A conversation about the morality of 'sweatshops' is running around some Catholic blogs, starting at David Morrison's blog, moving to Mark Shea's blog, to Disputations, and back to Mark Shea.
All of them take an anti-'sweatshop' stance, whatever that means. The best response comes in the the very first comment from Franklin Jennings after the David Morrison post criticizing Wal-Mart for exploiting the poor:
Ridiculous.
Every dollar saved at WalMart is not squeezed from the least of these. its another shirt purchased to feed a Bangladeshi family. With a 35% unemployment rate in a kleptocracy that has to import most of its food, I would say buying their textiles is almost a moral imperative.
Insult and injury, indeed.
125 comments later to those four blog posts no one has bested that logic. The simple truth is that voluntary economic exchanges work for what each participant sees as his own best interest. A completely coercive economy, say that of North Korea, might force people to work against their own self interest, but that's not what's alleged in most 'sweatshop' situations. It's only that the workers aren't earning as much as the should.
In the comments on the first Mark Shea post, Stephen writes:
...[W]hat would you propose as the alternative? A minimum wage that removes the profit motive of creating third-world factories? So instead of working 12 hours for, say, $2/day, they're working 0 hours for $0/day. Not to mention the happy side-effect of removing what little developmental steps they've taken.
Which Disputations, err, disputes:
I can read this comment in one of two ways. One is, "Evil will be done. Shouldn't we do the least amount of it?" The other is, "Evil will be done. Shouldn't we recommend the least amount of it is done?"
There's a third way to read that, which goes, "Employing people is good, even at wages we would consider extremely low." That is, offering jobs to third world workers only works if you offer them a job that's better than what they currently have. How is that evil?
Jobs aren't charity, employment is an exchange of values. But even when it comes to charity, is giving a small amount of money evil? Of course not.
Most importantly, what solution is offered? If you object to the way a company does business you can refuse buy from them. But many don't stop there, they want to forcibly interfere with free associations between employers and emplyees, to make it illegal to do what they do.
There's nothing as ridiculous as using the barrel of a gun to show you care about morality.
Posted by Walter at February 14, 2004 02:47 PMWalter, the context for the conversation on at least my web log had to do with 1) what the responsibilties Christians might have towards the men and women laboring in these sweatshop situations; 2) what those responsibilities might be explicitly in the Roman Catholic Church's teaching on the topic.
There was nothing in what I wrote about forcing anyone to do anything. That post and subsequent posts make it abundantly clear that WalMart and like-minded "price uber alles" retailers are able to enact the marketing strategy on the backs of very many poor people who are seriously abused. As a Catholic I don't think I can participate in such an exchange in good conscience. Others think they can for their own reasons, but I think the whole discussion and subsequent posts brought out far more evidence in favor of Christians withholding their business from WalMart than in keeping with the cultural status quo.
Posted by: David Morrison at February 15, 2004 06:28 AMYup. But as I wrote in my post many don't stop there. Commenters proposed variously enacting worldwide minimum wages and blanket tariffs on all imported goods.
Posted by: Walter at February 15, 2004 09:53 AMI hope you'll bear with me if I don't go read those entries, let alone hundreds of comments.
"That is, offering jobs to third world workers only works if you offer them a job that's better than what they currently have. How is that evil?"
In general, I agree. In many specifics, I agree. In general I do agree with the point that it's unreasonable to try to instantly impose our standards on third world countries, or refuse to do business in their lands, for the reasons we'll both agree upon.
But I can't agree that this is a blanket proposition, universally true in all situations. There are some lines we can draw -- or I can, anyway.
Factories where there is total indifference to worker safety, for instance, so that limbs are commonly accidentally chopped off on a weekly basis, isn't, in my view something that should be tolerated just because people are desperate and their children are starving enough that they "voluntarily" take a job there.
Libertarians, last I looked, oppose "coercion." There's plenty of coercion that doesn't flow directly from the barrel of a gun, government otherwise (you forgot to mention "jackbooted"). There's coercion of circumstance. There's coercion of desperation. There's coercion of starvation. These are all equally, in many cases, as coercive as pointing a gun, and render agreements made under their threat of force non-voluntary.
The people who died in the Triangle fire (I trust you're familiar with it), because they "voluntarily" took jobs in a factory where the doors were all chained shut so they couldn't escape, were murdered. I don't think this is the sort of "liberty" that helps make the case for the virtues of libertarianism.
Government makes capitalism workable by enforcing contracts, and many libertarians agree with this. My radical suggestion is that a certain minimal level of regulation does the same thing, and is equally necessary -- so far in history, anyway, and outside fantasy theorizing (which might someday be workable, okay) -- but I don't expect this to be very well accepted by even "lukewarm libertarians."
Posted by: Gary Farber at February 17, 2004 04:16 PMThese excuses for the exploitation of these people are no more than justification so you can sleep better at night. To think that you actually suggest that working a 12 hour day for $2 is in anyone’s best interest is ridiculous. These textiles may be sold at a great value to us as consumers, but consider the variance between the cost to produce the product and the price we pay. I am sure there is some room in that difference to afford a little more food for that family that you are so concerned about. In addition, using the unemployment rate as an emotional plea to buy the foreign made goods is so hypocritical. Apparently, Franklin Jennings is not so concerned with the unemployment rate here in the USA. It is obvious that people who use this logic are not and never have been unemployed themselves. Working 0 hours for $0 is just as bad in the USA as anywhere else in the world.
In response to Stephen, establishing a minimum wage in the countries we speak of would hardly eliminate the profit motive of building factories in third-world countries. The wage agreed upon would most likely still be low enough to allow corporations advantages to foreign production. If anything, it would add a little more to the “little developmental steps they’ve taken”.