The free market will correct unethical business practices.

[Bosiu]

Be that as it may...

Note that I favour enviromental regulation.

E-waste dumps in the poorest countries, resource wars and slave labor in Africa, sweatshop labor in authoritarian countries, meaningless consumerism in the developed world. Its all part of one big system.

Countries have increased GDP by reusing E-waste, labor is paid in African countries, that improve their overall economy in those countries and often times lead to democratic reform (the freer the market, the freer the people), meaning less consumerism that drives the world forward and creates new technologies, opportunities, throws open horizons and increases standard of living.

[Sibirsky]

They create jobs.

At low pay while they take the profits to offshore banks. Profits that could have been used to update healthcare, education, the transport network etc.

Not ideal. But better than no jobs.

[Central Slavia]

Sibirsky keeps saying that child pornography would be outlawed in his free market world.. but how?

Imagine following case.

relatively rich porn producer comes to a bunch of poor peoples and suggest them "borrowing" their let's say 10-12 year old kids for a substantial payment in return.
There definitely will be some that will agree (Sibirsky's logic) because the producer can outpay them seriously - depending on location a few hundred dollars might constitute few years' worth of earnings.
Then the producer will produce it and sell it to a willing market of perverts who will not rat him out either because it would be bad from them.
IE you have incentives at every segment - production and distribution to not close it down.
And security? If police force is privatised and this person rich enough he can simply afford to pay them to look elsewhere

[Sibirsky]

The increase in production allowed the funding of public education. An increase in production helped end child labor.

Haiti does not have proper funding to comply with Euro-American building codes. Therefore such legislation would only ensure mass homelessness.

Increased production may have helped create the conditions but child labor would have never been eliminated without collective action.

If Haiti does not have the funding for proper construction then the international community should assist them. However in the mass homelessness scenario there would ironically be less casualties. Because having no roof over your head is safer than having a poorly built one in an earthquake. You can't argue with physics.

Assistance doesn't work, It rewards failure. While there would fewer lives lost, I don't know if homelessness for much longer is better.

[Free Tristania]

At low pay while they take the profits to offshore banks. Profits that could have been used to update healthcare, education, the transport network etc.

Not ideal. But better than no jobs.

Jobs can be provided by local entrepreneurs as well. You don't need big business for that.

[Gthanp]

The garbage dump is probably full of e-waste from the global economy that manufacturers have failed to manage due to lax regulations.

Plus there are plenty of fair-trade companies that specialize in selling goods manufactured in third world countries for a fair wage.

Kristoff ignores this because he is an idiot

And you ignored the part where he specifically addresses that phenomenon.

Incidentally, I’m all for “fair-wage” clothing that is based on paying decent wages and providing decent working conditions. More power to those brands. But I think they reflect a modest niche, and the denunciations of sweatshops end up taking jobs away from the poorest countries.

And given his background and experience I think he is far more qualified to have an opinion on this than your, no doubt, well meaning, self.

E-waste dumps in the poorest countries, resource wars and slave labor in Africa, sweatshop labor in authoritarian countries, meaningless consumerism in the developed world. Its all part of one big system.

Oh. You're one of those. Im an economics major hoping to work for the WTO one day, I doubt we'll be getting along.

(Incidentally, I am from the "third world")

The exposure and denunciation of sweatshops create the demand for the fair-wage clothing in the first place. But I agree its not everything a sensible adoption of labor standards that ban the worst forms of bound and child labor and protect worker's rights to organize would help too. No need for this to cause economic hardship. Worker's organize in the context of the countries in which they live, they will keep their demands in line with the local economic conditions.

[Bosiu]

Sibirsky keeps saying that child pornography would be outlawed in his free market world.. but how?

