is that the people in such countries got a raw deal from fate, history, geography or culture. But the left attempts to blame Western employers who are providing these workers with better options than they had before.The left-wing spin is that the poor are poor because the rich are rich. That opens the door for a big power-grab by the left in the name of "fairness" or "social justice" or whatever other rhetoric resonates with the unwary and the ill-informed.Unfortunately, this theory does not also resonate with the facts. Whether domestically or internationally, investors looking for the highest rates of return usually steer clear of poor areas and put their money where there are people with more advanced skills, living in more prosperous countries, even if they have to pay much higher salaries in such countries.The United States, for example, has long invested more in Canada than in all of poverty-stricken sub-Saharan Africa, where wage rates are a fraction of Canadian wage rates. If the facts mattered -- and if the poor really mattered to their supposed saviors -- the implications of that would have been understood long ago.
Click to expand...
 
cstu said:
People who are against sweatshops probably have never been to a third world country. If they had then they'd know that these jobs and their pay, while horrific to most of us, are a blessing to the people who rely on them to survive. I agree that there should be minimum level of worker safety required but to complain about the jobs based solely on them making $1 a day is ridiculous.
Click to expand...
One dollar a day.And to think Latrell Sprewell was insulted by a three year 21 million dollar contract..and turned it down.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thomas Sowell

Those who vent their moral indignation over low pay for Third World workers employed by multinational companies ignore the plain fact that these workers' employers are usually supplying them with better opportunities than they had before, while those who are morally indignant on their behalf are providing them with nothing.Some of the more rational among the indignant crusaders for "social justice" may concede that the employers are usually offering better pay than Third World workers would have had otherwise. But they see no reason why wealthy corporations should not pay wages more like the wages paid in affluent countries.There are at least two reason why not — one economic and one moral.The economic reason is that output per man-hour in Third World countries is usually some fraction of what it is in Western industrial nations such as the United States. Pay rates raised without regard to productivity are a virtual guarantee of unemployment, whether it is done in the name of ending "exploitation" in the Third World or providing "a living wage" in the United States.Most modern industrial nations have minimum wage laws but those with higher minimum wage rates or additional workers benefits tend to have higher unemployment rates.Germany, for example, has perhaps the most employer-provided benefits mandated by government. These benefits include such huge severance pay that firing anyone is likely to be uneconomical. The costs of these benefits have been estimated as roughly double those of employer-provided benefits in the United States.If you think that is great for the workers, remember that there is no free lunch, for workers or anybody else. The high cost of labor and the difficulties of firing anyone mean that employers are reluctant to hire, even when times are booming.It is often cheaper to expand output by using more labor-saving machines, or to work the existing workforce overtime, rather than hire more employees. While Americans become alarmed when unemployment reaches 6 percent, double-digit unemployment has been common in Germany.At one time, neither Switzerland nor Hong Kong had minimum wage laws. Last year, The Economist magazine reported: "Switzerland's unemployment rate neared a five-year high of 3.9 percent in February." For most countries that have minimum wage laws, 3.9 percent would be a five-year low, if not wholly unattainable.Back when Hong Kong was a British colony and its wage rates were set by supply and demand, the Wall Street Journal reported that its unemployment rate was less than 2 percent. Then, after China took over Hong Kong and mandated various worker benefits — which add to labor costs, the same as higher wage rates — Hong Kong's unemployment rate went over 8 percent.This was not high by European standards but it was unprecedented for Hong Kong. There is no free lunch in any part of the world.Why cannot rich multinational corporations simply absorb the losses of paying Third World workers more than their productivity is worth? Why shouldn't they?First of all, multi-billion-dollar corporations are seldom owned by multi-billionaires. They are usually owned by thousands, if not millions, of stockholders, most of whom are nowhere close to being billionaires. Some may be teachers, nurses, mechanics, clerks and others who own stock indirectly by paying into pension funds that buy these stocks.Indeed, the average incomes of all the stockholders — direct and indirect — may be no greater than the average incomes of those intellectuals, politicians, and others who want them to absorb the costs of higher pay in the Third World.But if teachers, nurses, mechanics, and clerks are supposed to accept less money to live on in their retirement years, why shouldn't similar donations to the Third World come from reporters for the New York Times or Ivy League professors, movie stars or others who are morally indignant?Or is this just one of many things that the morally indignant think is worth having others pay for, but not worth enough to pay for themselves?
Click to expand...
 
