Question for the anti-sweatshop people:?

Question

After reading these two articles:

http://frontpagemag.org/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12008
http://www.dailyillini.com/media/storage/paper736/news/2006/07/17/Opinions/The-Alternatives.To.Sweatshops-2132038.shtml?norewrite200608101957&sourcedomain=www.dailyillini.com

Do you feel any different about sweatshops?

Answer 1

No.

To the poor, sweatshops are a means to earn money. But toiling at the sweatshops will never get them out of the poverty cycle.

"Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach the man to fish and he eats for a lifetime." - Anonymous

Answer 2

No, not really. I was already well 'ware of the evidence recapitulated in the two articles. No one disputes that something is more than nothing, and working in a sweatshop is something, in some times, in some places, where there is nothing else being offered.

Both articles make that point adequately, and a casual reader would have done with the question on finishing the article, accepting the argument--and its implicit assumptions.

The argument offered in the Illini article is patently misleading, in that it dismisses those who are opposed to sweatshops as having considered no other options. (It does this by presenting the case: sweatshop-bad-but-better/ no-sweatshop-degradation-&-death, as if there were only two possibilities). In fact, some of us have considered broader solutions, to a broader problem within which sweatshops are only a relatively mild and treatable symptom, like a scab on a young country's knee.

A little dab of communism comes to mind, as a palliative procedure that might take a little of the exploitive edge off the sweatshop. Let's encourage a red star boy or girl who isn't just a pocket wannabe Stalin or Castro. The next try at a proletarian state might be more effective--and perhaps more humane than rich-is-right boot-straps capitalism, which is apparently always uninterested in the fate of the displaced.

Outright patronage of a selected (presumably educable) country comes to mind. I know, I know, the 'little brown brother' thing . . . but what if we really meant the 'brother' part of it? I showed my brother how to make a fork work; surely there's a parallel between that and international economic relations.

Genocide is also a possibility, but it's very low on my list of alternatives to the sweatshop. It wouldn't be the first time some group 'evacuated' a region in order to reorganize it more cunningly than had the previous tenants, but I feel that it's likely to be taken badly by surviving bystanders.

This by no means exhausts the possibilities. Out of consideration for the hard-core Randian economists, I have avoided frequent use of words like 'commonwealth' or 'communism.' Some of those people are choleric enough that they might do damage to themselves in a fit of scornful pique.

Answer 3

The second link wouldn't work for me, but I presume it's similar to the first. I'd already read the first, interestingly; I'm interested in international trade.

I think that trade is the best way to help poor but stable and non-authoritarian states. (Trade alone won't make North Korea stop oppressing her people.) Contrary to another opinion here expressed, I don't think that starting another communist regime is the solution. China, arguably the wealthiest communist country ever, still ranks beneath war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina* in terms of per-capita GDP -- and much, much lower if nominal (rather than PPP) rates are used. And this is only because of the recent capitalist economic reforms in that country. Laos ranks 185th; North Korea ranks 194th. Communism appears to have failed.

On sweatshops again: Unless the laber is forced, I don't have a problem with trading. If we shut them out, the people will simply not be able to earn enough to buy food and clean water, so I don't see a moral high ground to be gained by closing off trade.

* Yes, I know, but this is from 2004. Sorry.

Answer 4

The best way to help these nations is to trade with them. Their most valuable commodity is their cheap labour, it would help noone if we didn't use it.

Look at how cheap labour helped countries like Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore to trade their way out of poverty.

Answer 5

Yes.