Imagine following case.

relatively rich porn producer comes to a bunch of poor peoples and suggest them "borrowing" their let's say 10-12 year old kids for a substantial payment in return.
There definitely will be some that will agree (Sibirsky's logic) because the producer can out pay them seriously - depending on location a few hundred dollars might constitute few years' worth of earnings.
Then the producer will produce it and sell it to a willing market of perverts who will not rat him out either because it would be bad from them.
IE you have incentives at every segment - production and distribution to not close it down.
And security? If police force is privatized and this person rich enough he can simply afford to pay them to look elsewhere

1. True. He will also simultaneously increase their standard of living by paying them what would be a substantial amount.
2. What is there to rat out? As long as the child was not forced (judging from the scenario above, they weren't) and the practice is legal in this world.
3. The force is privatized, they are loyal to the firm that hired them. It will take a substantial amount of money (more than he's willing to) to bribe them successfully.

The practice is despicable, but there is a market and in the above scenario, it is legal.

[Gthanp]

Increased production may have helped create the conditions but child labor would have never been eliminated without collective action.

If Haiti does not have the funding for proper construction then the international community should assist them. However in the mass homelessness scenario there would ironically be less casualties. Because having no roof over your head is safer than having a poorly built one in an earthquake. You can't argue with physics.

Assistance doesn't work, It rewards failure. While there would fewer lives lost, I don't know if homelessness for much longer is better.

Whether on not the house fell on them or they could never own the house in the first place they are still homeless. Chile didn't have this problem because of building regulations from the 1970s. Oh wait I though Chile was a capitalist utopia. Where did those regulations come from?

[Central Slavia]

Sibirsky keeps saying that child pornography would be outlawed in his free market world.. but how?

Imagine following case.

relatively rich porn producer comes to a bunch of poor peoples and suggest them "borrowing" their let's say 10-12 year old kids for a substantial payment in return.
There definitely will be some that will agree (Sibirsky's logic) because the producer can out pay them seriously - depending on location a few hundred dollars might constitute few years' worth of earnings.
Then the producer will produce it and sell it to a willing market of perverts who will not rat him out either because it would be bad from them.
IE you have incentives at every segment - production and distribution to not close it down.
And security? If police force is privatized and this person rich enough he can simply afford to pay them to look elsewhere

1. True. He will also simultaneously increase their standard of living by paying them what would be a substantial amount.
2. What is there to rat out? As long as the child was not forced (judging from the scenario above, they weren't) and the practice is legal in this world.
3. The force is privatized, they are loyal to the firm that hired them. It will take a substantial amount of money (more than he's willing to) to bribe them successfully.
The practice is despicable, but there is a market and in the above scenario, it is legal.

Exactly.
Also , why would the child have to agree? It's enough that its parents do.

[EnragedMaldivians]

And you ignored the part where he specifically addresses that phenomenon.



And given his background and experience I think he is far more qualified to have an opinion on this than your, no doubt, well meaning, self.



Oh. You're one of those. Im an economics major hoping to work for the WTO one day, I doubt we'll be getting along.

(Incidentally, I am from the "third world")

The exposure and denunciation of sweatshops create the demand for the fair-wage clothing in the first place. But I agree its not everything a sensible adoption of labor standards that ban the worst forms of bound and child labor and protect worker's rights to organize would help too. No need for this to cause economic hardship. Worker's organize in the context of the countries in which they live, they will keep their demands in line with the local economic conditions.

That also cause demand for laborers to fall. Which is what Kristoff, and myself are worried about.

No one is celebrating child labor as the pinnacle of what it means to be living in a civilized nation, but if well intentioned people pass legislation that will have the effect of creating more more unemployment, and therefore more poverty - and therefore more suffering than would have happened if these shops were left to operate on their own terms; what is it that they would have practically accomplished other than feeding their own sanctimony?

People above the minimum wage won't benefit. Those earning below may benefit to a degree- but what of those who lose employment because the business no longer think it is profitable to emply them?

The real world is not always aligned with what we would ideally prefer.

I'm propbably over quoting Kristoff now, but he does make his point well - and hes better informed on this issue than any of us will ever be. note that the following is quite old.