Worked Up

by Steven Landsburg

February 10, 2010

Back in 1992, a ten year old Bangladeshi girl named Moyna was one of 50,000 children who lost their jobs in the wake of protectionist legislation sponsored by the execrable union-backed Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. How does Moyna feel about Americans now? “They loathe us, don’t they?”, she says. “We are poor and not well educated, so they simply despise us. That is why they shut the factories down.” (The quote is from this report by the Bangladeshi activist Shahidul Alam.)

Probably Moyna’s only half right. Tom Harkin doesn’t loathe her; he just doesn’t give a damn about her. Ditto for the union goons and the American business owners who tout their made-in-America, untouched-by-Third-World-hands product lines. Those people (by and large) aren’t hateful; they’re just mercenary and callous. It’s their customers–the ones who would cheerfully pay extra for the privilege of supporting a $30-an-hour middle class American instead of a struggling $1-an-hour Bangladeshi—who are motivated by something like hate.

If hate is too strong a word, then let’s just call it bigotry, which is, after all, what it is. Not all favoritism is bigotry; it is natural and unobjectionable to care more about your family than your friends, more about your friends than your neighbors, and more about your neighbors than a stranger in the next town. Unfortunately, it is perhaps equally natural to care more about strangers who happen to speak your language and share your skin color than strangers who look and sound a little, well, strange. So bigotry is natural. All the more reason to resist it.

If bigotry isn’t the culprit, what is? Misguided concern for Moyna? Maybe so, though it’s hard for me to imagine concern quite that misguided. As Moyna could tell you, poverty sucks. As any historian could tell you, no society has ever pulled itself out of poverty without putting its children to work. Back in the early 19th century, when Americans were as poor as Bangladeshis are now, we were sending our children to work at about the same rate as the Bangladeshis are today. Having had the good fortune to get rich first, Americans can afford to give Bangladeshis a helping hand, and there are plenty of good ways for us to do that. Denying Third Worlders the very opportunities our ancestors embraced, whether through fullfledged boycotts or by insisting on health and safety standards they can’t afford to meet, is not one of those ways.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Scotch Rocks said:
AAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!I hate this. I hate seeing that a lifetime of activism is worth ####, because there's no competing against the power of the media.And just how many of you who are wondering aloud "how many of the pie in the sky liberals have actually been to the third world," have actually, yourself, been to the third world? How many of you have spent time in one of these ####hole factories you're so anxious to promote in the name of humanity? How many of you have spent considerable time trying to understand how these people came to be living on garbage dumps to begin with, so that now, instead of a dignified life, they must choose between living on refuse versus living in slavery? Some of us have done all of this, and we don't ##### about it just for the sake of #####ing. Big Western financial institutions, under the auspices of IMF or World Bank, have bought the governments of virtually every third world country on the globe. They went to (or installed at gunpoint) corrupt governments and then sold them a bill of goods, promising them first world standards of living in exchange for promises to pay back unfathomable loans at crippling interest.When they inevitably couldn't pay, the Western powers went in under the farce that masquerades as international law and paved over functional, local subsistence economies. They set up industries where they were guaranteed infinite labour at practically zero cost, and recouped their "losses" by proxy (and many times over) through the industries they set up in the wake of their financial destruction.With the local economy destroyed, the people are now doomed to either live on the detritus of the city full of slave workers, or to become slave workers themselves. The only ones who thrive are those installed by the West, who have sold out their countrymen at the behest of the West, or the westerners themselves who are living there to oversee the whole ugly premise. Traditional ways of living like farming, fishing, and crafts have been eradicated by (1) an insatiable demand for sweatshop labour, (2) agricultural subsidies that guarantee no local farmer can make a living, and (3) well-armed governments propped up by the West at the same time the West publicly denounces them at home for P.R. reasons.With no alternatives for survival left, whole populations have been forced into ####ty lives, and Americans and Euros can pontificate smugly about how much better their lives in corporate slavery are than they would be if the factories closed. And here's the sickest part. Because of how we've crippled them, they're right! It's true because we've systematically eradicated any hope they had of choosing better, simpler lives for themselves. All that's left is slavery, or slow, uncomfortable living death. Well, that, or GIVING THEM THEIR ####ING LIVES BACK.The whole ####house is built upon the bogus economics of the West. At its heart, the science of economics is very real. People must produce tangible goods through sweat and back breaking labour. And there is only so much reward to go around. But we in the west don't want to work for our share of the production. We'd much rather let everyone else do the labour, AND reap not just our fair share of the reward, but hundreds of times our fair share.We console ourselves with titles like lawyer, manager, consultant, IT pro, and financier. But all the while, we produce nothing tangible. We've enabled ourselves with an economy that allows us to sit on our ###, hold meetings, or surf the web, while we pretend to be economically valid. And we can do it because, ultimately, we have the guns. We can ship the horrors of economic blight and inequity overseas where the few Western people with consciences can't see them, and thus we can all pretend they don't really exist, and that our way is not only fair, but "the best way in the world." We claim we're legit because of a bogus corruption of the idea of supply and demand. "I provide a service people will pay for!" But this is only true because we have a surplus of capital we've stolen from the people who honestly laboured for it.If America got what it earned, it would starve.Screw it. It's not worth arguing this point in this country. The POV that capitalism honestly works, that we ought to be held up as an example of what a country can be, that we don't exist the way we exist ONLY through the constant use of force around the world...it's so drilled into us from birth that only those who go digging for the truth ever wake up to the fact that our way of life is, in many ways, despicable.I'm going to be sick. ### #### the people who are smart enough to think, but don't give enough of a #### to bother.
Click to expand...
So, you are saying there is a conspiracy by the West to make the rest of the world suffer so we can thrive and eat caviar?
 
