In defense of sweatshops — they’re often the best and fastest way for the poor to escape poverty

From Mark Perry.

"1. Sweatshop Video of the Day I. A surprising and inspiring 2012 TED Talk above on the alleged exploitation of Chinese factory workers, who we are told lead miserable and bleak lives making iPhones, Coach handbags and Nike running shoes in factory sweatshops for rich Americans. Author Leslie T. Chang explains why that’s a completely false and disrespectful narrative. Here’s an excerpt:

Across China, there are 150 million workers, one third of them women, who have left their villages to work in the factories, the hotels, the restaurants and the construction sites of the big cities. Together, they make up the largest migration in history, and it is globalization, this chain that begins in a Chinese farming village and ends with iPhones in our pockets and Nikes on our feet and Coach handbags on our arms that has changed the way these millions of people work and marry and live and think. Very few of them would want to go back to the way things used to be.

Certainly, the factory conditions are really tough, and it’s nothing you or I would want to do, but from their perspective, where they’re coming from is much worse, and where they’re going is hopefully much better, and I just wanted to give that context of what’s going on in their minds, not what necessarily is going on in yours.

HT: Bob Wright

2. Sweatshop Video of the Day II. In the Learn Liberty video above, you’ll learn from UC-San Diego professor Matt Zwolinski about the “Top 3 Ways Sweatshops Help The Poor Escape Poverty.”

3. Sweatshop Cartoon of the Day. A sweatshop cartoon classic, first featured on CD back in 2007.

4. Sweatshop Quotation of the Day I:

Closing sweatshops and forcing Western labor and environmental standards down poor people’s throats in the third world does nothing to elevate them out of poverty. Instead, it forces poor people to buy a lot of rich man’s toys, like clean air, clean water, and leisure time. If clean air and leisure time don’t strike you as extravagant luxuries, that’s because Americans – even the poorest of us – are so rich these days that we’ve forgotten what true poverty is like. But chances are your great-great-grandparents could have told you what it’s like: when you’re truly poor, you can’t afford things like clean air. Nobody in 1870 America worried about the environment.

~Economist Steven E. Landsburg, from his book “More Sex is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics.”

5. Sweatshop Quotation of the Day II:

Well-meaning American university students regularly campaign against sweatshops. But instead, anyone who cares about fighting poverty should campaign in favor of sweatshops, demanding that companies set up factories in Africa. If Africa could establish a clothing export industry, that would fight poverty far more effectively than any foreign aid program. American students should stop trying to ban sweatshops, and instead campaign to bring them to the most desperately poor countries.

~Nicholas Kristof’s 2006 NY Times op-ed “In Praise of the Maligned Sweatshop.”

6. Sweatshop Quotation of the Day III:

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.

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. The best way to help people in the poorest countries isn’t to campaign against sweatshops but to promote manufacturing there.

~Nicholas Kristof’s 2009 NY Times op-ed “Where Sweatshops Are a Dream.”

7. Child Labor Quotation:

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 out 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.

~Steven E. Landsburg, from his blog “The Big Questions.”"