Put Your Money Where Their Mouths Are
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: April 03, 2004
BISKÉ, Chad — With Democrats on the warpath over trade, there's pressure for tougher international labor standards that would try to put Abakr Adoud out of work.

Abakr lives with his family in the desert near this oasis in eastern Chad. He has never been to school and roams the desert all day with his brothers, searching for sticks that can be made into doors for mud huts. He is 10 years old.

It's appalling that Abakr, like tens of millions of other children abroad, is working instead of attending school. But prohibiting child labor wouldn't do him any good, for there's no school in the area for him to attend. If child labor hawks manage to keep Abakr from working, without giving him a school to attend, he and his family will simply be poorer than ever.

And that's the problem when Americans get on their high horses about child labor, without understanding the cruel third world economics that cause it. The push by Democrats like John Kerry for international labor standards is well intentioned, but it is also oblivious to third world realities.

[Bosiu]

1. True. He will also simultaneously increase their standard of living by paying them what would be a substantial amount.
2. What is there to rat out? As long as the child was not forced (judging from the scenario above, they weren't) and the practice is legal in this world.
3. The force is privatized, they are loyal to the firm that hired them. It will take a substantial amount of money (more than he's willing to) to bribe them successfully.
The practice is despicable, but there is a market and in the above scenario, it is legal.

Exactly.
Also , why would the child have to agree? It's enough that its parents do.

Nobody is celebrating this. But is a step one.

[Gthanp]

E-waste dumps in the poorest countries, resource wars and slave labor in Africa, sweatshop labor in authoritarian countries, meaningless consumerism in the developed world. Its all part of one big system.

Countries have increased GDP by reusing E-waste, labor is paid in African countries, that improve their overall economy in those countries and often times lead to democratic reform (the freer the market, the freer the people), meaning less consumerism that drives the world forward and creates new technologies, opportunities, throws open horizons and increases standard of living.

All right take your cellphone. The minerals inside often come from war torn countries in central africa where armed groups conscript labor at gunpoint to extract these minerals so that they can pay for more weapons and conquer more territory. Then the components are manufactured in a Chinese factory where worker's do not have the right to organize a trade union independent of the communist party so they have no recourse for grievances. Instead they jump out of buildings because there is no other alternative. Then some spoiled brat of an investment banker buys the phone and then throws it away as soon as the next innovation comes out next month. The e-waste is shipped to a dump in west africa near a slum where families pick through the garbage and melt down their toxic components in their cooking pot to be recycled.

[Central Slavia]

Exactly.
Also , why would the child have to agree? It's enough that its parents do.

Nobody is celebrating this. But is a step one.

However, Sibirsky is claiming this *wouldn't* happen.
I keep asking, what mechanism would prevent it?

[Gthanp]

The exposure and denunciation of sweatshops create the demand for the fair-wage clothing in the first place. But I agree its not everything a sensible adoption of labor standards that ban the worst forms of bound and child labor and protect worker's rights to organize would help too. No need for this to cause economic hardship. Worker's organize in the context of the countries in which they live, they will keep their demands in line with the local economic conditions.

That also cause demand for laborers to fall. Which is what Kristoff, and myself are worried about.

No one is celebrating child labor as the pinnacle of what it means to be living in a civilized nation, but if well intentioned people pass legislation that will have the effect of creating more more unemployment, and therefore more poverty - and therefore more suffering than would have happened if these shops were left to operate on their own terms; what is it that they would have practically accomplished other than feeding their own sanctimony?

People above the minimum wage won't benefit. Those earning below may benefit to a degree- but what of those who lose employment because the business no longer think it is profitable to emply them?

The real world is not always aligned with what we would ideally prefer.

I'm propbably over quoting Kristoff now, but he does make his point well - and hes better informed on this issue than any of us will ever be. note that the following is quite old.