The idea that someone can be made better off by having a job he wants made unavailable to him is unsound, but surprisingly widely held. Especially among people on the left.
Click to expand...
Good posting, MT. I've been saying the same thing for a long time, but it really struck home when I actually visited a 3rd world country and actually saw what people were happy to do for very little money.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Scotch Rocks said:
AAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!I hate this. I hate seeing that a lifetime of activism is worth ####, because there's no competing against the power of the media.And just how many of you who are wondering aloud "how many of the pie in the sky liberals have actually been to the third world," have actually, yourself, been to the third world? How many of you have spent time in one of these ####hole factories you're so anxious to promote in the name of humanity? How many of you have spent considerable time trying to understand how these people came to be living on garbage dumps to begin with, so that now, instead of a dignified life, they must choose between living on refuse versus living in slavery? Some of us have done all of this, and we don't ##### about it just for the sake of #####ing. Big Western financial institutions, under the auspices of IMF or World Bank, have bought the governments of virtually every third world country on the globe. They went to (or installed at gunpoint) corrupt governments and then sold them a bill of goods, promising them first world standards of living in exchange for promises to pay back unfathomable loans at crippling interest.When they inevitably couldn't pay, the Western powers went in under the farce that masquerades as international law and paved over functional, local subsistence economies. They set up industries where they were guaranteed infinite labour at practically zero cost, and recouped their "losses" by proxy (and many times over) through the industries they set up in the wake of their financial destruction.With the local economy destroyed, the people are now doomed to either live on the detritus of the city full of slave workers, or to become slave workers themselves. The only ones who thrive are those installed by the West, who have sold out their countrymen at the behest of the West, or the westerners themselves who are living there to oversee the whole ugly premise. Traditional ways of living like farming, fishing, and crafts have been eradicated by (1) an insatiable demand for sweatshop labour, (2) agricultural subsidies that guarantee no local farmer can make a living, and (3) well-armed governments propped up by the West at the same time the West publicly denounces them at home for P.R. reasons.With no alternatives for survival left, whole populations have been forced into ####ty lives, and Americans and Euros can pontificate smugly about how much better their lives in corporate slavery are than they would be if the factories closed. And here's the sickest part. Because of how we've crippled them, they're right! It's true because we've systematically eradicated any hope they had of choosing better, simpler lives for themselves. All that's left is slavery, or slow, uncomfortable living death. Well, that, or GIVING THEM THEIR ####ING LIVES BACK.The whole ####house is built upon the bogus economics of the West. At its heart, the science of economics is very real. People must produce tangible goods through sweat and back breaking labour. And there is only so much reward to go around. But we in the west don't want to work for our share of the production. We'd much rather let everyone else do the labour, AND reap not just our fair share of the reward, but hundreds of times our fair share.We console ourselves with titles like lawyer, manager, consultant, IT pro, and financier. But all the while, we produce nothing tangible. We've enabled ourselves with an economy that allows us to sit on our ###, hold meetings, or surf the web, while we pretend to be economically valid. And we can do it because, ultimately, we have the guns. We can ship the horrors of economic blight and inequity overseas where the few Western people with consciences can't see them, and thus we can all pretend they don't really exist, and that our way is not only fair, but "the best way in the world." We claim we're legit because of a bogus corruption of the idea of supply and demand. "I provide a service people will pay for!" But this is only true because we have a surplus of capital we've stolen from the people who honestly laboured for it.If America got what it earned, it would starve.Screw it. It's not worth arguing this point in this country. The POV that capitalism honestly works, that we ought to be held up as an example of what a country can be, that we don't exist the way we exist ONLY through the constant use of force around the world...it's so drilled into us from birth that only those who go digging for the truth ever wake up to the fact that our way of life is, in many ways, despicable.I'm going to be sick. ### #### the people who are smart enough to think, but don't give enough of a #### to bother.
Click to expand...
No offense intended, but you are out of your mind if you think it is all the West's fault for the state of 3rd world countries. My own personal experience being in Tanzania (my wife's family is from there) is that the people are too uneducated to understand how to better their lives. The government is corrupt without the help of the West and have no interest in educating a population that they can so easily control. The other self-induced problem is the people have no self control when it comes to having kids. Very few people use birth control and it's considered a blessing to have many children even if you have no job and no way of supporting them. Even knocking up many different women and abandoning their children isn't considered a big deal.
 
