Reply #61: Alternatives to sweatshops [View All]

[Lydia Leftcoast]

Ah, yes, libertarianism, the perfect philosophy for the nineteenth century.

People made arguments like that when "do gooders" in the nineteenth century proposed banning child labor in the U.S. and Europe. "Think of all the families that will starve!" they moaned, in the fake sympathy that greedheads always trot out when their pocketbooks are threatened. (When I get a few free moments, I'm going to write a DU article on the falsely compassionate excuses that right wingers give for protecting their own interests.)

But here's what really happened. The work was still there to be done, and with child labor now unavailable, the employers were forced to hire the children's parents and older siblings--for higher wages. Better yet, the children went to school, a choice unavailable to them when they were working fulltime in a factory. This led to upward mobility, sometimes even in the same generation, as the educated children could qualify for better jobs when they grew up, but definitely by the next generation.

You also need to look at real-world examples of development. The greatest examples, the Asian tigers, may have provided foreign contractors with cheap labor, but they always remained firmly in charge of their own economies, insisted on technology transfers, AND invested heavily in education, social services, and infrastructure.

Exhibit A for sweatshops, China, is indeed growing economically, but the growth is tremendously uneven, and availability of education and social services for the non-affluent has actually decreased since the introduction of laissez-faire capitalism.