Put Your Money Where Their Mouths Are
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: April 03, 2004
BISKÉ, Chad — With Democrats on the warpath over trade, there's pressure for tougher international labor standards that would try to put Abakr Adoud out of work.

Abakr lives with his family in the desert near this oasis in eastern Chad. He has never been to school and roams the desert all day with his brothers, searching for sticks that can be made into doors for mud huts. He is 10 years old.

It's appalling that Abakr, like tens of millions of other children abroad, is working instead of attending school. But prohibiting child labor wouldn't do him any good, for there's no school in the area for him to attend. If child labor hawks manage to keep Abakr from working, without giving him a school to attend, he and his family will simply be poorer than ever.

And that's the problem when Americans get on their high horses about child labor, without understanding the cruel third world economics that cause it. The push by Democrats like John Kerry for international labor standards is well intentioned, but it is also oblivious to third world realities.

Working for a home industry is different than working in a factory or a mine. I don't advocate banning child labor in home industries or subsistence farming that would be impossible to enforce. However eliminating child labor in factories will increase the bargaining power of the adults working in those factories because children are more easily exploited than adults. These parents now earning more can help pay the taxes to fund a public school system for their children. That's what happened in the United States and every other developed country.

[The Parkus Empire]

You're saying that paying for a child to grow up until work-capable age (Six or so, albeit at much-reduced productivity, compared to an adult; About 15 years until it's fully productive), not to mention the mother not being fully caable of work for a decent amount of time during this period, and not being to lay off workers - instead having to continue to house and feed and clothe them - when demand for one's product happens to be below the businesses' potential output is cheaper than hiring and firing people depending on whether there's work for them or not?

Despite this very process being the reason why slavery was given up on in a fair number of countries throughout the 19th century in the first place (Argentina managed to utterly outcompete Brazil for this reason)?

That's... A very interesting approach to reality you have there.

I'd say yours is more interesting. Slavery has been extremely profitable since the beginning of history. Saying that it disappeared because that was more profitable, instead of because of civil rights, is nothing short of absurdest historical reconstruction at its worst. Slavery only vanished from Western nations when laws were enacted against it.

Saying breeding and working slaves is unprofitable because you have to feed and house them is like saying breeding and working animals is unprofitable. It's fantastically ridiculous. Giving credit to greed for the actions of people who dedicated their lives to helping equality is inexcusable, especially when based upon such fairy-land logic.

Did I mention these companies ran government-guaranteed monopolies, anyway, not having to conform to a free market at all?

Which hardly detracts from the point that companies which aren't government backed today--like Nike--still profit from slavery enough to lead the market.

I'm eagerly waiting for examples to actually prove your point. I note that I've actually provided numerous ones. Your completely-free-market-armed-corp-and-slavery thingus OTOH, does appear to be a wholly hypothetical construct. Unless you can actually support its existence with evidence of such things existing in the real world - I'm not demanding a perfectly free market here, since such a thing has never existed. But evidence that a comparatively free market was or is more likely to have these things than a comparatively controlled one in the same time period -, your hypothesis, on account of completely lacking any sort of evidence supporting it whatsoever, will have to be considered false.

Napoleonic France. The Mongols. The United States.

And here I thought Germany had to import shittons of unskilled labour and its corporations had to actually pay it quite decently because it was utterly out of excess workforce in the 1950s and 1960s. Must never have happened. Clearly, unskilled labour is always available en masse, not in the least dependent on the principles of supply and demand, like everything else is.

I'm talking about today, not the 1950's and 60's when you could raise a family with a single worker with a high-school diploma. The baby-boom and technology changed everything.

[Daistallia 2104]

I'd also like them to explain the entire era of Jim Crow in the USA. Why didn't the Free Market stop all those Whites Only restaurants from turning a profit?

Bad example - neither the Black Codes nor the Jim Crow Laws were promulgated by the free market but by state legislatures.

It was all the government's fault.