cstu said:
The other self-induced problem is the people have no self control when it comes to having kids. Very few people use birth control and it's considered a blessing to have many children even if you have no job and no way of supporting them. Even knocking up many different women and abandoning their children isn't considered a big deal.
Click to expand...
Isn't having a kid in a poor country an economically profitable thing to do? If the kid can go out and beg or work or dig through trash, he can provide a net economic benefit to the family from a pretty young age. It's not like here where having a kid means a giant drain on your bank account for like 20 years.
 
fatguyinalittlecoat said:
cstu said:
The other self-induced problem is the people have no self control when it comes to having kids. Very few people use birth control and it's considered a blessing to have many children even if you have no job and no way of supporting them. Even knocking up many different women and abandoning their children isn't considered a big deal.
Click to expand...
Isn't having a kid in a poor country an economically profitable thing to do? If the kid can go out and beg or work or dig through trash, he can provide a net economic benefit to the family from a pretty young age. It's not like here where having a kid means a giant drain on your bank account for like 20 years.
Click to expand...
What??? Sounds like a form of slavery to me. Lazy ### human procreates so the child can go do the work to support lazy ### human? Wouldn't it be a better idea for the human to not have the child, get up off ### and go work to support himself? I think so.
 
Thanks for the articles Maurile, Clayton, KRS et al. Interesting stuff that I honestly hadn't given much thought to.

 
FavreCo said:
fatguyinalittlecoat said:
cstu said:
The other self-induced problem is the people have no self control when it comes to having kids. Very few people use birth control and it's considered a blessing to have many children even if you have no job and no way of supporting them. Even knocking up many different women and abandoning their children isn't considered a big deal.
Click to expand...
Isn't having a kid in a poor country an economically profitable thing to do? If the kid can go out and beg or work or dig through trash, he can provide a net economic benefit to the family from a pretty young age. It's not like here where having a kid means a giant drain on your bank account for like 20 years.
Click to expand...
What??? Sounds like a form of slavery to me. Lazy ### human procreates so the child can go do the work to support lazy ### human? Wouldn't it be a better idea for the human to not have the child, get up off ### and go work to support himself? I think so.
Click to expand...
You really need to go take your message to the people in these 3rd world countries instead of posting on a message board they will never see. I'm certain it will convince them.
 
