Don Boudreaux on child labor in developing nations:
I lectured this past weekend at an IHS seminar. A few of the outstanding students in attendance questioned my support of free trade with countries in which children work in factories. To these students, such labor is evil and should not be encouraged or even tolerated. (I think I’ll e-mail to these students this Postrel column.)
"What’s the alternative?" I asked these students.
Asking such a question sounds callous. But if the alternative to working in a factory is working on a (probably subsistence) farm, two thoughts should spring immediately to mind: (1) in societies in which child labor is prevalent, children will labor somewhere, even if regulations and trade sanctions remove them from factories producing goods for export to rich countries – locking children out of factory work does not thereby send them home to watch tv, practice piano, read Roald Dahl, or help grandma bake muffins; (2) farm work isn’t necessarily safer or more pleasant than factory work – perhaps it is better in some dimensions (maybe even in most dimensions); my point is that farm labor shouldn’t be romanticized just because it’s done outdoors with furry or feathery critters (who kick, bite, defecate, and attract vermin and insects). If reliable data could be gathered, I'd bet that they'd show that farm labor in such countries is almost as dangerous and unpleasant as is the typical job performed by a child laborer in a factory.
Boudreaux's reasoning can likewise be applied to adults laboring in sweatshops -- the proverbial Indonesian working for 50 cents a day in a dangerous factory making high-priced sneakers for Americans. This man might be making a ghastly pittance by American standards, but it was a pittance that he didn't receive before the shoe factory was built.
Sweatshop work looks horrible to American eyes, but it is obviously a good idea to the citizens of developing nations, as they would otherwise they wouldn't choose* to work there. The Sweatshop Stage of economic development is an ugly, but essential step on the road to progress.
If critics of sweatshop imports are serious about helping people in developing nations, they would buy their products, rather than boycott them.
*As to distinguish from literal slave-labor nations, such as China, where workers do not have a choice.
UPDATE: Dare We Be Christians and Maobi have related comments.
Friday, July 15, 2005
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2 comments:
John -
While I appreciate your concern for laborers in developing nations, I think there are alternatives. Not overnight change, save the world alternatives, but still options to continuing to buy the majority of our products from WalMart, Nike and the like.
There are "green"companies whose intention is to set up safe work environments where persons are paid a living wage and produce marketable goods. Companies like Ten Thousand Villages, NoSweatApparrel, and others (see list at http://www.nosweatapparel.com/resources/index.html). One alternative is to shop there whenever possible. When one can't, or it's more convenient not to, (and I'm just as indiscriminate as the next consumer) then at least we can let the more exploitive companies know how we feel about their labor practices.
It seems more hopeful and more just to support and expand these new and growing markets and work for change, even if it's incremental, than to keep on keeping on.
Please visit http://www.coopamerica.org/programs/sweatshops/whattoknow.cfm for additional information. They argue that sweatshops are not inevitable and that the low wages offered by sweatshops really do not help people climb out of poverty.
Certainly if virtue can be harnessed as a market force to the benefit of the downtrodden, then I applaud such efforts.
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