No, not entierly. Those laws didn't come out of nowhere, and the stiff resistance to their change was not entierly governmental.

So the fact that the government was trying to ban racist practices somehow caused these businesses to flourish?

The Jim Crow laws were state laws. If the state government opposed them, they would have been easily repealed.

[The Parkus Empire]

You're saying that paying for a child to grow up until work-capable age (Six or so, albeit at much-reduced productivity, compared to an adult; About 15 years until it's fully productive), not to mention the mother not being fully caable of work for a decent amount of time during this period, and not being to lay off workers - instead having to continue to house and feed and clothe them - when demand for one's product happens to be below the businesses' potential output is cheaper than hiring and firing people depending on whether there's work for them or not?

Despite this very process being the reason why slavery was given up on in a fair number of countries throughout the 19th century in the first place (Argentina managed to utterly outcompete Brazil for this reason)?

That's... A very interesting approach to reality you have there.

I'd say yours is more interesting. Slavery has been extremely profitable since the beginning of history. Saying that it disappeared because that was more profitable, instead of because of civil rights, is nothing short of absurdest historical reconstruction at its worst. Slavery only vanished from Western nations when laws were enacted against it.

Saying breeding and working slaves is unprofitable because you have to feed and house them is like saying breeding and working animals is unprofitable. It's fantastically ridiculous. Giving credit to greed for the actions of people who dedicated their lives to helping equality is inexcusable, especially when based upon such fairy-land logic.

Did I mention these companies ran government-guaranteed monopolies, anyway, not having to conform to a free market at all?

Which hardly detracts from the point that companies which aren't government backed today--like Nike--still profit from slavery enough to lead the market.

I'm eagerly waiting for examples to actually prove your point. I note that I've actually provided numerous ones. Your completely-free-market-armed-corp-and-slavery thingus OTOH, does appear to be a wholly hypothetical construct. Unless you can actually support its existence with evidence of such things existing in the real world - I'm not demanding a perfectly free market here, since such a thing has never existed. But evidence that a comparatively free market was or is more likely to have these things than a comparatively controlled one in the same time period -, your hypothesis, on account of completely lacking any sort of evidence supporting it whatsoever, will have to be considered false.

Napoleonic France. The Mongols. The United States of America.

Ancient Rome and Athens both had slavery by businesses (and just around the house) that weren't financially propped up or supported by the government.

Today we have Nike, which contracts slavery through a private enterprise, without any government helping at all.

And here I thought Germany had to import shittons of unskilled labour and its corporations had to actually pay it quite decently because it was utterly out of excess workforce in the 1950s and 1960s. Must never have happened. Clearly, unskilled labour is always available en masse, not in the least dependent on the principles of supply and demand, like everything else is.

I'm talking about today, not the 1950's and 60's when you could raise a family with a single worker with a high-school diploma. Technology changed everything. Education is massively important today. Also, humans aren't a product--they are sentient beings that require an acceptable lifestyle, not a commodity to left to the whims of demand.

[Norstal]

Nobody is celebrating this. But is a step one.

However, Sibirsky is claiming this *wouldn't* happen.
I keep asking, what mechanism would prevent it?

Magic fairies.

Also known as conscientious customers.

[Servantium]

I'd also like them to explain the entire era of Jim Crow in the USA. Why didn't the Free Market stop all those Whites Only restaurants from turning a profit?

Because it wasn't a free market.

[Farnhamia]

However, Sibirsky is claiming this *wouldn't* happen.
I keep asking, what mechanism would prevent it?

Magic fairies.

Also known as conscientious customers.

Accompanied by flocks of invisible hands slapping the miscreants.

[Bosiu]

Countries have increased GDP by reusing E-waste, labor is paid in African countries, that improve their overall economy in those countries and often times lead to democratic reform (the freer the market, the freer the people), meaning less consumerism that drives the world forward and creates new technologies, opportunities, throws open horizons and increases standard of living.