Scotch Rocks said:
AAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!I hate this. I hate seeing that a lifetime of activism is worth ####, because there's no competing against the power of the media.And just how many of you who are wondering aloud "how many of the pie in the sky liberals have actually been to the third world," have actually, yourself, been to the third world? How many of you have spent time in one of these ####hole factories you're so anxious to promote in the name of humanity? How many of you have spent considerable time trying to understand how these people came to be living on garbage dumps to begin with, so that now, instead of a dignified life, they must choose between living on refuse versus living in slavery? Some of us have done all of this, and we don't ##### about it just for the sake of #####ing. Big Western financial institutions, under the auspices of IMF or World Bank, have bought the governments of virtually every third world country on the globe. They went to (or installed at gunpoint) corrupt governments and then sold them a bill of goods, promising them first world standards of living in exchange for promises to pay back unfathomable loans at crippling interest.When they inevitably couldn't pay, the Western powers went in under the farce that masquerades as international law and paved over functional, local subsistence economies. They set up industries where they were guaranteed infinite labour at practically zero cost, and recouped their "losses" by proxy (and many times over) through the industries they set up in the wake of their financial destruction.With the local economy destroyed, the people are now doomed to either live on the detritus of the city full of slave workers, or to become slave workers themselves. The only ones who thrive are those installed by the West, who have sold out their countrymen at the behest of the West, or the westerners themselves who are living there to oversee the whole ugly premise. Traditional ways of living like farming, fishing, and crafts have been eradicated by (1) an insatiable demand for sweatshop labour, (2) agricultural subsidies that guarantee no local farmer can make a living, and (3) well-armed governments propped up by the West at the same time the West publicly denounces them at home for P.R. reasons.With no alternatives for survival left, whole populations have been forced into ####ty lives, and Americans and Euros can pontificate smugly about how much better their lives in corporate slavery are than they would be if the factories closed. And here's the sickest part. Because of how we've crippled them, they're right! It's true because we've systematically eradicated any hope they had of choosing better, simpler lives for themselves. All that's left is slavery, or slow, uncomfortable living death. Well, that, or GIVING THEM THEIR ####ING LIVES BACK.The whole ####house is built upon the bogus economics of the West. At its heart, the science of economics is very real. People must produce tangible goods through sweat and back breaking labour. And there is only so much reward to go around. But we in the west don't want to work for our share of the production. We'd much rather let everyone else do the labour, AND reap not just our fair share of the reward, but hundreds of times our fair share.We console ourselves with titles like lawyer, manager, consultant, IT pro, and financier. But all the while, we produce nothing tangible. We've enabled ourselves with an economy that allows us to sit on our ###, hold meetings, or surf the web, while we pretend to be economically valid. And we can do it because, ultimately, we have the guns. We can ship the horrors of economic blight and inequity overseas where the few Western people with consciences can't see them, and thus we can all pretend they don't really exist, and that our way is not only fair, but "the best way in the world." We claim we're legit because of a bogus corruption of the idea of supply and demand. "I provide a service people will pay for!" But this is only true because we have a surplus of capital we've stolen from the people who honestly laboured for it.If America got what it earned, it would starve.Screw it. It's not worth arguing this point in this country. The POV that capitalism honestly works, that we ought to be held up as an example of what a country can be, that we don't exist the way we exist ONLY through the constant use of force around the world...it's so drilled into us from birth that only those who go digging for the truth ever wake up to the fact that our way of life is, in many ways, despicable.I'm going to be sick. ### #### the people who are smart enough to think, but don't give enough of a #### to bother.
Click to expand...
:lmao:
 