All right take your cellphone. The minerals inside often come from war torn countries in central africa where armed groups conscript labor at gunpoint to extract these minerals so that they can pay for more weapons and conquer more territory. Then the components are manufactured in a Chinese factory where worker's do not have the right to organize a trade union independent of the communist party so they have no recourse for grievances. Instead they jump out of buildings because there is no other alternative. Then some spoiled brat of an investment banker buys the phone and then throws it away as soon as the next innovation comes out next month. The e-waste is shipped to a dump in west africa near a slum where families pick through the garbage and melt down their toxic components in their cooking pot to be recycled.

Wow... Lots of emotion here. Let me cut through it. I am not responsible for others action as for what they do, the guy jumping out of the window is a non sequiteur to me.

1. Minerals are mined mainly outside of Africa, in politically stable countries. There they do not need to worry about losing equiebt and personell.

2. However, the increased employment will increase their standard of living. I could care less about worker organization.

3. Investment banking is a difficult line of work. Trying to gague an entire market is very hard to say the least. I could care less about the child.

4. Recycling the E-Waste is a very lucrative trade. The reason why so many people can do it is because it is a way to make money.

If your so depresses by all of this then do something about it!

[Sibirsky]

I think the following are good reads on this topic, thought I would share.

Op-Ed ColumnistWhere Sweatshops Are a Dream
Nicholas D.Kristoff

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof

Before Barack Obama and his team act on their talk about “labor standards,” I’d like to offer them a tour of the vast garbage dump here in Phnom Penh.

This is a Dante-like vision of hell. It’s a mountain of festering refuse, a half-hour hike across, emitting clouds of smoke from subterranean fires.

The miasma of toxic stink leaves you gasping, breezes batter you with filth, and even the rats look forlorn. Then the smoke parts and you come across a child ambling barefoot, searching for old plastic cups that recyclers will buy for five cents a pound. Many families actually live in shacks on this smoking garbage.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don’t exploit enough.

Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.

“I’d love to get a job in a factory,” said Pim Srey Rath, a 19-year-old woman scavenging for plastic. “At least that work is in the shade. Here is where it’s hot.”

Another woman, Vath Sam Oeun, hopes her 10-year-old boy, scavenging beside her, grows up to get a factory job, partly because she has seen other children run over by garbage trucks. Her boy has never been to a doctor or a dentist, and last bathed when he was 2, so a sweatshop job by comparison would be far more pleasant and less dangerous.

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.

When I defend sweatshops, people always ask me: But would you want to work in a sweatshop? No, of course not. But I would want even less to pull a rickshaw. In the hierarchy of jobs in poor countries, sweltering at a sewing machine isn’t the bottom.

My views on sweatshops are shaped by years living in East Asia, watching as living standards soared — including those in my wife’s ancestral village in southern China — because of sweatshop jobs.

Manufacturing is one sector that can provide millions of jobs. Yet sweatshops usually go not to the poorest nations but to better-off countries with more reliable electricity and ports.

I often hear the argument: Labor standards can improve wages and working conditions, without greatly affecting the eventual retail cost of goods. That’s true. But labor standards and “living wages” have a larger impact on production costs that companies are always trying to pare. The result is to push companies to operate more capital-intensive factories in better-off nations like Malaysia, rather than labor-intensive factories in poorer countries like Ghana or Cambodia.

Cambodia has, in fact, pursued an interesting experiment by working with factories to establish decent labor standards and wages. It’s a worthwhile idea, but one result of paying above-market wages is that those in charge of hiring often demand bribes — sometimes a month’s salary — in exchange for a job. In addition, these standards add to production costs, so some factories have closed because of the global economic crisis and the difficulty of competing internationally.

The best way to help people in the poorest countries isn’t to campaign against sweatshops but to promote manufacturing there. One of the best things America could do for Africa would be to strengthen our program to encourage African imports, called AGOA, and nudge Europe to match it.