cstu said:
Scotch Rocks said:
AAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!I hate this. I hate seeing that a lifetime of activism is worth ####, because there's no competing against the power of the media.And just how many of you who are wondering aloud "how many of the pie in the sky liberals have actually been to the third world," have actually, yourself, been to the third world? How many of you have spent time in one of these ####hole factories you're so anxious to promote in the name of humanity? How many of you have spent considerable time trying to understand how these people came to be living on garbage dumps to begin with, so that now, instead of a dignified life, they must choose between living on refuse versus living in slavery? Some of us have done all of this, and we don't ##### about it just for the sake of #####ing. Big Western financial institutions, under the auspices of IMF or World Bank, have bought the governments of virtually every third world country on the globe. They went to (or installed at gunpoint) corrupt governments and then sold them a bill of goods, promising them first world standards of living in exchange for promises to pay back unfathomable loans at crippling interest.When they inevitably couldn't pay, the Western powers went in under the farce that masquerades as international law and paved over functional, local subsistence economies. They set up industries where they were guaranteed infinite labour at practically zero cost, and recouped their "losses" by proxy (and many times over) through the industries they set up in the wake of their financial destruction.With the local economy destroyed, the people are now doomed to either live on the detritus of the city full of slave workers, or to become slave workers themselves. The only ones who thrive are those installed by the West, who have sold out their countrymen at the behest of the West, or the westerners themselves who are living there to oversee the whole ugly premise. Traditional ways of living like farming, fishing, and crafts have been eradicated by (1) an insatiable demand for sweatshop labour, (2) agricultural subsidies that guarantee no local farmer can make a living, and (3) well-armed governments propped up by the West at the same time the West publicly denounces them at home for P.R. reasons.With no alternatives for survival left, whole populations have been forced into ####ty lives, and Americans and Euros can pontificate smugly about how much better their lives in corporate slavery are than they would be if the factories closed. And here's the sickest part. Because of how we've crippled them, they're right! It's true because we've systematically eradicated any hope they had of choosing better, simpler lives for themselves. All that's left is slavery, or slow, uncomfortable living death. Well, that, or GIVING THEM THEIR ####ING LIVES BACK.The whole ####house is built upon the bogus economics of the West. At its heart, the science of economics is very real. People must produce tangible goods through sweat and back breaking labour. And there is only so much reward to go around. But we in the west don't want to work for our share of the production. We'd much rather let everyone else do the labour, AND reap not just our fair share of the reward, but hundreds of times our fair share.We console ourselves with titles like lawyer, manager, consultant, IT pro, and financier. But all the while, we produce nothing tangible. We've enabled ourselves with an economy that allows us to sit on our ###, hold meetings, or surf the web, while we pretend to be economically valid. And we can do it because, ultimately, we have the guns. We can ship the horrors of economic blight and inequity overseas where the few Western people with consciences can't see them, and thus we can all pretend they don't really exist, and that our way is not only fair, but "the best way in the world." We claim we're legit because of a bogus corruption of the idea of supply and demand. "I provide a service people will pay for!" But this is only true because we have a surplus of capital we've stolen from the people who honestly laboured for it.If America got what it earned, it would starve.Screw it. It's not worth arguing this point in this country. The POV that capitalism honestly works, that we ought to be held up as an example of what a country can be, that we don't exist the way we exist ONLY through the constant use of force around the world...it's so drilled into us from birth that only those who go digging for the truth ever wake up to the fact that our way of life is, in many ways, despicable.I'm going to be sick. ### #### the people who are smart enough to think, but don't give enough of a #### to bother.
Click to expand...
No offense intended, but you are out of your mind if you think it is all the West's fault for the state of 3rd world countries. My own personal experience being in Tanzania (my wife's family is from there) is that the people are too uneducated to understand how to better their lives. The government is corrupt without the help of the West and have no interest in educating a population that they can so easily control. The other self-induced problem is the people have no self control when it comes to having kids. Very few people use birth control and it's considered a blessing to have many children even if you have no job and no way of supporting them. Even knocking up many different women and abandoning their children isn't considered a big deal.
Click to expand...
And no offense intended but you are incredibly naive if you think the problems of the third world are theirs alone and have nothing to do with decades of exploitation by the western powers.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

STEADYMOBBIN 22
Nothing seems to get done any more - Society is or isn’t crumbling- screen time and other lawn related gripes
4 5 6
Replies
262
Views
6K
Joe Bryant
Joe Bryant
Joe Bryant
  • Poll
Talk About Alcohol
8 9 10
Replies
467
Views
13K
Kiddnets
Kiddnets
KGB
Entrepreneur Guys
Replies
49
Views
667
ChainsawU
ChainsawU

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)
Top