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.

Look, I know that Americans have a hard time accepting that sweatshops can help people. But take it from 13-year-old Neuo Chanthou, who earns a bit less than $1 a day scavenging in the dump. She’s wearing a “Playboy” shirt and hat that she found amid the filth, and she worries about her sister, who lost part of her hand when a garbage truck ran over her.

“It’s dirty, hot and smelly here,” she said wistfully. “A factory is better.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/opini ... ml?_r=2&hp

My sweatshop column
By NICHOLAS KRISTOF
I’m just about the only person in America who favors sweatshops, and I expect a few brickbats for my Thursday column. Let me clarify a couple of things. First, I don’t deny the criticisms that are usually made of sweatshops — the unhealthy conditions, the abuses, the low wages, and so on. Indeed, I think sweatshops are often worse than commonly perceived, because some kinds of factories — such as those manufacturing leather garments — often use chemicals that are dumped in nearby streams, raising environmental concerns as well.

My point is that bad as sweatshops are, the alternatives are worse. They are more dangerous, lower-paying and more degrading. And when I struggle to think how we can really make a big difference in the development of the poorest countries, the key always seems to be manufacturing. If Africa, for example, can only develop an apparel industry, it will boom.

Now, there are lots of reasons why Africa doesn’t have a garment industry (except for Lesotho, Namibia and a few other places), and they include corruption, poor infrastructure, and quality control. But it’s also true that if a major apparel maker went into, say, Liberia, it would be competitive only if it paid very low wages — and that would get the company in trouble with the press and sweatshop watchdogs. So there is zero apparel export from Liberia (a fragile country with huge unemployment and a wonderful president whom we should be trying to support).

One of the best aid programs for Africa is AGOA, which creates incentives for American imports from Africa, and it should be expanded. The European equivalent, EBA, is a farce and should be combined with AGOA. But to do all this, we need to rethink sweatshops. We need to build a constituency of humanitarians who view low-wage manufacturing as a solution. And that’s the point of my column.

Incidentally, I’m all for “fair-wage” clothing that is based on paying decent wages and providing decent working conditions. More power to those brands. But I think they reflect a modest niche, and the denunciations of sweatshops end up taking jobs away from the poorest countries.

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/0 ... op-column/

Sometimes I think that well meaning people in the developed world don't understand the reality of viable choices faced by people from the third world.

Thank you for your additions to my (IMO formidable) sources.

[Bosiu]

Nobody is celebrating this. But is a step one.

However, Sibirsky is claiming this *wouldn't* happen.
I keep asking, what mechanism would prevent it?

Because the market is below the profit line. Also, a child pornographer is very high on people's "to kill list." so a combination of socio-economic pressures.

[Brogavia]

The free market is unethical to the nth degree. Look at what it has done to the planet. The free market is only about a tiny filthy rich minority exploiting the planet and people. I'm still waiting for the free market to do something. It never will. The free market is an anathema to decent people and the well being of this planet.

That's why the air in Beijing is so fresh, no free market to pollute it. And why the former soviet republics aren't filled with insanely high levels of heavy metal contamination.

[Sibirsky]

Sibirsky keeps saying that child pornography would be outlawed in his free market world.. but how?

Imagine following case.

relatively rich porn producer comes to a bunch of poor peoples and suggest them "borrowing" their let's say 10-12 year old kids for a substantial payment in return.
There definitely will be some that will agree (Sibirsky's logic) because the producer can outpay them seriously - depending on location a few hundred dollars might constitute few years' worth of earnings.
Then the producer will produce it and sell it to a willing market of perverts who will not rat him out either because it would be bad from them.
IE you have incentives at every segment - production and distribution to not close it down.
And security? If police force is privatised and this person rich enough he can simply afford to pay them to look elsewhere

The public would demand that child pornography be illegal, so it would be illegal. The fact that it may still happen is irrelevant. It happens now.